Kelly Sopp's Blog: Love Notes - The Hey, I Love You Blog

Flipping the Script on Your Love Story.

One of my favorite parts of being a writer is doing the research. For my newest book, Hey, I Love You...I spent a lot of time in conversation with married people. And whether it was newlyweds, happily weds, regrettably weds, or forever weds, the first question I always asked was, What page are you on in your love story? This was usually followed by an awkward silence as they wondered if I was talking about the latest Danielle Steel novel on the nightstand, or a recent Hallmark movie. Then it would dawn on them, I was asking about their marriage. Their love story. 

What I discovered is that most couples think about their marriage as something that is. Not something that is unfolding. It’s as if the act of getting married is the final chapter in the tale of how they met, and fell in love. Think about it. At dinner parties, it’s common to ask a couple how they met. But nobody ever asks, “So, what will happen next with you two?” Imagine if someone asked you that question. Do you know what you would say?   

The more you communicate empathetically and compassionately, the closer you’ll become.

It’s incredibly empowering to know that the best part of your story isn’t written yet. You’re like a time traveler! Everything you do and say today, influences your tomorrow. Will you be empathetic, caring and present? Or will you be judgmental, annoyed or distant? One response brings you closer together, and the other pushes you further apart. Where do you want the story to go?

No, we can’t always control the challenges in our lives and our relationships. But what we can control is how we face them. Every love story, even the epic ones, have elements of conflict. But what makes a story truly great is when there’s character growth and resolution. How will you and your partner overcome the next crisis? Will you stop repeating the same mistakes and unlock the joy of deeper connection? Will you pick up on the signals of what’s going on in your partner’s head and heart?

If you aren’t on a great page in your love story, then flip the script. Let go of what happened yesterday and move the narrative forward. Communicate your feelings honestly and thoughtfully. Spark up romance. Encourage one another. Ask for help folding the laundry. Apologize! If you have trouble doing those things, it’s okay. My book makes it fun and easy. And just remember that the more you communicate empathetically and compassionately, the closer you’ll become. And whatever you do, never stop trying to be the one your partner is excited to share a lifetime with. 

Stop Making Marriage So Hard.

Seriously, stop it. Stop tiptoeing around for days not speaking to one another. Stop harboring resentment. Stop burying your feelings. Stop dwelling on the past and dosing out passive aggressive revenge. Stop justifying why you are right and consider why you might have cause to apologize. Please, hear me when I tell you that you’ve already wasted too much time living in disappointment when you could be experiencing bliss. You want to know how couples find Happily Ever After? By creating it. And it’s far easier than you think. 

I spent the first twenty four years of my marriage making the same mistakes again and again. Same argument, same lack of empathy, different spoiled weekend. I can’t even remember what our misgivings were about, honestly. But I often found us on relationship autopilot, and I could feel our spark plugs starting to sputter and wear out. Until one revelatory day, when I finally understood. It’s simply about sharing.

Not only can communicating be incredibly simple, it can be wildly fun! 

Just think about it. If you share your feelings with your spouse, they have the opportunity to listen and empathize. If you share words of encouragement with your spouse, they’ll find it easier to be brave. If you share your struggles, your spouse can lend you support. If you share your truth, your partner can finally understand. And you know what happens when you share your regrets? Your partner can choose to forgive. Sharing is simply communicating. The more you do it, the more closely connected your souls become. And not only can communicating be incredibly simple, it can be wildly fun! 

When I wrote Hey, I Love You… I wanted to remove all the difficulties of communication by giving you the right words to express yourself as well as a playful way to deliver them. It’s as easy as bookmarking a page, then leaving the book someplace fun for your spouse to discover. Like on top of their favorite coffee mug. Or, hiding in their sock drawer. There are five sections in the book to help you navigate it all: Romance, Encouragement, Tough Times, Disagreements and Apologies. Within those sections, there are words for just about everything. By sending your message with a bookmark, it takes the pressure off your partner and lets them receive your message and reciprocate when they’re ready. 

Wishing you could spark things up? Bookmark the Kiss Me page, and wait to see what happens. Concerned about your partner’s wellbeing? Bookmark the I’m Worried About You page and invite your partner to share what’s on their mind. Hurt feelings? Bookmark the Ouch, I Could Really Use an Apology page and help yourselves get past your disagreement and move on to constructive conversation. Each time you use the book, it allows you to heal and grow closer. And it’s that deeper connection which allows you to create a more remarkable marriage.

Beginnings, Middles and Ends of Marriages.

This pandemic, like many difficult life events, has bubbled up a lot of truth to the surface of relationships. A number of my friends are divorcing, some in the early years of their marriages, but others after being together for decades. What I've learned is that the challenges we face in life will either bring us closer together, or they will drive us apart. And the greatest determinant of that, is how we step into those challenges. 

In the beginning of a relationship, there’s what I call the romantic filter. It’s like we see our partner through a soft Hollywood lens that smoothes their flaws and minimizes their blunders. When we face challenges at this point, whether it be a job change, a debt burden, difficulty with pregnancy, or the like, we tend to lean in and face them together. While we may not always be our best selves, we take comfort in the fact that our partner is trying the best they can.

In the middle of a relationship, we find ourselves getting more comfortable in the grace our partner extends us. At times, we may even take advantage of it. Like not resolving arguments as quickly, not expressing our love and appreciation as often, or not checking in on our partner’s well being because we assume they’re fine. The romantic filter we once looked through now starts to appear in high definition. We begin to see character flaws in our spouse that we never noticed before. We may even start to feel disillusioned, wondering “what happened to the person I married?”

Sometimes, marriages end. And that’s okay. But sometimes, they end for avoidable reasons. 

When challenges hit us in the middle of marriage, they’re usually the more difficult kind. The death of a parent, or a friend. A major health crisis. A struggling child. A financial blow. It’s at this point that life’s challenges have a greater ability to divide us. They create those small cracks which can ultimately lead to a break. Unless, during these emotionally vulnerable moments, we make an active choice to bond together and unite as an unstoppable, married force.

When my father died, the grief was hard. It felt like I’d sunk to the bottom of a dark lagoon, and it took a few years to rise up to the surface. During that time, my husband chose to keep shining his light for me brightly. Without this effort, I think I could have easily become lost. When our son left for college and we became empty nesters, it was yet another huge emotional challenge for me. My purpose was shifting, and I was asking myself hard questions like “who am I now?” and “What do I want to be?” My husband took notice of this and he leaned in even harder. He became more romantic. He encouraged me to take career risks. He gave me the time and space to find my footing, while at the same time, holding me near. All of these things strengthened our relationship.  

Sometimes, marriages end. And that’s okay. But sometimes, they end for avoidable reasons. That’s why I wrote Hey, I Love You… to help couples grow closer throughout all the years of their relationship by communicating better, listening more, and by understanding each other on a  deeper level. If you can strengthen your relationship each day, even in the smallest way, you’ll be far less vulnerable as a couple when the tough times arrive. Still, should you find yourself at the end, try to remember that ends are also new beginnings. As we learn more, we can love all the better.

Patience. Virtue or Vow?

When you write a marriage book, it can give the impression that you’re some kind of relationship saint. So let me set the record straight. It would probably take a miracle for me to earn a halo. I fully confess to starting arguments with the willfulness of a schoolyard bully. Over the years, my mouth has uttered strings of words I wholly regret. And like a twister, I’ve come crashing into perfectly peaceful moments only to leave my husband bewildered and ducking for emotional cover. Thank goodness marriage is a sacred space full of grace and second chances. I’ve needed plenty of both!

Patience has never been my strongest virtue. In fact, I’m not even sure if it’s one of my virtues at all. But I continue to work hard at it, because ultimately, I believe patience is part of a marriage vow. It may go unsaid, but I’m certain it’s somewhere in the fine-print next to the for-better-or-worse,-as-long-as-we-both-shall-live bit. Just like you can’t make a good Italian wedding soup without those little meatballs, you can’t have a happy lifelong relationship without patience.   

As newlyweds, we usually have plenty of tolerance for when our partner isn’t at their best. But there’s an important distinction to be made between tolerance and patience. Tolerance is the willingness to put up with a certain amount of something. For example, I have a terrible habit of leaving my car keys in different purses and places around the house. Then later, when I need to be somewhere, I frantically search for them, yelling “Arrrgh! Have you seen my keys?!!!” My husband has somehow tolerated this scenario on repeat for the entirety of our twenty-five years together.

With patience comes peace.

Patience on the other hand, is the ability to stay calm, cool and collected through whatever it is you’re tolerating. In the early days of our marriage, my husband had very little patience for my frantic car key searches. He’d say, “You know, this wouldn’t happen if you’d always put things away where they belong!” (Good point, but I'm a knucklehead who never seems to level up at this bit of wisdom.) The stress and frustration of my search would affect his mood long after I’d found my keys and pulled out of the driveway. Ironically, while I was the one experiencing the problem, he was the one who ended up suffering. 

At some point, we discovered something relationship-altering. With patience comes peace. It’s a much happier way to spend our days together. Sure, I still lose my keys because I’m me. But I've learned to be patient with myself and my mistakes. I try to resolve things more calmly. And he’s learned it’s best to simply smile and ask, “Have you checked the front porch?” 

Drawing on Experience.

Hey! Kelly here! This is my husband Dave. He’s also the designer and illustrator of Hey, I Love You… He wrote a lovely piece about how he approached this project and I wanted to share it with you. As much as I was toiling to get the words of this marriage book perfectly perfect, he was doing the same thing (and more) with the art. (And if you like this, you’ll love his portfolio/blog). With that, here’s Dave…

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My wife wrote a book called, Hey, I Love You… and she asked me to design it. Then she asked me to illustrate it. It’s in the contract with our publisher. They paid me in the advance to do 50 illustrations for the book. Well, they paid Kelly to have me do the work. Hahaha. Anyhoo, you know how many illustrations I did for the book? Over 100. And that’s why I like being a strategic designer who can draw. I didn’t HAVE to overdeliver because it’s my wife’s project. I did it because it simply HAD to be done. I’ll explain.

Kelly’s book is beautiful. Hey, I Love You… gives couples practical marriage wisdom, and an effortless way to exchange heartfelt words that need to be said, or unsaid, or aren’t said often enough. It’s so unique. Not just because of the way you use it or how anyone who’s married can find incredible value in it. It’s unique in the space of Relationships and Marriage. Have you ever looked in that section? It’s D-E-P-R-E-S-S-I-N-G. It’s mostly for people trying to fix what’s very broke or, in the dustier lower shelves, trying to teach people how to NOT get into that situation in the first place. Kelly’s book tackles all that (and more) handily and expertly, but in such a refreshingly positive way. This is starting to sound like I’m the president of her fan club (I am, and I’m also president of every businesses fan club on my portfolio site), but it’s important because when you illustrate a book, it’s not about your talents. It’s all about the content.

I’ve collected my favorites (but not all my favorites) to share. The book is so light and bright and airy, so the illustrations really needed to just be seasoning for the words Kelly wrote. I chose a loose style using the colors we already established in designing the book together. The drawings are cute and happy, but still rough around the edges and almost sketchy, just like my marriage. Kidding! Just seeing if you’re paying attention.

In this case, the content is composed of two parts. The first is an introduction to the book to explain it (it’s that unique) and give you an entertaining breakdown of tried and true marriage best practices. The second part is the bulk of the book - bookmarkable spreads that convey your romantic thoughts, encouraging words, mild concerns, deepest worries, and your most sincere apologies. That’s a lot of emotional content, right? Sound kind of heavy? Well, it IT IS! And that was what made it so tricky.

As a person who identifies as “married for more than 25 years”, I’ve (we’ve) experienced a lot of the experiences in this book.

The Hey, I Love You… bookmarkables are divided into five categories. The first two, Romance and Encouragement, were super easy and fun. Then it started getting challenging. I feel like such a baby even writing that because you honestly, have NO idea how much thought and research went into the writing of this book. For example, consider this spread: I’m Worried About You. / It seems like you might be having a tough time right now. Want to talk about it? While the sentiment is clear, it’s also intentionally vague. Because this bookmark may be appropriate for someone who’s going through a really hard project at work as well as someone who might be suffering from deep depression. The overall tone of the book is upbeat, but it’s not tone deaf. As a person who identifies as “married for more than 25 years”, I’ve (we’ve) experienced a lot of the experiences in this book. So what would you illustrate to represent that bookmarkable message?

For every message in the book, I had to put myself in the shoes of the bookmarker AND the recipient in both the most mild of circumstance AND the most dire. All the while I had to keep with the book’s upbeat voice and palette. For example,“I’m Worried About You.”. For this I illustrated a door outlined in white in a very dark room. Under the door there’s a bright yellow light showing from the other side. From other side comes a bright, hopeful love note that travels a playful path into the room. Fine for anyone who’s just sort of shut off emotionally from their loved one and open to interpretation by the recipient to speak to just how dark that room is that they’re holed up in. See what I mean?

Of course, not everything in the book called for something this heavy. Even in the serious parts. If you know me, you know I can’t stand an easy way out. But for a small part of this assignment, the easy way out led to more time and effort to tackle the harder stuff. “Maybe We Can Learn a Lesson in This.” = Graduation cap. “I Will Never Give Up on You.” = Life Preserver. Not lazy. Just accurate, appropriate, and efficient to tackle the harder spreads. Besides, remember what I said about the book not being about the illustrations? It’s true. They were always meant to be seasoning for the content.

At this writing, I’m still making more and more drawings. Once we sent the final files to our publisher, there was the website and all the marketing materials to produce. Right now I’m at over 300 unique illustrations for this project. This isn’t even counting the animated book trailers and animated gifs viewed by over 3 million on GIPHY. I hope there’s even more to add to this story when the book is available October 5. If you want to be in the loop, subscribe to the Hey, I Love You…Newsletter. If you preorder the book before October 5, you’ll get a cool little Sneak Preview Gift. from Kelly and I :-)

What! My Marriage is Tone Deaf?!

Having been married for a quarter of a century, I’ve spent a good deal of time around couples. One of the things that has always fascinated me is how spouses speak to one another. Some do it with kindness. Others, with the abrupt emotional volatility of a small explosion. I’ve observed couples who speak to each other with such banal familiarity that there’s little room for empathy or pre-consideration of their words. I have relatives whose only tone is angry-yelling. And I have friends who don’t really speak at all, but communicate more through  unenthusiastic grunts. 

Does it matter? Is tone an indicator of the state of your relationship? Or, is tone more of a dialect that’s regionalized in the micro society of your household? In my experience, yes. (To all three.) Tone impacts the very way we experience being in a relationship. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, how we speak communicates our level of care, honesty and state of emotion. Imagine a scenario in which you’ve cleaned up the kitchen counter where your spouse had left a few tools. A voice yells from the kitchen, “MY HAMMER IS MISSING!! DID YOU PUT MY HAMMER SOMEWHERE?!!” Consider the impact of that tone: your thoughtful act of cleaning has been ignored, you feel “lashed out” at, you sense your spouse’s frustration and impatience, your cortisol level rises, and because you’ve been yelled at, you naturally want to scream right back. It’s a whole mixed bag of emotions resulting from just two sentences. Now imagine your partner’s tone was completely different. They calmly pop into the room, smile and say, “My hammer is missing. Did you put my hammer somewhere?” It’s so much better! But even better still would be pre-considering the words, and delivering them with a loving tone. “Hey, thanks for cleaning up. I think I left my hammer out. Do you know where I can find it?” In this scenario, you feel appreciated; even helpful. The only emotional outcome is positive. And the end result is exactly the same – finding the hammer.  

Is tone an indicator of the state of your relationship?

Every time we speak to one another, we have the opportunity to do so in a loving way. Consider the alternative of being tone deaf – where dozens of interactions per day cause dozens of negative emotions in the relationship. Over time, they compound until we perceive the entire relationship as being stressful, loveless or hurtful. Even though many couples justify their household dialect as “just being the way we’ve always talked to each other” I have to wonder how much more joy they could be experiencing simply by paying more attention to their tone. One study  in 2015 at USC found that while words can be deceiving, tone of voice cannot. The study used an algorithm to predict the outcome of one hundred marriages based on the tone of interactions recorded in therapy sessions. In a five-year follow up, the A.I. had a 79 percent accuracy. 

Here’s the good news. Tone deafness in a marriage, or in any relationship for that matter, is entirely curable. Our choice of delivery, and our choice of words, is 100% within our control. In fact, when I took on my latest project to write a book about marriage, I wanted to create a way for couples to master a more thoughtful language and tone, immediately. So I devoted a great deal of the book to carefully pre-written sentiments which are kind, empathetic, meaningful and constructive. Then I included a simple means of delivery – a bookmark. That way, expressing how you feel is as easy as marking a page in the book and leaving it for your partner to discover. The tone is unmistakably loving. And it’s easier to receive your loved one’s message when it’s preceded by the words on the cover. “Hey, I Love You…” 

Is There a Recipe for a Healthy Marriage?

Humans have been coupling up and canoodling since the Paleolithic period. And while the Stone Age recipe for romance might have been grabbing your cave-buddy and grilling some wooly mammoth steaks on a stick over an open fire, history proves that relationships and recipes keep evolving. Now we live in the age of open and honest communication, couples therapy and online cooking classes. So what exactly have we learned in the last 2.5 million years? Well, a lot actually. Grab yourself a nicely aged glass of merlot and lets reflect. 

The base of any healthy marriage is communication. Learning to express your feelings, worries and thoughts with your partner is the very thing that allows you to be heard. Trust me, your partner wants to understand. They also want to be understood. In the past couple of decades we’ve been inundated with high tech ways of communicating. We’ve gone from mail to email, to paging, to texting, to direct messaging, in what feels like the blink of an eye. But are we better communicators? I actually think we’re regressing. These days, we abbreviate our thoughts into textable words that autofill. We chat about everything, but nothing too meaningful. And we often misinterpret the tone of what’s being said because we’ve stopped looking one another in the eyes. It’s like a recipe with so many ingredients, it’s just no fun to make!

Roles in relationships have changed too. In the days of hunting and gathering, our very survival depended on a clear definition of responsibilities and division of duties. But today, our roles are quickly evolving. We can better afford the luxuries of inner purpose, happiness and self-fulfilment. Taking care of one another has moved beyond the realms of safety and finance into the realm of emotional well being. We expect more than ever from our partners. We want them to be our teammate, confidant, lover, best friend, advisor, coach, therapist, audience, co-worker and even oracle. Just to overcook another food analogy, we’ve gone from steak and potatoes to gluten-free beef Wellington with a side of scalloped, herb-infused root vegetables. 

Learning how to have a healthy marriage is one thing. Incorporating what you’ve learned into a daily practice is another.

What we haven’t learned in that last couple of million years, is how to get things right all of the time. I’ve been married for twenty five years and just this morning I acted with the demeanor of a neanderthal. I was short-tempered, uncommunicative, and oblivious to my husband’s feelings. And he’s the person I love and adore the most! I acted this way despite having spent the past year researching and writing a book about how to have a more remarkable relationship! Look, we may have come a long way as a species. But we’re still human.

Learning how to have a healthy marriage is one thing. Incorporating what you’ve learned into a daily practice is another. When I wrote Hey, I Love You...I wanted to make a foolproof recipe for creating your best life together as a couple. So I included carefully measured amounts of wisdom, meaningful words to share, and a very analog way to express them. Who would have thought, in this day in age, that an old-fashioned bookmark would be the perfect conduit to getting you interacting and being romantic again? But quite simply, it is. Now communicating is as easy as marking a page that truly expresses how you feel, and leaving the book for your partner to discover. The book makes sure your words are constructive, meaningful and kind. And it allows you to process your partner’s thoughts and concerns in your own good time. It helps you to listen, and even reciprocate your feelings. And when it comes to growing closer as a couple, I promise you, this is one recipe that’s impossible to mess up. 

Expressing Love. (Poetry Not Required.)

We’ve all seen that dated romcom: Guy falls for girl... Guy attempts to win girl’s love by recruiting poetic friend to express his love to her... Girl eventually realizes she’s in love with the wrong guy. So why is this Shakespeare meets Hollywood formula of romance, plus hijinks, plus miscommunication so popular? Because love isn’t going anywhere. And expressing it? Well, it can be really hard. Even after you’ve captured someone’s heart and gotten hitched!

Let’s start with the actual words. Twenty-five years of marriage has taught me that speaking romantically is really as simple as expressing love and gratitude. It doesn’t have to be poetic to stir your partner’s soul. But it needs to come straight from your heart. And if it’s a little surprising, that’s all the better! Sentiments you don’t hear all the time cause a moment of pause and reflection. For example, “I don’t just love you. I like you.” What a wonderful thing to say to the person that isn’t just your life partner, but is also your best friend. Or, “Your buns look really great in those jeans. Not that I was staring or anything... okay, I was!” It’s a compliment, but it also acknowledges being attracted to your partner, and admits that you were totally checking them out. Expressing gratitude is incredibly romantic. Even, “I Appreciate You. I probably don’t tell you this enough, but I’m so grateful for who you are and all you do.” How do you say that and not get kissed?!

Words have incredible power. Gestures have impact.

In romance, love can also be expressed through gestures. Back to romcom scenarios: exterior night... guy stands under girl’s window holding flowers (or a 1980’s boombox) while friend hides in bushes feeding poetic lines. These types of sweeping gestures demand impact. Which is why so many marriage proposals are planned months in advance, and executed to the tee. In marriage though, these types of huge gestures are unsustainable and so they become a lot less sweeping over time. Cooking for your spouse is a romantic gesture. Taking a moment to celebrate their accomplishment is a romantic gesture. Even dragging the recycling out to the curb can be a genuine expression of love. But if you rely on gestures as your only form of romantic expression, you run the risk of not always being clearly heard.

When I wrote Hey, I Love You... I wanted to give couples a way to easily exchange the words that aren’t said often enough in marriage. Especially if those words don’t come naturally. After all, we can’t truly know how our partner feels at any given moment unless they actually tell us. I also wanted to help couples overcome communication inertia by making it easy. Oh, and fun! Speaking from your heart is as simple a gesture as placing a bookmark on a page that expresses your feelings, then hiding it somewhere for your partner to discover. Communicating this way becomes a kind of game that you just want to keep playing. 

Words have incredible power. Gestures have impact. When you find a simple way to marry the two, then you’ve mastered the language of love. And the more you use it, the more you’re scripting the greatest romcom of all time.   

Can Marriage Counseling Help?

People have a lot of differing opinions about the value of therapy. Some couples wouldn’t get married without at least a few pre-marital counseling sessions. Others wouldn’t be dragged to therapy if their life depended upon it. Whatever camp you’re in, let me tell you a little about the road in between. 

My husband and I approached marriage like most things in our lives –with a toe dip. We dated for a couple of years. Then, much to David’s conservative parent’s consternation, we waded into the shallow end of commitment by getting an apartment together. It was a life-changing, fun-filled adventure and we grew deeper in love. A year later, we got engaged. And a year after that, we were officially married. You might think the inching-in approach would have prepared us for the deep end. But as strong as we were at wielding the power of love, there were a few skills we didn’t even know we were lacking. Like honoring each other’s space and solitude. Speaking with empathy. And properly apologizing. Perhaps we didn’t need those skills as much in the beginning, when our relationship was new.

Going from “That’ll really get his goat” to “Let me de-escalate this situation” was a sign that I was finally growing up.

Some of what we needed to know came with maturity. A big one for us was learning to protect each other’s emotional triggers instead of pushing on them. Going from “That’ll really get his goat” to “Let me de-escalate this situation” was a sign that I was finally growing up. But in all honesty, some of the most important skills were learned with the help of therapists and marriage counselors. We sought their advice on several occasions, when we felt stuck on an issue, when we felt divided, or when life threw us a curveball and we knew we could benefit from an experienced voice in the room. And even though the cost always seemed to come at the time we could least afford it, I believe to this day it was the best money we ever spent. 

In individual therapy, I had the time and space to work on myself. Delving into the deep inner work of understanding why I am the way I am, and why I do the things I do, was foundational in being a part of a strong and healthy relationship. In couple’s counseling, we learned practical skills about communication, empathy, and working through life’s challenges together. Because even though we’d been having honest conversations for years, we didn’t always know how to speak to each other in the most constructive way. We’re still not perfect. But with knowledge practice, we sure improved. 

And what if your relationship is the stuff of fairytales? Can marriage counseling still help? I believe it’s the same answer as to these questions...are mashed potatoes better with butter? Is the french language sexy? Would I like a million dollars, tax free? Yes! There is always something to learn in a lifelong relationship. What marriage counseling can’t do is apply the learning. That one, my friend, is on you.

Are You in a Healthy Relationship?

Whether you’ve been married a day or a decade, it’s important to know if your relationship is healthy and thriving in ways that will allow your love to grow. If it isn’t exactly? Don’t freak out and pack your bags just yet! You have the power to make simple changes right now that will help your relationship blossom over time. 

So, let’s take a look. People often try to generalize what constitutes unhealthy behavior. I’ve found that nothing about marriage is black and white. It’s more like a Jackson Pollock painting with a splattering of black, white, green, purple, brown and an overall dominant hue of gray. But let’s go over a few basic diagnostics.

Abuse. This is a big one. No one is entitled to physically or mentally abuse you. If this is happening, please seek help right away. Hurt feelings on the other hand, are often the result of thoughtlessness or a lack of empathy. Those can be easily corrected with better communication skills, more listening, and by learning what constitutes a true and proper apology. 

Respect. In a healthy relationship, your partner holds you in high esteem. Even when you disagree, love means being respectful of each other’s voices and opinions. My husband and I disagree on plenty of things, one of which is his taste in music. So when he feels like listening to songs I can’t stand like 1950’s Doo Wop, I just smile, gently close the door, and give him the space to rock out. Do you feel your partner respects you? Are you making an effort to reciprocate that feeling?

I’ve been married for twenty five years, and there are still days when my relationship seems susceptible to the ills of the world.

Trust. It’s earned by displaying a consistency of character. In a healthy marriage, there is usually an abundance of trust. In an unhealthy marriage, there can be unwarranted or warranted suspicion. In a marriage that’s healing, be patient as you take the slow and steady steps to get there. Discussing your worries openly and honestly will help you both identify relationship dry rot that’s in need of repair. 

Presence. In the healthiest relationships, there is both attention and intention. What I mean is, we show up fully present for our partner, and we have the intention of making them feel seen and heard. This purposeful presence keeps couples closely connected. It’s when we put our relationship on autopilot that we start getting into trouble. Remember the first thing they teach you in driver’s ed? Keep your eyes on the road.  

Support. In a healthy relationship, support can be recognized in the form of encouragement, empathy, patience and compassion. If you extend your partner the grace and space to fail, it only encourages them to be brave and try again. Does your partner lean in and carry more of the load when you need them to? If not, maybe it’s as simple as letting them know what you need. 

Solidarity. I love the motto made famous by Alexandre Dumas, “All for one and one for all.” To me, it means facing challenges together while also looking out for each other as individuals. Solidarity in marriage is healthy. Selfishness, however, is not. So if it feels like you and your partner are often opposing forces, the best thing you can do is call a truce and have a serious sit down. A lot of couples battle over parenting style, especially in a blended family. If you’re stuck, consider a marriage counselor. They can work wonders at helping you have productive and constructive discussions that will get you both onto the same team. 

I’ve been married for twenty five years, and there are still days when my relationship seems susceptible to the ills of the world. The best way I’ve found to keep immunity up is simply to keep checking in. We speak respectfully, and we listen to each other’s truths. And we enjoy these conversations even more when we keep it light and make it fun. The great thing about communication is, the more you do it, the better you get at it. And the healthier your relationship becomes.