Don’t Make Things More Complicated Than They Are
Let’s Start a Marriage Moment!I’ve been trying to streamline my Friday Round-Ups, and my Facebook, and my newsletters lately.
I want to be consistent about what times I post and what I tend to post. It makes it easier for you–you know what to expect–and it makes it easier for me–I know what I’m posting.
And I’ve been experimenting with my Friday post for a while, because there are always small things I need to share with you–winners of contests, media appearances, guest posts I’ve done elsewhere, etc.
But I find these posts are too much of a hodgepodge. So I’m still going to share those things–but I’m also going to have a Marriage Moment–a 400 word update about something marriage that I’m thinking.
This is going to be hard for me–my posts tend to run 2000 words! But I’m going to try to write a 400 word pithy thing. Deep breath. You can do this, Sheila!
Now, every Friday I also like to share the biggest posts of the week here at the blog–let you know which ones really resonated, in case you missed them so that you can keep up. And often older posts start to go crazy again, too, so here’s your chance to read some of the oldies but goodies.
Here we go!
What’s #1 at To Love, Honor and Vacuum?
#1 NEW Post on the Blog: Top 10 Reasons to Get Married
#1 on the Blog Overall: Top 10 Effects of Porn on Your Brain, Your Marriage and Your Sex Life
#1 on Facebook: Marrying Later in Life
#1 on Pinterest: Stocking Stuffers for Your Husband Something tells me this is the most popular one that we are going to be having for a while. (bookmark this for later!)
Marriage Moment: Don’t Make Things More Complicated
I was talking with a friend recently with a three-year-old daughter. That little girl has just started speech therapy to get rid of some bad habits. It seems that she is replacing EASY consonants with HARD consonant sounds. Certain consonants are easy for kids to learn–s, t, m. Other sounds are hard–st, g, k, etc. This girl replaces easy ones with hard ones–a very rare problem!
So sunglasses becomes sunglackes.
She makes things harder than they need to be.
Do we do that with marriage?
I often receive emails from women who are sad in their marriages because their husbands do everything wrong. How can they fix their marriage?
In Thought #2 of 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, I suggest one specific thing: Look for things that he is doing well and thank him for those things. Try to find two a day, and say thank you!
Why? Because when you look for things he does right, you think about what he does right. When you constantly criticize and think about how miserable you are, you only notice everything he does wrong.
Because men thrive on appreciation, when they feel criticized, they withdraw. When they feel appreciated, though, they often become more affectionate in the marriage.
This honestly works! It won’t fix everything of course, but it builds such goodwill and brings the tension level down that it is often easier to discuss other issues you have.
Yet the women who honestly need to do this will listen to this advice and ignore it because they think, “Our problem is too big.”
What if changing little things could change big things?
I once heard a story about the Ritz Carlton hotel. I don’t remember all the details, but the hotel was trying to be the best in the world. So when a problem comes, they ask “Why?” seven times to get to the root cause.
In this case, rooms weren’t getting cleaned fast enough. Why? Because there weren’t enough clean towels. Why? Because they couldn’t move the dirty towels to the laundry on time. Why? Because the service elevators were clogged. Why? And so on and so on. They discovered the kitchen was getting huge deliveries at the same time the laundry needed the elevators. They changed the time of the kitchen delivery and the backlog disappeared.
A tiny change. A big difference.
Don’t make things more complicated than they are. Do the simple things. They’re not just for other people. They apply to you, too!
Check out 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage! It’s filled with small action steps that really can change the dynamic in your marriage–and make you much happier in the relationship!
And on TV…
I was on 100 Huntley Street yesterday! If you missed it, the episode is online! I start at around 33:30, and go for roughly 11 minutes I believe.
It’s awfully fun to have someone else do my makeup for a change….
And Maggie John, who interviewed me, said she really loved 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage! She took all these notes while reading it that she showed me, too:
A Note for iPhone iOS 9 Users
I have an iPhone. I love my iPhone. So over the weekend I cleared it all out to conserve memory so that I could do the latest upgrade! Yay!
Turns out not so Yay after all.
The new update makes the mobile version of blogs go all wonky. And it makes emails of blogs shrink.
It’s a huge pain.
So if you get my blog via email, or if you read it on an iPhone, I’m sorry it’s like that. It really is Apple’s fault, not mine. Everything still works great on my husband’s phone who hasn’t updated, and I talked to all kinds of technical people yesterday, and it’s a problem across the board.
There is a simple solution, though. Turn the phone sideways. Then things work again!
But I know it’s a pain. And I’m sorry. I’ve been trying so hard lately to fix the mobile version of my site and to make the emails always readable, and this is just frustrating. Sigh.
On Instagram…
Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving, and my daughter Katie (our youngest!) came home for the weekend. My married daughter and her husband didn’t, so on Monday we drove Katie back to Ottawa and had Thanksgiving dinner with my daughter and son-in-law. Our nephew came along, too, to make it a big family affair, and one of the girls’ best friends joined us, too.
While the turkey was cooking we played three rounds of board games! So much more fun than a screen. Really builds family memories. If you’re looking for games you can play with your hubby, I’ve got a list of 20 2-player games here.
A round of Settlers of Catan while the turkey cooks! #canadianthanksgiving #boardgamenight
A photo posted by Sheila Gregoire (@sheilagregoire) on Oct 12, 2015 at 3:23pm PDT
Have a great weekend, everyone!
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