Good Enough…

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

Mignon McLaughlin

No one plants a garden for just a couple of years; it is always a long-term project. It is the same with a family: it is a lifelong project. I have never met anyone who would dig up an apple tree every year and replant it in a more suitable spot, or simply replace it with a new one. No one expects it to bear fruit right away and in abundance. And no one expects a rich harvest if the garden is not tended.

Marriage is also a garden that needs constant care and attention. We plant it once and for all. We make vows, build a home, raise children. And if we then gradually and imperceptibly stop tending it, the garden becomes overgrown with problems that are hard to deal with.

In the Book of Proverbs, the author paints a picture that illustrates well what we are talking about:

I went by the field of the lazy man, and by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding; and there it was, all overgrown with thorns; its surface was covered with nettles; its stone wall was broken down.

Proverbs 24:30–31 (NKJV)

The owner did not destroy his vineyard. He simply did nothing, and the weeds grew on their own.

How often I hear that everything just happened by itself and no one is to blame. Once a young ex-husband told me, “It all just sort of happened on its own…” If you do not make an effort and keep investing in a relationship, everything becomes overgrown and eventually dies.

Why We Stop Investing in Our Relationships

There are many reasons, and they all sound quite reasonable. Work drains our strength. Household chores eat up our evenings. Parents grow older, expenses rise. Children arrive, and all our attention shifts to them.

Brian Doss, Scott Stanley, Howard Markman, and Galena Rhoades followed 218 couples for eight years. After the birth of their first child, marital satisfaction declined in about 90% of them. Stanley explains: a child does not destroy a marriage, but the child’s arrival speeds up the decline.

In other words, if your garden is already overgrown, new and important responsibilities will distract you even more.

Behind all these reasons lies one common cause. Work, children, and chores make demands, while a relationship, if it is genuine, cannot demand. And we are used to responding to whoever shouts the loudest.

A Quiet Enemy Called Routine

Another reason we stop working on our relationships is routine. Many couples believe that if they aren’t arguing, everything is fine and there’s no need to do anything. They stop making an effort, and when problems arise, they start frantically wondering what to do.

Research shows that routine seriously cools a relationship. Irene Tsapelas, Arthur Aron, and Terry Orbuch surveyed married couples in their seventh year of marriage. Those who admitted that they “do the same thing all the time” and very rarely do anything interesting together reported lower marital satisfaction nine years later than those who tried to add variety to their lives. Moreover, this pattern held true even in families where there were almost no conflicts.

Five Pillars

Caring for a marriage and making an effort to maintain a relationship can be described in very concrete terms. Laura Stafford and Daniel Canary studied what spouses do to keep their relationships alive and identified five specific actions. I call them the pillars that hold the house up.

The first pillar: kindness. Friendliness, cheerfulness, and refraining from constant criticism. Along with words of commitment, kindness is most strongly linked to marital satisfaction. Its most important expression is the constant small personal gestures. Definitely not holidays or events with lots of guests, but rather warm evenings spent together, or when spouses reunite in the evening after work. What do you say first: “I’m glad you’re home” or “Why didn’t you take out the trash?” Remember that reproaches kill love, and ill will—when there are more reproaches than expressions of gratitude and compliments—cools the relationship even when love is strong.

The second pillar: constant assurances of love and devotion. Many men think this is unnecessary: “I’m here, so that means I love you” or “I’ve already said that.” But it’s important for a wife to hear it again and again. “I’m with you.” “I choose you again.” “We’ll get through this.”

These words are repeated not because anyone might forget. They are repeated to preserve the relationship, sustain it, and provide each other with support during difficult times. The more often we tell each other that we love one another, the less the relationship is prone to erosion.

The third pillar: openness. These are conversations not about bills and schedules, but about each other and the relationship itself. How are things between us right now? What are you missing? What makes you happy? Openness implies honesty and a willingness to share what’s in your heart, not just to convey information.

Many couples spend years talking only about tasks and problems. They think they’re communicating, but in reality, they’re running a small private business that brings them certain dividends, but not family happiness. Ask your spouse what is really in their heart, not about shopping, decisions, plans, or debts. That’s exactly how relationships are built.

The fourth pillar: mutual friends, family, and church. A couple with a shared circle of regular friends is less likely to experience feelings of alienation and loneliness. Friends who know you specifically as a couple support your union. The church, a home group, and family friends become a living fence around your garden.

The fifth pillar: a fair division of responsibilities. Stafford and Canary observed that spouses who feel the division of household responsibilities is unfair invest less in the relationship. This is especially true for the one who feels they are carrying the heavier load. For many, helping out around the house speaks louder of love than flowers ever could. Flowers are nice, too, but sharing the load says what matters most: “You’re not alone.”

Something New Together

I said that one of the main enemies of a relationship is routine, but there is a very effective and simple remedy for it: constantly coming up with something new and doing it together. Arthur Aron, the author of self-expansion theory, showed that shared new experiences greatly strengthen the sense of closeness between spouses. In his experiments, seven minutes of an unusual shared activity were enough for couples to rate their relationship more highly. As we discover the unknown together, we rediscover each other.

This does not require big spending. It can be much simpler: a new route for a walk, a new and interesting dish, studying together, serving together.

Bradford Wilcox and Jeffrey Dew compared spouses who go on dates at least once or twice a month with those who do so rarely or never. In the first group, 83% of wives and 84% of husbands are very happy in their marriage; in the second, 68% and 70%. The authors caution that this is a correlation, not a proven cause. But the conclusion is clear: happy couples make time for each other, and time for each other helps them stay happy.

A Habit, Not an Impulse

One of the most common mistakes is treating care for a marriage like an emergency repair. A couple quarrels, gets scared, goes on vacation, breathes a sigh of relief. And then once again it is “good enough.”

Daniel Canary, Laura Stafford, and Beverly Semic followed married couples for several months. Their conclusion: maintenance behaviors work as long as they are repeated. Yesterday’s care no longer warms today. You do not water a garden once for the whole summer.

Jesus speaks words to the church in Ephesus that also fit marriage:

Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works.

Revelation 2:4–5 (NKJV)

Notice: He does not say, “Wait for your old feelings to come back.” He calls us to “do the first works.” First love returns through the deeds we repeat day after day.

Remember what you did when it was all just beginning. You called for no particular reason, just to hear that dear voice and say “I love you.” You listened attentively and with full focus, putting your phone aside. You were always thinking of ways to bring joy. These are the very first works.

What to Do

When things have already gone the wrong way, when work on the relationship was abandoned long ago and the bitter fruit has already ripened, it is time to stop and begin to change. But do not start with a grand project; start with one small thing. Do not try to change everything at once. Choose the pillar that is weakest and begin to strengthen it every day. For example, if there is a lot of criticism at home, start by bringing back a warm tone. If you have not talked about yourselves for a long time, find an evening for a conversation “about us.”

Set a rhythm. Time together should be in your calendar as firmly as any work meeting. Otherwise something will always push it out. And do not forget to come up with and do something new at least once a month. Do together what you have never done before.

A garden is planted for a lifetime. But it bears fruit only for those who go there every day to care for it.