Let me preface this by saying…

In no way is my marriage in trouble by any definition.

Then why post this?

Because I believe in ALWAYS upping my game in life, in my job, in my marriage.

The following is an article from a guy named Dan Pearce (a single, divorced TWICE, BTW) that I ran across while searching for Something Completely Different. But the title compelled me to right-click, open in a new tab and read a while later. The following is a story / blog / lesson that, no matter the health of your marriage, it will undoubtedly open your eyes to some things you may be doing very right and others that you may be doing very wrong.

You decide.

You know what blows big time?

The other night I was sitting with my family, most of whom are very successfully married. We were going in a circle giving our best marriage advice to my little sister on the eve of her wedding. It’s somewhat of a family tradition.

But that’s not what blows. What really blows is that I realized I don’t have any good marriage advice to give. After all, I’ve never had a successful marriage out of the two marriages I did have.
And so, when it was my turn, I just made a joke about divorce and how you should always remember why you loved your spouse when you first met her so that when times get tough, you can find someone new that is just like she was.
There were a couple courtesy giggles, but overall my humor wasn’t welcome in such a beautifully building ring of profundity.

They finished round one, and for some reason started into another round. And that’s when I realized. Hey. I don’t have marriage advice to give, but I have plenty of “keep your marriage from ending” advice (two equivocally different things), and that might be almost as good.
It eventually came to me again, and what I said would have been such great advice if I were a tenth as good at saying things as I was at writing them.

And so, that night, I sat down and wrote out my “advice list” for my little sister. You know… things I wish I would have known or done differently so that I didn’t end up divorced (twice). After writing it, I thought maybe I’d share it with all of you, too.
I call it my “Ways I Blew My Marriage” list. Also, for the list’s sake, I am just going to refer to “her” instead of “them” even though they almost all were true in both marriages.

Continue to read→

http://www.danoah.com/2012/10/16-ways-i-blew-my-marriage.html

I hope this is helpful to you in some way.
It’s my philosophy in marriage that you can never rest on your laurels… there is ALWAYS something you can improve on or stop doing altogether.
Remember, God loved these girls, to whom we are married, long before we knew they existed.
Lets treat them accordingly.

-Alan