How do we make a promise to be around, when we must contend with an unpredictable life?
All in Marriage
The Steady Years: Strengthening Marriage in Comfortable Times
How do we strengthen our marriage, when our week-to-week is steady and consistent?
2023: The Year of ‘Not Helpless’
2023 taught me a powerful lesson: facing fears and owning up to my choices proves that, really, we're never helpless.
To be held is to be loved.
At work, we shouldn’t depend on our companies to find purpose and meaning for us. We have the capability to find it for ourselves.
Life can transform us from selfish into something more gracious - if we let it.
I don’t always know who reads these posts, or where in the world they are from.
But if you’re reading this, I hope you are blessed with the gifts of a sturdy table, and a community that gathers around it, just as we are.
For sure, every person is capable of terrible things. But we, as men, don’t have to believe the delusion that we were born with a monster inside us. We have to stop believing that. We can build our identity as men around the parts of us that are most good.
For our marriages to survive and thrive - whether to our soulmate or not - we have to believe that life is better done together, not solo. No amount of love, destiny, resources, compatibility, or compromise can make up for not having this pre-requisite shift in mindset.
I don’t know if anyone else thinks about what life would be like without their partner. It’s like the worst thing. Which is probably why it’s a thought experiment that’s private, saved for dark corners and late nights, never to be acknowledged.
At the same time, perhaps it’s a pain that, when confronted, helps us to truly live. I don’t know. It’s a complicated feeling and idea. I don’t know for sure, but it’s something I think my father understood.
I think it takes adjustments, managing exponential growth, and humility.
Women pay a tax on their talent. It’s not fair.
An example of what causes good communication to emerge within daily life.
We planned for how we would handle a Covid exposure (so we wouldn’t have to scramble when it happened).
In a world of unlimited choice, we must know who we are. I know of no other way.
Marriage is fundamentally different than dating or even being engaged.
A weekly exercise to check-in on how your marriage is doing. Could also be done daily.
To have intimacy, I discovered at least three pre-requisites: accepting yourself, accepting love, and finding joy in sacrifice for others.
It seems more the case that couples who are committed, diligent, flexible and adaptive are the ones that make it. Love certainly seems to provide energy and motivation, but in the big scheme of things is love really more than a very small part of what constitutes lasting relationships? Love doesn't pay the bills, does it?