After the wedding, don’t forget to work on your RELATIONSHIP. That sounds pretty logical doesn’t it? The reason you married in the first place is because of the love relationship you built together while you were both single. And eventually you’ve decided to take your love to its highest level—committing yourselves together for the rest of your lives in marriage. But for a marriage to survive, and more importantly to thrive, we can’t rest on the “laurels” of past romantic behavior.

After the wedding vows are spoken, that’s when you need to make even more of a concerted effort so you stay connected in the loving partnership of marriage. According to the dictionary, the definition of relationship is “being connected.” Are you ”connected” to each other as man and wife — not only by law, but as marital partners committed to grow together in loving relationship? If not, today would be a good day to “re-connect” with each other.

If you grew together at one point in your life, with God as your guide, you can grow together as partners once again ”from this day forward” to work as a team doing that which could never be accomplished as two single people. (See Ecclesiastes 4:9-12.)

We’d like to share something with you that has helped us in our effort to live in loving partnership together that may benefit your marriage also. Once a week we schedule a “planning time” with each other. We have to schedule it because if we don’t, life will slide right between us until soon, not only aren’t we on the “same page” with each other, we aren’t even in the same chapter! We pray the following guideline will be a wonderful help to you. Please feel free to adapt this to best benefit your own marriage:

PLANNING TIMES WITH YOUR SPOUSE:

Look at your calendar together as a couple at least once a week or every other week so you’re in one accord with what you have scheduled to do. Make this time a priority and protect it from interruptions and distractions. This is an important time for you to have together. You may even want to put together a “Planning Time Notebook” so you have this guideline and any other important information in it to keep you on track and so you’ll be able to use this time most productively.

Make sure you both talk AND listen to each other (without interrupting), giving your undivided attention, empathy, and eye contact. Keep in mind that these planning times are to benefit your relationship. If these times seem to be problematic in causing great tension between you, work on this communication dilemma together.

You may need to work this through with help from your pastor or a counselor so your basic communication skills won’t sabotage your planning times. You’re to work together as a team, not as opponents.

Keep in mind what the Bible says: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29).  The Bible also says: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another…” (Hebrews 10:24)

FOR EACH PLANNING TIME TOGETHER:

•  Coordinate your calendars and decide if you’re in or out of balance on activities you have scheduled. Ask yourselves: “Do we need to change anything?” (Work towards agreement on commitments that will affect the whole family before you say “yes” to anything.)

•  Schedule fun dating times with each other. (You dated each other before marriage which helped you to fall in love in the first place. Date each other now to help you stay in love and remain connected as a team.) Make sure your dating times are for doing fun things together. This isn’t to be a time to talk about serious matters—it’s a time for you to enjoy each other’s company.

•  Discuss your family goals, ministry goals you work on and support as a couple, your hopes, and dreams with each other. (It’s important to have goals that you’re mutually in agreement with and working on as a couple. This keeps your relationship alive and growing together rather than apart.)

•  Share with each other your personal “80/20 goals” for the month. These are goals which will improve your life by 80% but will only require 20% of your effort. (They could include organizing or finishing a project that’s been “bugging” you for a long time.)

•  Share with and encourage each other in your own personal goals (i.e. self-study, education, dieting, reading, exercising, hobbies you want to pursue, or just having some personal R&R time that’s important to you as a man or woman).

•  Plan a House Task Update: Divide tasks in the house so you’re both in agreement. Decide together who’s going to be in charge of what responsibility.

•  Have a quick budget review and ask yourselves:

- Where are we?
- Are we off keel in any area of our finances?
- Do we need to make any adjustments and if so, where and how?
- What’s the next major household expenditure we need to make?
- And what do we need to do to make sure we have the finances for it?

•  Discuss future vacation times. (Discuss what arrangements still need to be done and who’s in charge of doing what.)

•  Decide when you’re to have your next planning time together.

•  Work on other concerns that need your attention so you’re on the same page as a couple. Bring up major discussion points that need to be talked through. This can be a great time to have a SANDWICH DISCUSSION. Each of you is to:

- Say some thing(s) you appreciate about your spouse.
- Tell your spouse of some thing(s) that are bothering you.
- Tell of something(s) you also appreciate about your spouse.

This is to “sandwich” the “tougher meat” of what needs to be communicated in between praise and appreciation which is also important to communicate-otherwise the other spouse may never know what you appreciate about them. Keep in mind that we’re to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15).

•  Ask each other what you can be praying about for them in the upcoming days.

•  PRAY TOGETHER. Get comfortable praying aloud with and for each other now and every day. You may feel a bit awkward at first but eventually you’ll be blessed by it. This is too important of a part of your relationship to neglect.

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We hope you’ll find this template for planning times helpful as a couple. We know it can seem daunting at first. But trust us, if you can implement only a portion of this plan to begin with, it will help de-stress your marriage and your lives and help keep you focused on the things that truly matter. If you know someone whom you think could benefit from this material, please feel free to copy it to distribute.

Steve and Cindy Wright

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