Before you get married, people give a wide array of advice. Some give awesome, memorable wisdom. But, others offer the kind of input that makes you wonder how they’ve managed to stay married. Once you’re in the marriage, the rubber meets the road. You work to apply the wisdom you’ve received and realize you might not have everything as figured out as you had hoped. Throughout this journey, maintaining your bond with your spouse is one of the best things you can do to ensure you enjoy a long, happy relationship. Here are 9 thoughts to change your marriage as you bond through home projects.
Your Marriage Is Unique
When you get married, it can be tempting to measure the success of your union by looking at the couples around you. People often use their peers as a measure of how well they’re doing, from the moment you join the first grade. Avoiding divorce can be the bare minimum to feel like your marriage is successful, but unless all parties in the marriage are happy, this is a poor measuring stick to have. By realizing that your marriage is unique to you and your spouse, you can avoid a world of pain.
As with your marriage, your home won’t always look like the homes you admire on Pinterest or other sources. But, it is uniquely yours. Making it into something you both love might be a lot of work, but it will be rewarding nonetheless. This is a good place to begin: simply accept that your home is what it is. This is how you can jump into the activity of home projects without expecting them to transform your home into a dream. With work and acceptance, your marriage and your home will become something you love. This is the first of 9 thoughts to change your marriage.
Marriage Is A Learning Process
Isn’t it so lovely how people gather to celebrate a couple when they get married? All the fanfare and joy can distract you from this truth. A wedding is the first day of a long journey of learning. In the same way that you can’t jump into roof repairs without doing a little research and buying the necessary tools and materials, people often jump into marriage as if they’ll have everything right from the get-go. When obstacles arise, they become discouraged and lose hope of having a marriage they enjoy. These people forget the importance of allowing a process of learning to happen. The second of the 9 thoughts to change your marriage is that learning includes mistakes and ultimately leads to success.
Some simple roof repair projects you can do together include replacing broken shingles, replacing flashing, and finding and fixing leaks. Although many of these DIY projects could be better supported by a professional, looking into how you can accomplish the simpler aspects of the work together will increase the sense of learning. As with all household repairs, especially those happening on the roof, it is important to take safety precautions to ensure your bonding moment doesn’t turn ugly due to an accident.
Space Is Healthy
In many of the families where people grew up, space was treated as if it was a rebellious pursuit of independence from the family. This thinking can stretch into your adult perception of requests for space within marriage. This isn’t to say that there is space for infidelity or neglect, but many times, people need time and space to process the things they’re facing internally. When you grasp this principle, the third of 9 thoughts to change your marriage, you’ll understand that space is not a threat to the relationship, especially one that’s meant to stand the test of time.
Maybe you have a broken shower door in your home. This can be an excellent home project to increase bonding between you and your spouse. As you work on it, taking care to install it safely, you can have a conversation about the way you were taught to think about personal space in your families. You can also discuss what your boundaries and desires surrounding space within your marriage could be.
Apologies Are Powerful
Many moments in marriage cause people to butt heads and even hurt each other in the process. When feelings are wounded and there needs to be an apology, it can be the most difficult obstacle to say ‘I’m sorry.’ But once both parties come to the place where they can peacefully discuss what happened, what wrongs were committed, and what needs to happen to make it right, then the relationship is strengthened by this process. The truth is clear in this fourth of 9 thoughts to change your marriage. It is a red flag to be a person who cannot say sorry. And though people think it makes them weak to apologize, nothing is more powerful than the ability to own up to one’s mistakes.
AC repairs are some of the easiest repairs to DIY. Among some of the activities you could take on for this bonding experience are cleaning, checking your breaker, making sure your thermostat is in good condition and making sure air is coming out of the AC ducts as it should. As you fix these small repairs, it can physically illustrate how a small fix could do a world of good and save you money in the process.
Communication Is Key
Still on the subject of talking, the fifth of 9 thoughts to change your marriage is about communication. Often, in intimate relationships like marriage, people talk past each other. Instead of clearly saying what they need or want in a situation, they talk about it vaguely or use ineffective modes of communication to meet their needs. If you want to change your marriage, being honest, clear, and direct is one of the greatest steps you can take toward this goal. By enhancing your communication skills, you will find it easier to get what you need from your partner and them from you.
Trickier home projects like sewer line repairs require a great deal of communication. In these spaces, if you can’t work together as a team, it is entirely possible for someone to get left behind in the chaos. Many times, the problem you are fixing might not be significant, but without proper communication, in sewer line repairs and marriage, the problem snowballs into something that requires professional help to resolve. To avoid messy outcomes, honesty is the best policy. And hopefully, once you’re honest about the things you need within your relationship, you can begin to work towards a satisfying resolution.
Marriage Should Be Fun
The first couple of months and years of the honeymoon phase seem to fade into tough times that feel never-ending. Couples tend to orient themselves around these moments due to their emotional intensity and significance. They forget the sweet, joyful things that attracted them to their spouse. They lose sight of the fun times they made space for in the past and trade these for the weariness of making a living, household chores, and raising children. The sixth of 9 thoughts to change your marriage is that your marriage should be fun.
Nothing creates space for fun like a deck restoration process. During this undertaking, you get to design, rethink and envision a space for rest and relaxation. For couples with children, this bonding exercise can help you tap into the playfulness of the past years. Beyond repairs, sometimes, all you need is a good cleaning to make your deck look inviting again. As you clean, you can also begin thinking of a new stain to give your deck a fresh new look. And once you’ve applied the stain, prepare for nights and days of games, drinks, fun, and excitement, all as a part of your fun marriage.
You Can Go To Bed Angry Sometimes
Like space, anger is an emotion that many people were raised to think is wrong. Any evidence of anger would be strictly punished until it was absent from the child’s behavior and facial expressions. This is because people don’t know how to navigate their anger without becoming emotionally explosive or violent. They have no idea that their anger is a vital clue to the things they need to address and change to live a joyful life.
An exterior door install project ties into this principle well. The seventh of 9 thoughts to change your marriage guides us to the fact that having healthy outlets, even building these healthy outlets, is vital to a transformational marriage experience. Learning how to express your anger is as important as having doors into and out of the house. There are also moments when your anger is so great and complex it requires time and patience to unravel in a constructive way. In these moments, restoring trust to the relationship looks like reassuring your partner that your anger is in the process of being resolved. Once you and your spouse are on the same page, and no one feels any urgency to resolve their anger, you’re on the path toward something steady.
Marriage Is A Team Made of Different People
The beauty of marriage is that you get to be with someone who is different from you. The romance and excitement come from those moments of realizing you’d like to explore their distinct personality more and more. The eighth thought of 9 thoughts to change your marriage encourages you to find joy in the fact that you and your spouse are different. It is good for people to be different from one another because the strength of the unit is enhanced by these differences.
Truck repair is an awesome way to illustrate this and bond over differences. A car runs because it has a wide array of different parts beneath the hood. It is vital for all these parts to be present or else there won’t be any movement. At worst, it could cause a giant eruption if some parts are left out because they’re different. Truck repair is possible in several different ways, from changing the oil to replacing faulty motors. Get together under the hood and appreciate the variety of differences inside your car and inside your marriage.
Marriage Is Not For The Weak of Heart
The final thought of 9 thoughts to change your marriage may seem like a macho cliche. But, think of it: marriage is one of the most vulnerable, trying experiences of growth you might experience. In marriage, people are challenged to change to become more accommodating, kinder, and more communicative people. In marriage, you’re expected to show up in support through sickness, poverty, and a host of other personal disasters. Marriage is for people who are ready to love without fear.
Garage door repair is one DIY that seems daunting for most people. Once you have it installed, many consumers don’t want to fiddle with it for fear that they could damage the system in some way. But once you’re living in a home with a garage door repair needing to be done, and no professional willing to do it for free, you might just have to forge on, without fear or through that fear. While many people might opt not to pursue this repair, with the right tools and materials, as well as safety precautions, nothing should stand in your way.
Takeaways
Marriage and home projects can be so complex. It’s easy to give up at the first sign of trouble. People doubt their ability. They wonder whether they should continue a marriage or begin a paver DIY project. But, with the right ideas, tools, and materials, your visions of greatness are within reach. Use the thoughts shared here to grow closer in bonding and achieve the home and the marriage you’ve been longing for. For anyone with the mind to use home projects for bonding, these tips are for you.
