Positive Habits in Marriage
So far, we have focused on creating a knowledge base of the process of habit formation and the identification of your personal habits. For the next three lessons, we will turn our attention toward your marriage and introduce some positive and negative rituals that often effect married couples. Afterwards we will examine the couple as a team and the necessity of working with another to change and create habits.
Perhaps you have read or heard that there are certain things that you and your spouse should do and do more often. Some professionals stress the need for more sex, more dates, more conversation, more vacations, and more family activities. But we often find ourselves without the time or energy to do much more of anything with our spouses.
As you have learned in the previous lessons, this happens because we have so many habits in place that we find it impossible to do anything else. Thankfully, you can apply the principles of habit formation into your marriage to create marriage and family rituals.
Bill Doherty, one of the most experienced and knowledgeable family experts explains that “rituals are social interactions that are repeated, coordinated, and significant”. A marriage ritual is a marital habit.
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Remember that a habit has a trigger, action, and reward. A marital habit signifies that you and your spouse have determined a habit that you form together and which will be dependent upon each other.
An example
Early into our marriage, my wife and I formed a marital habit every time we returned to our apartment together. We were fortunate enough (no sarcasm) to live on the third floor of our building. One day, as we got home, I chased my wife up the stairs attempting to tickle her. We were both laughing and enjoyed the adrenaline rush from running up the stairs. As time went on, we continued to engage in this simple but enjoyable ritual together.
Application
Take a moment to think about and record the activities that you and your spouse complete on a regular basis. Now, ask yourself the question below:
Are those activities rituals or routines?
Doherty also defines those who make an effort to create and maintain rituals in the marriage as an “Intentional Couple”. These couples refuse to allow habits to be formed on their own to dictate the satisfaction of their marriage. So what are some potential habits/rituals that an Intentional Couple would foster?
As the video above explained, two of the extremely beneficial rituals that Doherty recommends is Talking and Dates. He emphasizes these two because of their capacity to bring a couple together emotionally through the medium of verbal communication. As we get busy in our lives, just talking to each other starts to dwindle away and become virtually non-existent. Communication often becomes logistical instead of intentional, focusing on who will do that chore and how the rent will be paid.