10 Lessons From 10 Years of Marriage

I laid eyes on Mollie for the first time on Sunday, August 19, 2007. The first day of cross-country camp at college.

We became friends, and 132 days later we held hands for the first time.  28 days after that, we declared our relationship “official”. After 10 more days, we had our first kiss. 

Another 849 days passed before I popped the question. She said yes! 400 days later, we were married.

Well, it’s been exactly 10 years since that wonderful day. And today, I’d like to share 10 lessons I’ve learned from being married to Mollie. I’ll note 7 things we’ve done well, and 3 areas I hope to personally grow in the future. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did on reflecting.

Things we’ve done well

We talk about everything

Mollie and I both place a very high value on good conversation. We have lots of casual and fun dialogue throughout the day, but our real speciality is intentional conversation. For example, It’s not uncommon for us to plan ahead for a dinner date by each choosing in advance 2-3 topics that we want to talk about or questions we want to ask each other.

The result of this practice (and other similar ones) is that our curiosity about each other and the things we’re interested in has grown exponentially over the years.

We regularly seek out novelty

I think new experiences are a vital part of a growing relationship. Every new experience you have with a person is another string that ties you together. And a healthy amount of novelty keeps away boredom and adds excitement to life. 

Mollie and I are regularly having new experiences together such as traveling somewhere we haven’t been before, trying out a new recipe, or doing something different with our evening routine.

We have a shared worldview

For Mollie and I, it has been a tremendous gift to go through life with someone who shares a similar worldview. This covers everything from the faith we practice, to our general philosophy of living and parenting. It’s good to have friends that challenge you in these areas, but for your very closest and most intimate friend, it’s nice to have those deep similarities.

We’ve also been intentional about growing our worldview together by having many discussions on important matters and sharing as many experiences together as possible. Without forcing us to agree on everything (we don’t), we think it helps us to grow in a similar direction. Too many couples reach a point where they realize they’ve grown apart— and this is something that Mollie and I have been mindful of guarding against.

We have shared dreams

Not only do Mollie and I share a worldview, we also share many of the same dreams. To take two recent examples– for a while Mollie and I have talked about starting a blog together, and now, here we are 5 months into this shared adventure. We’re also both fairly frugal people by nature, but we love traveling. With a little creativity, we found a way to make a month-long trip to Florida work in our budget for next year. 

To find and pursue your dreams together, you have to want to do so. I think this requires a high-level of agreeableness and a desire to be part of something together. It’s definitely a trait that you can fall into by accident, but from our experience, it can and should be cultivated.

We share the load of responsibilities

Our approach to the responsibilities of raising our children and taking care of the house has been that we are in it together. We have naturally settled into a pattern where each of us takes care of certain activities more often than the other, but it is very much a shared load, and a give-and-take.

One general rule of thumb is that one of us doesn’t rest, if the other spouse still has work to do. We knock it out together, and then relax. Another good practice is that we’ve been quick to take on chores that the other spouse finds most disagreeable. Most importantly is the fact that we both take a broad ownership of these responsibilities together— we almost never say “that’s not my job.” These strong habits that we adopted early in our marriage laid a solid foundation for the past 10 years of building a home together.

We don’t hold grudges or harbor negative feelings

In the beginning of our marriage, Mollie and I were definitely more “sensitive” towards each other and stepped on each other’s toes about small things. I think we were still learning some of the selflessness that it takes to live side by side with someone.

But in the past 5 years especially, Mollie and I have greatly improved at letting these things go. We rarely, if ever, hold grudges about anything. I think we’ve come to the realization that a bit of generosity and grace towards the other spouse’s moods, helps to restore the tranquility so much faster than calling them out on every little mistake. The result has been a very peaceful home.

We greet each other with a smile

On the flip side of the last point, it’s not just the absence of negative feelings that makes a relationship strong. We are both big believers in making regular deposits into each other’s relational bank accounts.

One of the ways Mollie does this so well is that she always greets me (and our kids, for that matter), with a warm smile. The kind of smile that seems to genuinely say that she’s glad to see us. I can’t tell you how much good that single practice has done for their joy in the 4 walls of our home.

Areas to grow

In this “areas to grow” section, I’m mostly going to focus on myself. Mollie could stay exactly how she is for the next 10 years and I would only be gaining a small bit of ground against her many virtues.

Become unoffendable 

How much simpler and happier would life be if you became unoffendable? This is one of my personal goals, or at least to get as close as I can in this lifetime. I would say that I have a fairly strong will and opinions. Sometimes this is a virtue, but other times I’m trying to have things done my own way out of pride.

I think our marriage would be strengthened, if as a general rule, I chose to be as accommodating and flexible as possible, except in the areas of my highest values. This doesn’t mean I would resign myself to self-pity or frustration, I think with the right attitude, I could truly find pleasure in the gift and serendipity of going with the flow more often. 

Respond with empathy, not a solution

In most areas of life, I enjoy problem solving. When something is off in my own life, I’ll try to fix it by thinking through the problem and figuring out what can be changed. I’ve learned (and relearned) over the years that when Mollie shares one of her own struggles with me, she is not looking for me to immediately try to solve the problem. She is looking to be heard and to be understood. 

The reason that this is hard for me is simply that it’s not by natural response. I think I’m helping by trying to remove the source of frustration. But in marriage, as in any loving relationship, intimacy and trust are far higher values than my DIY therapy skills. When Mollie is vulnerable towards me by sharing her struggles, I’m trying to rewire my instinct towards empathy.

Grow in patience with the kids

You never really know how much growing in patience you still need to do until you’ve lived with a household full of young children. Neither Mollie and I are particularly lacking in the patience department, but we both have our moments— more with the kids than with each other. We find them less reasonable 😉

It is in these moments that we’ve realized how important it is to have a spouse to lean on. When Mollie is having a rare moment of impatience, I try to dig deep and be extra patient without trying to make a self-righteous show of it. And also, I’m trying to have fewer impatient moments of my own, because I know that doing so impacts the mood of the entire home. Growing in this area is just another way I think we can improve the overall dynamics of our marriage in the next 10 years.