After almost 13 years, my husband and I still do marriage classes to keep our relationship strong
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For our wedding, my aunt gave Zach and I tickets to a weekend-long marriage conference. The gesture was unbelievably sweet, but having only been married for six months, most of the advice we received fell on still-honeymoon-blissed ears.
I remember looking at Zach and saying, “None of this applies to us.”
And it didn’t.
Although not long after that, I know Zach and I were both grateful for the information we’d gleaned from the conference. As marriage got tougher and more complicated, as our communication skills were tested and stretched and as life inevitably got harder, we leaned into those morsels of good advice, finding endless opportunities to apply them.
Nearly 13 years have passed since that “Weekend to Remember.” The biggest takeaway for Zach and I wasn’t the advice, but the weekend itself. We would never have chosen to spend a weekend at the conference had it not been gifted to us. That weekend set the tone for our marriage going forward.
Marriage conferences and classes are not strictly for couples on the verge of divorce. They’re helpful tools for every marriage, no matter the stage or health of the relationship.
Since then, whenever possible, Zach and I have jumped on every opportunity to invest in our marriage. We’ve admitted to each other that this thing is hard, that life together is complicated and difficult, and the world we live in only makes things worse. The more we know about the other person and the more tools we have to work together on a unified relationship, the deeper, more enjoyable our commitment to each other is.
No two people can have a perfect relationship. There will always be struggle as two different people — with very different ways of thinking and very different backgrounds — try to maintain one mindset. But the harder you work to understand your spouse and invest in them, the easier the struggle becomes.
We’ll be married for 13 years this August, and we’ve just started another three-month-long marriage class. We’re giving up comfortable Thursday evenings at home to spend in deep discussion with other couples about managing our expectations and learning to give each other grace.
I’m going to be honest, these classes or seminars aren’t always easy. Sometimes they’re too revealing. Sometimes I don’t like what I learn. I’d rather everything be his fault. I hate admitting that I’m wrong. Sometimes we’re doing great, but when we dive in deep during a class, we find out that things aren’t as perfect as they seem and we have some damaging hurt to work through. Sometimes the classes we take bring out more struggle than our every day life.
And that’s OK. Because the point of working on your marriage is to make the core of it stronger. It’s easy to pretend everything’s fine when the surface is smooth. But we’re more interested in what’s underneath the surface. We’re more interested in the heart of each other. We’re more dedicated to our marriage than our immediate happiness.
I encourage you to do the same. Things could be going great for you or things could be awful. Both scenarios are the perfect time to pause the busyness of life, find a seminar or book or couples class and invest in each other. And while you’re there, remember why you fell in love in the first place.
Rachel Higginson is a married mom to five kids. She is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who has received a Utopia Award for Best Contemporary Romance and Penned Con Award for Best Novella Series. She lives in Omaha. To read more from Rachel, click here.
