#1.
Laughing Together:
Laughter
is a doorway to intimacy. It is like an instant vacation in a marriage and the
best way to keep perspective when things go wrong. If you laugh together, you
can cry together, and thereby feel more ready to trust each other when
communicating feelings. If you can find humor in everything, you can survive
anything. Do not take things so seriously. Learn to stop yourself when you are
ready to get angry and instead use the love language of laughter. If this is
your behavior at home, then you can take this behavior on the road through
phone calls and little creative things you can do while you are away.
#2.
Encouraging Each Other:
Become
each other’s cheerleader. Learn how to encourage and support your spouse’s
activities. Listen and really take an interest in the things your spouse likes
to do. Express respect for your husband. Every chance you get, compliment him
in public and in private. Build up your wife in front of others and give her
honest credit for your family’s successes. Let your spouse truly know you
appreciate him or her. The more we build up our spouses, the more they will
feel valued by us and build us up in turn.
#3.
Touching Each Other:
The
power of intimate touch cannot be underestimated. You must develop a healthy
habit of touching each other beyond just the bedroom. Intimate touch is the
love connection of holding hands, cuddling, stroking each other’s hair, arm or
leg, and other ways of showing physical affection. Too frequently I run into
couples who do not touch each other, especially in public. Touch is the basis
on which couples develop a healthy desire for each other. Touching your spouse
protects you from wanting to touch others in a world of many lonely people.
Touch protects you from finding a substitute for what God has designed for your
marriage. Intimate touch does not have to include sexual touch, but we must
develop a language of sexual touch with our spouse as well. If you learn to
touch your spouse, you will lose your desire to touch someone else.
#4.
Talking About Your Feelings:
One of
the biggest barriers to growth in marriage is the absence of discussion. Couples must talk about their
feelings. Life is not perfect, and marriage is not perfect. Your spouse is not
perfect and neither are you. You need to talk to your spouse about how you feel
and what you struggle with. Traveling with unresolved issues can actually cause
a heart to grow colder. Set aside time each week for just the two of you to go
out and talk. Tell your spouse what happened each day and what challenges you
had personally. If you learn to invest time together while you’re at home, your
time on the phone will increase in meaning and depth while our on the road.
#5.
Forgiving and Being Forgiven:
We must
not let resentments build up in our marriage; we must learn to forgive our
spouses and ourselves. Conflicts in marriage happen, and we need to give our
spouses permission to tell us what they are struggling with. Everyone’s
feelings are valid. We must get to know how our spouses feel on issues that
cause conflict between us. If you do not share and forgive, you are not in a
place to see your spouse or yourself properly. We cannot express love and
receive love properly if we do not forgive.
#6.
Protecting Your Image of Your Spouse:
This is
the biggest vulnerability to attack you will face when on the road. Intimacy
with your spouse must not only be developed, it must be protected! Our images
must be real, not make-believe. What we see on pay-per-view or over the
Internet is not a real source of intimacy. If we look at other images as
sources of physical intimacy, we set ourselves back and block our view of
seeing things clearly. If we think about them and meditate on them, we rob
ourselves of true intimacy. When you begin to find true intimacy with your
spouse, you will lose your desire for substitutes and instead try to protect
your relationship. The goal must be to seek and search for those things in your
spouse that will grow your love and intimacy. Your spouse must be the most important
person in your life.