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The Art of Marital Friendship

© Mike Woods

Why do people get married? If you want to have some fun, just ask the marrieds around you. You'll get some amazing responses. Everything from physical comfort to religious promptings.

And just what do they want out of it? Again, the answers vary considerably. Everything from someone to cook the meals to someone to gas up the car or someone with whom to to have kids.

But in the long run, it seems all of us want companionship...we long for a friend. We can get by without a lot of things, but it seems friendship is the thing that makes the good times great and the bad times tolerable.

So as married couples, how do we get there? How do we insure that we develop and maintain that all-important friendship? In a wonderful book called "Finding the Love of Your Life" Neil Clark Warren calls this friendship companionate love. It's the love that endures. The love that sustains after the passionate love wains.

So how do we develop and sustain that companionate love? It comes down to continuing to be interested in that other person. Amazing how many marital couples are just bored with each other. And partly because they've stopped paying attention to the other person. They no longer marvel at the complexity of that other person...the things that make them so unique, so precious.

It takes time to notice all that...or should we say continue to notice that. We had no problem noticing when we began the relatoniship. We just stop paying attention. We stop marveling.

So what do we do? Well, the next time you see your spouse...stop for a moment and take a nice long look. Look them squarely in the eyes. Hold their gaze for a moment. Likely, they'll wonder what's going on. And begin to notice the little things again. How they hold their fork. How they do their hair. The way their face displays various emotions.

We were created to enjoy this marital relationship. But it won't happen by accident. Next time you're with your spouse, watch closely. Look at them as if you're seeing them for the very fist time. He or she is a treasure.

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