The Secret To A Great, Long Marriage

Ok, let's get right to it so you don't have to weed through a whole bunch of seemingly trivial stuff to find "The Secret"

Quite simply, the secret to having a never ending honeymoon marriage relationship is FOCUS. There, I said it and I meant it. That didn't take long.

Wow, you say! I read all the way to here to find that out? The secret is FOCUS?

What does that have to do with me having a great marriage?

Well, let's look at a few things I've noticed over the course of my own 30+ year marriage. What's the old saying, "experience is the best teacher, as long as it's somebody else's experience."

Get ready, this is huge!!! What I've noticed is this: After they are married, people don't treat each other the same as they did before they were married. Profound huh? Profound yes? Observant yes? Told you it was a mammoth observation.
So easy you could have spotted it, right?

Yes it is easy to spot this happening, but the real question is, what causes it to happen?
Guess what? People lose FOCUS. Yes focus.

What do I mean by that?

To demonstrate, I'm going to borrow a small snippet from a paper that I wrote long ago. You may have seen pieces of it floating around in cyberspace.

Travel back with me to those dating days. Remember how exciting it was?

Those were the days where your focus on your future spouse was the greatest.

Remember how all outside interference was banned from your life on date night.

Remember how your typical Friday went, leading up to your big night?

If you had a date on Friday night at 8:00pm, your focus was intense!!!!!

· Parents would call at 2:00 in the afternoon to invite you over for a free dinner. "Sorry Mom and Dad, I've got a date."
· Friends would call about 3:00 with free tickets to see if you wanted to go to a ballgame. "No can do, I've got a date."
· If Ed McMahon (yes, the Reader's Digest Sweepstakes guy) called to let you know you'd won a million dollars and wanted to deliver it at 8pm. "Sorry Ed, can we make it for another time? I've got a date with my future spouse and I won't let anything get in the way."

If you had a date for 8:00pm, focus was the one and ONLY thing you were passionate about. Nothing else mattered.

So where did that passionate focus go?

Quite simply, it got pushed out the door by everything else that has been thrown your way - work, career, sports, kids, finances%u2026you get the picture. Life just comes at you from ninety-nine different directions and pretty soon you forget to focus on the most important person in your life. And when you lose that focus...well it is not a pretty sight.

So the secret is keeping that magic focus in your relationship.

How? Here are two simple tips that will help. They may seem ridiculously easy, but you will just have to trust me. I've kept them deeply entrenched in our marriage for over 30 years and we still have that honeymoon feeling every day.

Number One: I never let a day go by without a very sincere "Karen, I love you." You may want to change the name to protect the innocent. Takes all of about 10 "focused" seconds, but she knows I mean it because she hears it every single day.

And Number Two: Take one small block of time each and every month and schedule yourself a date with your spouse. Make it a date where you are focused on each other and having fun together, just like in the old pre-married dating days.

There you go gang, the secret is FOCUS. Just keep that focus on each other alive. It doesn't take much time, but it speaks volumes to your spouse to know or hear on a regular basis that they are truly the most important thing in your life.

Web Resource: www.neverendinghoneymoon.com