Clădește si investește in relația de soț-soție: sfaturi practice de la David si Claudia Arp, consilieri de familie.
Marriage Builder #1: Be Friends For Life
by David & Claudia Arp
“In survey after survey, at least 80 percent of couples in successful long-term relationships report that they have become best friends.” –Dr. Georgia Witkin
Is your spouse your best friend? If so, you’re on your way to having a great marriage because friendship is a key factor in successful marriages. In our own survey of long-term marriages, we discovered that as the years go by, the friendship factor becomes even more important.
Think about it. Have you ever met a couple on the way to the divorce court who were best friends and having fun together? We haven’t! So if being friends with your spouse is so important, what can you do today to build your friendship?
Daily we have the opportunity to deepen our friendship through spending time together, but we must be intentional about it or it just won’t happen! So how can you foster quality time together?
Have you noticed that men and women have different friendship styles? Men tend to value doing things together, while women tend to value talking together. For that reason, shared activities and regular times to talk go hand in hand, allowing the friendship needs of each spouse to be met. But what can you do together?
From time to time we ask our 10 Great Dates® seminar participants how they are building their friendship. Here are some of their responses. Note that all include talking and doing something together!
· “We like to take the back roads, get lost, and then find our way home again.”
· “We work out together at the local fitness club.”
· “We like to cook together. Lately, we’ve been learning to cook Chinese.”
· “We walk around the soccer field while our son practices soccer.”
· “We learned to sail together.”
· “We do organic gardening.”
· “On Saturday morning we have a standing date to run errands together.”
If we have whetted your appetite, make your own list of friendship enhancing activities. Start by listing things you’ve done in the past that built your friendship. Then brainstorm things you would like to do in the future. Remember to pick activities that include both talking and doing.
Now choose one activity to do this week. Finding and nurturing shared interest and activities will nurture your friendship. And nurturing your friendship in marriage will help you stick together–closer than a brother!
“There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”Proverbs 18:24
