Ep. #1041: Book Club: My 10 Favorite Takeaways from “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work”

Hello, hello and welcome to Muscle for Life. I am your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another book club episode. See, I said I was gonna start doing these again, so here I am with another installment. And the book I’m gonna be talking about today is the seven principles that Make Marriage Work.

And I chose this book because I liked it, of course, because I’ve read a number of books about romantic relationships and improving them, and I found this to be one of the better ones. It is a very practical and evidence-based book. Strengthening a romantic relationship and it focuses on improving communication, better managing conflict, and building trust and intimacy, and out of all of the things that you can do to improve a relationship.

I think that those form a big part of the core. Fundamentals that provide most of the results, the 20% that provides the 80%. As an analogy in fitness, you know you have energy, balance, and macronutrient, balance and progressive overload and training intensity, training volume, a handful of ideas that if you understand them and you know how to use them, you can gain, let’s say at least 80% of all of the muscle and strength that is genetically available to you.

If that’s all you knew. Those fundamentals that I just mentioned and a few others, you could get and stay in great shape for the rest of your life. Now, that isn’t to say that you couldn’t learn more things if you want to get even more jacked or if you just like learning about health and fitness. But if you never learned another principle about eating, about exercising, about resting and recovering, Again, you could achieve what most people are trying to achieve in fitness.

And so similarly, I felt that this book did a good job providing a lot of the analogous fundamentals in creating and maintaining a great romantic relationship. Now, if you are currently dating someone new, And you are still in the infatuation stage of the relationship, or if you have been together with somebody for some time, but you don’t have kids yet, and you kind of just have fun together, you might not find this book particularly useful or any book on relationships useful because if you do genuinely like each other, if you have some admiration for each other, if you have some respect for each.

If you are sexually attracted to each other, it’s pretty easy to have a good relationship when your life is pretty easy. But once the fascination fades, and it always does, eventually the relationship can wither. If we don’t consciously do the right things, and especially when life gets more difficult, when stress levels are higher because of kids in career obligations and so forth.

And so the question of course is what are those right things? And that’s where this book can help. Now, it can’t provide all of the answers, of course, and you might find some of the advice in the book, just obvious and instinctive, easy for you to do. You just do these things natural. But you will probably also learn some new and easy ways to improve your relationship by adding or changing just a few key behaviors.

Let’s get to my 10 key takeaways from this book. So the first one in the strongest marriages, husband and wife share a deep sense of meaning. They don’t just get along. They also support each other’s hopes and aspirations and build a sense of purpose into their lives together. Two, in marriage, people periodically make what I call bids for their partner’s.

Attention, affection, humor or support. People either turn. One another after these bids or they turn away turning toward is the basis of emotional connection, romance, passion, and a good sex life. Three, in our long-term study of 130 newlywed couples now in its eighth year, we have found that even in the first few months of marriage, men who allow their wives to influence them have happier marriages and are less likely to divorce than men who resist their wives influence.

Statistically speaking, when a man is not willing to share power with his partner, there is an 81% chance that his marriage will self-destruct. Four. Through the course of their marriages, they had learned to view their partner’s shortcomings and oddities as amusing parts of the whole package of their spouse’s character and personality.

Five. Conflict resolution is not about one person changing. It’s about negotiating, finding common ground in ways that you can accommodate each other. Six, keep working on your unresolvable conflicts. Couples who are demanding of their marriage are more likely to have deeply satisfying unions than those who lower their expectations.

Acknowledging and respecting each other’s deepest, most personal hopes and dreams is the key to saving and enriching your marriage. Eight. And this one is long, but bear with me. I think you’ll find it useful. So quote partings, make sure that before you say goodbye in the morning, you’ve learned about one thing that is happening in your spouse’s life that day.

From lunch with the boss, to a doctor’s appointment, to a scheduled phone call with an old friend. Time, two minutes a. Times five, working days total. 10 minutes per week reunions. Make sure to engage in a stress reducing conversation at the end of each workday time, 20 minutes a day, times five days total, one hour, 40 minutes per week.

Admiration and appreciation. Find some way every day to communicate genuine affection and appreciation towards your spouse. Time, five minutes a day time, seven days total, 35 minutes. Affection, kiss, hold, grab and touch each other. During the time you’re together, make sure to kiss each other before going to sleep.

Think of that kiss as a way to let go of any minor irritations that have built up over the day. In other words, lace your kiss with forgiveness and tenderness for your partner Time, five minutes a day, times seven days. Total 35 minutes. Weekly date. This can be a relaxing, low pressure way to stay connected.

Ask each other questions that let you update your love maps unquote for a second. The Love Map concept is explained of course, in the book continuing here and turn toward each other. Of course, you can also use these dates to talk out a marital issue or work through an argument you had that week. If necess.

Think of questions to ask your spouse, like, are you still thinking about redecorating the bedroom? Where should we take our next vacation? Or how are you feeling about your boss these days? Time, two hours a week total, two hours grand, total five hours. And next, takeaway number nine. And let’s face it, anyone you marry will be lacking in certain desirable qualities.

The problem is that we tend to focus on what’s missing in our mate and overlook the fine qualities that are there. We take those for granted. And finally, 10 quote before you try to resolve a conflict. Remember that the cornerstone of any compromise is the fourth principle of marriage. Accepting influence.

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