One of the biggest reasons My wife and I decided to get married was because of how quickly our friendship grew when we started dating. It was never a chore to hang out with each other and when one of us wanted to do something the other jumped at the opportunity to experience something new or even something they didn’t enjoy just because the other would enjoy it. Based on Studies done by Dr. Gottman that are described in his book “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work” friendship can be a big part of how to make a strong marriage last.
This seems to be hard for a lot of people in relationships, they have their group of friends and their spouses put in separate categories. This can lead to having to pick between hanging out with your friends, a lot of whom you have known for way longer then your spouse, or your spouse. If you have weekly traditions from before you were married it can be even harder to make time for you spouse, they can become a second thought if we allow our friends to stay the top priority. An example of this from the book is from pg. 25 that reads “In small but important ways, Olivia and Nathaniel are maintaining the friendship that is the foundation of their love. As a result, they have a marriage that is far more passionate than do couples who punctuate their lives together with romantic vacations and lavish anniversary gifts but have fallen out of touch in their daily lives.” If we are able to prioritize the friendship with our spouse, we will have a better chance of keeping a healthy relationship with them.
My wife and I had a friend recently tell us that we needed more separate friends and that she thought we spent too much time together. Our response was, with both of us working full time and with only so many hours in the day, we barley have enough time to spend together. If we added even more engagements to our week, we would never see each other. Luckily this is the point of view of the both of us and for the limited time that we have been married it has worked out great. I hope that as we continue in our journey as a married couple we can keep this perspective even as we change as people as we get older.
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