In Gottman’s Book “The Seven Principles of Marriage” One of the principles is to turn toward each other. He explains this as doing small things that can help connect you with your spouse. Things like doing things willingly when asked without complaint or just sharing a moment together can help build a mutual trust and help keep the marriage healthy during harder times. Many people think that grand gestures or expensive gifts or big vacations are the way to keep a marriage happy. But what happens when hard times come? You won’t be able to buy those expensive gifts or take the big vacations as a fix if you can’t afford them, and if that is what your spouse expects it can lead to an unhappy marriage on top of a financial crisis.
Some ways that I turn to my wife are by doing the dishes, she hates doing the dishes and asked me when we were engaged if I would be willing to do the dishes. I have done them mostly without complaint ever since. Another way I turn towards her is by doing maintenance on our motorcycles. We both ride and they require pretty frequent oil changes and other routine maintenance to keep running well. I taught my self how to do what needed to be done and can take care of all but the biggest issues we have run into. This allows us to save quite a bit of money and time and was a useful skill for me to learn.
Some ways that my wife turns toward me are that she makes dinner most nights, I commute an hour home and so I get home quite a bit after her most nights. She takes care of the grocery shopping and cooking so that when I get home we can relax and eat. Another way just recently she turned toward me was Sunday she took the time to make a crockpot full of soup for me to spilt up and bring to work for lunches. I had been trying to decide what to bring for lunches since we are trying to save money, and without prompting she decided to make a soup. It was a very thoughtful gesture and I really appreciated it.
My Class Blog 