Ruth's Ramblings

Current married thoughts...

Last night, we went to Borders to do some reading and some work. Hubby was prepping for this week's couples kinship meeting, and I was doing some browsing around. I picked up a book by Dr. James Dobson... I grew up listening and reading his stuff... Hubby says that Dobson's gifting is probably in his parenting/child-rearing stuff. Not ready for that. Instead, I skimmed through some of Dobson's thoughts on marriage. I came across something interesting that caught my eye... I don't have the text with me (nor the book title, darn) but I'll loosely paraphrase the theme that Dobson was trying to get across. He was basically saying how the world revolves around the law of entropy (2nd law of thermodynamics? something like that) where things over time move from orderly to disorderly. He also applied this principle to relationships... over time, by default (or autopilot, as some call it), individuals in relationships grow distant and apart. That's why it takes real work to make a relationship/marriage work. Couples can be so caught up in their usual daily routine of things, and before they know it, years have past and the lack of investment in each other has really cost them precious intimacy, which has now been replaced by alot of distance and growing apart. Dobson also listed out some of the top killers of marriage, and among the very first killer was overcommitment (I was rather surprised - I thought it would be something obvious like infidelity or selfishness, which are also named as killers, but a bit lower on the list). Ouch.

Trudging forward into our 3rd year of marriage, Hubby and I have been starting a conversation about this very subject. We're starting to have a little taste as to what it might be to "grow apart" by getting stuck into routines and into our own activities and such. The past couple months have been costly for us - we came out tired and stretched dangerously thin. It's starting to show in our relationship too. It's so easy to get so caught up and focused on our activities around us, that if we don't consciously choose to make our marriage/family a priority in our daily lives, we miss out completely without even knowing it (until it's too late..?) We realize that it takes time, energy, and effort to make this relationship a priority over all our other activities around us - the investment we make in each other is so important and so needed (going on "autopilot" will NOT help in the long run). We need to consciously and actively choose to make that a priority for ourselves, our marriage, and our family.

With that in mind, Hubby is trying his best to re-romance me in our marriage... so he came home from work the other day with a dozen roses. (I was guessing he got it at discount at Costco, but hey, I was won over by his efforts and his heart.) =)

Posted by Ruth at 6/22/2004