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Benefits
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Benefits
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Twenty-five years of research on successful love and marriage has taught us many things, but first and foremost ? no love has blossomed or been sustained without doing the "simple things." Big things don't matter until your relationship has mastered the art of doing the simple things day in and day out in your relationship with another human being whom you purport to love.
All too often in life, people make assumptions about love and relationships that do not stand up under scrutiny ? that are not supported by the available evidence. So, what are the facts?
One of the great misconceptions of all time about love and relationships is this ? just do the "big" things and everything will turn out well. And what do the Big Things include? For starters the list includes "having financial stability in your relationship," "being in love is all that matters," "having a good job and a house in the suburbs," and so it goes. But the truth is, these "Big Things" are important, but they are only a by-product of "doing the simple things." Here's what we mean.
It is an established fact ? successful love is based on an accumulation of the "simple things." If you want your marriage and your relationship to succeed, just do the simple things! Do them day in and day out. When your relationship has mastered the "simple things" you have a chance to make it work. You have a chance to make it last. But if you don't, well, failure is an option.
There is another important fact of life when it comes to love and relationships ? there will be big challenges to address in your relationships, of that you can be sure. You might have to deal with financial setbacks, serious illness, the loss of a job, or the death of a loved one. And trust us on this ? if your relationship with the one you love has mastered the art of doing the simple things day in and day out, the likelihood of your relationship making it through the tough times are multiplied many times over.
So what are these simple things? Here are a few: always showing respect for the one you love; saying I love you many times a day; engaging in simple acts of kindness (breakfast in bed, flowers on non-special occasions; opening doors for them, etc.); giving your lover lots of daily hugs; treating them with courtesy at all times; helping clean up the dinner table; sharing financial decisions with them, and the list goes on. Read more about the multitude of simple things that matter in our new book, Simple Things Matter In Love and Marriage, due out in August.
The point is, simple things matter and when you practice doing them, they accumulate. Simple acts add up. And always remember, you can't keep turning on then turning off doing the simple things. You have to consistently engage in doing the simple things day in and day out. When you do, you will be surprised at how well this simple notion works. Start engaging in them today.
Love well!
About the Authors
During their distinguished careers the Doctors have received some 65 local, state, and national awards; published nearly 350 articles and manuscripts; delivered over 1000 speeches, workshops and public presentations; traveled throughout the world; and appeared on radio and television and in the print media. Dr. Charles D. Schmitz is Dean and Professor of Family and Counseling Therapy at the University of Missouri in St. Louis and Dr. Elizabeth A. Schmitz is President of Successful Marriage Reflections, LLC.
Ah, come ON! It’s okay to promote a book, but lots of girls and women REALLY need a LOT of good advice RIGHT AWAY. And some of the best advice known is NOT so difficult:
Really DO have to start with the “big things“:
To start, I would ask a girl or woman, do you really believe in marriage? Or, are you convinced that for women marriage is a fraud, maybe an opportunity for some financial or professional gain, but otherwise just a pain, a place where women are pushed just to “give up the best years of their lives and their careers to do low grade, menial scut work to take care of HIS children“, where “he gets all the credit and glory and she is just stuck in the house all day“, a really great place to practice manipulation and deception while pursing a personal, secret agenda, e.g., to save the world and get security from gratitude from the public, and, maybe, getting revenge by sabotaging his life?
Gee, stuck in the house all day and caring for the children while he goes to work and gets all the glory? For her, ‘equality’ would be a HUGE step down.
Okay, assuming that she DOES really believe in marriage, financial security is a BIG thing. “When hunger comes in the door, love flies out the window.” Financial security is NOT easy to achieve, and the alternative is AWFUL. Marriage WITH financial security and little else is already better than divorce without financial security. The big stuff really is big; that’s why it’s called big.
But, there really is more: It’s also big; it’s not small, but it’s subtle: How do you know that he/she loves you? Do you know because they give you gifts or do little things? No. Here’s how you can know, in five parts:
(1) Knowledge. The other person works hard to give you knowledge of themselves. They eagerly tell you what they know, think, believe, feel, want, hope, fear, etc. In this way you can trust them, empathize with them, work more cooperatively with them, step on their sensitive emotional toes less often, and reach common ground more easily. Also, with all that information from someone you trust, you get an extra brain and pair of eyes and ears helping you meet the challenges of navigating through the rough waters of life.
If they don’t tell you, then they can be keeping secrets in “deepest consequence“. It’s the person on the other side of a poker or negotiating table who doesn’t tell you what they are thinking, not the person on the other side of your bed.
If they say, “You don’t know what I think” and they will NOT tell you, then you are in DEEP trouble.
(2) Caring. Does the other person care about you? Do they REALLY care, and SHOW it? Do they notice when you are tired, frustrated, angry, sick, etc. and need some help, advice, rest, or just cheering up? Do they help you watch your diet, exercise, career progress, clothes, get medical checkups, etc.?
If they really love you, then they will clearly, strongly CARE about you. And, honey, the important caring is REALLY important to both of you and MUCH more important than just some darned flowers.
If she doesn’t care about him, then she can think, “This dumb marriage means nothing to me, but it is really important for me to be well regarded in the community. Since the community will regard me as a good wife if I feed him well, I will fatten him up. Then hopefully he will die soon, and I will be rid of that clod.“. It’s happened.
If you have someone sharing your marriage license, shower, bed, bank account, car, house, dinner table, holidays, and parenting and whom you are trusting to be much of your life for the rest of your life and they don’t care about you, then you have at best a bicycle with one flat tire, a sack with two apples and one rotten, a two cylinder engine with one broken piston, a four legged table with two broken legs, a delicate machine with a big rock in the gears, etc.
(3) Respect. Right, the other person has to respect you. Otherwise, you have someone who married you with a lie: They didn’t love you; they had some other objective in mind, e.g., wanted you to put them through graduate school before they got a good job and then dumped you; the marriage ceremony was some stage play acting and otherwise just a fraud; they were trying to steal from you, and when you discover the theft and the loss, you have a right to be TORQUED.
If they say, “I know you have a Ph.D. in mathematics, but, if I had known that you had gotten a D in eighth grade arithmetic, then I would not have married you,“, then they are just making an excuse for something they want to do for some unrelated reason. They have a hidden agenda that stands to do you harm.
(4) Responsiveness. The other person should respond to you. If you ask them something, ask them to help you with something, ask them to do something for you or with you, etc., then they should eagerly, genuinely, enthusiastically respond.
If you are thinking hard about whether to add a room to the present house or buy a new house and seek their thoughts and they don’t respond, then you should suspect that they don’t intend to be around for either option. If you are drawing floor plans for the dream house for the two of you and they don’t pay attention to the progress, then you’ve got problems.
If you do something nice for them, then they should be grateful and provide strong, warm, sincere thanks and show some corresponding happiness.
If you come up behind them and give them a surprise hug, then they should be thrilled with your attention and happy; you should be thrilled to see them happy; and they should not be angry that you just interrupted what they were doing.
If they don’t respond, then they can be playing some power game of ‘distancer‘, trying some intimidation manipulation, or just be on the way out the door.
(5) Trust. If you are using a French chef’s knife with a 10” long blade to make mirepoix out of two pounds of carrots, then your left hand holding the carrots has to trust your right hand holding the knife; else there will be a lot of pain and damage; and similarly in marriage—each partner has to trust the other or there will be a lot of pain and damage.
You need to know that this person will never knowingly hurt you, lie to you, deceive you, manipulate you, take advantage of you, etc. anymore than they would let their right hand intentionally hurt their left hand.
For these five things, knowledge, caring, respect, responsiveness, trust, you need to know that there is NOTHING you can do unintentionally to lose these “till death do you part“. Otherwise, get a kitty cat or a puppy dog and keep looking for a spouse.
For the first four, extra credit for knowing a good source.
For the little things, sure, you thrill in seeing the other person happy: So, if they are not quite asleep, then you use your toes to tickle their feet; if they are looking aimlessly out the back window, then you sneak up and blow a stream of air on the back of their neck; on Monday you confirm that it’s okay to have a nice dinner for two on Friday and then arrange it and keep the rest a surprise; etc. You let them know that you know that they are there, see what they are doing, like having them there, and want to make them smile.
Gee, and in this list of five things to know if he/she loves you, nowhere did I mention sex. AMAZING.
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