I’ve been married for just about 11 years now. To borrow and tweak a mission cliche, it has been the best 11 years of my life. Growing up I wasn’t sure what to expect from marriage. It seemed to me that anytime someone talked about it they inevitably mentioned the trials that came along with it. Everyone made it sound like it was just work, work, work. Work at not fighting, work at not spending too much money, work at keeping a good home, work at raising your kids, etc. Needless to say, I had some anxiety about marriage. Why bother getting married if all you do is fight about everything?
Now I wonder what all the fuss was about. Marriage has been nothing like I thought it would be. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised. In the 10+ years we’ve been together we’ve had exactly one fight: my sweet wife thought her Mongolian BBQ leftovers would keep in a 120 degree car while we went to the movies. I thought otherwise…
So why has our marriage been so great? One word: games! Google the number one cause for divorce and you’ll get over 152,000,000 hits. When you start clicking on those links you quickly see that one thing keeps coming up over and over again. Hint, it starts with ‘S’ and rhymes with ‘rex’. Some don’t get enough, some get too much, some never get what they want, some end up getting it from places they shouldn’t. To make sure we don’t have any problems with this in our marriage, we play games, mostly Yahtzee.
Here’s how it works (spoilers ahead): The best of five wins “their way”, winner best of three gets to pick something from a long list of desirable items (use your imagination). This is great because when you get around to you-know-what each person will be getting something they want. And I can tell you that in all our years of playing Yahtzee no one has gone on the type of winning streak that would threaten our marriage. The bottom line is that both of us are almost always getting what we want. This gets rid of all the tension around the number one cause of problems in marriage. It’s great.
Games can also be used for many other things: who has to change the diapers, doing dishes, shopping, visiting the in-laws, bathing the kids, etc. Be creative. I heartily recommend games as a way to make your marriage better, but I’m curious if other Cultural Haller’s have tips? What do you use to make your marriage work?
The trick is that the you will have to agree what is on the list. I can see wives front loading it with “honey does” and balking against sexual things, and husbands doing the opposite.
You’re right. We don’t have an actual written list but we’ve been playing long enough that we both know what’s acceptable. For couples just starting out a nice negotiating session and subsequent list would be a great idea
We play monopoly.
Whether stakes are involved or not, I totally agree that playing sports or games in the right spirit can strengthen the freindship side of a marriage. I find that games well played help loosen up the mind and improve conversation. And it goes beyond the marriage reliationship. My kids tend to share more about their lives when we’re sitting around a table playing a game.
I agree with Jimmy Jon as well. I think what’s most important out of all of this is that you are spending time together, and laughing. The stakes are just a bonus