Arrive at Five (years)

In one of my favorite books, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the 10,000 Hour Rule, which basically stipulates that to be successful in a field, a person has to engage in deliberate practice for 20 hours a week for a 10 year period.

43,800 aka the number of hours we’ve been married.

It got me thinking:

“What are the things that we deliberately practice to make our marriage work?”

• Prayer – I pray for the health and safety of my wife and child everyday. I pray for the ability to guide and lead my family. My wife leads us in prayer as a part of  Mikki’s bedtime routine.

And although I’ve had my own spiritual struggles (i.e. How can oppressed people and the oppressors be praying to the same higher power?), I can’t deny God’s presence and influence in my life. I lay next to proof of His existence every night.

• Laughter – We laugh with each other, hard. I‘d say at least two to three times a day, my wife is going to say something to me or vice versa that is going to cause us to bust out laughing. We have inside jokes and because we’re the same age, we have similar cultural reference points so our jokes make sense.

 

• Communication – I know, it may be cliché for me to say because we’re psychologists but we talk. We know each other’s professional struggles (i.e. Who’s cool at work? What’s _______ on now?” etc.) as well as each others hopes and dreams for the future. We’re on the same page about how we want to raise our daughter and how we want to utilize our financial resources. We know each other, so if something is off, we can detect that. I think most importantly is the desire to do the reparative work. We argue, certainly, but we always go back, talk it through and make it right. Ultimately, the foundation of our romance is our friendship, so generally, people fix things with their friends.
• Quality Time – Turns out, my wife and I have the same love languages of quality time and physical touch. But if the quality time isn’t there to build that closeness and build that emotional connection, then it reduces the desire for some nah mean. It doesn’t have to be some elaborate date, but just being connected and engaging in an activity that builds that connection really helps. No connection, no erection.
• Physical Touch – Everyone needs some nah mean. One of people’s biggest fears about marriage is having sex with the same person forever. But these same people have sex with numerous partners and don’t feel anymore fulfilled because people need more. While sex is important, without these other elements, the bliss is fleeting. But I get to have all these other things AND weak legs? Sign me up forever.

Marriage is hard work but it should never feel like a job. But we work hard as professionals and as parents, so it was only right that we celebrate five years of marriage by playing hard.

So five years ago before we flew to Cozumel for our wedding, we were in the airport in Atlanta and go to Starbucks for coffee and barista wrote Bride & Groom on our cups.

Being that we were feeling nostalgic, we went to Starbucks despite their recent issues with people of our hue. This was our exchange with our barista, Infiniti.

“It’s our five year wedding anniversary and we were wondering if you could..”

Infiniti: “Say no more, I got you!!!”

Our life is average. I should have known that a woman named after a car was going to mess up our request. But her heart was in the right place.

We celebrated at Secrets Maroma Beach in Cancun, Mexico, which we highly, highly recommend. It’s an adults-only resort so there were a lot of couples there. Vacation makes people friendly. The couple to the right of us had been married for 20 years, wearing matching NRA hats. They were with three other couples and they yelled out to us from the swim-out bar, “Hey North Cakalacky!!! Come do some shots with us.” These are people that would likely not speak to us if they saw us out in the States but on a resort in Mexico? Bottoms Up.

These were some of our favorite things:

• The Swim Out – It was crazy to walk out to your patio and then boom, private pool. My wife absolutely loved the convenience of ordering room service and jumping into her pool.

Plus if the water was too cold, we could just fire up the Jacuzzi. “Can’t lose in the jacuzz!!” Words to live by.

Plus the seclusion of the pool left open the possibility for some nah mean on the late night. Not saying that two educated professionals would do such a thing…

• The Cabana – When we wanted some variety away from the swim-out, Maroma is one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

While it is a “public beach,” it is so hard to get on to the resort that I don’t think a person can just decide he/she is just going to chill at Maroma.

While there are beach chairs, nothing was as cool as laying on a bed in the middle of the beach, drinks constantly being brought out. We felt extra pampered out there by our concierge.

Also, this ocean water was the closest we’ve gotten to as far as Guam-level warmth and clarity. You can see the fish zip past you.

• The Food and Drinks – We don’t drink nearly as much as we did when we first started dating. I don’t know if it was parenting or if we just spent so much money on champagne but our alcohol intake has drastically tapered down over the years. Not on this trip.

We drank so much tequila but it was high quality so we were never sick.

Drunk but not sick.

The seafood was really good. I even had another Heathcliff moment with the fish.

• Pre-responsibility us – We do a lot of adulting. The majority of my decisions are generally filtered through the lenses of “How is this going to effect my wife and my kid?” I think it is easy to become sharers of information as opposed to friends and partners, so it was nice to not have to get up to work out, or get Mikki ready or deal with carrying around people’s problems and innermost heartache. While we don’t get a cookie for being grown, it was nice to get that Wake Up When You Feel Like It Sleep. We had absolutely no obligations as my wife swiftly shut down all timeshare sales disguised as welcome breakfasts.

“Don’t you want to stay for breakfast?”

We already ate. Thanks.

That’s why she’s the brains of this outfit.

 

• Re-development of our Love Map – One of the foundational exercises that Dr. John Gottman developed for married couples is the Love Map. Basically, a love map is all the space a person has reserved in their mind specifically for their partner. It’s where all the important and not so important information is stored. It may not be important to anyone else but if it’s important to her than it’s important to me. How can you love someone but you don’t know them?

It was nice to go out to get dressed up for my wife, take her to dimly-lit dinners every night and take the time to hear her innermost workings.

People change, even grass grows. So it’s important that you don’t take for granted that you “know” somebody. You might have known who they were then, but do you know who they are now?

Here are some examples of Love Map questions:

• Name my two closest friends.
• Name one of my hobbies.
• What stresses am I facing right now?
• What is my fondest unrealized dream?
• What is one of my greatest fears?
• What are some of the important events coming up in my life? How do I feel about them?
• Name one of my major rivals or “enemies.”

He has more detailed questions in his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, which is a great read.

Like I said, marriage is hard work but it should never feel like a job. Don’t put more effort and energy into your career then you do your relationship.

As my wife always tells me, “If you die, your job will miss you and they will be sad but your job will be posted within 24 hours. So you can be loyal to a job or loyal to you.”

Choose wisely…

#greatscottz