Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

Your Marriage Superpower

Your Marriage Superpower

One of the best marriage superpower strengths is not what you think it is.

  • It’s not explaining yourself better.
  • It’s not a new love language you are not using.
  • It’s not dinner or flowers or babysitters.

It’s the ability to walk away.

See, sometimes you are not yourself.

You are either tired, grumpy, or simply stubborn.

Words are exchanged and you are suddenly spewing for nothing.

Here are 5 steps to stay married another day:

  1. Shut your mouth. Stop talking.
  2. Walk away. Remove yourself from the situation.
  3. Leave the house if needed. Go walk around the grocery store for an hour.
  4. Still, shut your mouth. You are in the same room again, but still, be silent.
  5. Go to bed. People who say “never go to bed angry” are probably divorced.
  6. Reassess tomorrow. Think about it all.
  7. Apologize. After you have your whits again, make amends.
  8. Say I love you.

Understand: Often all your marriage needs is for you to stop.

You are welcome. šŸ˜‰

The Truncation Of Married Love

The Truncation Of Married Love

This is the last passage that I noted while reading this book.

I think I am drawn over and over to the idea that everything is temporary – especially death.

Everything feels truncated in death.

It is like some sort of injustice. Business that was left undone.

Only natural that married love would fit in that box too then…

I feel sometimes that I could stop and weep over the fact of this transient life.

But I am so often reminded that I likely do not see the entire picture.

Paul is gone, and I miss him acutely nearly every moment, but I somehow feel Iā€™m still taking part in the life we created together. ā€œBereavement is not the truncation of married love,ā€ C. S. Lewis wrote, ā€œbut one of its regular phasesā€”like the honeymoon. What we want is to live our marriage well and faithfully through that phase too.ā€

-Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air (Amazon)