Learning to Love All those Things {Building Marriage}

She loves chick flicks.  But they make you want to fall asleep.

She loves going thrift shopping.  But you get bored after 2 minutes.

She loves to travel, but all old houses look the same to you.

Does this sound familiar?

There are some couples that seem to love doing everything together – running together in the cool crisp mornings, chilling together watching the latest Downton Abbey season on Netflix, or a whole variety of other activities.

But you?  You just can’t seem to get into what she loves doing.

So I’m here to tell you that there IS a way.  You CAN learn to like what she does.

How?

Maybe you don’t enjoy doing yoga.  But perhaps you can do a version of it that helps build muscle (or lose weight) which you’ve been wanting to do for awhile.

Maybe you don’t enjoy chick flicks.  But perhaps you can identify with the guy characters and find similarities to yourself.  Funny story, one of my all time favorite movies is a chick flick called “Leap Year”.  And I’ll be honest.  It’s one of the cheesiest, lamest chick flicks.  But Amber loves it.

So in watching it to make her happy, I found that I could identify with the main guy character so well and have used a ton of his phrases in our everyday life!  “Throw it in the wash, it’ll be grand!” is probably one of my favorites from that movie.  :)

Maybe you don’t enjoy thrift shopping.  Amber loves it, but to be honest, trying to find pants for my 6′ 9″ frame is basically impossible at thrift shops.  So instead of getting super bored while she’s looking for clothes or boxcar children books, I’m looking for business books.  But if there aren’t any good ones to look through, I may just grab a comic book (Calvin and Hobbes anyone?) and get a few good laughs while she’s browsing.

Maybe you don’t love seeing old house after old building or every little downtown.  But perhaps you can start to learn about the history of each area first and find one thing that makes that little town special.  I know she would be happy to make one extra stop to visit the World’s Largest Ball of Twine (link to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biggest_ball_of_twine) if that was one thing that made the city a touch more bearable to you.  Because how random is a huge ball of twine??

But most of all?  Try to learn to love it because she loves it.

How amazing of a husband (or future husband) could you be if you took the time to actually learn to love and enjoy the things she loves?

How much more valued and important would that make her feel?  And of course I don’t mean just feign pleasure.  I mean truly try to find something about that activity that you truly can enjoy.

Or perhaps there’s something new you can start doing together that both of you can enjoy.  But more on that next week!  To find out what that is, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get it delivered straight to your inbox!

Joel