Investing Time Makes Marriage Work
Devoting a Workweek to Love Yields Greater Marital Satisfaction
To many Americans, working just forty hours a week sounds like a vacation. Many people devote so much energy to promote their careers, provide for their families, or make ends meet that forty hours is often not enough. But when it comes to marriage, sadly, how little time is invested. Yet the rising divorce rate and devastating effects of shipwrecked relationships demand the question, Why aren’t more people willing to work at love?
Willing to Work?
According to professor of psychology and professional marriage counselor Everett L. Worthington, Jr., couples often believe marital myths which lead to an unwillingness to work at love. For example, many think that love is a feeling. “We’ve fallen out of love,” they say. “The love is gone,” they insist. While it is true that the initial feelings of love may happen spontaneously, there isn’t a lasting marriage on earth that survives without back-breaking (or heart-breaking) sweat equity.
Just One Week
To demonstrate this truth, Worthington asks his marital counseling clients to dedicate one workweek to their marriage. Just one week. Most readily agree. Over an eight-week period, couples spend nine hours in counseling and three hours per week doing relational homework, for a total of thirty-three hours invested, much less than the average person spends at a job. This allows for extra time to be spent on dates, lovemaking, spontaneous conversation, and mutually-enjoyed recreational activities together. Over an eight-week period, he has found that couples who simply invest forty hours of "Love Work" together are significantly affected in the amount of love they feel and experience with one another.
Couples can devote time to this type of workweek aside from professional counseling. By simply taking time, each week, to invest in talk, play, and mutual interests together, couples report a greater sense of love and increased satisfaction in their marriage. As years go by, it's those couples who simply invest time in their relationship who remain happily married, through sickness and health, for richer and for poorer. They work to make it work.
Love that Works
So what does this prove? This simply shows that real love is a love that works. Partners commonly sacrifice and invest time, energy, and resources in order to achieve their dreams. Marriage is no different. True love, the kind that lasts a lifetime, is achieved through nothing short of work, real work.
The choice is clear. Will you devote a week to love? Simply investing one workweek in your marriage can produce satisfying results and increase marital satisfaction. Professional counseling may not even be necessary, just some planning, a little flexibility, and some creativity for planning thoughtful and fun ways to work at love. All it takes is a week. Is improving your marriage worth a workweek? Of course. There’s nothing more rewarding than a love that really works.
Holding Hands
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