Marriage is about Deep Friendship

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Stu: hey there, welcome to the Stupendous Marriage Podcast. I'm Stu. Hey, I'm Lisa. We're talking about one helpful thing that we learned about marriage early on.

Lisa: I remember that you recently posted about this online and talked about some advice that you received from your mom on our wedding day.

Which I don't even remember you telling me about that, and I thought it was really good.

It

Stu: was. was actually a celebration of my mom and dad's anniversary. We had gone to the Ozarks and we were celebrating them. We also decided to celebrate my grandparents on that day. And I was with mom in the chapel just hanging out before the service. And I was like, well, mom, what is the most important thing that you've learned about doing marriage and relationships with dad?

And she's like, you know. You can have sex with anybody out there, you can do all that, but what's most important is your dads' friendship. He and I are really, really good friends. We've gone through the highs, the lows, he's a good man, I believe in him, [00:01:00] he believes in me, and it's so important to have a good friend to do life with.

Absolutely. I was like, wow, that's, that's really good stuff. That was deep. I was like, that's good

Lisa: mom. Yeah. I've talked to a couple of people who are struggling in their marriages and they've said to me , what is it that you guys have done that has worked well for your marriage?

Not that we're perfect at all, but that we have had a lot of really good seasons. And I said, he is my best friend. And he is the person I want to call when something's great, when something's horrible. And I truly believe that that has sustained us through the more difficult times. Because I can be mad at you as my husband for, you know, doing something to hurt my feelings or leaving the dishes in the dishwasher, whatever the case may be, but as my best friend, I still want to talk to you and share things with you.

I think that has really always given us an awesome amount of strength and connection. for the more difficult

Stu: times. [00:02:00] Yeah, we didn't know what God was doing when he started our friendship. Honestly, you know me being in radio Lisa working at the nightclub We had gone to a couple events together and we stood back and we laughed and we had ice cream together And we were people watching and just enjoying each other's sense of humor And, our very first date was a concert and we enjoyed our whole time together.

We missed the act that Lisa actually wanted to see that night. We were going to see Dave Matthews, but there was an opening band that she wanted to see even more than Dave Matthews. We missed that band completely because we spent our first date just chatting it up and we enjoy talking to one another.

We enjoy sharing with one another. We didn't know the gift that we had. When we started our friendship that way, I mean, quickly we became boyfriend, girlfriend, we just didn't realize how much of a core element our friendship was really going

Lisa: to be. Right. Yeah. Well, and I'm thankful that all these years later, I still like you.

And I've told you that at times, especially [00:03:00] when we're having a hard time. And there's times that I've said, I don't like you right now. I love you. I'm committed to you, but I don't like you right now. I'm grateful that that's carried us through and it's been really good. How do you think you

Stu: nurture a relationship? How do you nurture the friendship that you have? If you're thinking about friends, I mean, you want to do things together. You enjoy sharing stupid moments as well as good moments as well as bad moments together, the highs and the lows you want to experience

as much of life as you can with someone, if they're your friend. And then if something happens not in their presence, you want to share it with them too. Sure. And really what we've found is that closeness is the thing that makes marriage really, really work. You think that people are having affairs and that's the number one reason why people get divorced. Well, it's really not the number one reason why people get divorces, they're not close with one another. They don't share life together. [00:04:00] They're living separate lives. It's almost like two ships passing in the night and we've had that and we hate that actually in our relationship.

It's like... we're not connected. I mean, just a couple days ago, Lisa's like, I really miss you. She was over here doing something with family and I wasn't part of that. I was at home working. And it's just that yearning to nurture that friendship connection. Just be connected. We heard from Trey and Lee Morgan from Stronger Marriages, about their 15 minute coffee breaks that they do every day. And that is super, super great.

It's an awesome way to stay connected. Author Doug Fields, calls it the 1 percent rule. If you can take 15 minutes a day, which is about 1 percent of your day and about 1 percent of your week, which is about two hours where you just reconnect, talk about what happened during the week, talk about what's going on during the week.

Yeah, you can do schedules and things, but it's really how are you doing? How are you feeling? Where have we fallen down? Where have we done well? How can we reconnect better going forward in this [00:05:00] week? And that is really,

Lisa: really helpful. And I think the pace of our world right now, I saw a post where they interviewed kiddos and had them say what they wish they could tell their parents it was on sticky notes and all the sticky notes overall, most of them said.

I wish you would get off your phone and look at me. I wish you would talk to me instead of talk to your friends. . And I thought, wow, here are these innocent little kiddos sharing something that honestly probably most of us are guilty of.

Yeah. It's not just kids who want that, right? And long for, right? It's because how many times have you been sitting with your spouse and they're on their phone? I'm the first one to say I'm bad at this and I'm looking at stuff that is not important to me. I'm looking at social media. I'm looking at email.

Cat videos. Cat videos. Oh my gosh. They're amazing. But they're very distracting for me. And so having some time away for your spouse, having some time away for your kids. It's really discerning [00:06:00] how am I spending my time. I Actually set a timer on my phone. That said, how long I could be on Facebook. Now I have changed that timer.

ignore,

Stu: ignore for 15 minutes, ignore .

Lisa: Not for that reason. No, seriously. So I just, sometimes I have it open and then I, I'm not even on it. It's sitting on my desk and I have it open and then all of a sudden it says, you've timed out, you've timed out. And I'm like, but I'm not even in right now. But at the same time, it's a really great tool, especially for you when you have little kids who want your attention to be able to say, Hey, maybe life is not all about the screen that we're currently recording on.

And maybe it's just about relationships.

Stu: Yeah. Maybe you turn off the phone or the screen after this and go connect with your spouse. I think that's a good thing to do. I really do believe that marriage is about intimate friendship. Mm-hmm. and that friendship is really the core of a great marriage.

So what do you think? Let us know stupendousmarriage.com/voicemail. We would love to hear from you. We want to hear your stories. We want to hear how God's moving in your life. We want to hear if you agree or disagree with us. You can leave comments below on the video if you're watching us on YouTube.

And thanks for watching. We really, really appreciate it. We'll talk to you next time. See ya.