The Single Most Important Habit for a Healthy Marriage

Can You Feel What a Kiss Does to Your Marriage?

Or are you busy thinking about how your spouse doesn’t kiss you often enough so probably your marriage will be over soon?

The single most important habit for a healthy marriage is to stay in your own business. The problem is most of us don’t do this. Instead, you’re habitually in your spouse’s business, wondering what they could do better. Or you’re wondering why your spouse is ruining your happiness.

Don’t believe me? Take the challenge:

Notice your body when you are kissing your spouse. Can you feel your own lips? Can you feel how your perineum softens and your hips relax? Can you smell the scent as you soften into those lips even more?

No? You’re missing out.

Instead of feeling your own lips and hips, are you busy spinning tales to yourself, “I wonder if he thinks I’m a good kisser?” “I wonder if she’s enjoying this?” “I wonder if they’ll want to kiss me again tomorrow?”

Not only do you miss out on the lips and the hips and all the soft smells of someone you like, you also miss out on living your own life. When you habitually let your brain wander into your spouse’s business, you sabotage the health of your marriage.

This article will help you:

Identify the three kinds of business that occupy your brain.
Learn the single most important habit for a healthy marriage.

Try this:

Tune in to your senses.

What do you smell? Taste? Hear? How are your feet feeling? Your pelvis? Your throat?

By noticing your body, you notice your own experience.

It’s hard to stay in your own business. You want to control everyone’s reaction to you, getting others to laugh at your jokes, or hand you a tissue when you’re crying. But it doesn’t feel like love to your spouse when you have an agenda for the way they laugh or respond to your tears.

Besides, it’s futile to think you can control your spouse. Just as vain as trying to paint a rainbow in the sky.

The health of your marriage = staying in your own business

Let’s identify the three kinds of business and figure out how to stay in your own business instead of meddling in your spouse’s business.

The three types of business in your marriage are:

Your business: thinking about what you can control.
Your spouse’s business: thinking about what your spouse can control.
God’s business: thinking about circumstances that happen in the natural world like tornadoes or the wave patterns at the shoreline.

When you master the single most important habit for a healthy marriage—staying in your OWN business—your happiness will grow exponentially.

You’ll find you’re tempted to enter your spouse’s experience. Notice where your brain goes as you live your daily life, and how you blend: “He doesn’t tell me he loves me.” “She never appreciates me.”

Or you might begin to judge: “He should brush his teeth.” “She should find a new job.” Again, you’re in your spouse’s business.

You’re in your spouse’s business when you blend or judge.

Perhaps you’ve got a god-complex. “It snows too much.” “I know I’m gonna die within the year.”

You’re in God’s business. You are happier when you accept what you cannot change. Your marriage will be healthier when you practice the habit of staying in your own business because that’s the business you can change or control.

Try this:

Notice when you begin to blend.

He doesn’t tell me he loves me.
She never appreciates me.

Notice when you begin to judge.

He should brush his teeth.”
“She should find a new job.”

Notice your god-complex.

“It snows too much.”
“I’m gonna die this year.”

Each time you find yourself in someone else’s business, practice the habit of consciously returning to yourself.

When you find yourself lost in blame, judgement, or worry, you are likely in someone else’s business. Each time you notice yourself in other people’s business, or in God’s business, gently return to yourself. What can you do to change this situation? What do you want? How do you want to do this differently? Feel this differently? Act on this differently?

It’s easiest to find your way back into your own business with a few deep breaths and then notice your own body.

Try this:

Take a deep breath, in through your nose, blowing out through your mouth.

Notice your body. Notice what your body wants.

Repeat the breath. Again. This is your business.

When you are trying to control your spouse’s reaction to you, pause. Then ask yourself, What can I do in this moment?

When you are trying to change circumstances, pause. Then ask yourself, How do I want to react given these circumstances?

If you get confused, refer to this outline by Byron Katie, or watch a short tutorial here.

The single most important habit for a healthy marriage is to stay in your own business. Staying in your own business will revolutionize your marriage. But don’t expect yourself to change this habit overnight.

Staying in your own business is a practice that might take you a lifetime. Why not spend that lifetime cultivating the health of your marriage?