Hi everyone. This is Sean McGuire with a New Vision counseling podcast. Today I’m excited because we’re going to go over the six keys to create an awesome marriage. Now this is so impactful that I did a video series on it as well. If you sign up for our email, just go to New Vision OKC Christian marriage counseling sign up for the free guide and we will send you out once a week, a video that has each of the six keys in it and it really time, like two to four minutes. I think each video is now today I’m going to take about 10 15 minutes to go over these keys and I’ll go over one to two keys per podcast because they’re so vital to creating and sustaining and awesome marriage. There’s a guy named John Gutman and I’m really like a lot of his research. He nerds and geeks out on studying.
What makes the most successful couples successful? What are the key ingredients or the key indicators to creating and sustaining a lifelong marriage? Now. He also may not know this cause I don’t think he’s a believer or Christian, but he takes a lot of scriptural principles and applies them with sowing and reaping with honoring others, with serving others, with speaking kindly, gently, you know, a gentle answer turns away wrath and he really incorporates these principles into how to create a great marriage. Now I want you to think about this because what I’m going to give you is most of it will not take much time at all, but what it will take is being intentional daily on incorporating these principles and these activities into your daily life. And before you spin out and say, Sean, I don’t have much time. I don’t, you know, I, I don’t have time.
I’ve got such a busy schedule with kids, work kids’ activities. I get it, man. My kids are nonstop on the go. I have multiple businesses. I’m selling into people’s lives every day and there’s so much opportunity to really change people’s lives and effectively changed the world and impact the greater community in Oklahoma City and Edmond, where we live in and what we serve that I have to make decisions every day of what’s most important. So I want you to consider something that Dave Ramsey said. He said, if you live like no other today, you can live like no other tomorrow. Meaning if you invest, if you get out of debt, if you start to daily make a commitment to paying off your debt, to living below your means with time, with the resources that you get from your income, then you’ll live like no other debt free and have an abundance of wealth as you mature and go through the years.
Well, the same is true of your marriage. Think about your kids. They will age out. I mean, if you’re parenting right, most of us, our kids will leave the nest at some point and there’ll be living their own lives and we’ll be left with what we’ve created in our marriage, whether it’s great or whether it’s terrible or whether it’s on the verge of destruction. That’s what we’ll be living in. So I want you to really encourage you to take time today to invest in your marriage and over your really big about communicating this to our Edmund in Oklahoma City area with all the people and surrounding areas and really around the country, through social media, on our new version, OKC Christian marriage counseling, Okc, Facebook and Instagram pages that the daily behaviors and habits that we prioritize and schedule and through our lives, we’re really impact what marriage we live in.
You know, the Christian marriage community is really called to a higher level of standard because the Bible is our foundation. But these principles apply to any marriage, whether you’re a Christian marriage, whether you’re a non Christian marriage or some other kind of religion, the principles that are going to teach really apply to all of you. So I want you to think what do you want as a lasting memory for your kids to have growing up? What kind of marriage, what kind of love do you want them to enjoy? What kind of marriage do you want them to create to build them, to create a Christian marriage? Do you help them to create a marriage where it’s surrounded by activities? By you guys are super committed to sports. There aren’t competitive soccer teams and that’s what your life is surrounded by. You’ve helped them to remember you guys eating meals together or me eating meals separately.
Think about what you want to leave as a legacy in them because your daily investment into the Love Bank of your spouse will be the model of what your kids will replicate naturally as they age out and create their own relationships and their own families and their own lives. So I’m going to jump into this. I want you to think about the couples in your life that you know, and maybe you might know one, maybe you might not know any, but if you have some thinking about those couples that are most successful in whether they love each other, they’re the couples that spend time together, that are affectionate, that have certain behaviors and habits that make their couple, their relationship’s special. So I’m going to give you the first one and that is how we part, how we say goodbye matters. The first key to creating an awesome marriage is how we say goodbye.
Now he say, what are you talking about? Great question. I want you to think about why this would be important. It’s the last memory your spouse and you have to leave throughout the day that that’s going to linger in your mind and your heart and the feeling that you get when you say goodbye. That’s the last thing that you’re going to have to go off the rest of your day. So if the last thing you have is an argument about money is some kind of dissension that you have over a disagreement with how you parent the kids or how much you’re spending on their social activities or you know, something that you’re going to do with your inlaws. Maybe your wife wants to go to inlaws for dinner that night and you’re like, no way. I want to come home and relax. So thinking about how you part in the value that it will impart throughout your day or the subtraction it will have.
I know that early in our marriage we had a lot of conflict over inlaws by, when I say a lot, I mean nuclear conflict. Thankfully it’s changed so much. We love them and have a great relationship today. But many of our parties were just miserable and I would go to work as a Christian OKC Christian marriage counseling counselor helping marriages, people in relationships, premarital counseling, thinking I’m the worst guy in the world to be OKC Christian marriage counseling. I’m such a hypocrite because I’m arguing and fighting in my marriage today. And one of the, one of the areas I discovered is super impactful is we have to be very intentional about not bringing a pot topics unless it’s an emergency. 99% of our days we need to part with a good buy. Now, here’s some ways to do that. If you were, if you were saying goodbye part with a kiss. Now, many days my wife’s not up and so many of our parties might be a note, might be any texting or a video or an audio or something.
When she does get up, that’s positive, that’s encouraging. And when my kids are up and she’s up, I personally need to be very intentional about what I allow as far as conversation to get me, uh, come through my mouth. And we have to be intentional about conversation that we talk about nothing hot before I leave because we know it can spiral that we never have time to finish it because I’ve got that limited time and I’ve got to leave for work. So we want to be very intentional. So something we can do as a kiss. A six says sick, I call it the kiss, the possibilities, but just the possibilities could land you late to work if it goes the right way or you, you know what I mean? If you’re a married couple, you never know what can happen, but six seconds is a great time.
One, two, three, four, five, six. Now, if you kiss consistently, that may not be a long time. If you don’t kiss consistently or maybe the only the time you kiss is one of your intimate, well this may be really awkward and that’s a key indicator of how far you have to grow and how much more amazing your marriage can be when you incorporate this kind of intimacy in it daily. Now, at the end of the kitchen, either walk out the door, you might leave a little bit late depending on where you go. It’s spontaneous romance. It helps you to uncover if there’s a distance between youth or something that you need to address later on when you get home that day. It may help your marriage continue to grow and open up doors that had been closed for a really long time or maybe have never been open because of some issues that you guys have also and exposes when you walk out the door, when when you’re partying, maybe some things that you need to deal with later in the day.
Maybe you can write them down because they come to mind in the morning. Do not engage in the morning. Make sure you guard this time as sacred time. Also find one thing out about your spouse that is going on in their day. Find one area in your marriage that they are going to be playing with the kids. They have a play date with a friend or maybe you have a business deal or something that you really need prayer for because it’s a stressful encounter with a coworker or an employee. Something that is going to happen in that day that they can be praying for thinking about you or just to know your day in your world really helps to keep connected. Also, don’t forget to adapt. Like I said, I leave most days before my wife gets up. I leave three days a week, probably around 6:20 AM because I’m an early riser.
I find that I win most days when I get up really early. But for the sun beats me up. I feel like much of my day has already been lost. God’s just wired me to have a lot of time with him and then start to produce. Uh, like right now, I started this podcast before 5:00 AM or before 6:00 AM. So whatever your rhythms are, make sure that you honor them and find ways to leave notes, send video techs, send audible texts, send all kinds of things, leave notes around the house, uh, and do these things. You can even leave gifts in surprise places and maybe send a text or a video. Hey, I left you a surprise. It’s under the lamp in the kitchen. So those kind of things are great. And make sure that you make an effort to help them feel valued, special, loved, and cared for.
This is a great way to send your spouse into the workforce or to leave your wife or whoever stays home with the kids in a position to win the day in a position of feeling good about your marriage, which is a safeguard, especially if you work outside the home and you worked around attractive people that wear Cologne and maybe dress up for work. It’s a safeguard that you are full, that you have your tank met, your needs met, and your love tank. This is a marriage principle that whether you live in Edmond, Oklahoma City, where we serve, what we practice or anywhere around the world that will protect your marriage because the best way to protect your marriage, to keep it safe from adultery or the negative influences of the world is to make it amazing. Well guys, this is the first one of many that I’m going to go over the six keys to creating an amazing, an awesome marriage and this is something that you absolutely can do.
Now I went on and I talked about this for 11 minutes and I have so much more that I could have talked about how you say goodbye, how you leave that person feeling warm and they talk about lunch plans and doctor’s appointment. Something good about your day. He do. This takes two minutes a day. That’s including the six second kiss five times a week John Gottman would say, and I added my own flavor as Christians, it’s what we can pray about our spouse throughout the day and maybe set reminders in our phone just helps. Even now thinking about this, I’m feeling more positive and affirming like I want to do this more effectively. I want to be more consistent in practicing five days a week because it really makes a difference. And guess what? This is just key number one. If you like this, go to our website page, new version, OKC Christian marriage counseling sign up for the free guide.
We would love to bless you with that. It comes out every week. You get this keys and it’s something that will come out for six, six, six weeks and and each of those six weeks you will discover another key that I’m going to go over and these six podcasts that will help you create an amazing marriage. Also, if you’ve liked this podcast, please like us, subscribe. If we have the subscription up to our podcasts, it really helps get the word out when you share it. We have social media, nuvision, OKC Christian marriage counseling, Okc. We want you to be part of our tribe, part of our culture of people that one person, one, couple, one family at a time, beginning to share what we do that that no matter where you’re at, God wants to intervene in your story. Whether you call us and we, you invite us to join your story because that’s what you need or it’s just being a part of the podcasts of the Facebook, of sharing what God’s gonna do through your life to others. Please share the word that God is on the move and revivalist happening now through each person who says yes to his best in their personal life and in their marriage because that New Vision counseling our, our, one of our core values, our mission statement is we help you discover what better looks like for you and then equip you with the resources and tools to create it. God bless. I look forward to seeing you again really soon.