Q&A with my husband

Welcome back to my married young series, this is one of four posts, if you haven’t read the previous ones I highly recommend you start with them first and end with ‘Q&A with my husband’. I’ll have them listed below:

• Are you making the right choice?
• This is what you need to understand about weight gain in marriage.
• Your home is your sanctuary

Men’s perspective..

A few days ago I finally had a moment to ask my husband some questions that would help a lot of women, I told him. I knew he would be happy to help. He sat across the couch from me, I opened the memo app & pressed record..

What’s the best part about marriage?

Having someone to pick you up when you’re down, someone who constantly motivates you. Someone who chooses to love and appreciate you for who you are.

What is something that you know now that you wish you knew when you first got married?

I wish that I had known that marriage is not a 50/50 or 100/100 situation. It is a 70/30, you know 80/20 or even 60/40. It’s constantly changing, it’s like a seesaw. Each person gets a chance to be at the top and at the bottom but the only difference is that it happens unexpectedly. One person is in control and the next thing you know, the other one has to take over when their spouse hits the bottom.

If you could change one thing about marriage, what would it be?

I wish we had more time for each other because those magical moments are fleeting and you know, we enjoy them when we have them but they don’t last very long.

What advice do you have for young men who just got married?

Learn to open your heart. What I mean by open your heart, I mean learn to feel emotions. Learn to be charismatic and learn to be vulnerable, for the love of God please learn to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is a key part to a strong marriage, if you can’t be vulnerable with the person that you love then it seems like you don’t trust them. Like can you trust somebody if you can’t be vulnerable? Trust and vulnerability go hand in hand.

What makes a house a home?

Giving a home a soul and that takes two people. You have to put character into the home, so that may mean the wife might be into decorating and the husband doing things outside. But it’s the personalities that kind of get embedded to the wall, when you make those memories here you look at the place differently. Anyone can buy a nice home but what gives it character is the soul of each person just slowly seeping into the wall. That’s why anywhere can be home.

How important is getting support from your spouse?

You need your spouses support. That could be them achieving something, or them giving up on something. They could be giving up on you, giving up on the relationship. It means a lot and it carries a lot of weight and it’s something that’s not instantaneous, it’s long term. It’s not always in that moment you know, sometimes there are moments where you spouses support means a ton in that one moment but it carries for years. You could care for them or support them when they’re developing a dream and that dream could be a monumental thing, change your entire life.

How do you fix something that’s broken?

One piece at a time. To build a home you start with laying the foundation and you start your stick structure and then you start building up the walls. It’s the same thing with everything that’s broken. It may seem impossible to put back together you know but if you sit there and try to glue the pieces back together, you sand it, repaint it. Eventually it’s going to look as good as new. If not better cause then you find ways to make it even stronger, find support beams. Things that you can lean on that makes the relationship stronger than it was before. If the trust is broken, it helps. Rebuilding trust takes a long time but yes you do it one piece at a time and you learn ways to reinforce it. You have to take it one step at a time, it’s not an instant fix, it’s not a bandaid, it is something that takes time.

What advice do you have for women in relationships who feel like they don’t get the love that they deserve?

If you’re in a relationship that you’re not happy in or feel like you’re not getting the love that you feel that you deserve. I’m not saying leave immediately but while you’re in it, learn as much as possible. Each relationship that you’re in serves a great purpose. It means that you’re finding things that you like & things that you don’t like. Learning things that you can take with you into your forever. It may not seem like it but find it. There are these subtle details in each relationship that stick with you for the rest of your life and you don’t realize it until years later. When you could have been learning from those but you’ve just been repeating the same lessons. Learn the subtleties of each relationship and cary them with you so that when you find the one, you have all the foundations on how to make a relationship work.

How do you make time for Jesus, individually and as a couple?

You know, individually this is something that I battle with but there’s always time. People want to always have like a time where they can close the door and have three hours of just praise God and read their bible but we all live very busy lives. I think sometimes we need to modernize, there’s a time and place for that. I think to modernize it, you make it fit your everyday life. Pray in your car, wake up and just say thank you to God, give Him your love and devotion for five minutes. Anyone can spare five minutes. I can brush my teeth and just think of God for five minutes.

I think as a couple that one is a bit easier because Sundays are usually dedicated for church you know. If you’re not going to church you can have couples bible studies. They really give you a lot of insight. They may seem kinda silly in the beginning but you start to realize there are serious messages the more you start to do it. The more you invest, it reaps a lot of fruit and your relationship just grows stronger because of that. I know ours has, we’ve been doing bible study since before we were married. We’ve learned a lot of lessons that have preemptively helped us in times of grief and anguish and then also in times of joy.

How do you make your partner feel appreciated?

The key thing is that you really have to take the time to learn your partner. As far as what are the subtle small things that they love. It could be that they love books and you buy them that book. Or they love a certain flower or you know that they like to go to a certain coffee shop. Your spouse is not always going to tell you the things that they want, that would get boring. I think it’s just paying attention to the details of their life. When you get to know someone, it’s like knowing your favorite song, word by word, that’s how you should get to learn your partner. You should know the things that they like & the things that they don’t like. Their aspirations and dreams and obviously it’s going to take some time but it’s important that you take the time to get to really know them.

Shernice: Thank you so much Mo.

Montel: You’re welcome bean.

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