MaxiMeyer.com

Marriage is not easy. It takes work. It can suck the life out of you and days or weeks can be very “low”. The past 6 weeks for Kem and I was a challenging stretch along with observing strain in several marriages around us.

When I got married, I didn’t think these thoughts would ever come to mind: “Did I marry the wrong person?” “Is this going to be my life for the next 40 years?” “Life would just be better if I was single…”

I’m sure I have plenty to learn in the upcoming years but here are some observations of myself and people around me:

• Pace is an enemy of intimacy. Kem and I are both very driven and task oriented. If not kept in check, we can accelerate to consume more and more white space in our calendars. Action: Protect the balance of work, ministry, and time to keep “margin” in our schedules.
• Today’s snapshot is not a reflection of reality. Emotions can drive us in the valley… once my emotional tank is on “Empty” it can be hard to get our relationship moving again. Action: Identify what fills my tank to help me be a better spouse… A little time away? Coffee with a friend to get perspective?
• Men don’t listen so literal. When we fight…if I hear “always” or “never” I tend to break out the spreadsheet of time identifying all the times when I DID clean out the sink, plan a date night, or got home at the right time. Action: Weed out the always and nevers and try to understand the message behind the frustration. Women, never say always. Always say something different.
• Your Purpose is life is bigger than your marriage. Having a common purpose bigger than Kem and I has been a lifesaver and glue for our marriage. Our marriage is a subset of our purpose, not THE purpose. I want to be a better husband BECAUSE of the purpose God has for my life… Action: God has called us to bring Hope and Love to a dying world, what does that look like for you as a couple?
• Get Outside Help. Communication is too broad of a difficulty to manage alone in marriage. Close friends and professional counselors are part of our “life board of directors”. Men and women are crazy different. Action: Don’t believe the lie that counselors are for the weak or that you don’t need help, they can take your marriage from average to good and from good to great.

Over the last few days we’ve been dumping our boat again and swinging the pendulum back into a healthier place and pace. The good news is that we still like each other.

How do you maximize your marriage? What helps you when you feel like there’s no hope? Do you have a Purpose bigger than your marriage?

If you haven’t heard already- my wife Kem turns 40 tomorrow so we launched a birthday “weekend” experience that kicked off Friday, Aug 29th- “the party continues” details are here on Kem’s blog which was…. oh yeah… HIJACKED!

The first thing we did when she wasn’t looking was grab her phone out of her purse, threw her purse in our car (which was already packed) and left town without it! There’s something you should know… Kem is “nomophobic”- addicted to Twitter, her phone, keeping up with peeps, A.D.D., and “navigating” through this has been a real intervention…

Here are new things and favorite comments from the weekend so far:

• “Hey, you took my fun..uh… I mean phone!” …. nice Freudian…
• I asked, “Do you trust me?”…. She responded… “Quite a bit”… (What’s that supposed to mean, quite a bit?
• She reiterated…. “You know I specifically asked that I not be surprised…”- Ruh-roe… that might be a problem…. (We’ve since been counseling while on the adventure of how surprises are fun for other people too, the kids… I’m trying to spin this the best I can… any ideas?
• “I can handle being without my phone but I just need to understand WHY”… hmm…well let’s see… I can’t tell you your blog has been hijacked and the whole world knows what the plan is…. but… uh… how about back to… “Do you trust me?”… (I’ve been trying to pull on her emotional cords…)
• Another line I’ve tried with minimal success…”By taking you out of your normal environment, you get to learn things about yourself that you may not otherwise know..”

I’m sure we’ll have more to come…. special thanks to Mandy and Melisa (@melisajohnson in Twitter) for keeping the world up-to-date on the weekend activities and blog heist! Let the fun continue!

If it weren’t for our faith, Kem and I both agree we probably would have been divorced several years ago. We are both so stinkin’ independent and driven… if we’re not careful, we can drift into two different tracks in a matter of weeks.

We were out with some great friends (including this guy) last night and had some “real” conversation about our marriages.

Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned from our 13+ years:

• Kem is for me. She wants me to have success in my career and ministry, be a great father, and to do life with her. In the early years in our marriage, I didn’t get this… especially when we would fight. Be “for” your spouse.
• Marriage is hard work. Really hard. It would be so much easier to be able to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, and accomplish whatever I want to go after. However, like most things…. easier is not better.
• I didn’t realize how low a low could be in a marriage. When we’re in a bad place, life stinks. If we were to try to navigate out of all these times on our own, we probably would not have made it. Let friends in your life and be real with them. Get counseling. Press-in, be truthful and real. Don’t go at it alone.
• There are several things that are important to Kem that I don’t get… I’ve found that “logically” explaining to her why those things shouldn’t be important is bad. Sometimes really bad. Find out what she cares about and do that.
• People are watching. Our kids are watching. The accountability that comes with leadership makes it all the more important that we work through our challenges. It makes me wonder, how many couples have pulled the plug because they simply thought it really didn’t matter to anyone outside themselves?
• I love how we talk about ministry, business, strategy, innovation, communications, and what we’re learning together. For me, it’s one of the top 5 glues in our marriage. We share and do life together overlapping and intertwining passion and purpose in what we do day to day, week to week. It’s one thing to be in a bowling league together…it’s entirely different when you’re on mission together.
• I thought Kem was marrying me for my body. She wasn’t.
• I get great fulfillment working to help Kem in her strengths and watching her grow and thrive. Her mission has become part of mine. Are you all about your talents or are you encouraging and supporting your spouse in what they were created to do?

Kem’s feisty, smart, fun, and a babe. I can’t wait to see how our relationship continues to grow in good times and bad. She makes me a better man.

Last year Kem and I had a week getaway to Orlando to fill our love tanks for each other…. but it was a bomb. Not “da bomb”, just plain ol’ bomb. One contributor was that I happened to be reading The God Delusion… Here are a few ways we learned to kill romance on that trip:

• Ask your wife, “What if God is just some fictional spaghetti monster in our brains?” at dinner… it communicates you’re really thinking only about her and she is your main focus
• Have a Fed Ex package arrive at your condo overnight with urgent work to-do’s
• Go to a place with tons of people and external stimulus for your spouse with ADD…. like say….. Orlando… so she can be calm and peacefully thinking about her man
• Go to a trade show for your work
• Talk about how much dinner cost and how you now only have $64.38 per day for the rest of your trip
• Lay out by the pool by yourself
• Have a few beverages at DIFFERENT times than your spouse during the day to really make sure you’re out of sync

Thanks to a great dinner and smart discussions with Brad and Jamaica Abare last night, I was up at 6:30 AM on vacation with too much stuff in my head….. more God Delusion to come…