The Best Marriage Advice We Received

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Jesse and I have been married four years now! In these past four years we've lived in four different homes, had two kids, and gone through our share of ups and downs, joys and challenges. I'm so thankful that we can journey through the adventure of life together.

At the end of our wedding day we had a small gathering with family and close friends. It was a chance to share some intentional time with them after such a busy weekend. We shared our hopes and dreams for the future, and they had an opportunity to pray for us and share their wisdom and advice. It was a very meaningful time.

We greatly valued everything that was shared with us, but one piece of advice particularly stood out, and I know for a fact that it helped us enormously, so I thought this would be a good time to share it with you:

Never start an important conversation after 9pm.

That might seem like a kind of odd piece of advice, but consider: When you get married, you go from having comparatively limited time together to having more or less unlimited access to each other, at all hours of the day (and night). It's pretty fantastic. But the problem is learning that just because you can start an important conversation at eleven in the evening (or one in the morning), doesn't mean that you should. It's often as the day is winding down that I remember different things that I wanted to talk to Jesse about, but by then we're tired, and the conversation doesn't always go as well as we would like it to. We say things we didn't mean to say, tempers flare, and then there isn't time to cool off and deal with it properly.

There were occasions, especially at first, when we would find ourselves in the middle of an argument or misunderstanding and realize that we had neglected the advice and started an important conversation too late in the day. I had to learn to catch myself and leave bringing up those subjects for another time, and I'm always thankful that I did.

For those of you who are married, what has been the best marriage advice that has helped you? If you've been married for a long time, is there anything you wish someone had told you when you were first starting out? I'd love to learn from your experiences!