What makes your marriage work?

Question

How do you balance your marriage? What do you think keeps your marriage going? Do you go out with your friends by yourself? Do you go out with your husband? Does your husband go out with his friends? Do you and your husband text all throughout the day? Do you feel like social media comes between your relationship? I know this sounds bad and probably selfish but I want to be my husbands everything and I don’t know how to stop. I feel like I don’t know how to have my own life.

Answer

My husband works from home and had his routines and I used to work. It worked out. Then I became a stay at home when we adopted. We had to really figure things out to find a balance. We both deleted most social media accounts (I kept Snapchat) it’s just what we both wanted for our own reasons. We didn’t even talk to each other about it. My “Kat dates” are important (I spend time getting my nails and watch a movie alone type thing)  and he woodworks alone. I do have friends that I hang with and he has his. We have family days where it’s all about family. We also have church then family lunch. And then we have dates while the LO is at her lessons. I like our system. It works. Experiment and see what you guys like. And we always let each other know what we are doing (I like to know he’s safe so he always updates me via text and calls) my husband rocks 😻

Answer

Well, for us we communicate about EVERYTHING. Everything important, not important, fun, uncomfortable… nothing is off limits. We share everything, we don’t have secrets. We also put the other first ALWAYS. Which balances out, because sometimes he puts me first and I “get what I want” and vice versa, without it ever being from selfish intent. We truly want what’s best for each other, which yes, means denying our own wants sometimes. It also means saying the hard stuff sometimes, holding each other accountable, and having to hear the other one out even when it’s not something we want to hear. Loving each other more than ourselves in the basis of our marriage.
I also want to add that the way we have our marriage structured this way is because we’re both Christians, and our belief in God is the center of our marriage, so our marriage values are centered around that. It’s the same structure taught to me by my parents (married for 35 years) and his parents (married for 47 years).

Answer

I think it’s what works best for both partners. 
My husband and I are pretty independent and have different interests. We’ve been together happily for 14 years. I couldn’t handle the level of do everything together that some couples do. Other couples wouldn’t be cool with the independence we share.
It’s a negotiation of what works best between the 2 people.