Hey, Hey, Hey!!! This month my husband and I will celebrate our 11th anniversary! Ayyyee! With that being said, I decided to do a special edition blog post that will take the readers a little closer into the Jones Zone. We are getting a tad bit personal into our own relationship to let you all know some of what works for us and what just do not fit here and a little about how we navigate this thing called marriage.
Soooo, I interviewed my dear hubby, Herbert (Boss) Jones and here is what he had to say:
Trust
(Boss): Our relationship works because we trust each other not to do anything that may inversely affect our relationship. We can trust each other to refrain from inappropriate interactions with others, to make healthy financial decisions, to support each other’s goals and trust each other’s spiritual insight.
Endurance (Making it Last)
(Boss): The love we have for each other is why I desire and strive to stay together. Our love looks a lot like us doing whatever it takes within our relationship to grow with each other and maintain a happy healthy marriage.
Challenges
(Boss): We handle difficulties and challenges by talking it out and respecting each other’s feelings and opinions.
Advice to other couples
(Boss): It’s cheaper to keep her. (LOL). In addition, have respect for each other. Intentionally seek to understand each other and let your differences work for you.
Mr. Jones hit on a few points and now I will elaborate on them from my perspective.
Trust
I definitely agree with trust being the BIGGEST, and the most ESSENTIAL element in our marriage. Trust is a #RelationshipGoal. Our trust is solid. The one thing that has helped to maintain trust in our relationship is not because we always do things perfectly and in order, but because if one of us has a problem with the actions of the other we communicate that and that behavior will immediately cease. When you both can agree that there is nothing or no one on the outside of your relationship that is worth destroying what you have that part is easy. I also trust that I can communicate anything to Boss. Our friendship is tight. He is my safe place to talk to about anything, even when I vent to him about HIM. He may not always like what I have to say and that’s OK. I don’t feel I have to walk on eggshells because I know at the end of the conversation we will be good, our relationship will still be a happy one and we are going to walk away from that conversation with the same strength we went into it with or come out stronger.
Endurance (Making It Last)
BOOM! I like everything he said about how we endure. We define what our love for each other looks like. No one else gets to determine that for us. We do not accept opinions about how we choose to run our marriage. This is a two-person partnership. It is our responsibility to make sure that we do not allow outside forces to dictate how we choose to love each other. We learned that lesson earlier on in our relationship and decided together that will not be an issue that we will revisit during our marriage.
Our goal is to create and maintain our own happiness and then pour that into our relationship to create a happy love life. Sometimes that looks a lot like acknowledging our own flaws, working on that internal stuff and growing as an individual while being careful not to taint our relationship with excess baggage that has nothing to do with the person we are currently loving.
Challenges
Listen here! I Am a woman of many feelings and emotions, and I am going to express them or ain’ no resting for the weary. To be romantically connected to a man that gets that is so very refreshing. Regardless of how hard a challenge we must show up in our marriage and work though that problem as a team. It is us against the problem. We do not always agree but we do respect how each other feel and our thoughts are valuable to one another.
I have a love-hate relationship with his sarcasm. (LOL) My husband can be very sarcastic and sometimes I get butt hurt about something he says for a minute or two but that is his personality and accepting his sarcasm is apart of the contract. I love that about him 98% of the time. The other 2% not
so much.
Advice to Other Couples
Yall, when he said it is cheaper to keep her, I literally laughed out loud. He probably means that from the bottom of his gut. I wholeheartedly agree that making differences work for you will do wonders for your relationship. Sometimes, similarities can be a thorn in the heart of your relationship too but those differences, whew! Boss and I have a lot of common interest and common thought processes BUT we also are different in a lot of ways. We had to find a balance to make those differences work for us and not against us. First, learning to respect that we are two different people who are entitled to our individuality was key. Sure, we are one union by marriage. Sure, we are cleaved to one another but there are layers of us that have come together to make us who we are in our marriage.
I see relationships as a vibration’s continuum. Things are always moving and even changing. As we change, so does our relationship. Therefore, there is no perfecting the relationship but there can be a close perfection in how you choose to show up and behave in your relationship time and time again, as your relationship goes through stages of growth, changes and challenges.
A piece of advice that I will always give couples is MAKE LOTS OF HAPPY MEMORIES. One of the reasons I created the Make It Last #RelationshipGoalsCardGame is because I believe that making happy fun memories together can go a long way. For anniversary this year we will be giving away a free deck of cards. To be entered in the drawing, you will just need to comment on this blog post and let us know what part of this blog you enjoyed reading the most or ask us a question in the comments. A name will be pulled on July 19th (Our Anniversary Date) and we will contact the winner for details about where to send the cards.
The cards can also be found at www.aprilyjonestherapy.com/shop
Photos of a few of some our memories:
One of the things we both love to to do is make memories! Last year we renewed our vows for our 10th anniversary. We had words of affirmations printed on stones. Our #RelationshipGoals