Episode Details

Courting your wife means continuing the maintenance behaviors that build admiration, affection, and respect, the same behaviors that brought you together, applied every week of your marriage. It is not about expensive dates or anniversary gestures. It is about how you live with each other on a regular Tuesday afternoon. The ten ways to court your wife in this article are drawn from twenty years of clinical practice and the published research on what actually keeps couples close. The couples we worked with who recovered the warmth in their marriages did not start with a romantic getaway. They started with small daily behaviors. Over time, the felt sense of the marriage often began to shift. The research backs that up, and so does what Verlynda still sees every week in session. Why Courting Your Wife Matters After Years of Marriage Researchers Canary, Stafford, and Semic (2002) defined "liking" between spouses as the degree to which a person admires their partner. Liking is built from affection and respect, and it is the outcome of what they called relational maintenance behaviors. These behaviors are not extraordinary. They are small, repeatable acts that, over time, regenerate the feeling of being chosen. The reason this matters is straightforward. Marriages do not stay warm by inertia. Researchers Wilcox and Dew, working under the National Marriage Project, found that husbands and wives who spent intentional couple time at least once a week were three and a half times more likely to report being "very happy" in their marriages than those who did not. The size of that effect is unusual in marriage research, and it is not produced by grand gestures. It is produced by repetition. Think of these behaviors as planting seeds in a garden you tend year-round. Stop planting and you will not notice for a while. Then one season the marriage feels barren and you realize you are months away from anything growing again. Plant a few seeds every week and you have a near-constant harvest of warmth and connection. That is what courting your wife actually looks like in long marriages, and it is the foundation of the work we do in counseling for husband and wife. King Solomon wrote, "Rejoice in the wife of your youth." That line captures everything we are about to walk through. The job is to keep delighting in each other, investing in each other, and enjoying each other, on purpose, for the long haul. How to Court Your Wife in Everyday Moments: The 10 Behaviors The following ten behaviors are not ideas pulled out of a hat. They come from empirically validated research on what differentiates couples who stay close from couples who drift. Read them once. Then pick two to start with this week. 1. Be Generous With Your Words and Actions Generosity in marriage is a willingness to reflect on your spouse's strengths and work around her weaknesses to serve her. It is not jewelry or expensive vacations. It is small acts of service, affection, forgiveness, and noticing the good aloud. The Journal of Marriage and Family (2013) found that as generosity increased in a marriage, marital satisfaction also increased. Conflict and perceived likelihood of divorce both decreased. The reason is simple. Generosity helps you see your wife as someone you give to, not someone you keep accounts against. That shift can change the posture you bring to your interactions with her. Generosity is also one of the top five predictors of marital success, which is no accident. It compounds. 2. Be Sacrificial Without Strings Sacrifice goes a step beyond generosity. It is the giving of benefits when your spouse is in need, with no expectation of immediate reciprocation. A 2010 study in Psychological Science found that the higher individuals scored in "communal strength" toward their partner, the more they experienced positive emotions during daily sacrifices. They felt appreciated and reported high relationship satisfaction on the days they made sacrifices. They also reported bette