Doing Marriage Well: Tailoring Your Unique Love Story

Welcome to doing Marriage Well. Or welcome back, if you were here when Lori was doing the posting.

For those who don’t know me, I’m Paul. Lori and I have been married for 40 years. We’ve been doing marriage ministry since the 90s. I blogged to men as The Generous Husband for 22½ years, and to women on The XY Code for eleven years. 

Paul and Lori in front of a giant butterfly

Yesterday, Lori gently warned you that I’m different. But both Lori and I are all about marriage. We want to see marriages heal, grow, and become great. 

When we decided to revamp our online presence, I claimed the Doing Marriage Well URL because I love the message behind it. Doing marriage “right” is about doing what someone thinks we should all do. But your marriage is the blending of two unique people, and what works for others may not be good for you. There are things that are nearly universally successful for couples, and things that are universally harmful. For those who follow Jesus, there are some expectations and limits. But honesty, there’s a great deal of wiggle room. We’ve seen happy couples living a wide variety of different ways. If it’s in God’s will, and both husband and wife are good with it, who am I to say anything against it?

My goal here is to help you find what works well for your marriage. I will do that by offering you things to consider. My hope is you are here with your spouse, as discussing these issues together is powerful. But if your spouse isn’t on board yet, you can still find new ways to live out your marriage. As I share things, weight them. Try those that seem like they might work for your marriage. If it’s a good fit, great. If not, ditch it, or consider how to modify it to work for your relationship.

I will be blogging five days a week, Monday through Friday. For the most part, I will look at a single idea or theme each week. If there are common gender differences, I will talk primarily to the ladies on Tuesday, and the gentlemen on Wednesday. Blogging to couples together will be new for me, so give me a bit of grace. On Thursday I’ll do a wrap up, and will try to give a clear action step. On Friday, I’ll post about sex. When it fits, I will do that in line with the topic for the week.

If you’re thinking “I’ll just read the Friday posts” I would caution you that a good sex life requires a good marriage. And if you’re thinking you may skip Friday, I’d caution that you can’t have a good marriage without a good sex life.

I’ll be doing a survey the first Monday of each month, with results the last Monday.

As for Tilly, see below.

~ This is Paul, reminding you that every marriage is different

Those of you who were here before know that Tilly was a regular part of this blog. Tilly is our cat. She loves Lori, likes me, and tolerates our son and grandsons. When Lori announced she was handing the blog over to me, some of you were concerned you would lose Tilly.

It took a long time to get her to sign a new contract. I did use the words “outside cat” but I promise it was just a negotiating tactic!

So here’s Tilly, exercising her right of creative control over how I use pictures of her.

Tilly supervising placement of her picture.

Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly
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Starting Soon

Hi, y’all, I’ll be starting up again this Sunday.

Hope your holidays have been happy and warm. We hit negative digits (Fahrenheit) here in Washington state and I know many of you in the states are facing significant cold as well. Snuggle in with your sweetie and stay warm.

icicles

I have started writing a few small articles that are more supporting concepts than something we might spend a week on. The first one is just a short reminder that Small Steps will get you where you want to go.

Also we are in the middle of our year-end fundraising. If you like what Paul and I do, please consider giving.

 

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Image credit © Image by Nancy Morris / Pixabay
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Christmas Break

Christmas is just around the corner, so I thought it would be good to take a break to make room for all the holiday fun and extra activities.

No new ideas, just a bit more time to practice “kindness” and “uplifting words“. Can your efforts bring a bit of holiday cheer or make someone’s load a little lighter?

Merry Christmas

See what a difference those two concepts can bring to your spouse and others in your world.

See you in the new year!

 

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.
Image credit © Photo by lilartsy / Unsplash
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Welcome

At Doing Marriage Well we are all about learning marriage skills and putting them into action.

Please take time to check out past blog posts, resources, and such to get to know us. If we are a good fit, subscribe and join us in making your marriage your happy place.

 

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.
Image credit © seanlockephotography / Adobe Stock
We’re Donation Supported