Marriage Monday: The Kickoff & Introduction

Hello, friends! John and I have decided to add a weekly segment to Little Band of Characters called Marriage Monday: a blog segment which is prettymuch exactly like it sounds! Each Monday, John and myself (or a guest author / couple) will post a feature blog with a helpful tip for improving and strengthening your marriage or relationship. Welcome to our first post!

Before you go reading our super simple tip for the week, it's good that you know a little bit about John and myself and why we have decided to add this section to the blog.

First and foremost we want you to know that we are not marriage experts: we are not professional counselors, and we are not trained in any type of marriage improvement seminars. However, we feel that we are able to bring practical, fresh and honest ideas to the table and stir up some conversation about making marriage a better place to be. It's a little project that's caught our attention, so we're going to run with it until we feel we've run it out.

We have been married since August 2009, and we are young blood: at the time of our wedding, we were both under the age of 21. Too young for some, but in the words of Nat King Cole,

"we're not too young to know / this love may last, though years may go / and then some day, they may recall / that we were not too young at all".

In the last 2.5 years, we've experienced trials from all kinds of angles: financial, emotional, spiritual, and family-related. Together we've grown substantially into new, different and changed people - and although the journey has not been easy, it's been worth every hard-earned minute.

We have had the opportunity to witness other marriages strengthen, other marriages fall apart, and other marriages stay on a mundane path of "well, I guess we're here anyway...". Learning from others has been a large component of our growth and goal-making and so we hope that others can learn from us. That's why we've decided to do Marriage Monday. (Also, it might be a great way for us to focus on our marriage as we welcome a new baby into the world!)

Today, we're going to keep our post short, sweet & introductory. Today, we present a marriage tip that will hopefully set the stage for the remainder of our Marriage Monday posts: it's from Mitch Albom's novel "Tuesdays with Morrie" and inspired this whole thing...

"There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: if you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike."

"And the biggest one of those values, Mitch?"

Yes?

"Your belief in the importance of your marriage."