The Gift of Time

Written by Aubri Galano

What one gift that everyone wants? The gift of time. Time is the main ingredient in building lasting relationships. Your time is a gift you can give your spouse every day.

My goal for this month is to learn more about my husband. My relationship with my husband is an important one. I’m constantly reminding myself of that and the importance of working on our friendship. It can be easy to just let our relationship happen. We live together, and I see him every day. Somehow our relationship work itself out because we must be getting closer if we see each all the time, right? Wrong.

Emotional intimacy doesn’t happen on its own

I see my coworkers a lot during the week, but many of those relationships stay at the co-worker/acquaintance level. I have to be intentional about growing and expanding those relationships if I want to have a deeper friendship. In my marriage, I have to intentional about spending time developing my friendship with my husband.  Emotional intimacy doesn’t just happen on its own.

It’s important to grow in your knowledge of your spouse. Believe it or not, there are still things you might not know about each other. There are things waiting to be discovered. You took the step to marry your spouse because you knew they were worth your time. So, show them you still see their worth by taking time to work on your relationship. In today’s busy culture, time is a big deal.

Remembering the good times

One of the things I do to get to know my husband better is to reminisce. I often have a bad memory, and I know I won’t remember fun times forever.  New memories are constantly replacing the old. It’s important to take time to remember all of the good things that have happened to you as a couple.

We sat down at our kitchen table and recorded, in a journal, all the good memories from the past year. It was nice to remember the fun times together. This was a good reminder that life can have more good in it than bad. Then, we talked through some questions:

• What did each of us enjoy doing the most?
• What do we want to continue doing?
• What do we want to add?

I wrote everything down so I can look back later and remember, for other couples just talking through memories is enough.  Time invested in your relationship is always time well spent. How will you work on a friendship with your spouse? What will you do to get to know your spouse more?