Ask any happily married couple -- ANY -- how they did it and you'll hear them say, "You have to work at it." But what does that mean? Here are three helpful tips Jeanette and I have learned first hand go into the kind of marriage that most people dream of but few actually create...

Routine preventative maintenance is much wiser than repairs. And unlike your car, with good and ongoing maintenance your marriage continually gets better, rides more smoothly, absorbs the bumps along the road better. Just the opposite of a new car in thinking.

A well maintained marriage over time ADDS features rather than losing them. It's more comfortable and pleasing. The music is better as your stations increasingly play more and more of your favorite tunes. Your turning radius and other such things improve - in automobile terms they call it "performance." Unlike the early years, blind spots tend to disappear and you can see so very much more. So your marriage is smoother, more satisfying, more energy-efficient, and safer.

There is absolutely no getting around this. Perhaps the biggest mistake in struggling marriages is the failure to recognize this reality and wisely GIVE to the marriage what it will otherwise take against your will. Marriage requires fuel and doesn't ask for permission - it takes it whether you are prepared or in the mood or not.

Wise couples proactively budget and INVEST a healthy portion of their individual time, money, and energies into their marriage. Unwise partners, particularly those with full-time jobs to sap their energies, often see marriage as something to reenergize THEM from the other challenges of life and work (which, of course, it can be IF it has the necessary fuel reserves required to accomplish this).

Marriage - particularly the first few years -- is all about adjusting. In our experience most couples are unprepared for the reality of change in marriage which, when you think about it, is really rather odd. Change is a natural and unavoidable part of life. Growth = change. Your relationship WILL change. The crucial question is this: "What skills and understandings are necessary to assure the inevitable changes we face in our lives and marriage will be GOOD change and not bad change? How can I proactively guide healthy, constructive growth in our relationship?

There is no more important skill the first few years of marriage than the ability to discern, adjust, and readjust to one another.

The THREE key elements to healthy marriage adjusting is individual and mutual patience, learning, and skill practice. Self-command - not feelings - is where patience, learning, and skill practice are developed. Feelings, particularly during the first five years of marriage - are very often not your best friend. They can make couples reactive and, without discipline, lead to many unhealthy and destructive patterns. With discipline comes healthy habits that each of you utilize to discern, adjust, and readjust to each other in the infant, formative years of your marriage. This is the first exciting and wonderful challenge on the journey to the prime of your marriage life and maturity.

Even the best maintained marriages naturally break down. That's right. Even in marriages like ours, there are breakdowns. Fabulously happy couples learn effective relational repair skills and, with practice and experience, they are very effective in repairing the damage. Learning and becoming proficient in repair skills is a vital task for all relationships but none more than your marriage.

If you don't both have those skills, chances are your marriage isn't running so well and needs repair work. As long as you both agree those skills are lacking (even if you both believe it's the OTHER who lacks those skills!), if you both want to learn them and are willing to make the commitment to the process, we'd love to help you. Nothing is more personally satisfying than helping good couples with unhealthy patterns turn their marriage around and enjoy the fabulously happy marriage they've SO wanted.

Keep in mind that we don't do too much of the repair work ourselves. That's your responsibility. Our job as coaches is to give you the tools, training, and guidance (and love) to get you started and established in the relational repair business.

Here are a few relationship repair tips that have worked for Jeanette and me. Keep in mind that every relationship is unique. These are some things that interact well in the chemistry of OUR marriage:

1. Learn to Laugh! This is actually one of the most important maintenance tools as well as a repair tool. Life is short. It can get pretty heavy. So lighten up! Make finding the humor in every possible situation a practiced art in your life. We have and it really, really makes a lot of things that would otherwise be unbearable not so bad. Learn to PLAY!

2. The little thing is the big thing. Bigger isn't better when you're trying to repair a relationship. Be subtle and indirect -- a rose, a gentle touch, a playful, disarming giggle.

3. Learn to read and affirm your spouse's repair overtures. Jeanette and I each have this sort of forced smile that says to each other, "It's okay, I still love you and I'm now open for putting this behind us." Then follow up.

4. Make reconciliation a clear priority. Don't put it off. Don't wait for your spouse to take the first step. Figure out a way to suck it up and learn to say "I'm sorry."

5. Try e-mail. If you both find it difficult to have a civil conversation without it erupting into a full-fledged spat, e-mail might be just the ticket. It removes negative non-verbal cues that can incite more negative reactions. It also affords you time to think about what you want to say. Then, once you've written it, you might just find that's all you needed to do and you don't even need to send it.