Marriage and Intimacy Tips for Christian Couples: Secrets of Happily Ever After

Reimagining Your Romantic Traditions for More Intimacy and Gratitude

• Monica Tanner • Season 3 • Episode 262

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Ready to reshape your view on Valentine's Day and turn it into a day you both actually enjoy?

Let's stop dropping hints and creating resentment from unmet expectations with some honest, heart-to-heart communication. This episode is all about replacing those last-minute scrambles with meaningful traditions and understanding.

I'll walk you through the exact steps to engage in those crucial conversations with your sweetheart—setting the stage for clarity and connection, not just on February 14th but for every celebration your calendar holds.

This week is about recognizing each other's efforts, celebrating progress, and infusing every occasion with genuine gratitude.

And, for those looking for that perfect Valentine's gesture, why not make a pledge to regular, weekly date nights and documenting your love story with the Date Night Journal. Get yours before Valentine's Day by ordering before February 10th using this link --> https://monicatanner.com/journal

Speaker 1:

Have you ever wondered what makes the difference between those couples who absolutely love to be together and the ones who merely tolerate each other in their old age? Hi, I'm Monica Tanner, wife to a super hunky man, mom to four kids, relationship coach and intimacy expert. My goal with this podcast is to help you and your partner swap resentment for romance, escape the roommate rut and nurture a bond built on trust, communication and unconditional love. Each week, I'm sharing the secret strategies that keep couples madly in love, dedicated and downright giddy about each other, from the honeymoon phase to the golden years. I'm on a mission to craft the code of happily ever after, and I'm sharing those juicy secrets right here, because an awesome marriage makes life so much sweeter. Let's get to it. Hello and welcome to the secrets of happily ever after podcast. I'm your host, monica Tanner, and I'm super grateful for the opportunity to record this episode Now.

Speaker 1:

If you're listening in real time, we're just ahead of Valentine's Day it's a week away and I wanted to record an entire episode on how to make Valentine's Day more enjoyable, because you're in either one of two caps you love Valentine's Day, it's your favorite holiday, you're going to go all out or two you hate it. It's over commercialized. Why are we forced to celebrate this anyways? And usually those two people marry each other, and so either the one who loves it tones it down and pretends like it's not that big of a deal, or the one who doesn't tries really hard to make it special and usually falls short. Today, I want to give you three tips for a more enjoyable Valentine's Day, and you can actually use these tips to create a better experience for any holiday, a gathering or event. Before we get started, I want to mention to you, or encourage you to think about, giving your spouse the gift of weekly, non-negotiable date nights, this year for Valentine's Day. Now I've created the date night journal, which is a journal where you can record 52 weeks of date night, plus some extras, in a very simple and meaningful way. So the gift you would be giving your sweetheart is the commitment to go out on a date every single week and then document your love story using this journal. Now, if you order in the next couple of days, you'll get this journal before Valentine's Day. All you have to do is go to monnekatannercom backslash journal and you'll get it in the mail before the holiday. All right on to our episode.

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So today I want to share with you three tips to a more enjoyable holiday, even if one or both of you are not romantic or creative. Number one, my first tip, has to do with creating open lines of communication. Now, this seems pretty obvious that you'd want to communicate openly about what you want to do for Valentine's Day, but most of us fall into this silly little dropping hints game, or hoping and wishing that our partner is just going to know what we want, or again minimizing like it's okay, valentine's Day is not a big deal, we don't have to do anything all of which causes resentment. Now, if you've been married for any length of time, let me know how that's going for you, because most of the time, the feedback that I get from my students and clients is that Valentine's Day was a total bust. Either their expectations were too high, their partner didn't get any of the hints that they were dropping, their partner went way overboard, and then they felt bad. Typically, if I ask people to rate their Valentine's Day experience, it rarely gets over a five out of ten, and the solution to this is to take some time before and talk about it using open communication.

Speaker 1:

So here's a few tips on how to do that. First of all, drop the hint giving, because that never, ever and I'm serious, never works Around. Here we like to say husbands don't take hints, and neither do wives. Nobody, most people are not good at picking up hints, especially in the midst of crazy, over-scheduled lives that most of us lead. So stop it with the hint dropping.

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Number two, choose a time that is not a high stress or high conflict time. So while your partner is in the middle of a stressful task or just getting home from a stressful day or falling asleep are not great times to initiate a conversation about your Valentine's Day plans. Instead, try approaching your sweetheart with hey honey, I've been thinking about Valentine's this year and I wanted to run some ideas past you. Can we come up with a time in the next couple of days that would be a good time to chat about this? That way, you're not catching your partner off guard or at a stressful time. You're actually making time to talk about your Valentine's Day expectations, which is the first step of opening the lines of communication. So choose the right time and setting for the discussion.

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Now, once you're sitting down to have the conversation, make your requests without blame or criticism, for example, saying something like we always screw up Valentine's Day, or I hate the way we do Valentine's Day, or Valentine's Day is always, or I don't like the way we celebrate Valentine's Day, that tends to open up your partner to a lot of defensiveness or judgment. It tends to make them close off to anything else you might say after that. So try something like hey, I'd really like to do something fun and intentional for Valentine's Day this year. I have some ideas that I'd love to run by you. That's a great way to open up the conversation.

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Your next move could be to get curious about what they're thinking. So hey, babe, I'd love to chat about or brainstorm, some ideas about what we can do for Valentine's Day. I'm curious, what are your thoughts about it? And then make sure that you're listening to your partner's experience. Certainly they've had different experiences, ideas, desires around the holiday than you have, and it's really fun to get their perspective in an open and inviting way so that you can at least know where they're coming from.

Speaker 1:

Whether you are the more or less romantic partner, it's always helpful to understand your partner's view of whatever it is you're talking about and ask probing questions like how did your parents celebrate, what's your, what has been your favorite past celebration, those types of things. And then, once you feel like you have a good handle on their experience of Valentine's Day and your experience of Valentine's Day, then start brainstorming together ideas about how you could make it meaningful for both of you. So, using both you and your partner's experience, oftentimes you can come up with way better ideas than if you're trying to figure it out all on your own. Now remember that the goal of this conversation is not to change your partner's view of Valentine's Day or how they feel about it, or whether or not they're romantic or creative, but the goal is to understand each other better and work together as a team to come up with something mutually meaningful. So that's number one. Open up the lines of communication and have a chat about your thoughts, feelings and expectations on how to celebrate together. Have you taken the intimacy level quiz yet? If not, you absolutely should. All you have to do is go to monocatannercom backslash quiz and take a three-minute quiz. At the end, I'll tell you what level of intimacy you and your spouse are at and I'll give you next steps to be able to increase your intimacy. Regardless of what level you're at, you can always make improvements, so do yourself a favor and go to monocatannercom backslash quiz and learn about your level of intimacy and how to improve it.

Speaker 1:

Number two Think about celebrating in non-traditional ways and maybe on the non-traditional day. Remember you don't have to celebrate Valentine's Day right on the day. This year, valentine's Day is on a Wednesday. It's a normal working day for most of us. Our kids have school activities and all the things, so don't think that you have to celebrate Valentine's Day on the actual day. To make it mean something, my husband and I love to round to the nearest weekend and then remember that it doesn't have to be the traditional expensive, elaborate dinner, chocolate, flowers, all of the commercialized Valentine's things. You get to customize and create whatever experience is meaningful to you.

Speaker 1:

The idea behind Valentine's Day is it's just a day to celebrate your love. So here's a list I made of a few non-traditional ways perhaps to celebrate Valentine's Day this year. And make sure, when you're brainstorming these ideas and working together, that you keep in mind your unique relationship dynamic. What is it that you love about each other? What is it that you love to do together? How can you create a memory around Valentine's Day that honors your particular specific relationship. So here's a few ideas.

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Number one a themed movie marathon. Choose a series of movies or a genre that you both love but you don't usually watch together. Make it cozy with blankets, popcorn and your favorite snacks. It's a simple, low key way to spend quality time together. Number two plan an outdoor adventure, especially if the weather's nice. In your area. There are lots of fun things you can do outdoors that don't require reservations or a lot of money that you enjoy doing together. Number three create some sort of cooking or baking challenge that just the two of you can do together. Pick a theme or a certain type of cuisine and challenge each other to a cookoff, bakeoff or just make dinner together. Number four you could do something artistic, maybe a hobby that the two of you enjoy but don't make enough time to do together. Valentine's Day would be a great opportunity to revisit that hobby that you both enjoy.

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Number five plan a trip together. Sometimes it's fun to just dream. For example, my husband and I want to go to Greece. It's a mutual bucket list item that we both have on our bucket list, but planning a trip there is a little bit involved, so we haven't made a lot of time to plan it. Valentine's Day would be the perfect opportunity to sit down and look at all of the things that we might like to do and just plan that vacation for a future date. Number six be silly. Plan at home, dance off or listen to your favorite music, or put in an old mixtape that ignites all of those feel-good feelings you feel for each other.

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You can write love notes to each other. You can do or plan some sort of service or charity activity which strengthens your bond of love but also shows love for others. You can pamper each other with an at-home spa experience. You can learn something new like astronomy, and plan just some sort of stargazing experience, doing some research on the things that you're seeing. Take a walk down memory lane, do a review of your relationship in recent or ancient history, talk about some of the experiences that you're really grateful for, or remember in a fun way, or just learn a new skill, something that neither of you is good at but are both interested in. You could just carve out some time to make a new memory or learn a new skill. The idea is to create new memories, especially if Valentine's Day is overlooked or carries with it a negative connotation. Take this opportunity to make a new memory and a new experience around this holiday. So that's number two find a non-traditional way to celebrate.

Speaker 1:

And number three my final tip for a more enjoyable Valentine's Day, even if one of you or both of you is not romantic or creative, is to acknowledge effort and get excited. So this is something that's absolutely in your control. Whether you're the more romantic or less romantic partner, it's easy to take past experiences and taint future experiences with them, and what I mean by that is you could just roll your eyes and be like Valentine's Day always sucks. Of course it's going to suck this year. Why do we have to celebrate this commercialized holiday?

Speaker 1:

Like all of the thoughts that may be running through your head, try to replace them with some excitement. Like, now that you've opened up the lines of communication, you've brainstormed something non-traditionally and fun to do together. You can just approach it with excitement. Like here's your opportunity to create a new memory and a new tradition or a new experience, just for the heck of it, just because millions of people recognize Valentine's Day as a holiday. So get excited. Think of ways to increase you and your partner's anticipation for something really enjoyable and then recognize any progress with appreciation towards a more enjoyable experience.

Speaker 1:

Celebrate the effort, not just the outcome. It's important to celebrate the fact that you worked on this together as a team. So even if the restaurant lost your reservation or things didn't work out the way you planned them remember, such is life Laugh it off, pivot and put your energy and focus towards enjoying the whole experience rather than focusing on the things that didn't go right. Most importantly, practice some gratitude for your partner. If you do nothing else on Valentine's Day, think of some reasons why you're grateful and thankful for your partner and your relationship and share that with them. Even when everything goes wrong or only half of the things go right, there's always something to be grateful for and I guarantee, if you can find that thing and you can acknowledge any progress towards something better, then you're winning Congratulations. You've created a more enjoyable Valentine's Day.

Speaker 1:

So, my friends, with Valentine's Day coming up, I encourage you to number one, open up the lines of communication.

Speaker 1:

Number two, think about non-traditional ways to celebrate. And, number three, acknowledge effort, progress and show your appreciation, whether you're listening in real time and you're going to apply these to Valentine's Day or you just happened upon this episode and any other holiday, like Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year's, is on the horizon. Use these tips for a more enjoyable experience together and I will see you next week, which happens to be Valentine's Day. Same time, same place. And until then, happy marriedging. If you had as much fun as we did just now, I hope that you'll head over to your favorite podcast player and leave a rating and review for the show or share it on social media. That's how other people can find this awesome content and we can spread the message that happily ever after is possible. Feel free to check out my website, monicatannercom, to find out more ways you can work with me and, as always, thank you so much for spending this time with me. We'll see you next week.