Love and Marriage: Marriage Advice for #TeamStayTogether

This is a re-post, originally posted on April 24th, 2015. Enjoy!

As my husband and I come up on our 10th Anniversary, I can't help but think about our relationship when we first started out as newlyweds. We were the first of our friends to get married and all we had to go on was instinct and the advise of our parents and grandparents. Did we listen to them all, of course not, but I still wanted to share a few that are definitely worth sharing and incorporating into your relationship. #TeamStayTogether can be challenging, so I'm doing my part to keep hope alive.

1. Don't go to bed angry. It took me a long time to get with the program on this one. I thought there were only 2 options: 1- stay up to un-holy hours of the night arguing talking to my husband till we worked it out or 2- just shut it down and be mad that night and again all morning the next day. Then one day I realized that my beauty sleep and my sanity had taken too much of a beating and I learned 8 magical words: "We gone have to agree to disagree. Good-night." Will we discuss it the next day, probably. Will I worry about it at 10 o'clock at night- nope.

2. Kiss everyday. There is research out there somewhere that shows that kissing is good for you. It releases those feel good endorphins, amps up the romance and helps remind you of the reason you got together in the first place. You may not have time, or privacy for those teen-age makeout sessions, but make sure you smooch it out with your sweetie.

3. Don't sweat the small stuff. Don't nobody have time to argue over every little thing. Yes, I know you have asked your man a thousand times to replace the bag when he takes the trash out (one of my pet peeves), but when he doesn't don't trip. Just continue throwing the garbage in the can as if he did, so the next time when he has to empty and clean the can out, he'll make sure he replaces that bag. It's a little passive aggressive, but it beats fussing about it again. I'm just saying.

4. Say I love you everyday. I am not a very affectionate person. Don't know why, I'm just not, but it wasn't until I got married that I realized how much weight these 3 little words really carry. We can get on each other's last good nerve, not talk all day and roll our eyes when the other person talks, but at the end of the day "I love you" pretty much means that all is forgiven and everything is all right.

5. The 80/ 20 Rule for Relationships. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married put me up on this rule saying that in most healthy relationships, we only get 80% of what we want and it's in that search for the 20% that either drives us crazy or causes people to stray. Remembering that life is not perfect, and neither is your spouse will help you get things back into perspective.

6. Forgive and forget. It's nothing worse than having what I like to call the "forever" argument. This is when couples who have been together forever start bringing up stuff that happened forever ago just to make a point. You may have forgiven, but with that you have to at least pretend that you forgot. We are no longer allowed to bring up things that happened pre-marriage, pre-kids or pre-marital counseling. We try our best not to bring up things that happened last week, let alone last year. You know that you have truly forgiven someone when you don't use it and throw it up in their face.

7. Learn to live in the grey area. I can be very cut throat at times: you're either right or wrong, you're going to do it, or not do it, I either like you or I don't. I don't leave much room for interpretation. So, I had to learn that with marriage, everything isn't always black and white, we will not always agree, we will not always get along, there may be times where we just can't get it together. But, it's in those moments, when we are pushed to our limits that our faith in each other is tested and we come out the other end stronger than when we started.

Those are my tips, please share yours.

Forever Loving My B.A.D.D. Kids (and my Husband),
Rhonda