by Cassie Celestain | Marriage Contributor
When I was teaching my husband, Ryan, and I did a great job of working as a team in the evenings which allowing us to run our household efficiently. We both picked up where things needed to be done. If he had an evening workout I cooked dinner. If I needed to grade papers he cleaned up the dishes. We didn’t have a system set in stone, but we managed to work as a team well and get everything done.
Last year when I did not return to teaching the way we approached things were a bit different. With Ryan working full time and training to become a professional triathlete (which is almost a full time job) his attention was put there. My attention was put on our speaking business, the True Agape blog and our household. That is what we decided would work for us. Ryan still pitched in when needed, but for the most part the house was all me. We each had our own areas that we focused on. And really we didn’t have to function as a team much to run our household.
Now that we have our little one we are back to working as a team to make things run smoothly in our home. Transitioning into working together again is something that takes some time and communication.
Do you feel like you and your husband need to work better as a team? These are the things that we did and you can try them too:
1. Establish Core Values: It is important to be on the same page. If we both know what is important to us then those things are in the forefront of our mind and we can work towards them. For us we established the important things in our evening were: Ryan getting his workout in, us eating dinner together and getting to bed on time. These are the things that will help us reach our long term goals.
2. Be Selfless More Often: To accomplish those core values on a daily basis we have to learn to be selfless a little more. Sometimes when Ryan gets home from work I’d love for him to take baby or cook dinner, but I know he has a workout. Or sometimes if baby is asleep at dinner I want to rush through dinner so I can do something I want to do, but I know dinner together is our time to connect. It’s not about me. It is about our values we decided on, about us, about our family.
3. Ask What Needs to Change: We need to come together and discuss what is working and what is not. Are the core values we originally chose really what we want to be working towards? Do we need to approach things differently to accomplish them? For us this now means dinner may be a freezer meal or leftovers rather than freshly cooked food every night. We have to be willing to be flexible and change to continue to be a successful team.
I know that as life goes on and seasons change our plans, core values and how we approach running our house will transform. However, I truly feel like these three steps will always be a great way to aid us to stay on track as a team.
*Working as a team is always needed to make a marriage work. In this post I am referring to team work as a way to make a household functional.
“Marriage is Not a Destination, But Rather a Life Long Journey”
