I made a pretty large goalat the start of the new year to make my husband more of a priority this year. As many of you know, being a mom, taking care of the house, and all the other mom tasks we have throughout the day can leave us in an unmotivated heap and our husbands feeling neglected. At the beginning of the month, I shared a new series/challenge called Making My Husband a Priority. The Making My Husband a Priority challenge was/is inspired by the 5 Love Languages and by the Marriage Laboratory (who I heard on the 3 in 30 podcast a few months ago).
Here is How the Challange Works:
Each month I will choose 1 of the 5 Love Languages to focus on (words of affirmation, physical touch, quality time, receiving gifts, and acts of service). For the entire month, I will do things for my husband based on the specific love language I am focusing on. Depending on the love language I might do something every day, every other day, or once a week. The whole idea is to make my husband a priority and make sure that he knows how much I love and value him as my partner and teammate.
April’s Love Language Recap:
For the month of April, I chose to focus on Words of Affirmation. While this isn’t a super important love language for my husband and me, I wanted to start with something easier. I mean how hard would it be to write my husband a love letter, email, or text once a day? Well, the answer is, a lot harder than I thought.
At first, I started out very strong. The best time for me to write a loving email or text was at the end of the day when I was laying in bed going over all the things I was grateful for. But, like always happens, life gets busy and it is hard to prioritize simple things. I would be so tired I’d just forget, or I would be upset at something he said, or I just wouldn’t do it, no other reason than that. I would definitely say I failed the April challenge. I would say I probably sent him a text/email 65% of the time. That is terrible odds for a Make my Husband a Priority challenge!
However, considering the 65% average I did notice a difference in our relationship. While my husband’s top love languages do not include Words of Affirmation I noticed him feeling happier and more confident. He would get a text message or email from me and he would respond with equally kind words and more physical love. He seemed like a stronger husband after hearing how much I loved, appreciated, and thought he was a great husband, provider, and father.
What I Would Do Differently:
Looking at my D grade for the first month’s challenge there are quite a few things I would do differently next time.
- I would choose a different time to send the text/email: Honestly, what was I thinking sending the email/text at the end of the day? Looking back I should have known that there would be WAY less motivation once my head hit the pillow. A better time for me to have done this challenge would have been during the day while M was napping. I typically have a clear head, I feel optimistic for the day, and I am generally in a great mood. At night there are too many things that can affect the outcome of my want to prioritize.
- I would have built up my love letters: I know this sounds like cheating, but honestly, there are days where I want to tell my husband how much I love and value him. I wish I had prepared for this challenge by harnessing those times and building up a little repertoire of love letters that would have been easy to send when the day got busy.
- I would have used The Dating Diva‘s products: If you know me you know how
much I love The Dating Divas, I talk about them all the time on Instagram. They believe in making your relationship a priority and dating your spouse to build a stronger relationship. They have the cutest products (super cheap too) to help you achieve this. One that I purchased and wished I had used more was the 365 Text Messages. These text messages are so cute and completely prepared for you. You just send them to your partner. But besides these texts they have a few other products that would have really helped, so I wish I would have just gone to their website and picked a few to help. - I would have used the Marriage Laboratory site more: Since the Marriage Laboratory is where I got my inspiration I should have used the site to help guide it. There are a lot of resources on the Marriage Laboratory too like 14 Days of Love Letters, 40 Texts to Send to Your Partner Right Now, 42 Love Letter Prompts, etc.
- I would only send texts or emails every other day: I thought to send a love letter every day would prove to my husband even more how much of a priority he was and how much I love and appreciate him. However, towards the end of the month, he didn’t really even respond or seem to care much for the loving texts. It could have been because they weren’t consistent, but he also just didn’t seem to appreciate the loving words nearly as much as he had in the beginning.
What’s Next?
The next challenge will be quality time, this is a high scoring love language for both me and my husband. The Marriage Laboratorytalks about how she and her husband attacked the quality time challenge in a 4 step, 10-minute process.
Step 1: Discuss the day’s success:
- What was the best part of your day?
- What made you laugh today?
- What gave you energy?
Step 2: Discuss the day’s struggles:
- What was hard for you today?
- What drained you today?
Step 3: Pray together
- Express gratitude for each other
- Plead for their cause
Step 4: Kiss
- For 5 seconds or longer
For me, I would like to include a variation of this process. We already have a conversation at the dinner table most nights about our days. I will use her questions to help guide our conversation, though.
I am also going to plan a date night every week. The Dating Divashave a whole #getyourdateon challenge, where every week they present 2 options from their website of dates you can plan. Everything is pretty much ready for you, you just have to print out their free printables. I have been trying to be more intentional with this, but I will work even harder over the month of May.
My hope for the quality time challenge this month is to bring my husband and me closer together. Life for both of us is so busy it would be so nice to reconnect. If you are interested in finding out what your love language is, take the 5 Love Languages quiz. If you are trying to make your husband more of a priority I would love to hear how you are doing it, what’s working for you, and what isn’t, feel free to leave me a comment below.
Awesome ideas! I’m gonna bookmark this and try it tomorrow. Is marriage laboratory a podcast?
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It is not a podcast yet. I think they are starting a podcast though. It is a website. I heard it on the 3 in 30 podcast.
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It’s never a bad idea to tell the people we care about how much we value them. I just hope he is reciprocating by making you a priority too!
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He is a great husband and he does reciprocate. I think that is one of the things about this challenge though. I took it on for myself. Meaning I wasn’t asking him to actively participate. But he did. I would write to tell him how amazing he is and he would write back with a similar compliment.
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i think words of affirmation is so important. love this post!
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Thank you so much. I agree words of affirmation are super important. Although it isn’t our top two love languages it is still up there. Is it high on your love languages quiz?
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I think it’s sweet that you are challenging yourself. The “grade” doesn’t matter. It’s the love behind wanting to strengthen your relationship. Good for you!
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Thank you so much! It can be so hard and the “grade” can be very discouraging. But I just want my husband to know that while our lives have changed I still love him very much.
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I love to see other couples working through the five love languages together, it’s such a great place to start to really keep marriages strong.
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I couldn’t agree more. When I first learned about the different love languages I wasn’t sure how true/accurate it was. But now I am a huge believer.
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Such a great idea! My husband and I always made a resolution to make each other more of a priority this year. But we focus solely on each other’s love language as opposed to all of them. If we did an entire month focusing on giving and receiving gifts, it just wouldn’t do anything for either of us because neither one of us care about gifts. It’s not our love language. We both have the love language ‘acts of service’ and then I also have ‘words of affirmation’ as well. So those are the ones we focus on in our home. It’s been so beneficial for us!
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It’s funny that you mention that. Gifts is so low on our love languages too, in fact on the quiz we both get a big fat zero. The Marriage Laboratory said the same thing. But she did notice she enjoyed giving the gifts. She did it once a week for a month and while it didn’t do much for their relationship compared to the higher scoring love languages she was still glad she did it. My big ones are quality time and acts of service. His are physical touch and acts of service.
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I love this post! I definitely benefited from reading this. I always feel like my husband gets the “leftovers” of me and my time. I need to focus more on him, and spending quality time together.
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I know it can be so hard! But I try to put myself in his shoes. If I were only getting his scraps how would I feel? This has helped keep me motivated when I just don’t have the energy.
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What a fantastic challenge. I feel inspired to check it out!
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Thank you. It is definitely a work in progress. I’d love to know how it goes if you try it.
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It really is so important to constantly work on growing your relationship. It’s so easy to just put it into auto-pilot. Love all these ideas.
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It really is so easy. I knew relationships took work, but there was so much time to put in the work before baby. Now, not so much. I have to be even more intentional.
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i love this post. its so important to make your husband a priority because so often its easy to place the people closest to us on the backburner.
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So so true. When I find myself doing that or feeling unmotivated to put in the effort I like to put myself in his shoes. If he were doing what I’m doing how would that make me feel? The answer, horrible!
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I love this! I think it’s super important!
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Nice. I think some of these ideas are very sweet. If you have genuine feelings of appreciating & loving your husband in your heart then he will feel it anyway, without having to ‘do’ anything! But certainly it is lovely to demonstrate those feelings sometimes ❤
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I can see what you’re saying. We had a very strong, loving, happy relationship before we had our son. Now we still have a happy, loving relationship, but I want to keep it strong. The best way is to work at our relationship. This is just a way for us to work at it more.
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This has so many great ideas in it! I love making my marriage a priority but it’s definitely an ongoing struggle. Bookmarking this to save ideas for later!
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Thank you. Relationships take work, for sure. Especially as life gets busier.
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I love how honest you were in this post. It’s okay that you didn’t get around to doing something every day. I agree with your point about doing it every other day instead of every day. I used to send my husband texts and I noticed that they didn’t mean as much when I sent them all the time. Loved this post and I look forward to hearing how the next month goes!
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Thank you so much. At first I did beat myself up about it. But you’re right. I think it means more when it isn’t everyday. As weird as that sounds.
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Hey, Thanks for writing this article. It can really help a thousand of couples out there to find a balance in their marriage.
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Thank you so much! I hope it helps.
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I think that this is a great idea. I wonder what love language my husband would respond to the best.
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You should take the test. It is really eye opening.
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Love this idea and i concept. I made a similar decision earlier in the year as well but I love the way you have it all detailed out.
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I have to be really intentional. If I’m not, things tend to get pushed to the back burner.
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This is such a great idea. I love how to tried the love languages that were really your thing.
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The love languages are a fun way to reconnect.
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