What does a good marriage look like? For those struggling in broken marriages, that’s a lofty aspiration. But if your marriage is still intact, you may benefit from the advice of author and marriage coach Joyce Zook, who believes she can not only show women what a good marriage looks like, but how to create a wonderful marriage. She tells us more about this in our interview about her award-winning book, 12 Keys for Marriage Success. Although this book is for women, some of you men may glean something from her comments as well.
What inspired you to write 12 Keys for Marriage Success?
I love my life and my marriage, but it has not always been full of pleasant experiences. My loving husband, Aaron, and I have been married for forty years, but my first marriage ended in divorce and abuse. I wrote the book because I wanted to tell other women how they could experience the love we have found.
What guided you in your search for creating a successful marriage?
We got married in a small ceremony at my husband’s family home in Pennsylvania. Over the next two years, we both accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and neither of us desired a repeat of our shameful pasts. Our mentors suggested we study the Bible and reap the benefits from the wellspring of knowledge it encompasses.
When we applied what we learned, we fought less often, and our friendship and devotion for one another grew. Best of all, joy and peace filled our hearts when we implemented the truths we discovered.
How did you come up with 12 Keys to improve marriages?
After speaking for many years on Love that Lasts a Lifetime, I got invited to do a radio interview. They wanted twelve questions they could ask me about creating long-lasting marriages. I chose to give them the main points from my talk and the specific lesson I had learned.
The subtitle of your book is “what a wife can do to create a wonderful marriage.” Tell me how a wife can change her marriage all by herself? Most people think it takes two people to make a marriage work.
Some men join their wives and put forth the effort to improve their marriages and others refuse. Most guys won’t even pick up a self-help book or visit a counselor. Therefore, wives often strive alone to revive their relationships without the assistance of their spouse.
The Lord never stops caring for us and continues to guide and show us how we can have marriages filled with His love. Just as the Lord doesn’t’ give up on us, neither should we end our attempts to rekindle love while any spark of hope still exists.
I encourage women to press on even if it’s by themselves because most marriages get better with their consistent efforts. And best of all, God will help us to repair and restore our marital relationships
What are the 12 Keys for Marriage Success?
- Key 1: Stick Like Glue ─ Staying married takes commitment
- Key 2:Think Like a Couple ─ Leave singleness behind and develop your new identity as a couple
- Key 3 Let God Direct ─Get to know the Creator of marriage the Bible, prayer, and worship
- Key 4: Give Your Best ─ Give yourself and your husband a gift of a happy, healthy and rested you
- Key 5: Save Time for Your Husband ─ Rearrange your schedule and find time to spend with the man you married
- Key 6 : Respect Your Man ─ Affirm your husband’s opinions and preferences. Honor your husband by respecting his ideas, capabilities and worth
- Key 7: No Nagging ─ Change yourself first, and you set the atmosphere for him to want to alter his actions
- Key 8: Admire Your Hunk ─ Praise his body, personality, work ethic and he won’t be a tempted to look elsewhere for attention
- Key 9 : Do It His Way Learn to follow his lead as an act of submission to the Lord
- Key 10 : Talk – Talk – Talk Learn the basic techniques to have a good fight and discuss the problems which plague your marriage
- Key 11 : Date Your Mate ─Spend quality time alone by dating your spouse to keep the fun, and romance alive
- Key 12: Light the Fire Celebrate your love for each other and learn to get in the mood for those intimate moments
How can we get our men to change their bad habits or other things we don’t like?
As much as we would like to do it, we can’t change our men. Fact is, we can’t make anyone willingly alter their behavior by our words or our willpower. The only person we can force to modify their actions is ourselves, which is extremely hard. But we can set up circumstances which make our husbands want to adapt and adjust their lives for the better.
If we try to fix or force our spouses to perform a task our way, it frequently backfires. It is possible though to amend our own behavior and thereby produce an atmosphere which influences our guys to change their reactions to us.
Can you give me an example of how this works?
Say two people are dancing together on the dance floor when one of them decides they want something to drink and walks away. The other person, now stranded in the middle of the room, has to determine what they will do. They usually do something different, often following their partner to get refreshments.
The same thing happens in our marriages. When one person makes significant changes in their actions and responses, the other person has to decide what they will do next. When our husbands experience our consistent behavior changes, they will usually modify what they do. Consequently, marriages begin to heal.
I love your analogy of the dance. Let’s talk about nagging though. We wives are often guilty of nagging in trying to bring about change. Please tell us why nagging doesn’t work.
Our spouses rarely exchange their behavior for a different type of response due to our nagging or critical comments. If we sound like their mother, most guys tune us out or walk away in anger. Grown men don’t want to be told what to do or be treated as children.
Nagging rarely causes anyone to switch what they do without resentment. But our husbands will show a renewed interest in us as women and wives when they experience our acceptance and admiration for who they are.
Shifting our behavior to act as their girlfriend and lover, not their mom, causes our mates’ reactions to turn for the better. We create an environment which invites them to adjust their conduct because they feel valued. Once they sense our continued support, they begin to express their appreciation and love for us more readily.
One of the 12 Keys you list in your book is “Date Your Mate.” How does dating our husbands help heal a damaged marriage?
We yearn for marriages packed full of passion and romance where we are cherished by our men. To maintain this type of close connection means we have to devote quality time to be with our spouses on a regular basis. Weekly dates protect our friendship with our husband, keep the passion alive and maintain open lines of communication.
What do dates for a married couple look like?
Good dates involve three parts. First, we need time alone with our guys. Then we want to do a fun activity to enjoy each other while chatting and getting reconnected. Finally, dates for husbands and wives include private time to celebrate our love for one another. Sharing the pleasure of making love may happen before the date, after, or the next morning.
What’s the most important thing you want women to take away when they read your book?
Marriages can change for the better. Suppose our guys don’t show any initiative to work on the relationship or don’t agree there’s a problem to fix. We still have the opportunity to completely transform our marriages even if we are the only ones trying to improve it. Our consistent adjustments to our conduct set the stage for our mates to reconsider their responses and actions.
The Lord works through and alongside us as we embrace His truths to build the deep connections we crave with our husbands. We can discover greater happiness and a richer intimacy with our husbands by incorporating the twelve keys for marriage success into our lives.
Where can people find out more about your book 12 Keys for Marriage Success and your other books as well?
Readers can visit www.Joyce@JoyceZook.com for more information about my books, my coaching services, and free resources.
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