What’s one of the top practices to create a strong marriage? Believe it or not, team meetings! As a married couple, you are one team and that team can’t function well if you don’t have team meetings.
A team meeting in your marriage is a dedicated time where you connect as a couple, encourage one another, review the business of the family, and discuss the business of life. This allows you to get, and stay, on the same page week after week despite what life’s busy schedule might throw your way.
Mark and I have found that setting aside this time each week has been a game-changer in our marriage! Want to do the same? We are sharing the full outline of how to do this in your marriage starting this week:
Start with Connection
In our marriage team meeting, we take time to affirm and encourage each other. By starting with this, we are establishing a connection with one another before diving into the nitty-gritty details. This is important because it helps you focus on the positive aspects of your relationship and your spouse. It establishes you as teammates who are committed to working together to solve any problems that come your way.
Here are a few of our favorite questions and prompts to help build connection:
- One thing I appreciate about you…
- I felt most supported by you this week when…
- My favorite moment with you this last week was…
When it comes to appreciation, you might express gratitude for one chore or task your spouse did this week or share what characteristic you admire most in your spouse this week.
Support One Another
After you have connected with one another, it’s time to move on to how we can support one another. This is how we learn about what is worrying our spouse, causing stress, and how they are growing as a person.
You are one of the most influential people in your spouse’s life. You will know more about their struggles, their victories, what stresses them out, and more than anyone else. As such, your encouragement and support is vital to their growth and well-being.
Here are a few questions we like to walk through as a couple to ensure that we are encouraging one another:
- One thing that is weighing heavy on me right now is… (respond with curiosity, empathy, validation, or prayer)
- One thing I’m excited about is…
- I need your help with (fill in the blank) this week.
Review the Business of Family
Let’s face it. Life can get crazy busy sometimes, especially if you still have children at home and participating in school activities. The sheer logistics are enough to make your head hurt.
This is a chance to review all the activities of the week, how your children are doing, and how you will divide up the necessary labor for the week. Here are the topics and questions we like to review to be sure we know the business of our family for the week:
- Let’s look at the calendar together and talk through the logistics of this week. (Events, where the kids need to be, groceries, etc…)
- Is there anything on the calendar for the next few months we need to talk through?
- Is there anything with finances we need to talk about?
Discuss the Plan for Connection
We don’t often think about having to plan out romance and connection with our spouse. In the movies, it just “happens.” The spouse plans out a romantic date night without even having to call their spouse to pick a date and somehow all the details magically fall into place.
Our reality is far from the movies! Romance, connection, and date nights with your spouse require communication and intentionality. This means you will have to coordinate details and plan intentional time to make time for connection and romance.
Here are the questions we use to plan out connection, intimacy, and date nights:
- What’s our plan for daily connection this week?
- What’s our plan for lovemaking this week?
- Is there anything we need to do to make our upcoming date night successful?
Having a weekly marriage meeting can help you stay on the same page and work together with your spouse to create a strong, healthy, and connected relationship! Does it require intentionality and planning? Absolutely! But it is well worth the effort.
We love to end our weekly team meetings by answering a curiosity question and holding hands to pray for one another.
Here are a few of our favorite curiosity questions you can use:
- What is your favorite memory of us?
- What would the perfect retirement look like for you?
- What do you love about your work? What do you like the least about your work?
- If you had a day to yourself, what would it look like to make it a perfect day for you?
- What is one action I do that makes you feel most loved?
- What is the best kind of foreplay for you outside the bedroom? Inside the bedroom?
- One thing I’ve been learning about myself is…
It’s all too easy to let the craziness of life allow you to drift apart. Having a weekly team meeting is just one of the ways you can make sure you are cultivating connection and drawing closer to each other week after week.
If you are looking for some additional tips for planning your weekly team meeting, consider grabbing this book by our friends Bill and Pam Farrel: Marriage Meetups: A Planner for Couples Who Want a Productive, Passionate and Purposeful Life.
