Want to have a better marriage? Make some team rules.

Think about the last team that you were on. I’m going to use the example of a football team, but whatever team sport makes you more comfortable, think about that.

Let’s say that we’re going to get a group of folks together and we are going to go play some flag football. The very first time we get together a player who’s on the team, all they want to talk about is the uniform we are going to get. We’re going to have shirts, we’re going to have shirts made, what color are they going to be. And the person has been so disruptive talking about uniforms, we don’t even get any practice time in. So we decide we are just going to go ahead and leave. We’ll meet next time and practice.

The next time we get together, somebody else’s family heard about this uniform thing and they are very invested in it. They don’t want to be embarrassed by whatever kind of uniform shirts we might end up getting. So this family interrupts our practice time. They talk about uniform stuff the whole time. Two practices in and we’re still not practicing. We haven’t practiced at all.

So, we are going to have to have some team rules. Maybe one of our team rules might be that whenever we have a practice time, a designated time as practice, then all the team members will practice during that time. Period. Maybe we’ll come up with a second rule. That second rule might be that if you have family members who are interested in something about the team, they can they can address those issues in some other way outside of practice. But they can’t interrupt our practice time.

Those are a couple of team rules we are going to make so that we can actually commit our time to practice.

Marriage is no different.

If we want to have a good marriage we’ve got to create some type of team rules. MARRIAGE IS A TEAM. We have got to create team rules about how we’re going to deal with each other and how we’re going to let the outside world deal with us. To what degree are we willing to let the outside world be disruptive or distracting. We create rules to keep us from being distracted from actually doing what is that we are supposed to being doing in our marriage. The rules keep us focused and working toward the same goals so that we don’t drift apart. Think about what that might be for your marriage.

Do you want to have a better marriage? Make some team rules.