Earlier this summer, my wife and I celebrated ten years of marriage.
It’s almost too shocking to believe — a full decade with Shannon. Since 2016, we’ve moved states, changed jobs, traveled the world, and become parents. Along the way, we’ve learned a great deal about sex, conflict, intimacy, communication, and what it takes to love someone well in a long-term relationship.
At my other writing project, Instrument of Mercy, I’d write an article at every anniversary sharing what we’d learned about marriage in the previous year (you can find all of those articles here).
Well, it’s been a couple of years since I’d written one, and I figured our ten-year anniversary warranted a new article, one that encapsulates the most important issues and revelations we’ve wrestled with over the years.
What follows are the eight lessons that have shaped our marriage more than any others.
None of them came easily. Most were learned through failure, frustration, and repetition. And not one of them have we mastered. We still have a lot to learn.
But in conversations with other married couples, I’ve found these lessons to be surprisingly universal. My hope is that by sharing them with honestly — and a little bit of startling vulnerably — you’ll find something useful in them too.
Note: This article was originally posted at my new writing project, The Illuminated Manuscripts on Substack. Moving forward, this is where I will be sharing shorter pieces on life and culture, as well as sending out updates on books, films, and ideas I found fascinating and worthy of conversation. Subscribe for free to get these posts delivered straight to your inbox.
Lesson #1: The person you marry will change. So will you.
Ten years ago, Shannon and I were different people.
We held different opinions, worldviews, expectations, and dreams about our future than we do today. On the whole, this shouldn’t be very surprising. Ten years before we were married (when we were 15), we were also very different from who we were on the day we said, “I do.”
And thank God for that.
Marriage doesn’t preserve your spouse in amber. Nor does it you. As you have changed, you will change.
When you decide to partner with someone in marriage, you’re entering into a relationship with their past, present, and future selves. And that’s why it’s such a risk. But it’s also where marriage becomes its most rewarding.
Like a glacier carving out a valley as it advances or retreats, it’s Shannon who has most shaped and defined who I am over the past ten years. We adapted and evolved in relation to one another, and as she leaves her mark on me, as I do her.
But change is a byproduct of both internal and external forces. Over the past decade, we’ve shared a bed for the first time, moved states, bought, remodeled, and sold a home, changed jobs, traveled the world, buried a pet, paid medical bills, been to therapy, and become parents.
Who we are now is the sum of all of these experiences and more. We’re in a constant state of metamorphosis. Always in a state of becoming.
I love the version of my wife I married ten years ago.
But I love who we’ve become together even more.
Lesson #2: Do what needs to be done without expecting anything in return.
When I was a teenager, my dad shred some of the best relationship advice I’ve ever heard:
A lot of married guys think they deserve a blow job or something for unloading the dishwasher. Be the type of husband who unloads the dishwasher just because it needs to get done.
Despite (or, more likely, because of) its crudeness, my dad’s pearl of relationship wisdom lodged in my head and never shook loose.
After our honeymoon, Shannon and I learned fairly quickly that marriage is rarely, if ever, a 50/50 split. When work was overwhelming and I came home exhausted, Shannon often carried more than her share of the load at home. And when her business demanded extra time and attention, I picked up whatever extra slack I could.
Successful marriages aren’t built on perfect equality from day to day. They’re built on a mutual willingness to carry a little more when your partner needs you to.
Currently, I work a traditional 9-5 in which I’m expected to be in the office three days a week. Shannon runs her own business from home and serves as our daughter’s primary caregiver during the workweek.
This means that, despite earning less than I do, Shannon works far longer and harder throughout the week (and does far more important work). She rarely gets to clock out at 5. She moves from running a business to caring for our daughter to managing the thousand invisible details that keep our household functioning, so when I get off work, I can cook dinner, and we can enjoy a few hours together as a family before putting our daughter down for the night.
The absolute worst thing I could do is treat helping out when I get home (or on the weekends) as a favor. Because that’s not a relationship; it’s a transaction. It should be my privilege to care for my family, not a burden I expect to be rewarded for.
Looking back, my dad wasn’t really talking about chores. Or blowjobs. He was talking about entitlement. About resisting the immature urge to turn ordinary responsibility into bargaining chips.
A key marker of a healthy marriage is when both people are looking for ways to lighten the other’s load, not increase their own leverage.
An easy way to do this? Instead of asking, “What do you need help with?” (which subtly puts the burden of responsibility back on the other person), just do what you see needs to be done to make life a little bit easier for your partner.
So, speaking specifically to the men here, if you notice that the dishwasher needs to be unloaded, or the litter box cleaned out, or the baby’s diaper needs to be changed, don’t pause to run a cost-benefit analysis.
Just do the damn thing.
Lesson #3: There’s nothing sexier than initiative.
Shannon will tell you that one of the sexiest things I’ve ever done for her had nothing to do with sex or romance. In fact, it happened before we were even dating.
Way back in 2015, Shannon and I’s burgeoning friendship was reaching that awkward phase in which we couldn’t keep using group hangouts to justify spending time with another.
However, I was barreling toward the final month of my master’s degree and preparing to defend my capstone project. I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to pursue a romantic relationship with Shannon and give it the attention it deserved.
So I told her.
One day during a break in my studies, I invited her out to a nearby park for a walk, and there I told her that I fully intended to take her out on a real date. I just needed to get through my capstone defense first.
Years later, Shannon told me it was this moment that sealed the deal for her. Instead of lingering in limbo for several weeks wondering if I was going to make the first move, she came away from that conversation not only knowing my intentions, but also with a timeline.
Initiative is sexy because it removes uncertainty. It shows the other person that you’re thinking about their needs before they have to ask.
When it comes to dating, some level of initiative is required to move the relationship forward. This, I believe, coupled with the inherent erotic thrill, is what makes the early stages of a relationship so intoxicatingly fun.
And while initiative may look different in marriage, it’s no less important (and perhaps more so). But it’s far too easy to shift into neutral once the ring is on your finger.
A spouse who takes initiative isn’t just thinking ahead. They’re creating opportunities for connection. Through initiative, they’re saying, “I’ve been thinking about you, and I wanted to do something about it.”
There’s nothing sexy about endlessly asking your partner what they’d like to do this weekend. Nor is there anything sexy about expecting your partner to feel loved without showing them that they are.
What’s sexy is planning the date.
Or offering the compliment.
Or writing that note.
Or sending the text message.
Or arranging an afternoon for your partner to relax without having to ask.
As you can tell from the list above, being an initiator doesn’t even require a lot of forethought or resources. And that’s because what matters is consistency (and not waiting until your relationship is in trouble to make an effort).
Like a muscle that gets stronger with use, relationships are built through repeated acts of affection and attentiveness.
Lesson #4: Organize your marriage (and finances) around what gives you joy.
Shannon and I love to travel. Over the past decade, we’ve visited Canada, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Greece, Croatia, England, France, Iceland, Spain, Norway, and more.
For us, travel is an opportunity to break the routine and love each other in new ways in new places. When we reflect on our favorite memories and experiences together, they almost always revolve around being someplace else together.
Obviously, travel isn’t a cheap hobby, and we’ve organized our finances in such a way that — barring an unexpected mishap or life development — we allow ourselves at least one “big trip” per year.
Could that money better be spent or invested elsewhere? Perhaps. But, for us, travel is a source of great joy and fulfillment.
At some point, every couple has to decide toward what direction they’re orientating their shared lives. Shannon and I do our best to be financially responsible. We save, invest, and plan for the future. But we’re also aware that life is happening right now.
In his (fantastic) personal finance book, I Will Teach You to be Rich, Ramit Sethi unpacks the concept of a “rich life,” a lifestyle philosophy that views money as tool to fund what you love while cutting costs on things you don’t care about.
Everyone’s rich life will look different, and it goes far deeper than what most people would associate with a stereotypical rich lifestyle (expensive clothes, fancy trips, etc.). It’s about consciously organizing how you spend (and save) your money around your values.
Too many couples drift into a lifestyle they’ve never consciously chosen. They spend money the way everyone around them spends money without honestly evaluating whether it creates more happiness, connection, or fulfillment in their lives.
It’s often said that money can’t buy happiness. That’s not entirely true. Money can absolutely buy experiences, memories, freedom, time together, and opportunities to invest in the people and causes you love.
You’re already spending and saving money. The question, as a couple, you need to answer is whether you’re doing so in such a way that intentionally creates the kind of life you want to share together.
Lesson #5: To have better sex, you have to learn to talk about having better sex.
For a monogamous couple, Shannon and I feel pretty sexually liberated.
We rarely go more than a few days without having sex. We’re not squeamish about sex and nudity in movies and TV shows. We exchange sex toys on Christmas (Bellesa Boutique being our favorite provider). We’re subscribed to OMGYES, a female pleasure-centric library of sex education videos. And we give each other the freedom to explore and indulge what feels good to us on our own time.
But we didn’t get there by accident. In fact, in a lot of ways, Shannon and my sexual preferences and proclivities aren’t 100% aligned.
A handful of examples: Shannon prefers sex fast and a little rough, and I like to take my time. Shannon likes sex in the morning, and I prefer it in the evenings. Shannon loves having sex in the shower, and I’d prefer it literally anywhere else. And what turns Shannon on isn’t necessarily what turns me on.
Like most married couples, we’ve learned that desire doesn’t always show up in the same way for both people. But instead of shying away from those discrepancies, we’ve approached them as opportunities for deeper sexual intimacy through conversation.
However, to have a conversation about sex is not synonymous with having a sexy conversation.
Shannon and I love talking about sex with one another. We joke about it, and discuss the mechanics of the act and what we can do better and want to try next. Without fear of shame or judgment, we share fantasies and tell each other when we see or read something that turns us on.
But, more often than not, the best conversations — the ones where we actually crack open and dig into the meat of an issue — are borne out of simmering feelings of frustration, neglect, and disrespect that finally reach a boiling point.
Instead of shying away from these hard conversations, it’s best to embrace the inevitability of sexual conflict and confront the issues head on. After all, sex is tied up in all kinds of personal and cultural baggage— all unique to the individual.
In addition to talking about the kind of sex you want to have, it’s also important to continue to learn about sex. It’s unlikely many of us received a comprehensive sex education with long-term sexual satisfaction in mind. Sex Talks by Vanessa Marin is a great place to start, as is Come Together by Emily Nagoski and Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel.
Additionally, as previously mentioned, OMGYES is an incredible video resource centered around female pleasure for more visual learners.
Lesson #6: Intimacy doesn’t happen by accident.
Look, life gets busy. The schedule becomes crowded. The responsibilities pile up (especially once you become a parents). And one of the first casualties is often physical and emotional intimacy with your spouse.
Shannon and I haven’t been immune to this reality. In fact, it’s one of these things we’ve struggled with most over the past couple of years. What once came effortlessly, now requires a bit more effort to maintain.
We’re definitely a work in progress in this area, and it’s unlikely to get any easier. However, we’ve implemented a few mitigation strategies to ensure we don’t sacrifice intimacy on the altar of parenthood.
For starters, we’re not above scheduling sex. I know some people chaff at this idea, but carving out a specific window of time — like Sundays during Florence’s nap time — can go a long way in taking the pressure off of both parties. Consequently, we often have more and better sex than if we’d relied on spontaneity alone.
Relatedly, we have different expectations around sex depending on the day of the week. Weekday sex tends to be of the quick “I’m horny. Help me get off” variety, while weekend sex can be more of a multi-positional “Get the toys out” premium event.
We’ve also built entire dates around a sexual experience. Earlier this year, for example, we visited a trendy spa with private rooms designed for couples to relax, reconnect, and have a little fun.
For us, the anticipation, playfulness, and novelty are what keep intimacy feeling fresh after all these years. In our experience, a long-term sexual relationship doesn’t suffer from a lack of love nearly as much as it does from an excess of routine.
We’ve also tried to prioritize “non-sexual sexual” touch. I know this sounds like a contradiction, but stick with me.
Shannon will readily tell you that one of the highlights of her day is having her back scratched before bed while I read. It doesn’t go anywhere (most of the time). It’s not a signal. It’s just physical touch for the sake of physical touch. We’ve started doing this occasionally as we watch TV together at night, and it’s led to some of our most intimate “sex-less” moments.
And I think this is an important distinction to make. Cultivating intimacy encapsulates far more than making room for sex. It’s really about becoming more aware of the hundreds of small opportunities to communicate comfort, safety, affection, and (yes) desire to your partner that likely pass you by unnoticed every day.
In short, don’t rely on spontaneity to restore your emotional and physical connection to your spouse. Anything left to chance eventually becomes a victim of neglect.
Lesson #7: Parenthood is worth the disruption
One of the dumbest things I used to say before becoming a parent was, “When we have kids, we won’t let them change our lives.”
Like many childless couples, Shannon and I assumed our future child would somehow adapt to our lifestyle rather than the other way around.
What we discovered very quickly was that our daughter didn’t give a shit about our carefully constructed lifestyle. She didn’t care about our sleep schedule, our weekend plans, our sex life, or how much uninterrupted free time we’d grown accustomed to.
Simply put, if you don’t want kids to change your life, then you probably shouldn’t have kids.
We waited until we’d been married for seven years before seriously considering parenthood. Of the two of us, I was the more apprehensive. I worried about our finances. I worried about how it would affect our relationship. I worried about losing the comfortable routine we’d built together.
And, in hindsight, many of those worries were totally justified!
Having a child absolutely wrecks your life.
But it’s the beautiful kind of wreckage, the type that makes you realize how much of what used to capture your attention and energy never really mattered at all.
One of the unexpected gifts of parenthood is that it allows you to fall in love with an entirely different version of your spouse. Watching Shannon become a mother has been one of the great privileges of my life. New avenues of devotion, sacrifice, tenderness, and commitment emerged almost overnight.
Yes, life is more complicated now. Our attention is more divided. We’re more tired. Our freedom is more constrained.
But we’ve also become more patient, more resilient, and more intentional. The orientation of our lives has been completely turned upside down by this beautiful person we created and brought forth into the world together.
In a culture obsessed with “reducing friction,” it’s possible to optimize and curate all of the value and meaning from life for sake of freedom and convenience.
Parenthood is a crucible. It leaves no part of your life unchanged. In the most profound way, it reduces you to a secondary supporting character in your own story.
And that’s the joy.
Lesson #8: Your time is a precious commodity. Be generous with it.
Late one night, when our daughter was about six months old, I woke Shannon and told her I needed to go to the emergency room.
Three minutes earlier, I’d felt a slight pain in my left side as I was getting ready for bed. Now I could barely stand.
About half an hour later, I was writhing on a gurney with my eyes rolled back into my head as wave after wave of pain crashed through my body. All coherent thought had evaporated. There was only pain.
The culprit, it turned out, was a kidney stone.
But, for about an hour, as we waited for the results of the CT scan, such was the suddenness and the intensity of the pain that I reckoned with the possibility that I was dying.
Thankfully, we were sent home a few hours later, but the experience left me rattled. Because, in a lot of cases, that’s how death comes upon us, isn’t it? It happens suddenly, without warning.
At some point in the future — whether in a frenzied split-second panic prior to disfiguring trauma, under the fluorescent lights of a hospital’s operating room, or in a morphine-induced haze as your body loses its fight to an insatiable cell-eating disease — your life will come to an end.
In one of the most philosophically chilling passages I’ve read, Oliver Burkeman writes in 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals:
“Your experience of being alive consists of nothing other than the sum of everything to which you pay attention. At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been.”
I’m in my mid-thirties. It’s not a hyperbole to claim that I’m approaching middle age. As a consequence, my perception of the passage of time will begin to accelerate. As you live longer, each passing year represents a continuously shrinking fraction of your total lived experience.
If there’s an overarching theme to each of the lessons in this article, it’s that intentionality matters. Perhaps more than anything. Too many people sleepwalk through life and then complain that it’s too short.
As Seneca, the first-century Roman philosopher, said, “It’s not at all that we have too short a time to live, but that we squander a great deal of it…And so it is—we don’t receive a short life, we make it so.”
Every day we get a little closer to our final day. But instead of existential terror, this salient fact should motivate us out of our comfort zones, to not accept complacency or the lazy assumption that “it can wait until tomorrow.”
For me, it means I don’t want to wait to be a better parent. Or to have better sex. Or to a better spouse. Or to make those memories that will, in the end, define who I am and what “compelled my attention.”
I don’t want to fritter away my time dicking around my phone. Or arguing with strangers on the internet. Or refreshing the same handful of apps for a cheap dopamine hit whenever a red notification appears.
Humans are self-justifying machines, and we’re really good at making excuses for our lack of initiative. But, at some point, your time will run out. And your intent to be a better spouse, lover, or parent won’t have mattered at all.
This is the great struggle of life, so it’s also the great struggle of marriage. No one likes thinking of their life in light of their inevitable death, but it’s probably the most important lesson I can impart here.
Your time is limited. So be mindful of
where
and to what
and to whom
you allocate it.
Because, in the end, your life — and who you are — becomes whatever repeatedly receives your attention.
So, who are you becoming?
Instrument of Mercy 