Last week my wife, Lisa, and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. It just so happened that our anniversary fell, as it almost always does, on a day when we had an event scheduled for our family. My wife’s parents and siblings planned a weeklong reunion (that included our June 13 anniversary date) in Boerne, Texas, where my wife grew up and where her parents and many of our extended relatives live.
Instead of being put out by having a family reunion scheduled right over the top of our 20th anniversary, my wife and I decided that it would be a good opportunity to take our kids back to the place where their very existence started to take form. I proposed to my wife at a restaurant along the Riverwalk in San Antonio in May, 2003. Six weeks later we were married in the Manti, Utah Temple. Despite having a somewhat difficult engagement that caused some apprehension about getting married, once the deal was done, we have never looked back.
Attending a family reunion with my in-laws during an important anniversary date made the trip to Texas a memorable one for lots of sentimental reasons. On our actual anniversary, Lisa and I ate dinner at the restaurant where we got engaged just over 20 years earlier. The following day, we brought our eight children and my in-laws to the Riverwalk and took pictures with them at the Republic of Texas restaurant, where we went over with them our memories of taking an important step that affected all of the people in this entourage.
The nostalgia of taking my wife and kids back to the place where our family started in celebration of 20 years of marriage gave me plenty of reasons to think about what I’ve learned during the 20 years I’ve been married to my wife. I’m going to share with you some of those lessons, hoping that these lessons will benefit whoever reads this article, whether you’re single, looking forward to getting married and starting a family, or whether you’re a seasoned spouse hoping to benefit from someone else’s marriage experience.
During this instructive memoir, I’ll explain lessons related to both secular and religious, even doctrinal, aspects of marriage.
The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self-control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home.
– David O McKay
Introducing The Robbins Family – 20 Years Later
My wife and I are parents of eight children. We were blessed with a girl first, who has essentially filled the role of assistant mother for the six younger brothers and (finally) the little sister who followed her.
To summarize our approach to life, we have loved traveling and having adventures. We’ve spent a lot of time doing sports, especially baseball. We’ve included a lot of music in our kids’ education, and we’ve even built our own little bluegrass band. We’ve dealt with some health issues and other setbacks, but overall we’ve been blessed, protected, and directed throughout the 20 years of marriage and family life my wife and I have experienced together.
We have always loved changes of scenery, including drastic ones. Within a year of getting married, my wife and I decided to leave BYU, where we met, and move to China to learn Chinese and to experience Asian culture. We went into the country as English teachers. Later, after adding five children to our family, we moved to Costa Rica to learn Spanish and experience the culture of Latin America. Each time we returned to Utah from one of those stints living abroad, we quickly felt another pull to leave the comfort of LDS-dominated Utah County and get back out to the next experience.
As our children entered school many years ago, my wife and I made the decision to homeschool them rather than sending them off for hours each day to get their education. Our decision to homeschool was motivated mostly by a desire to be much more involved in their development than if we had them attending school.
Our most recent motivation to find an adventure led us to where we are now, living on an 11-acre homestead we’ve built near Nashville, Tennessee.
Our daughter, Maylee, has been learning to write and record music. She created this video with the help of her brothers.
With that context, here are some of the things I’ve learned that are most important for creating a happy, successful marriage and family.
The Family Proclamation
My wife and I have used the principles described in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” as the foundation for our family. The wisdom in this document cannot be understated. My own experience has reinforced the notion that “marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan”. I don’t see how any couple who follows the guidelines presented in this proclamation could falter in their marriage. Marriages and families thrive and prosper whenever the members of those units have held tightly to the guidelines and principles of family presented in that document.
Our family values this document so much that as part of our kids’ homeschool education, my wife has had each of them memorize it. The expectation is that by memorizing those words, our kids will internalize the document and use it to make decisions for building their own future families.
Choosing the Right Person to Marry
Aside from adhering to the divine principles upon which solid marriages are built, choosing the right person to marry is imperative. Creating a fulfilling and lasting marriage is one of those aspirations that is clearly not dependent upon yourself independently. While it is possible to use your influence and assertiveness to help turn a “fixer upper” into a solid marriage partner, that situation is more of an exception than the rule.
After I returned home from a mission at the age of 21 and began dating girls with the goal of getting married, I found myself torn between the objective of finding a spouse in a timely manner (as advised by my mission president, parents, and other advisers) and finding that person whose personality, interests, attractiveness, and dedication to the gospel matched what I expected. During the five years between returning home from a mission and finally getting engaged, I went on dates with hundreds of different girls. Some of the relationships were serious, but I often found myself disappointed that I wasn’t able to find the match that I wanted.
Then, after being patient for years with the process (and the expense!) of dating many different girls, I found one whose company I consistently craved, a pretty girl from Texas who liked college football and used the word “y’all”, one who I could tell wasn’t high maintenance, a girl who was a giver, who was fun but thoughtful, one who was dedicated to sexual purity but who knew how to show affection.
As I looked for a spouse, I read often from Proverbs 31:10-31, which describes “a virtuous woman”. Reminding myself regularly of the feminine qualities I was looking for in a wife made it so that when I finally was introduced to her, I was confident that she would be a great wife.
Choosing the right person to marry is a critical first step to ensuring that your marriage and future family life are full of bliss. From my experience, basing your decision of who to marry upon the wrong qualifications, including attractiveness alone, social status, wealth, and other aspects of vanity, can make it very difficult to build a flourishing, long-lasting relationship, since vanity is by its nature intended to be short-lived.
Continuing Courtship
Marriage shouldn’t end a couples courtship. Instead, courting inside of a marriage relationship is critical to keeping a romance, along with the marriage itself, alive and thriving.
When we were first married, Lisa and I determined that we would go out on a date with each other on a weekly basis. Especially as we’ve had lots of children enter our family, this weekly time away from parenting and “management” responsibilities gives us the chance to reconnect with each other, to talk about topics that are more difficult to talk about at home, and to continue to develop a living relationship.
Besides our weekly dates, we enjoy spontaneous moments of courtship that involve dancing (slow dancing as well as some occasional hippity hop) in the kitchen during breakfast or dinner, taking a break to watch the sunset with our kids, and frequent hugs and kisses while in passing. These moments of continuing courtship provide life to our ongoing romance and help us take on the more serious and difficult issues with more unity.
Although it takes extra planning when there are lots of little ones in the household, there are benefits associated with occasional trips with only your spouse. My wife and I try to plan an overnight or multiple-day trip every year. Making sure that you spend some extended time alone with your spouse rejuvenates the relationship, allowing you to take time off from the roles of policing and disciplining that are so often involved in parenting.
Staying Healthy and Attractive for Each Other
Most couples begin their relationship because they are physically attracted to each other. Too many couples tend to allow life’s stress and the entropy that comes with having too much on their plates (literally and figuratively) to cause them to become unattractive to each other by putting on extra weight or otherwise letting their physical bodies deteriorate. While aging and changes in metabolism are bound to take a toll on everyone’s ability to look like they’re young adults, there is always something that can be done by a couple to look good and be attractive to each other.
Despite having more responsibilities that we can sometimes keep up with, my wife and I have as a couple committed to eating well, exercising and doing what we can to look our best for each other. We have our times when we’re simply tired or over scheduled and find ourselves slipping on our diet and commitment to exercising enough to keep us as healthy and attractive as we should be, sometimes for longer periods than we’d like to admit. However, we know how to hold each other accountable for health goals.
I’ve been particularly impressed with my wife’s commitment to being fit, even after having eight children. She makes great sacrifices to get herself back to pre-pregnancy weight. I appreciate her efforts, which (though it may seem vain) motivate me to love her even more because of her unselfishness.
Communication and Planning
A few years before I got married, I learned something about how sovereignty changes when a person gets married. I was at a social gathering that included mostly married couples, some with young children, when I decided to ask a group of them who would be interested in going over to the church to play basketball. The response to my question to the guys, “Does anyone want to go play basketball at the church?” was surprising to me. Each of these half dozen or so men immediately looked at their wives (who were sitting around the table with them) with the “Is that okay?” countenance. It was clear from the looks on their faces that they knew to ask for approval before committing. I had an epiphany then about the need for men to coordinate with their spouses.
Since getting engaged and later married, the need for clear and open communication has been obvious. Coupled closely with effective communication is planning for the future, including working together with your spouse and children to accomplish what you’ve determined to be your respective missions in life.
In the weeks leading up to our wedding, my wife and I sat down together several times to discuss important aspects of our marriage and how we would build our family, including:
- assessing our current finances and setting goals for where we wanted to be in the future
- discussing where we wanted to live after we finished school
- planning for children, including how large we wanted our family to be, how we would educate our kids, and what parenting style we wanted to use
- reviewing other personal and family goals in a setting where there could be clear understanding and commitments for support as well as compromises
Continuing a pattern we established just prior to getting married, Lisa and I have made a habit out of conducting regular formal and informal sessions for staying in sync so that we can spiritually create (following the pattern demonstrated in Genesis for the creation of the earth) of each of our family’s upcoming stages. I’m grateful to have learned most of these principles of planning and goal-setting from my experience serving a mission. Those lessons have come in very handy.
My wife and I break down our planning strategy into these categories, each of which serves a purpose in helping us keep our family in line
- Setting Long-term Goals: At least four times a year, we look at where we are as a family, including evaluating what each of our eight children needs to have the fulfillment in life. We use family councils, interviews with our children, and date night conversations to try to anticipate what we should be doing over the next six months to the next several years to keep our opportunities in line with our family’s mission and objectives.
- Weekly Planning: Usually on Sunday nights (sometimes Monday mornings) we plan out our coming week, including writing out a schedule of commitments and making a to-do list of priorities for the week.
- Daily Planning: Each morning after scripture study and breakfast, we review our schedule for the day to make sure we stay up on everything from music lessons to baseball practices and games to church activities and other things our family is involved in.
Another aspect of communication that I’ve found to be critical in a marriage and in raising kids is the way that my wife and I communicate with each other and with our children, as well as the expectation for how our kids communicate with each other. It has helped all of the relationships in our household to encourage the expression of love between family members, including saying, “I love you” and giving hugs frequently. The relationships between my wife and me and between our children and us have been greatly benefitted by sincere expressions of love and appreciation.
We have also been careful not to allow our household to fall into the trap of complaining, using crass language, and promoting a contentious spirit in the home by using tones of voices that are negative or whiny.
Sacrificing Self for Family
The Savior taught his disciples, “But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.” (Matthew 23:11). I am grateful for the sacrifices that my wife makes for me and for our children, and I try to demonstrate an example of doing the same. Our kids have generally developed the spirit of service and unselfishness as we’ve studied the Savior’s example and tried to emulate his commitment to selflessness.
We have found that the law of attraction, wherein doing good out of pure intentions attracts good things in return, applies very consistently to being willing to sacrifice one’s own conveniences for the benefit of others.
Keeping a Sense of Humor
Life has a lot of stressful moments. I’ve found that developing and consistently making use of a good sense of humor reduces the stress level and makes marriage and family life much more enjoyable. We often start the day or end the day watching a comedy segment from Brian Regan, Studio C, or some other form of clean humor.
Being willing to laugh together and see things from a different angle can be an effective way to diffuse tense situations and maintain good relationships within a marriage.
Being Fiercely Loyal
Fierce loyalty to your spouse is essential for ensuring that your marriage relationship is unique from any other relationship and built on a solid foundation. During the times that I have worked in an office outside my home (only a few years out of the past 20), I’ve been surprised by how many active LDS co-workers thought there was nothing wrong with going on lunch dates with a person of the opposite gender.
I’ve seen marriages destroyed because of a breakdown in trust between spouses who didn’t respect boundaries, including not flirting with other people and other habits that lead to a breakdown in marital confidence. Especially in today’s hypersexual world, being loyal to your spouse cannot be taken lightly.
My wife and I do not even ride in a car along with someone of the opposite sex (with very few exceptions) so as to avoid the very appearance of impropriety. Having that kind of loyalty and established boundaries has been
Multiplying and Replenishing
My wife and I have taken seriously God’s commandment to Adam and Eve to multiply and replenish the earth.
Early on in our marriage, my wife and I made a commitment to God that we would welcome into our family as many of His children as he’d give us the ability to provide for. As we’ve studied the scriptures throughout our lives, it has been clear to us that the ultimate in marriage satisfaction comes from partnering with God to create children and raise them righteously. We’ve been blessed to have a large family, and we can’t imagine this life or the next without the relationships we have with any of our eight children.
Raising Confident Children Who Are Without Guile
Our goal for raising our children was to give them the love and support they need to be confident in who they are, and to be motivated to become who God intends them to become. We have observed over our lives that there is usually a careful balance that has to be sought between confidence and pride.
The objective we’ve had with each of our children is to show them love and provide for them the opportunities that they need to feel accepted, to be confident, to develop their spiritual, social, and physical talents, and ultimately to be well prepared for their future as adults.
I often tell people that we raise our kids on the Bible, baseball and bluegrass, meaning that we teach them the gospel of Jesus Christ as a top priority, and we help them build their confidence by developing their talents. Both music and sports are important in our plan for their personal development, because there are things that we believe are important to developing talents that are found in both musical education and through physical exertion.
As our family has developed over the years, my wife and I have paid close attention to societal trends, and we determined that we wanted our kids’ primary influence to be us (their parents), because we are responsible for their welfare and salvation. As we have observed the negative effects that the established education systems and popular culture have had on kids, we have chosen to educate them at home, doing whatever we can to strengthen their bonds with us and with their siblings. That plan has worked out very well for us.
We often use the example of Joseph from the Bible to instruct our kids on who they should become. Joseph was noted as a person who, despite the unfairness he experienced in life and setbacks that could have destroyed him, was made prosperous as he turned his attention to benefiting others. Those who interacted closely with Joseph found their lives enriched because of his selfless, giving demeanor.
Conclusion
I hope that you’ve felt some motivation in the ideas I’ve shared here as I’ve contemplated what has been useful to me during my 20 years of marriage.
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