Today, I'll share three things I've learned about what it actually looks like to prioritize your marriage.

First, I think most of us need to get curious again. We're resourceful in every other area of life, but when it comes to marriage, we wing it.

Second, I'll talk about humility, the willingness to look in the mirror and ask the hard questions about what I need to change, not what my wife needs to change. I think that's actually what headship in the family is really about.

And third, I want to challenge you on whether your marriage is actually a priority, or just something you say is important while your time and money go everywhere else. Your marriage is your vocation. It deserves more than leftovers.

Grab a drink and let's talk about it.

____________

🔥 Download my FREE guide for Catholic Husbands: 3 Secrets to Becoming the Lover of Her Dreams

Learn the 2 most common reasons wives don't enjoy sex, and what to do about it!

>>> Get it here: https://canafeast.com/holydesires-3secrets

Today I want to talk about something that sounds really obvious, but that most of us are not actually doing or not doing as well as we should.

And that is prioritizing our marriages, not just saying that it matters, not just feeling like it matters.

Actually treating marriage like it's the most important human relationship in our lives, which means being willing to invest in it, learn about it, grow in it.

Have three pretty simple points, and for many of us, I'm hoping that this will be a good review.

It's the kind of thing that we need to hear regularly and remind ourselves of it, because it's the kind of thing that, honestly, it's all too easy to slip into complacency and just sort of let life take over and we go on autopilot.

This is a little bit of a wake up call for all of us husbands out there.

Point one on prioritizing our marriage.

We need to be curious about it.

The first thing I want to challenge you with is when was the last time you were genuinely curious about your marriage?

I don't mean curious about what's wrong, about the problems.

I mean curious about what's possible.

Curious about your wife, curious about how you could love her better.

Curious enough to pick up a book, listen to a talk, maybe listen to this podcast.

That's fantastic.

Seek out a resource that could help you grow as a husband.

Most of us are incredibly resourceful in other areas of life, right?

If something breaks in our house, we watch a YouTube video.

If we want to get stronger, we go find a program, we figure out an exercise routine, professional development.

Most men are super involved and tuned into that, right?

We treat our careers very strategically and we're good at it.

And that's fantastic.

That's a strength.

Why is it then that when it comes to marriage, so many of us just kind of wing it?

We basically coast on whatever we picked up growing up and we hope for the best.

We kind of treat it like it should be there for us rather than it's something that we need to invest in.

We take from it instead of giving into it, if that makes sense.

That's not good enough for marriage.

God designed marriage to be an incredible source of joy, of connection, of holiness, of unity, of love.

But that vision doesn't just happen automatically.

It really doesn't.

The grace is there, but we need to work with it.

We need to cooperate with that grace of from God.

It takes a kind of curiosity.

It takes the willingness to say, I want to understand my wife better, I want to understand myself better.

I want to learn what it actually takes to build the marriage that God has in mind for us.

If we're not even open to the questions, we're not even curious about what might be.

If we're not curious enough to know what God might have in store for us or how things could be amazing for us, then forward, right?

We're not going to suddenly stumble into these great things.

We've got to build the marriage that we want, with God's help, of course.

But God asks us to cooperate in that process of grace and in that process of transforming ourselves to be the men that God has called us to be like.

That's our task in this world, right?

So here's a practical challenge.

Seek out one resource this week.

A book, a podcast, conversation with a mentor, couple, something.

Be a student of your marriage.

Be a student of your wife.

Okay?

That's point one, curiosity.

Point two kind of follows from that.

Point two is humility, the willingness to look in the mirror.

This one might sting a little bit, but I am preaching to myself just as much as to anyone else who's listening, because I need to remember this just as much as anyone else does.

Humility is the foundation of growth in marriage and growth in general.

Growth in life.

Real humility starts with being willing to look in the mirror and ask, what am I contributing to the problems here?

How am I the problem?

That's humility.

It's easy to focus on what your wife could do differently.

It's easy to build the mental case for why she needs to change.

But that is not the posture of a man who is serious about his vocation in marriage or in life.

The man who transforms his marriage is the one who has the courage and the humility to say, I have things to learn.

I don't have this all figured out.

I'm willing to do the hard work of examining my own heart, my own life, and to be humble enough to realize that I have some things that I need to work on and that I can change.

Remember that one of the ends of marriage, one of its purposes, is for the sanctification of the spouses.

We are supposed to become holier because we are married.

So this vocation of marriage is perhaps the primary arena, or where God is forming you into the man that he created you to be.

Formation requires growth and change, right?

We want to get more holy than we are now.

There's a process of growth and change from where I'm at, wherever I am right now, to holier better than I am right now.

Okay, if we're going to grow and change.

That requires the honesty to recognize specific areas where I fall short, where I need that growth.

And I'm certainly far from perfect.

And again, I'm preaching to myself.

I, Nathan, am far from perfect.

And that requires humility to admit I'm not always right to admit I might be part of the problem here.

This doesn't mean that you beat yourself up.

It doesn't mean that you take all the blame.

It means, though, that you stop waiting for your wife to change and you start asking God, what do you want to change in me, Lord?

How can I change, Lord?

How can I improve, Lord?

What is my path to greater sanctity, greater holiness in my marriage?

Or maybe in a specific situation that you are struggling with in your marriage?

In my personal, humble opinion, humble, that is what headship in the family really looks like.

So a headship, male headship, it's not so much about authority.

It's not about rights.

It's not about privileges.

In my opinion.

It's far more about leading in love.

It's about leading in humility.

It's about leading in service.

Husbands, love your wives.

As Christ loved the church.

That's what Christ did.

He served.

He.

He loved.

He forgave.

He was compassionate.

Let's take a look at St. Joseph.

He's my hero, my model, my patron.

And the humility that he needed.

He needed so much humility to be the head of the Holy family.

The holy family, which consisted of God, the Son and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

How much humility did Joseph need to lead that family?

And yet that's what he was called to do, and that's what he did, did.

And it was in virtue of that humility that he attained such sanctity.

That's what we're called to as well.

So those questions, where can I grow?

Where am I contributing to the problems?

How can I change, improve myself and my marriage and family?

How can I look in the mirror and see where I need to improve and grow?

Those humble questions will change the dynamic in your marriage more than anything else.

And here's the other thing about this.

When it comes down to it, we can only really change ourselves.

We can change the dynamic of our relationship by changing ourselves and our own approach to that relationship and thereby change the dynamic of the whole thing.

But we can only do it directly by changing ourselves.

All right, point three.

Point three is prioritize your marriage like you mean it.

I love this.

There's an old saying that goes like this.

Show me your calendar and your bank Statements.

And I will tell you what your actual priorities are.

Your real priorities are the things that you spend your time and your money on.

It's not just what you feel is important.

You can feel like your marriage is important.

You can can believe it's your most important relationship.

But if you're not actually investing time, energy, resources, money into it, it's not really a priority.

You're not prioritizing it.

It's just an ideal.

It's just a thing that you like to think about.

I've talked to hundreds of Catholic men at this point, and I see a pattern again and again.

It's this.

Men are generous with their time and their money and many areas of life, but they've never once invested, actually invested time or money in a significant way into their marriage.

Maybe they won't bat an eye at spending money and time on gear or hobbies or professional development or entertainment.

You name it.

There's nothing wrong with those.

I'm not down on any of that.

That's fantastic.

But they balk at spending a few hundred dollars on a retreat or a marriage program.

Why is that?

Brothers, your marriage is your vocation.

It's the thing that God has called you to give your life to.

It's the most important work that you have.

It's far more important than your career, far more important than your specific hobbies.

Those are great.

Again, I'm not down on any of that.

But there is a priority, a prioritization in our lives, right?

And our marriage should be right near the top of it, right?

Our faith in God and our marriage, and those are very intertwined because our marriage is a sacrament and vocation.

So it's very intertwined.

So our marriage and our relationship with our wives and our children, if we have children, it deserves more than the leftovers.

We need to prioritize our marriage.

That means things like carving out time to talk with your wife.

And I mean really talk with her beyond just logistics, beyond who's taking who to soccer practice.

Practice.

It means having real, ongoing conversations with your wife.

It means being intentional about dates.

It means reading a book together or joining a program that challenges you to grow or going on a retreat together.

Getting away together.

It means having the courage to say, I want more for us means dreaming together with your wife.

My wife Sarah and I just spent a Saturday morning recently where.

And we just spent about an hour at a coffee shop together dreaming about what we wanted our lives to look like.

And it was such a beautiful experience.

And I really encourage everyone to do that.

Dream about what you want your life to look like, what you want for your children, what you want for your marriage, for your personal development, like all those things that I was talking about, that's part of your dream for sure.

And then share it, right?

Pursue those dreams together and it can draw you together.

The men I've seen who have experienced the biggest transformations in marriage are the ones who decided to stop coasting, stop just assuming that their marriage would be there for them, and started being present in their marriage, they started investing in their marriage, they started pouring into it and strengthening it.

And for those of you who are fathers, who have children, having a strong, loving marriage with your wife, with your children's mother, is the most important, best gift you can give to your children.

It will have such an impact on their lives.

Children are starving for authentic, loving examples of true love, of they want to know, especially as they get older, you know, in the middle school, high school years, they want to know that love is real and they want to know that love is possible.

That's one of the purposes of marriage.

It is a public sacrament and it is a witness to the reality of God's love for his church.

If God's love for his church is kind of like a man's love for his wife or a woman's love for her husband, that's pretty high calling.

We better show that love is real, is compassionate, is joyful, is forgiving, is tenacious and endures and that it gets better over time.

That's one of the mysteries and great joys and promises of the wedding feast of Cana.

That God saves the best wine for last in marriage means marriage isn't the best on your wedding night.

It's not.

Being newlyweds, that's wonderful and beautiful, but it should get better and better and better over time.

So by the time you know your 85, 90 year old retired couple together, gray haired, maybe hopefully, with a beautiful large family, that should be your most joyful, most loving time.

Because you've had all those decades together, to grow together, to increase your love together, to face and overcome challenges, to dream together and strive for those dreams to allow God's grace to work on you.

The sanctification of marriage has been working in you and you've been working with that grace for so many decades that by the time you reach the end of the road, you should be so much more loving, so much more in love than when you started.

And that's the real vision, the real dream of sacramental marriage.

But we need to prioritize it.

We need to actually invest time, definitely.

And some money.

You got to invest in some dates, you got to invest in getting away.

You got to invest in some babysitting.

You got to invest in some retreats, some programs.

Invest.

Don't be afraid to invest some real money and absolutely real time into your marriage if you want that beautiful vision to be a reality in your own life.

So here's what I want to leave you with.

Today I had three things for you.

One, be curious.

Stop winging it.

Become a student of your marriage.

Seek out the resources, the wisdom, the formation that will help you grow to humility.

Look in the mirror before you look across the dinner table.

Right?

Ask God what he wants to change in you.

That's where the transformation starts.

That's where the process of sanctification starts.

Right?

Right on our own hearts.

And three, prioritize.

Prioritize your marriage like you mean it.

Like you really believe that your marriage is the most important relationship in your life.

Let your calendar, your effort, your bank statements, let all of those things reflect the real priority that your marriage is for you.

Your marriage is worth fighting for.

It's worth investing in.

And the fact that you're here listening to this tells me at some level you already know that.

So this has been, hopefully for you, just a reminder, maybe for you, it's been a wake up call.

Either way, go and do something about it.

Have a great deep conversation with your wife.

Prioritize some time together.

Go plan a date.

Go do something about your marriage.

Prioritize it.

Be curious about it and be humble.

And change yourself to be the man that God is creating you to be.

God bless.