Confession time. For years, my first instinct when something felt off in my marriage was to fix it. Diagnose the problem, apply a solution, move on. Turns out I was using the wrong mental model.

Most of us have inherited a mechanical way of thinking about marriage. Your marriage needs fuel. It needs a tune-up. If something is wrong, find the broken part (or the broken person) and fix it. Although well intentioned, this metaphor can quietly reinforce unhelpful assumptions and unrealistic expectations.

In this discussion, I'll share why the mechanical metaphor falls apart under real-world pressure, why a garden is a much more accurate picture of what God designed marriage to be, and what it looks like to cultivate your marriage even when it has been in a long season of drought (spoiler: there are no shortcuts, and that is actually good news). Grab a cup of coffee and let's talk about it.

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I want to start with a confession.

Yes, again.

For a long time, when something felt off in my marriage, my first instinct was to try to fix it.

Roll up my sleeves, diagnose a problem, apply the right solution, and move on.

I spent nearly 20 years in corporate tech.

And so if you give me a broken thing, broken process, broken system, whatever, I want to try to fix it.

It's kind of how my brain works.

Here is what I have slowly come to realize.

I was using the wrong mental model.

I was treating my marriage like a machine.

And marriages are not machines.

Today I want to talk about two very different ways of thinking about your marriage and your sex life.

One of them, I think, is quietly doing damage to a lot of Catholic homes.

The other one is much closer to how God actually designed this whole thing damn.

To work.

So here's the first metaphor, and I'm positive you've heard some version of this for pretty much your whole life.

Your marriage is like a car.

It means fuel.

It needs regular tune ups.

If the engine starts rumbling or knocking or making weird noises, you take it in and you get it fixed.

If a part is broken, you replace that part.

Input equals output, more effort equals faster movement results.

Listen, there's something really intuitive about this, right?

And that sounds totally reasonable.

And I've read this metaphor in so many marriage books, Catholic ones too.

It sounds like something a good husband would say.

I'm going to go work on, on my marriage.

We need a marriage tuneup.

We need to put some fuel back in the tank.

These are all like, the intention is spot on.

There's nothing wrong with any of those intentions.

But I want to bring out something that this metaphor is actually quietly teaching us.

It teaches us that marriage is a system of parts.

It can be optimized.

When something goes wrong, there's a broken component.

You know, if the connection feels thin, if our sexual life is not what we hoped, if our wife seems distant, somebody somewhere is a broken part that needs fixing.

Here's where it gets quietly problematic.

A lot of us, when we're honest, quietly start to think that the broken part is our wife.

I'm preaching to myself here.

I have been there more often than I care to admit.

The problem with the mechanical metaphor is that people are not engines.

Relationships are not machines.

It's not a system that you optimize in that way.

So here's the different metaphor that I want you to start thinking about instead.

Your marriage is a garden.

A garden is alive.

A garden responds to care, but it does not respond on your Timeline.

You don't fix a garden.

You cultivate it.

You don't pour fuel into a garden.

You do water it.

You create conditions where things can grow.

And then you wait.

You think about a what a gardener actually does, right?

Gardeners prepare the soil.

They plant the plants or the seeds.

They water, they pull weeds.

They pay attention to the seasons.

They notice what is thriving and what is struggling.

And for reasonably long stretches, they wait.

Growth is not something that you can force.

Growth is something that you cooperate with.

And it happens on its own timeline.

I think this is so much closer to how marriages actually work.

People are living things, last time I checked, not machines.

You can't put in 10 units of effort and expect 10 units of intimacy to come back out.

It doesn't work that way.

That's not how any of this works.

We're people, we're complex.

We have emotions and we're organic.

We are not mechanical in that way.

What you can do is create better or worse conditions for the marriage.

And that is a big part of the work in marriage.

So here I want to talk through four quick points about the garden metaphor versus the mechanical metaphor.

So the first, cultivation is different from repair.

I mentioned this earlier.

A mechanic looks for what is broken and then tries to fix it and expects that fix to work immediately.

That's how he knows the fix worked, right, because it's functioning again right away.

That's how machines work.

A gardener, however, looks at what is struggling and finds ways to help it flourish over time.

Those are two very, very different postures.

And if you approach your marriage with one versus the other, I guarantee that your wife will feel the difference.

So number two, you create conditions and then you wait for the natural growth to occur.

I mentioned this one as well.

This is the part that is really hard for guys.

And, you know, guys like me, I also struggle with this.

Gardens don't grow on a gantt chart.

You can't, like, put this out and expect certain, you know, results in your own time frame.

You can do everything right this week and not see anything above the surface.

Meanwhile, however, underground roots are forming.

Shoots are getting ready.

You just can't see it yet.

Like growth is happening.

But you have to be patient.

Point three, gardens are resilient.

I think this is really, really important here.

A good marriage, like a good, well tended garden, it can survive seasons of drought.

Maybe the kids are little and you're surviving on, you know, mere hours of sleep each night.

Maybe work has been really brutal.

Maybe there's illness or loss.

Life happens right we all know this life can really smack us upside the head in lots of ways that we don't expect.

But a well pended garden can make it through a hard season or two.

Of course it will be affected a little bit, but it will survive.

If it's a well pended, healthy, flourishing, thriving marriage, it can survive a season or two of struggle.

What it can't survive is year in and year out, year in and year out of drought, with no one tending it, there is a limit to its resilience.

So seasons of neglect stack up.

But that resilience is really important.

Okay, and then the fourth is, this is another really important difference between a garden and a machine.

A machine, okay, think about shifting the metaphor slightly.

Think about a mechanical metaphor, right?

Like when you're building something, say you're building a table, you know exactly what you're going to get.

You have this idea in your mind, and if you execute correctly against that idea, you're going to get exactly what you expect.

That's again a mechanical metaphor.

So you're building your marriage, for example.

You have this blueprint, you follow the plan, you get the output that you desire.

But again, we're in this reality of growth, of, you know, people who aren't tables.

We're not projects, we're not things to be built.

A garden or plant reveals itself in.

You plant the seeds and of course maybe you plant a rose bush, you know generally what rose bushes look like, you know generally what to expect.

But every individual rose bush is just that individual.

And it will reveal itself.

It will grow in its own way according to the, the specific conditions.

And my point here is that there is a process of discovery when we keep this organic garden metaphor in mind.

A marriage isn't something that we know exactly what we are going to get when we're done with this project.

A marriage is something that we discover as we go through it.

We don't know exactly what we're going to get at the end.

We have this idea, of course, we have general ideas and sometimes, you know, and those are great, but there's always a process of discovery, of revelation, of growth, growing together.

So your wife is not a project that you're completing, nor is your marriage as a whole.

She's a person, she's growing and she's being revealed to you and even to herself over the course of a lifetime.

And same for you.

So we have to have this openness to discovery and what is being revealed to us.

And having this metaphor of a garden and plants really opens our Minds and our hearts to this discovery in a way that, you know, the mechanical metaphor just shuts us down to.

So what do you do if your garden of marriage has been in a drought?

Has.

Has been through several seasons or more of real hardship?

Some of you listening know exactly what I mean when I talk about a drought.

Your marriage might be dry, might have been dry for quite some time.

Maybe you feel more like roommates than like lovers.

Here's the truth.

A garden that has been in drought can absolutely come back.

I believe that and I've seen it.

My own marriage has been in a really bad place.

And we have a whole story about how we came back from that.

And that was actually a large catalyst for why my wife Sarah and I do what we do to share these things with anyone who will listen.

Because we believe so much in the goodness of marriage.

So it can come back, but it does not come back the way that a car comes back from the shop.

You don't hand it over to a mechanic on Monday and pick it up on Friday.

Reviving a garden takes work that doesn't look impressive at first, right?

You weed, you pull a bunch of weeds, you till the soil, you fertilize, you water, you do it again next week for a long time.

Maybe nothing visible is happening.

It's just little tiny baby steps.

The healing and the growth are happening, but it's underground and it's not obvious.

Maybe it's not visible.

Maybe it's deep inside your heart and her heart.

Eventually, however, you do start to see green shoots, then leaves.

It takes time, might take several seasons before a garden is really flourishing again.

If this resonates with you, then you know that your marriage didn't get to where it is now overnight.

It was probably a process of many years.

And it's not going to be healed overnight either.

I think that's actually really good news.

It means that no crisis is too late, right?

That you think you're not too late.

But it also means there's no shortcut.

It's just the steady work of a husband and wife who love each other and are willing to keep showing up.

So what does cultivating your marriage actually look like day to day?

How do we cultivate it?

How do we maintain it if it is thriving?

How do we keep it thriving so that we don't, you know, drift into a dried out garden that has endured many seasons of drought or neglect?

Right.

I talked a lot about this in a recent Holy Desires group call and I wanted to share some of what came out of that call.

And these are things that, that my wife Sarah and I speak about a lot.

Three quick points.

One is rituals of connection.

These are things like date night, morning, couple prayer, a daily check in that actually checks in and goes past.

How you doing?

Fine.

No, like actually have a conversation about how your day really was.

These are not extras.

They, these are the conditions for a thriving marriage.

This is the, the rich soil.

These conversations and connections are watering your, your garden.

So the title of this says it all.

Rituals of connection.

You have to maintain a connection with each other.

This kind of goes to an old saying that I really, really love to quote.

And it goes like this.

Show me your calendar and your bank statements and I will tell you what your actual priorities are.

If you look at your calendar where you spend your time, and you look at your bank or your credit cards, whatever, financial statements where you spend your money, those two things will tell you what your real actual priorities in life actually are.

Not what you say, they are not what you claim.

They are what you actually spend your time and money on.

So if you look at your calendar and your bank statements, where does your marriage show up there?

Like, how much time are you actually devoting to your marriage on a daily or weekly basis?

How much money are you devoting to your marriage in the form of date nights or babysitting so you can have some time together?

Whatever it is, right?

If not, how do you expect that your marriage will maintain its, its love and connection, right?

You have to invest into it.

And it doesn't have to be huge, don't get me wrong, but it does have to be real.

So that was one.

Rituals of connection number two, Gratitude and affirmation.

I love talking about this.

So does Sarah.

We tend to find what we look for.

Look for the good things in your wife and in your family and your kids.

Then say them out loud.

Thank your wife and give her compliments.

The more you do this, the more you will notice about her.

It's a little bit like looking at a dark sky at night.

When you first come out and look up at the sky, you see just the brightest stars, right, shining in the sky.

The more you look, the more your eyes become accustomed to the, the sky, the more you'll see, and you'll start seeing the fainter ones.

And pretty soon the whole sky can be, you know, you'll notice more and more and more stars in the sky.

It's a little bit like that.

If you look for the bright spots, the, the beautiful things, you'll notice those right away.

And then as you continue to look for the good things in your wife and in your kids, the more you'll notice if you look for the bad things, you'll find those too.

I mean, goodness gracious, we're all humans.

None of us are perfect.

We're mixed bags.

If you look for what's negative, you'll find that too.

But why would you want to do that?

Look for the positive.

So this not only builds her up, makes her feel, you know, special and noticed and seen and cared for, it also changes your own heart, right?

That noticing the stars, noticing the bright spots in your wife, that habituates your own heart to be more kind and more loving.

And that's the kind of person, that's the kind of man, that's the kind of husband you want to be.

Right?

Okay.

Third one, Humility.

When I am tempted to think that my wife is the problem, I have to do a real check on myself and I come back to humility.

What can I change?

How am I the problem?

How am I contributing to the problem?

I love the Litany of Humility prayer.

There was a time for about a year and a half, literally, when I prayed it every single day.

And I, and I credit that prayer with a significant change in my own heart and my own spiritual life.

I still pray that prayer regularly, at least weekly.

I, um, I'll provide a link to that prayer.

You can do a quick Google search, find it, there's.

It's all over Online Litany of Humility.

Get it, print it, pray it every day.

So, brothers, here is the challenge this week.

Notice which metaphor you are running on.

Just notice in your mind when you think about your marriage.

Do you think about a mechanical metaphor or not?

Are you trying to fix your marriage like a mechanic?

Or are you tending your marriage like a gardener?

If you catch yourself in fix it mode, especially about your wife thinking that she has a problem that needs to be fixed, take a breath.

Pray.

Pray that litan of humility, ask in this moment, how can I help create better conditions for our marriage?

What can I plant this week?

What good seeds can I plant?

How can I water our marriage?

How can I till our marriage?

Your marriage is not a machine.

It is a garden.

Gardens, even the ones that have been in drought for a long time, can flourish again.

God bless you all.