A Bit of Marital Advice

       When my husband and I met in college and married just six months later, we didn’t have much time to find out about how to be a married couple. We had to “learn as you go” and are still at it fifty-six years later, thanking God for our years together. However, there is one little tidbit of advice we received that has meant more to us than anything else.

         My dad was a preacher, and he married us. The only thing I remember him telling us in the way of marital counseling “Kiss her when you’re going out or coming in.”

         Back in the 1950’s when we married, most of the wives were homemakers. They stayed in the house while the husband went out to “bring in the bacon.” So the man did most of the “going out and coming in”. Early in our marriage, though, both of us were working, and we remembered the good-bye kiss almost every time one of us left to do something, or when we came back home. It became a funny ritual we always did, and it helped us to remember my dad, and his homespun wisdom.

         Nowadays, both husband and wife are usually needed to help with the family income, so both are coming and going a lot. That’s a lot of kisses. And when you’re kissing a lot, you don’t have time to get mad at each other.

          It doesn’t hurt to give a little squeeze along with the kiss. At our house, it always brings a smile and a happy memory when I see my husband puckering up for a kiss, as he comes toward me, his keys jingling in his hands, as he announces, “I’m going out!”

(Written by Juanita Nobles and published in Love is a Verb, compiled by James Stuart Bell and Gary Chapman, 2011-- picture made in 1963)