What is being intentional in a marriage? It reminds me of the word mindfulness, a buzzword that we all have a general understanding of, but does anyone really have a clear meaning of the word? Often these words are said, and we come to our own conclusion of what they mean and so there isn’t a general consensus of the word. This causes so much confusion when people talk about it. While we think we are all on the same page, we aren’t because we all have different meanings of the word and relate to it differently.
Intentionality is the second cornerstone in the foundation of a Confident Marriage, as taught in our workshop and talked about in our podcast. Here, however, I want to bring some clarity to what it means when we refer to it and how very deep the different elements of it really are.
So often, we talk about those things that we would like to improve on in our marriages, our jobs, in our lives, and as parents. These things can really feel overwhelming! Where do we even start? It feels like there is so much we would like to accomplish and so much to always do. All this starts with being intentional. When you are intentional about the things you want to accomplish in life, you are able to take the steps, one step at a time, towards your end goal. Intentional means that if you want to have better communication in your marriage, in those moments that you realize that you’re not having good communication, you stop the conversation. Ask your spouse to take a break and then come back to it with an intentional plan on coming to a solution. Do it with good communication tactics. That is being intentional.
Intentionality means doing things with a purpose. It doesn’t mean that you don’t make mistakes, and it doesn’t mean that you are always having to pay attention to every single little thing you do. What it does mean is having a plan of the little baby steps it is going to take to reach that bigger goal. All goals, big and small, have little steps that lead up to accomplishing the overall goal. When you’re clear on what the big picture looks like and clear about the little baby steps you need to take to get to where you want to go, that’s what it means to be intentional.
However, there is another step to being intentional after all that - putting those baby steps into practice every single day. Intentionally doing those baby steps that lead you to your goal. Even when you make a mistake or forget about it, you can realize you aren’t being intentional and start being intentional. Sometimes, it is a back-and-forth process like that, that is ok! Eventually, you will learn the habit and you will stop having to swing in and out of it. It will come naturally.
Being intentional about loving your spouse, especially when things are hard, is so rewarding in the end. We often take for granted that our spouse already knows how we feel about them, or that we’ve done these things for a spouse a million times before. We sort of fall into this mundane robotic way of life where we just do this “thing” day to day. That’s when we’re not being intentional and that’s when we’re just letting life take us where it shall. Just realizing that we are just living life every day and we’re not paying attention to how we are loving our spouse, how we are impacting people around you, not being the leader in our home, that alone is a huge step towards intentionality.
This is a huge, pivotal point. This is where you can step back and really get a clear picture of how you can make changes. You can see what you can do to be more intentional with your marriage, your spouse, your job, or whatever it is you want to work on.
Intentionality is the glue that holds everything together within a marriage. You can’t make a single change in your marriage, you can’t improve your marriage, you can’t remove the challenges from your marriage without intentionality. Intentionality is how it starts, how it holds it together, and how you succeed, Confidently!
Want more? Listen to the episode “Being Intentional In Your Marriage. What Does That Even Mean?”