Seriously! Cow dung is essential! Okay, maybe it’s not essential to a great marriage, or even to anything in life except maybe farming. But here’s the real essential ingredient to a happy marriage: laughter.
As a Christian, I am well aware that laughter is not the essential ingredient. You absolutely need God. You need to put the other person ahead of yourself. There’s a lot of great things that I could list here, but today I am focusing on laughter for three reasons.
- I recently saw a video on YouTube titled “Love needs Laughs“. I actually hadn’t watched the video, I just saw it as a recommended video on the YouTube homepage until right before I wrote this article, but the title stuck in my mind. And now that I watched it, I recommend it.
- It isn’t something that is normally talked about. Granted, the things that are brought up as key ingredients for a successful marriage are generally more important, but I still think this is important enough to talk about.
- I’ve recently discovered just how true this is in my own marriage.
The Anecdote
I recently started to wonder why I wasn’t enjoying my time with Kaylin as much as when we were dating. I remember wanting to spend a lot of time with her, but now that I have her around much of the time, I would rather do other things.
I realized a small part of the reason was because when we spent time together, we usually had very serious discussions about things such as what our upcoming plans would be and what we can do to become better versions of ourselves. The practicality and seriousness of our relationship was starting to weigh us down. These were all good discussions, though. Ones we should be having, so how could they be the issue?
Technically, the seriousness wasn’t the issue. The real issue was the lack of time spent together having fun. We had a lot of fun when we were dating, but now all we did was watch movies for fun, and that was relatively rare and movies didn’t offer us much interaction with one another. Real time together is what every relationship needs; just being in each other’s presence isn’t enough.
So here is where the cow dung comes in. Don’t worry, I didn’t throw any at her or anything like that. A few nights ago, my wife and I were lying in bed talking together when she accidentally flicks my nose.
I say “Ow!”
She replies with something like, “My fingers are really stiff. Did you know that?”
“Well I knew they weren’t liquid… except your body is like 70% water… but I guess fingers are probably less than that.”
“Yea, they’re boney.”
“You know what’s inside bones though.”
Our replies come simultaneously. She says “bone marrow” and I jokingly say “cow dung”.
There’s a bit of a pause, then I sheepishly say “I mean bone marrow.” Then we burst out laughing at my absurdity. She then proceeds to flick my nose again, and once again she says, “My fingers are really stiff. Did you know that?” So we went through the whole silly dialog again and proceeded to laugh even harder than we had the first time.
This may just sound stupid right now to you, but trust me, it was funny in the moment. Anyway, in that moment I recalled the “Love Needs Laughs” title and realized it was true. Through this strange and silly moment I was beginning to feel closer and more attached to my wife. So I did what any smart man would do with that realization: I started a tickle fight with her!
Conclusion
So the takeaway is this: every relationship requires considerable quality time together in order to build it up and to keep it strong (if you read yesterday’s post, you’ll know I already said the same about our relationships with God). As humans, though, our emotions need to be lifted as well, so make sure a good chunk of that time involves having fun.
Note: Be careful with sarcasm! Especially if your relationship is getting rocky, sarcasm can be viewed as rude and make things worse. I know this from experience.
With all that being said, go have some fun!