Anyone who has ever ventured into the home of a couple happily married for many years has probably seen the Happy Marriage Recipe hanging in the kitchen. You know, it lists various “ingredients” like a regular recipe, but the ingredients are love, hope, tenderness, forgiveness, warmth, faith, and laughter.
It even lists how many cups of each and how to “mix” the ingredients. It may sound silly, but there is some credibility to the Happy Marriage Recipe that needs to be kept in mind when creating your own recipe.
The first ingredient listed is always love. Now, love can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but let’s see it paraphrased from the Webster. Love is a strong affection, warm attachment, devotion, tenderness and admiration for the other. Keeping love, in its many forms, in the recipe for your happy marriage will hold on to the things you feel so deeply about your spouse. Remember the love you feel towards your spouse and your devotion and attachment will continue to grow.
The definition of love, itself, covers warmth and tenderness, so let’s take a look at hope. Hope, when it comes to your marriage, is vital. Without it, there can be nothing to look forward to. Many couples meet hoping for a better or stronger marriage. Perhaps they hope to have children, or hope to one day pay for a house. Hope gives you something to look forward to and to strive for.
A big and very important ingredient in any happy marriage recipe is forgiveness. We all know that we will eventually do something that will hurt or disappoint our partner. We ask for forgiveness, and for a truly happy marriage, forgiveness is given. That does not mean that it will happen immediately, depending on the circumstances.
You may have to put up with some bad moods for a while, but if your spouse is following the recipe for a happy marriage, you’ll find a way to forgive them. After all, one day they may be the ones to apologize to you, and you need to find a way to do it.
In a happy marriage, faith in one another to do the right thing and make good decisions is often taken for granted. When it comes down to it, faith is one of the most important bonds between two people. Maybe it’s just the faith that one will go to work and bring home a salary, and one will stay home with the kids. This is not taking things for granted; it is simply having faith that each will perform to the other’s standards.
Finally, laughter is often mentioned as the last ingredient in the recipe for a happy marriage. However, laughter in marriage has been found to keep people together. It might just be the laughter at a silly joke, or maybe some crazy cat thing that resulted in a broken vase. Finding ways to laugh at the things that might make you want to cry can be a magical cure-all for a sticky situation.