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I really recommend the book "Cherish" by Gary Thomas.

Has anyone else here read it?

My husband and I read it together by passing it back and forth because of our schedules and kids. Then we'd talk about what we read when we would make time later.

This might be the best book we've ever read for our marriage.

I don't think we'd put that much thought into how when we married we promised to "cherish" one another and what exactly that meant, but with two busy careers and three kids 5 and under, we fell into a pattern of not prioritizing the cherishing in our marriage the way we could have been. We were being "efficient." Effective... but hardly romantic.

But then enters this book! Now we have changed our priorities.

My husband even had a few "aha" moments when he realized some of his previous actions had been undermining me with the kids or generally being un-cherishing toward me. He had never realized that doing those things were maybe not bad if we were just independent people out in the world, but that because of our relationship and the importance of it that those actions were actually harmful. (Like he would take the kids' side in arguments or would be really grumpy if he didn't want to go to a festival that meant a lot to me. Stuff that mainly originates from natural expressions of our different personalities.)

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that this book helped us communicate, put things into words that I hadn't figured out how to yet, and it's brought us closer together when I already thought we were pretty close. And that's kinda cool.

ETA: Gary Thomas is a religious author. I believe most of the ideas stand strong on a secular-level too, but if religious bits peppered throughout a book would take away from it for you, then this one probably isn't for you.

[This message edited by Bumblebee23 at 10:00 AM, June 12th (Tuesday)]

Thank you for that one - I wish I'd read it 5 yrs. ago because what you described is exactly what happened to us.

I remember saying to his cousin, while he was present, that I hoped that in my next life I'd be cherished. He just looked stunned but I'm sure he just put it off as me being whiny and/or demanding.

But I am going to read it now because it sounds like it will help me forgive myself for the behaviors I displayed when I was so frustrated with our lives. Thank you.

the book is too religious for me but I do love that word and believe it to be true.

Sewardak, Yes, sorry about that!! I'll add it as an ETA in my original post. Gary Thomas is a religious author. I think most of the ideas are applicable and powerful in a non-religious way, too, but I can completely understand all of the scripture in between ideas souring the book for a secular reader. I ran into one religious author who wrote two versions of her stuff, one with the religious bits and one without. I wish there was a secular version of this book because I think the idea of "cherish" is so great.

JosieP, Yes, please forgive yourself! For me, it felt so freeing to read that some of the natural things that we "want" in relation to feeling cherished are actually very healthy for your relationship. I think it was most of all eye-opening for my husband. He hadn't thought of things that way before, but he did know he wanted to cherish me. I guess he didn't realize what that looks like.

One of the coolest takeaways I had was that loving actions lead to loving feelings. An example in the book was a man who bought flowers for his wife every Friday for a long period of time (I think in the years). Sometimes she'd tell him he really didn't have to do that and was like "this is too expensive" "this is unnecessary, I know you love me" etc. No matter where she was or what she was doing, he'd make it happen. And through that action, while it made her feel very pursued and loved, it actually caused him to have even stronger feelings for her because he was always remembering to think of her and figure out how to make her feel special -- how to cherish her.

If only we spouses would keep each other in mind like this all the time and continually try to make each other feel special!