EP 17. Valentines Day is Not a One Night Stand. PT 3. Keys To Making It a Lifestyle of Romance, Passion, and Love.

Welcome to the Married and Love it podcast.

We are Greg and Linda Smith, your host from Raleigh, North Carolina.

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See it as a freshening up of your marriage, preventive maintenance, a marriage tune up, or fanning the flames of romance, love and passion.

You could even call it continuing education.

We will be covering everything that has to do with your marriage including hot topics like sex, communication, love and much, much more.

Our teachings are based on Christian principles plus over 47 years of marriage to each other and ministry experience.

We want to help you make your marriage great by teaching you how to be married and loving.

It is an honor and privilege to have you join us.

As always, thank you for joining us.

Today we're going to continue.

Talk about Valentine's Day is not a one night stand.

It should be a lifestyle of romance, passion and love.

In episode 15 we talked about what what kind of message is given on Valentine's Day and, and how that message should be communicated daily as a lifestyle.

Does that mean you should be telling me every day that you love me every day.

I'm the best thing every day.

Anything you've ever had.

Every day.

All right.

Daily.

That means I should the dishes every day just to show how much I want I love you.

Yes, that's a good.

That's.

That'd be great.

Don't push it.

I'll take it.

We also discuss what the Bible says about how our life with our spouse should be a daily love affair.

See, that's what you're talking about.

Yes.

When you're doing the dishes every day.

Every day, three times a day.

Well, maybe during meals a day.

But our expressions of love should be daily.

Yes.

So then even after that, we talked about making your marriage a number one priority.

And all of these line up to having a lifestyle of romance, passion and love.

Now who wouldn't want that?

Think about it.

Isn't that when you first got married?

That's what you were thinking when you got up there on the stage or the platform or before the justice of the peace that you want.

A lifestyle of romance, passion and love.

We all probably start off that way, but when time hits us, that begins to fade.

So that's what we're talking about.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Well, episode 16 we're going to be talking about if you have a marriage or I guess we did already.

We talked about if you have a marriage that's boring or dull.

It was bland.

It's, there's no excitement.

Maybe you're just feeling like a roommate.

Well, Greg talked about then it might be time to spice it up a little bit and add some of that.

Texas Pete and splash it on.

Spice it up, make it hot.

Add some excitement by being more spontaneous.

Right.

You covered that.

And maybe for you to come out of your comfort zone, that might be including a sticky note saying, I can't wait for you to come home tonight.

The kids are going to be at practice and we don't have to be there.

Or maybe turning on your red light bulbs and candles in your bedroom love nest with romantic music playing.

That's the neat thing about when you're empty nesters.

You can write that note.

It says, I can't wait for you to come home from work or out playing golf or out being with the ladies.

And you don't have to put in there when the kids are, the kids are always, you can do it every day.

It's nice being in.

Right, dear?

Yes.

Yes.

Well, also if you are Mr.

And Mrs.

Romance, if you're already there, well, excel still more.

That's what the word of God says.

Excel still more.

So today in our episode, we're going to be talking about eight keys on how to create a Valentine's Day lifestyle.

And also we didn't get to tell you the rest of Greg's pull story.

So stay tuned for at the end of this episode to hear the rest of the story.

Want to hear the beginning of that?

You got to go Back to episode 15.

There you go.

You got it.

So on today's episode, we're going to be talking to you about eight keys on how to create a Valentine's Day lifestyle.

Now, romance and affection, they are key ingredients as to keeping your relationship alive long after the wedding has taken place.

Like we got 47 years.

That's right.

Seven and a half.

These keys still work.

Yes, they do.

Yeah.

And we apply them.

But you know what?

Tell me.

Yeah, you took the words out of my mouth.

It's being intentional.

Yep, yep.

It keeping these eight keys going in your marriage, it breaks up the monotony that many relationships they find themselves in.

And it's going to add zest, anticipation and it's going to produce some good memories.

Just like with the 10 second kiss.

Since Linda and I really been focusing on that in our own relationship, it has taken off to where we look forward to it.

We don't forget about it.

We'll do it during the day.

And it just adds a little extra of romance, of a little bit of an affair attitude in there, of just anticipation, just doing that one thing daily and getting it incorporated.

So these keys we're going to talk about are really going to make an impact in your marriage.

Yeah, we.

We have had to spice up our marriage even a little bit.

We.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's pretty spicy.

We have to apply these steps ourselves.

But you see, even with Linda having a lot of health issues these last 12 to 13 years, we've been dealing with them.

Our romantic life hasn't been what we want it to be.

So we really have to take that in consideration.

And then we even have to be more intentional so we can keep those flames going.

Maybe not.

Yeah.

Maybe not as hot as it's been in the past because of limitations and this and that.

But you know what the key there is when the circumstances of life attack you?

Maybe it is the kids or a new kid comes in a lot of overtime all of a sudden for work.

Maybe there's some illnesses or family situations going on.

You still, as we talked about in the last episode, have to make your marriage a priority.

Yeah.

And you have to work through these issues.

And maybe it's not going to be where you want it, but you got to keep that pilot light on.

You got to keep a flame going.

So when that little bit of a season happens, you just get in there and stoke the flames and that romance can come back.

Because what happens with a lot of couples when things throw them off track, before long they have become roommates.

They have roommates.

Yeah.

Or worst case, there are no more mates.

Yeah.

And we don't want that to happen to you.

No.

And here's some of the consequences that Ellen Creedman, her book is really good and she talks about this.

If you're not having this lifestyle of love, romance and passion.

And here are just a few things that she says could occur.

You're missing out on feeling like lovers and you're drifting apart.

And maybe the.

You experience a loss of intimacy and really it creates a stress, a buildup of stress in the home.

And we don't even realize that it's happening.

It's really subtle.

You don't have anything to look forward to, actually.

It can also create stress induced illnesses.

It creates boredom.

Boredom, anger.

Would you.

Would you even think that anger would be a part of what it would create?

Yeah.

That's really interesting, isn't it?

And then you actually forget how to talk to each Other.

Yeah, you just rely on texting or.

Devices and no talking, no communication.

So we wonder what happened in my marriage.

And this could be some keys that you could pay attention so you can.

See there's benefits to romance and passion to doing the 10 second kiss.

They're doing the little things we're going to talk about in these eight keys to help you in your physical life because you're going to stop illness.

You're not going to be as stressed out unless you're feeling like lovers and you're not bored all the time.

That role, enjoying each other.

When your home life and your love life is sizzling and doing well, it rolls over to your better employee probably or a better business owner.

That's true.

Whatever you're doing because you're not carrying around the burden of a poor relationship or hurts and such because that zest, God designed it, it gets us fired up and we can we go to work smiling.

You go to church smiling, you don't have the arguments as bad.

You're probably still going to have the church on, on the, on the argument on the way to church because the devil's in there trying to get you mad so you won't hear what's being said.

But good things happen and it's free.

Doesn't cost anything to do a kiss.

Doesn't cost anything really to be romantic.

So what we're going to do is we're going to get on to the eight keys to help you accomplish this.

Key number one is you hear this a lot.

It says continue to capture your spouse's heart like you did when you first started dating and then you were newly married.

So many times we lose our first love, that first fire that we have because of a lot of situations coming up.

But I want to tie this into something to give you a little example.

10 or 13 years ago, somewhere in there I lost 60 pounds.

But you know what the hardest that would be like getting married, let's say.

But you know what the hardest part of losing the 60 pounds was?

It wasn't the losing.

Yes, that was tough, but it's keeping it off.

And you know what the key to keeping that weight off is?

I do what I did when I started losing it.

Now I don't do it to the extreme on, on certain things because I don't want to keep losing.

But I had to build the foundation and that's what happens.

A lot of times people go on a diet and they just do this quick weight loss thing and they don't develop any, any dietary or exercise habits.

And soon as they lose their weight, they just go back to the way they were and what happens?

They balloon right back up.

So in your marriage relationship, we have to look back.

What did we do when we first got married and how we got dated?

How did we act?

You know, when you started dating, you were trying to be your best self at all the times.

At all times, you were focused on pleasing your spouse.

And you are intentional and on purpose.

And First Corinthians 7, chapter 7, verses 32 through 34 talks about how married people are more concerned about pleasing their spouse.

Here's just a few things that you probably did when you started dating and through those first years of marriage.

Like you made yourself look good for your spouse.

You cleaned up.

Basic grooming, dress to impress, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

And the guys, you washed your cars.

Well, I guess the girls could do that too.

But a lot of guys, it's like, yep, let me present a clean car rather than something that's all trashed out.

I remember my friends always said, oh, Greg's got a date with somebody this weekend.

He's watching his car.

Yep, that's right.

And guys, you opened the car doors for us and you held other doors for your girlfriend or your wife.

And you shared, you talked, you did stuff together.

Actually, you might have just breathed, you know, call each other on the phone and just listen to each other breathe.

Yeah.

And then I.

We were.

When we were dating is we live.

I lived about 30 minutes from her.

So we would.

I'd go over to her house in the afternoon.

We'd have a nice date, go on a picnic, go to a movie, just hang out, do.

Do stuff.

Went to Steak and Shake.

Went to Steak and Shake.

Yes.

Back in those days.

But we would spend three, four, or five hours together all afternoon.

I'd drive 30 minutes home because back then we didn't have cell phones to talk, or else we probably would have been talking on the cell phone.

And I'd get home, get.

Get back in the house, and I'd go out in the garage because I had a phone in the garage.

But I would call her back on the.

On, on the phone, and we would talk for a little bit.

Before long, like she said, you're just kind of sitting there listening to each other breathe for another two or three hours sometimes.

Yeah.

Or at least a couple hours.

That's right.

But you were.

Wanted to spend time with the love of your life.

And I remember when we lived in Texas that there was a couple of these guys that were Employees there at Kenneth Copeland Ministries.

And we'd had.

There was a big cafeteria there.

Yeah.

And we'd all sit down and have different lunchtimes together.

But these two guys, they.

If one of us came to the table to sit down, they would get up out of their chair.

The nerve of these guys.

I know.

They ruined it for you all, didn't they?

And they would pull our chair out for us and make sure that we were comfortable and help us get our chair pushed up to the table.

Now that is what you call something else.

They did.

They did.

They messed it up for you guys, didn't they?

Yeah.

You know, that.

That story just talks about respecting your spouse, honoring them and.

But with those days, in our early days, we were just goo goo gaga and just, just.

And loved one la La land.

Yeah.

We did things.

We wanted to please them and we overlook things.

So that's what we're talking about.

We need to go back to those.

Instead of getting in that roommate or just taking somebody for granted.

Now, in the early days of dating and especially those first couple years of marriage, they.

They talk about the hormones that are kicking in.

And, you know, in the early days of dating and especially after you got married, you would probably have a lot of kissing going on, a lot of touching, hugging.

And once you're married, hopefully you waited that long.

But after you're married, then you have making love and.

And the women didn't seem to have headaches back then, you know, and.

But that.

That romance was going on and you were communicating and bonding, and during that time, you had hormones that kicked in, which helped, you know, that's why they say after about 18 minutes, those hormones begin to wear out.

They're not horny moans.

No, that.

Yeah, that'll kick in.

Yeah.

Horny moans.

Yeah, they're horny.

They're horny.

Some people have said that's a horny moan.

No, it's just normal hormones.

But after a while, those hormones begin to fade because God, goddess, attraction.

Attraction came from that.

But one of the things that stimulated that was kissing, touching, hugging, making love, communicating, bonding.

Those.

They released those hormones.

But what happened?

They begin to slow down and wear off a little bit.

And what happens?

You get busy taking each other for granted.

Physical touches and happening as much.

You're getting tireder, you're working.

Life starts hitting you, working and all this.

So what happens?

You're being drawn apart, which is eliminating what a lot of these hormones are meant to do.

And then the kids come, and all of a sudden different hormones come on or stop with the woman.

And before long, then the headaches happen.

Yeah.

Then you're beginning to drift apart because you're.

You're not doing the things you were doing when you first got married.

So the day the challenge is, because we want.

We want to do is kick in your oxytocin, your dopamines, your endorphins and serotonins.

So the key is to kiss more.

See, when.

And I'm going to get a more blunt here.

When somebody makes love and they have an orgasm, it releases a lot of different types of hormones.

The.

The oxytocin things are approved, all these different chemical things here.

And that brings a bonding, and it also brings healing to your body.

And we'll save that for another topic.

But things happen when you make love and have an orgasm.

So you guys need to make sure when you're making love, your wife's having an orgasm.

Don't get selfish on us.

And that's going to be another talk, but just want to tell you, because it says pleasing our spouse.

Our spouse, we want to please them, but not only emotionally, but you want to please them sexually.

And that is a major point.

See, the enemy wants to get us having a poor sex life, not bonding, not connecting, so he can drive us apart.

So what we need to do.

Let me get back on track here, is kiss more, touch more, have more physical touch.

If you hug more, hug more.

If you're walking by your spouse.

If you're walking by your spouse, touch them on the shoulder, rub your hand across their hair.

Just bump into them.

Have a little flirtatious bump.

All right, but touch more, kiss more, hug more, make love more Often heard somebody saying the other day, teaching once or twice a week, you just do it for your marriage.

And that's gonna.

You'll be surprised what happens.

Instead of once a month or.

And that's another topic, but make it a goal.

Make.

As we Talked in episode 16 about this, part two, make your marriage, your health of your marriage a priority.

Stir up these hormones.

You got to stir them up.

It creates a hunger and a craving, you know, and then you anticipate seeing each other if you haven't been together for a bit.

And you know this example, but it's like having a fire in your fireplace.

A lot of us in our marriages, we got one little log that's smoldering or a little bit of flame going on, and it's about to go out.

And what do you got to do?

You got to go over there and poke it, get Some air going in there, get that flame going, put some more kindling on it.

Do what you need while you're doing that to get that flame going again.

And then you sit down, the flame's going good.

But if you hang out and don't tend to your fire for another 30 minutes or hour two, what happens?

The flame starts going back down.

So you got to continue to stoke that fire.

Flint, fan the flames, as the old cliche goes.

So we need to work on that with our marriages.

Okay.

We need to move along here.

So it's also kind of like priming the pump, wouldn't you say?

So you know, when you, if you've seen the old fashioned pumps to get water and you have to put water in it.

Yeah.

To prime it.

Yeah.

And then you start priming it.

If you pump it casually or half heartedly, then it's going to take forever to get that water out.

But if you pump hard and you continue with it and it begins to get the water flowing.

So then once the flow starts, you got to maintain that pressure, keep that going with.

With an occasional pump or.

Yes.

You know, just.

It's kind of like the same.

What happens if you got the water halfway up and you back off?

Oh, then you got to start all over again.

All over again.

Yeah, yeah.

So you don't want to do that.

So here's some ideas.

Well, real quick, what I wanted to bring out when we start this.

Hugging and kissing and touching more or making more love.

The more you do that and develop that lifestyle, the more you begin to anticipate it.

Just like I talked about me and Linda earlier.

And you enjoy anticipate doing it and enjoying it.

And before long you begin to get that fresh romantic feelings going on, your marriage on a regular basis, just like Linda talked about.

You got a pump to pump.

What more fun to pump a pump.

Is it then kissing, hugging and making love and cuddling.

That's pretty fun.

How could you not want to do that?

Yeah.

Prime the pump.

So prime the pump.

That's like the 10 second kiss that we talk about.

Do that, you know, make a decision that you're going to do that for a couple times a day, 20 second hugs, you know, kind of like the 10 second kiss.

Two times a day.

Two times a day.

And then how about the prayer?

We talked about that 22nd prayer.

Say a little prayer together that a.

Couple times a day.

Hold hands whenever you can.

That just keeps the fire burning.

Are you going to get cooties?

No, no.

Hold hands.

Hold hands when you're driving if it's comfortable.

Hold hands in the store.

Hold hands when you're going to church, when you're walking down the sidewalk, hold hands.

Say I love you in the mornings, at night, anytime you get a chance.

And guys, if you hold hands with your wife when you're walking through the mall or store, it can save you money.

Oh, you keep.

They don't go.

They don't go off wandering.

Yeah.

They don't go off credit card.

Say I love you in the mornings and in the evenings.

I love you.

Yeah.

Yes.

So everybody needs this.

These key steps we're going to be talking about.

The keys.

Yeah.

Everybody needs a little bit of this all the time.

Yeah.

Regardless of what they're, you know, because if physical touch might be part of somebody's love language, and we're going to be teaching about the love languages down the road.

But everybody needs that physical touch.

Yes.

That's just the human nature.

Right.

Everybody, no matter what your love language is, still needs to have a little bit of everything.

Right.

They just may need the certain ones more often.

That's what you have to learn how to take care of.

Yeah.

And that's how you begin to learn about you.

So we're going to move on with number two.

And we express our love and our passion and.

And such with words and body language.

We all need words that express love, being cherished and appreciated.

So you need to do that with your spouse.

Say I love you and demonstrate how you cherish them and that you cherish them.

That's where the sticky notes come in different.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

So words that express love and how much you love them and how you love them and what characteristics you love about them.

Flirt with your eyes with a wink.

That's kind of the body language.

Be in a room or being eaten to dinner.

Maybe you're out with some friends and look over at your spouse and just give them a good little wink.

Spoken words flirt with your words.

When's the last time you flirted with your spouse?

Think about it.

Share your feelings.

See, now we're talking about flirting.

So you could say that's got sexual overtones or romantic overtones.

But you know what?

Sometimes you be.

You need to be sharing your feelings because that's opening up your heart and sharing how you feel about your spouse or about your life together or what's going on in your life.

Whisper sweet nothings in your ears.

Reach over and whisper to them.

Maybe when you're out with a group of people and watch everybody's curiosity or your kids curiosity go, what'd you say, dad?

What'd you say, Mom?

Yeah, you can give them a little bit of kiss, right?

Might be with love letter or.

Yeah.

Stick on the mirror.

Oh yeah, Love notes, sticky cards, sticky.

Notes on the briefcase.

Yeah, but I think Linda said.

But get lipstick or dry erase marker and mark it on the mirror.

Erases off, put a big heart on there, say I love you or see you tonight.

I look forward to seeing you more of you.

And I've even taken like on the roll of toilet paper, I've written a little note on the toilet paper knowing, well, we're empty nesters so we can have a little more leeway than normal and write little things on the, on the toilet paper.

So whenever that moment in the throne room happens.

Yeah.

Greg has a little love note right there.

You know, it's just a fun thing to do.

You can put a sticky note just about anywhere.

You can hide it.

Like we shared in one of the other episodes.

I'll.

Linda had one put in the men's bathroom where I worked.

She had another person go put it in there.

You can do it with your own electronics, texting.

Yeah, they got emojis now, all kind of stuff.

Yeah, social media, all the voice, leave a voice, sexy voicemail or tell somebody how much you love them instead of just please pick up more beans when you come home.

Make sure that you're sending that to your spouse.

Right.

And not actually because that happens nowadays.

But yeah, but you know, just expressions of your love and flirt and such.

There's so many things you can do.

Okay, now that we've covered the first two keys of making a lifestyle of romance, passion and love, let's go ahead and stop here and we'll pick up the rest of the keys on episode 18.

But before we move on to the honeydews, Greg, how about telling us the rest of your pool story?

All right, I've been waiting to do this.

Now, if you haven't listened to episode 15, I recommend you listen to that because I'm going to tell you about the pool story.

And it's really good.

And the main point, just to give you a little flavor to it, I had went out and bought a outdoor swimming pool that would hold like three people with walls that were around three and a half feet tall so you could sit in it.

I went, brought it, put it in our bedroom and it had nice hot water in it and I invited Linda in.

Now there's more to the story if you Listen to the episode 15.

You're going to find out about it.

But what we're going to do tonight on this episode is tell you what happened the next day.

Well, the following day, I had to take that pool out of our room and I put it in the backyard, put some water in it so the kids can play in it.

And during the afternoon, Tiffany and Jason brought over some friends and they took them out in the backyard and they say, look at that pool over there.

My parents had that in their bedroom last night.

Getting back to the main point is that evening I had taken a babysitter home or maybe took the kids to stay somewhere, I can't remember.

But I got back and it was later in the evening, pulled into the garage, put the garage door down, got out of the car and walked around.

And we have a door that goes into the house.

And right on that door there was a sign from Linda that said, meet me in the pool.

Which again, that was in the backyard and it's a private area.

And that's the end of the story that I can tell.

Okay, well, okay, let's go on with the HoneyDews.

Yes, number one, for this episode of HoneyDew.

Number one, think about a creative way that you can express, express your love for your spouse that you haven't done in a while or maybe you've never done it.

Then do it.

Number two, think of a gift that would be meaningful for your spouse, maybe something simple and surprise them with it.

And what's number three?

Oh, this is my favorite one.

It's the ten second kiss.

Now, if you haven't heard of this or done it yet, you're missing out.

I'm telling you, you need to do it.

But for everybody else, you know the drill.

Grab your honey, set a timer for 10 seconds.

Or say, hey, Siri, set my timer for 10 seconds, pull them to you and give them a good old kiss.

You'll be glad you're dead.

Well, thanks again for joining us.

And until the next episode, remember this, you can be married and love it on purpose.

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