Don't Put Your Marriage on the Back Burner! 3 Reasons to Keep Growing

The Abundant Catholic marriage course is on sale for 50% off (coupon code: JOY) until Thurs, June 10th in honor of the upcoming feast of Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin!🌹 

Learn more at canafeast.com/abundant

Yes, life is busy... but that doesn't mean you can let your marriage stagnate on the back burner. Here are three reasons why you NEED to keep growing in your marriage and relationship skills, as well as some ideas for how to work on your marriage. 

1. Continuing education is important (and often required!) for professionals so they stay up to date and pursue excellence, whether as teachers, doctors, engineers, or accountants. In marriage, we also need continuing education! Continual growth, improvement, and change for the better is also part of the call every Christian has to continual conversion and growth in holiness. In marriage, we need to keep learning how to love better.

2.  Your kids and community deserve for your to be the best example of marriage you can be. Could you see your kids growing up and saying, "I want a marriage like my parents had?" This should be our goal!

3. Your sex life will benefit from improving your relationship skills, communication, connection, and togetherness! Sexual intimacy thrives in a marriage climate of emotional intimacy. It needs it in order to do what God designed it to do--to be a total, mutual, personal gift of self that is the physical expression of the spiritual communion of husband and wife.

Different ways to grow in your marriage can include: reading books about marriage and relationships, listening to podcasts, doing an online course, going on a marriage retreat, intentionally carving out time for each other, or going to counseling as a learning experience. 

MORE RESOURCES

Free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic Women: 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit (for married and engaged women)

Do you want to know what is allowed for Catholics in the bedroom? The "What's Allowed List" answers 20+ questions about what is licit and illicit. ($10)

Model-free lingerie! Get 10% off with my affiliate link for Mentionables.

Transcript

0:57

You need to keep growing in your marriage. Why do you need to work on your marriage? I'm going to share three reasons why you need to keep learning relationship skills in marriage and seeking to continually grow, educate yourself and really work on your relationship. This is Sarah Bartel and I am here to just help you learn how to do that, how to strengthen your marriage and why that is important and what are some ways that you can do that. So by the end of this episode, you will know three reasons why you need to keep learning relationship skills in your marriage, and then have a handful of ideas about how you can go about doing that, including the course that my husband Nathan and I created. It's called Abundant and it's on sale for half off. In honor of the feasts of Saints Louis and Zelly Marton up through this Thursday, July 10th, 2025. So if you would like to use our program to help you grow in your marriage, now is a great time to get it on a super good discount. Thanks to our devotion to Saints, Louis and Deli Maram. Just a wonderful example of a Catholic married couple. Okay, here are the three reasons. First of all, I'm just gonna say them briefly now, and then I'll unpack each one more in depth. First of all, continuing education is important. Secondly, you owe it to your kids and your community. To keep striving to be the best example of a happy married couple you can be. And then thirdly, this is better for your sex life to keep growing in your marriage. Since your emotional intimacy is the foundation for your sexual intimacy and your sexual intimacy should just be the expression of that emotional heart to heart connection that. You should be building in your marriage. So let's unpack. Reason number one, continuing education is important. We see this in most professional careers. Doctors, teachers, therapists, physical trainers, your NFP teachers. Many, most all of them, I would say there's some sort of continuing education that's either required or strongly encouraged or necessary for them to stay on top of their game, to stay updated and keep their saw sharpened, if you know that expression. Like just keep their skills sharp so that they can continue to practice with excellence and we should want nothing less for our marriage. Right. When we go through these years together. We shouldn't draw only on the reserve of knowledge that we had at the time that we made our vows. We should continually be adding to our skills, our education, our knowledge, our knowledge about what marriage means, the meaning of this beautiful sacrament of marriage in the Catholic Church. Have you learned that? Have you dived into the catechism of the Catholic church and just read the section on the meaning of the sacrament of marriage, which. Is a beautiful section and I will point you to paragraphs 1601 to 1666, um, to really just like read for yourself, what does the church teach about the meaning of marriage, and then are you expressing that in your day-to-day relationship? So learning about what marriage means, but also learning about how, what kind of skills can help you communicate better, can help you stay close emotionally, can help you be resilient when hard times come. That is, it's learnable. And that comes with having a growth mindset. This belief that it is possible to change, it's possible to improve. It's possible for you to improve and change, and that comes from your efforts. And your efforts don't always have to be successful. The key here for growth mindset is that you just need to keep trying. Then ultimately through your process of trial and error, you will find, oh yeah, I can improve in this skill, or this works for us. And you know, I find when I try this other approach, it's not as successful for, you know, us in our marriage. But anyway, you, you just need to keep growing in order to. Pursue excellence. Um, no less in marriage than in any of the, you know, professions where we expect this of the people who care for us. And this really ties in to the call all of us have as Christians, to continuing conversion in our discipleship of Jesus as we follow Jesus, as we live life in Christ, we should continually be striving to change, to convert, to become more like Christ, to be more other-centered, less self-centered, to love more effectively, to have more compassion and. Empathy and attentiveness and attunement to others to be more influenceable and receptive to those around us. You know, showing that they matter, that they're seen, we see them. We notice them, we care about them. We see what is going on with them and what's important to them. All that is super important. So yeah, I guess I would say in addition to continuing education, just being important, it's, I'll add, it's important for us as Christians, as Catholics, to keep learning how to grow in holiness, to keep to learn, keep having this continual conversion to love. Better, more effectively, more with the heart of Christ. And so this takes input, right? This takes learning, right? Whether it's you're learning from podcasts, you're doing spiritual reading, reading the catechism learning from other couples who you admire. Uh, how, or reading books about marriage. There are a lot of different ways you can do this. Going on a marriage retreat even going to couples counseling, not even if you're in a crisis, but just to improve your skills. That is totally valid. I wanna really destigmatize that you can go to counseling together just by way of continuing education, wanting to just be better and better and improve. Yeah, I, I think counseling is a great way to get continuing education about our emotions and how to acknowledge them, and then how, what to do with them and how to, how to live with them. It's really, it can be quite helpful, but yeah. Also. Growing in prayer and staying close to the sacraments and you know, going to communion and asking Jesus when you receive him in communion, will you please bless and strengthen my marriage? Will you please help me love more like you in my marriage? Definitely tie this into your spiritual life. Okay, so that's reason number one. Continuing education is important, and that is one of the reasons why you need to keep learning relationship skills in marriage. Reason number two, you owe it to your kids. If you have any. And your community to be the best example of a happily married couple you can be. Now, I'm not saying you have to be a perfect couple. I'm not saying you have to plaster on a fake smile and you know, affect toxic positivity. Happy, happy, joy, joy. Nothing's wrong here. No, no, no. I want you to be a real couple, but. Show an example of resilience, vulnerability. A couple that's connected, that's humble, that is truly intimate, you know, emotionally as well, because your kids and your community, whether it's your parish, your neighborhood, the schools that you might be, you know, involved in, in any way. It just everyone in the culture around us, they're looking to see, is love real? Is marriage worth it? And do you want your kids to be able to say when they grow up, I want a marriage like my mom and dad had. Just think about that. Do you think your kids could say that? That should be our goal. All of us who are married should have that as our goal. To have the kind of marriage where our kids would grow up and say, yeah. I would love to have a marriage like that, like my mom and dad had, because the truth is how many of us can really say that? Like have we been shown an a good example that attracts us to this vocation of marriage? I mean, I would hope that yes, but there's a lot of hurt out there, right? And a lot of brokenness, and you owe it to the next generation. To your community to show love is real, marriage is worth it, and you're gonna keep working at your marriage so that you can be that example, because that is part of the meaning of the sacrament of marriage. It's supposed to be an icon of the trinity. Which is a huge call. Um, but it's, it's right in there in the meaning of the sacrament that every Catholic married couple is supposed to be like an icon also of Christ's relationship with his bride. The church, you participate in that relationship, it's like you're plugged into it kind of like, uh, right now it's summertime as I record this and it's pretty hot and we are plugging in, um, fans, you know, just, to cool down our rooms that we're in, like the living room, if our, a lot of people in our family are hanging out in the living room, we'll just bring a fan in and plug it into the wall, right? So then by plugging it in that that fan gets to participate in the electricity, running through the walls, running through the wires in our home, and it gets animated by that electricity. And same thing in Catholic marriage, you are plugging into. The relationship that Jesus has with his bride, the church, and that's the source of the grace for your sacrament of marriage, and you're supposed to be a witness to this faithful love to show that as just as Christ is faithful to his bride, the church. And loves her with a love that's tender, forgiving, understanding, compassionate attentive kind. Then so too Catholic spouses, husbands, and wives. We are supposed to love with that kind of love because we share in it.'cause that's the source of our love. That is the, the big picture, the, you know, the bigger mystery that we participate in when we. Are married in the church and have a sacramental Catholic marriage. Okay. And the thing is, marriage is pretty endangered right now. It's like we, we talk about endangered species. Well, we could say that marriage is an endangered species in a sense, because fewer and fewer people are marrying. Across the board in the culture, and this is happening in the church as well, the rates of weddings each year, year to year in most, yeah. Most diocese around the country here in the US are declining from one year to the next. So fewer and fewer people are getting married and it's at the exact same rate as the decline in marriage in the culture. Um, so, you know, so many people are cohabiting and. Our kids, the teenagers in our parish, they have a choice to make as they grow up. And do they look around at their parents, at the other married couples in their parish and see, oh, this looks great to be married. They look. They look in love, they look happy with each other. This is worth it. I will definitely choose to marry rather than just settle for cohabitation when I grow up. Like a lot of that depends on what kind of joyful, attractive witness we are giving as married people. And that is. One of these reasons, I'm telling you why it is so important that you keep learning relationship skills in your marriage so that you can be that beautiful, attractive witness. And again, I'm not saying you have to be a perfect witness. You don't have to be fake, happy, cheerful all the time. You just have to show that like, yeah, this is a real love, that is resilient, that's humble, that is vulnerable, that you know, that is attractive. And that's part of fulfilling your vocation as a married couple to be that radiant witness. Okay. Third reason. It's better for your sex life. If you keep working on relationship skills in your marriage, then those skills are gonna be there for you in your sexual relationship as well. If you can learn to communicate with empathy and understanding, if you learn how to relate to each other without getting defensive, without avoiding topics. Without people pleasing and placating and using anger for manipulation and coercion, all those are bad, toxic, maybe even abusive, depending on the severity and level. Right. Um, well, the, the coercion and like anger could be abusive. Right. So, okay. That's what I'm saying is like if you can turn that around and have good interactions between you two and feel close, feel like you have a heart to heart connection, you can talk about your feelings with each other. You know what is important to each other and what's going on, you know, inside each other, then that is really going to help when you have your sexual connection in the bedroom because, it will truly be a more human experience, more personal, more of a total mutual self-giving, which is, is what it's supposed to be in our Catholic teachings. And where it is the expression of your spiritual intimacy, your spiritual communion, and, um, yeah, you will, you'll just enjoy it more. You'll feel less like an object, less like this is just an activity, a thing we have to do, something to check off our list. To be, you know, a normal married couple and more like a celebration, a coming together of two people who really know each other. And that's biblical, right? The language in a lot of translations of the Bible in the Old Testament about when a husband and wife have sex, it's they, uh, you know, he knew his wife. And you really wanna know each other. And how can you do that? Keep working on your relationship skills in your marriage. Keep working on it. It's worth it. It's important. And because it's one of these squishy, intangible, invisible sorts of things, we often put it on the back burner, say, oh, we're fine, I'm fine. But all this other external logistics stuff is way more important, right? Like all the activities we're doing, and right, like the things on our schedule work, kid activities, if you've got kiddos, your commitment, your volunteer commitments, we, uh, your social life all, oh, phones, our screen time, all of these bump are the quality of our marriage relationship that often just gets bumped out, way down on the priority list and put way on the back burner. And this is. Bad. This is dangerous, right? Because then neglected, it can wither, it can fray. You just, you don't have as much of that thick, woven close relationship to sustain you through the years, through the hardships and right, and to be that foundation of joy for your sex life. So. I just want to be a voice telling you to prioritize your marriage, that it is worth it. At the end of our life, God is not gonna ask us like, how many hours a week did you volunteer at church? How many sports and music instruments did you make sure that your kids were doing? Uh, how many social engagements did you go to on a monthly basis? He's gonna ask, how well did you love? Especially the people that I gave to you who are closest to you, how well did you show my heart to them? How well did you fulfill your primary vocation as a married person? As a married wife or husband? Your primary vocation is marriage and the the way that you live that out is gonna be a big part of how we are judged at the end of our life. And. It's a gift too, because there's so many opportunities for growing, for growth in holiness, for growth, in how we care for each other, how we honor each other. Yeah, how just, yeah, how, how we give each other the best that we can, and that is what I, I just encourage you to do by continuing to grow in relationship skills in your marriage. So again. To recap these three reasons why it's important to grow in relationship skills in your marriage. First of all, continuing education is important and for us as Christians. We want to continually change and improve in our holiness, our Christ-likeness. And you can do this in marriage, being a marriage disciple, following Jesus better through your vocation of marriage to grow in holiness. Uh, secondly, you owe it to your kids and community, to your parish, to the generation after you. To be the best example of marriage that you can be, and then thirdly, better for your sex life. Yay. Those relationship skills, that connectedness is gonna serve you so well in the bedroom. It's gonna help you connect better, relate better, communicate better, all about sex instead of. Just doing the same old thing you always do, not talking about it, uh, just having as a routine or a source of resentment or whatever negative negative dynamics might be cropping up. Okay, so how can you grow in your relationship skills? Again, I'll recap some ideas. You can read some books about marriage skills, about the meaning of marriage and the theology marriage about the church's teachings on marriage. You could go on a marriage retreat, you can. Do a weekend getaway where you spend time with each other, but I encourage you have some sort of structure or growth built into it. Like if you rent an Airbnb and, you know, maybe go to the, a mountain cabin together or to the ocean, like a seaside place, I encourage you to maybe listen to some podcasts along the way. Bring a book to work through. Have some online marriage growth content that you can do at your getaway so that. You're both in it together, growing instead of having your getaway be a place where your tensions are exacerbated. And you don't wanna become this crucible for whatever resentments or disconnects have been simmering in your relationship. You wanna be proactively growing. Counseling I mentioned and yeah, making time for each other regularly. I'm a big advocate of a weekly date time together. Um, but also if you want some good online content that's Catholic, that draws on the best of the social sciences and psychological skills, as well as the theology of marriage, as well as just the practical experience. Um, to, this is what my husband and I do with our Cana Feast Ministry. So on the My Delight Podcast, I've mostly talked about the improving your sex life skills that I focus on in the My Delight course I run for women. But years before I started doing that, Nathan and I, my husband and I, we. We created an online Catholic marriage ministry that helps you get on the same page, renew your joy, feel more connected, feel more in love. And our signature course Abundant brings you systematically through experiences and learning and reflection and teaching to help you do just that. You'll work on your, your goals together. You'll work on dreaming together, you'll write each other love letters. You'll just, uh, you'll work on finances, you'll learn how to overcome gridlocked issues, and each module of the course builds on that before, and you do it all at your own pace online. And it's helped hundreds of couples grow in their marriage. Thanks be to God. I'm so grateful that it has been an instrument of really renewing marriage for so many couples. This week, it is 50% off in honor of Saints, Louis and Zel, and you can find it at cana feast.com/abundant, or just cana feast.com, if that's easiest for you to remember. And then look around for the abundant, uh, section there. Yeah, and I just offer that to you as one way that you can grow in your marriage. It's Catholic. It draws on practical skills, and it will help you grow in your marriage relationship skills grow in your marriage. You'll be so thankful you did it. Now I get questions from spouses, usually wives, but sometimes men, husbands too, saying My spouse. Isn't interested in doing something for our marriage, like doing some formal program. Can I do it on my own? Yes, you can. Like ideally it would be great if you two go through it together, but we actually have an adaptation where just one of you can go through it and it can bring a lot of good, just you working on your end of things because then that changes the way that. You show up for every interaction with your spouse, with your husband, and it improves, it makes a difference. So just wanted to put that out there that you can do it. Even if it's just you, you can sort of adapt the amount that you might draw your husband into the, um, reflections or just share with him what you're doing or you just. Do your own work. Work on it yourself. It'll improve your attitude, your skills, your outlook, and the way that you talk with your husband. So that's at canopies.com. Abundant. Whether you join Abundant or not, I really hope that you will choose something that you can do to work on growing in your marriage. It will glorify God, it will bring you more joy and meaning and. Growth and help you become more the person that God is calling you to be, more the woman that you're called to be. If you're a woman listening to this and you know, all this kind of growth helps us, um, in other areas as well, you'll be surprised at the ways that you'll find this applied. Okay. God bless you. See you in the next episode. Oh, and again, abundant is on sale through Thursday, July 10th at half off. All right, God bless. See you the next episode.