One of the best marriage advice snippets we can provide to you is the idea that couples who are persistent and follow through consistently, together… tend to stay together. It’s about an attitude in the mind of both partners that we are going to stick through, whatever comes our way. These couples share dreams, they share a vision for the future.
We recently read an inspiring story of a young couple who dreamed of opening a health food restaurant. They had met in college, had recently graduated, and had a child and over $100,000 in college loans. They spent hours talking about ways they could help people eat and live healthy lives. The restaurant they envisioned would help people do that.
When they shared their dream with family and friends, they were discouraged. Some considered it foolish—that this was not the right time to take on such a project. But, they continued to pursue their dream by creating the best business plan they could put together and stayed focused on fulfilling their dream.
They decided that they were now ready to seek a bank loan to get the restaurant off the ground. They were turned down by bank after bank—11in fact. And while they were discouraged by so many rejections, they remained steadfast to their dream. The 12th bank approved their loan. Today, they have a successful business and are planning to open 2 new restaurants. Their real success was the fact that as a couple, they dreamed together, planned together, worked together, and were persistent toward their goal. And by the way, they paid off their student loans in 3 years.
It’s not just enough to have dreams or take action toward making them happen. Whether or not you succeed is determined by your persistence and follow-through when your first attempts fail. Thomas Edison tried and failed to invent a light bulb over a thousand times before he came up with one of the greatest inventions of all time. In our marriage counseling experience, it is the couples who exhibit persistence and follow through who make it more often than not through the hard times.
Marilyn Vos Savant says that “Defeat is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.”
Don’t give up at the first sign of difficulty. Stay committed to see your dreams fulfilled, individually and as a couple. Studies show that couples who dream together, work together and achieve together… stay together!
We like how Michael Larsen put’s it. He says that a “diamond is simply a piece of coal that stuck to the job.”
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