Discover the key relationship that might be missing in your marriage

Are there mentors in your corner to teach, train, and pray over you as you learn to navigate the early years of marriage?

We made so many mistakes early on in our marriage – as do most young couples figuring out adulthood together. We really didn’t have a plan for our marriage. And as many young (and older!) adults experience – “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail! ” (Benjamin Franklin)

Holly and I both felt this deeply and quickly decided to seek out wise counsel and work to build a community of more seasoned married folks to mentor us. But where to begin? It made the most sense to start building relationships in our local church. Until this point, we attended church as a young married couple, but we were not investing in the community around us. We had the posture of receiving rather than giving. We decided to commit – together – to volunteering at our church. And it was amazing to watch God bring these experienced couples into our lives. Soon, our community started to shift drastically and became filled with couples, emulating the characteristics of what we hoped we could become.

When the storms of life came—which they always do—we had mentors in our corner to teach, train, and pray over us as we learned to navigate the early years of our marriage.

So here’s the challenge…

Find a couple or two who are ahead of you on the marriage journey and have the type of relationship that you and your spouse would like to have. Look for people who are the type of father and mother that you want to emulate, run their business, or are an employee like you want to be, and have a marriage like you want to have.

Pursue them and tell them what you have noticed or admired in them—not flattery but concrete examples of what you’ve observed. This will greatly encourage them and show them you are watching and seeing what they are doing. As you build a relationship with them, ask questions that help you learn from them. We want to be lifelong learners, and asking great questions helps us draw out wisdom from others.

Great questions to ask your mentors:

What are the ways that you have helped each other feel loved and heard throughout the years?
What is the best gift that you have ever received from your spouse, and why was it so meaningful?
What would it be if you could give yourself any advice as a younger married couple?

Then, watch God bring the right couples into your life during the right season. Typically, we haven’t seen couples have “lifelong mentors,” but mentors who come upon their path for a specific season and reason.

Pursuing other couples to mentor you and your spouse might not be comfortable initially, but it will be worth it. Once the relationship is built, you will grow and learn in ways you never thought possible, but you must help guide the mentor couple by asking the right questions to draw the wisdom out.

As we have seen time and time again, you and your spouse will most likely be pursued one day and will have the opportunity to become mentors to another newly married couple. So, lay the groundwork today. You will be glad you did!

Together for marriage,

Mike and Holly