Benefits of Marriage: Friend for Life

One of the most practical and wonderful ways that marriage is a benefit to us is that we have a friend for life. No matter where your marriage is at the moment, you have got to admit that you found your spouse to be enjoyable company at one point and time. Most of the time we marry someone that we really are friends with at first and through the dating process, we decide they are thee friend that we can't live without.

Friendship is something that is important to all human beings. We were created to be in relationship with others. We crave being known at our deepest levels. We crave having someone care about us unconditionally and when we are completely undeserving. We dream of being looked at by the same person day in and day out for 20, 30, 40, 50+ years and still seeing admiration and desire in their eyes that communicates we are still the most attractive person in the world to them. We desire to have someone to share our hopes, dreams, and goals with. We hope for someone to go through life with hand-in-hand laughing, making memories, having fun, and experiencing the joys of living with. I can't help but think of the quote:

"This day I will marry my friend, the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love” ~Author Unknown

Marriage provides all of those things and then some when we are willing to commit to it and be that for our spouse (not just expect that from them without being that for them). One of the greatest joys I have experienced in my own journey of marriage is the friendship that has developed between my husband and I. It is this friendship times a gazillion where we are each others best friend and thoroughly enjoy the company of one another. It's this amazing anchor in our marriage that at the end of the day, we flat out really enjoy one another. He's my "partner in crime," and there's no one else I'd rather do anything with. Now I have to put it in here, I am not saying that you should isolate yourselves from the world and have no other friends. What I am saying though is that we are created for relationships, and a lot of times we work really hard at developing our friendships outside of the marriage. Then there is our marriage, and we forget that the foundation of a good marriage is developing and maintaining that friendship with your spouse. If you keep that friendship strong and growing, you will enjoy your spouse and find it much easier to work through things together. Never mind the fun of being married to your best friend!

I want to leave you with a few cool quotes about friendship that I think remind us why cultivating the friendship in a marriage is so important:

• "A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out." ~Walter Winchell
• "Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief." ~Swedish proverb
• "Friends are needed both for joy and for sorrow." ~Samuel Paterson
• "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe unto him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up." ~The Bible: Ecclesiastes 4:9-10.