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Guest Posts By Paul and Lori. Way Back Posts. · Doing Marriage Well

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  Doing Marriage Well for October 12th, 2026. Guest post by Paul and Lori. Wayback Posts.
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  It's a busy week for us this week. Lori gets her gallbladder out,
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  finally, and it's harvest time.
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  I'm not sure I have the time or the brainpower to turn out good content,
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  so I'm going to punt and give you some of the best posts from our previous blogs.
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  The Generous Wife, The Generous Husband, and The XY Code.
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  Those blogs are still available. There is a lot of great content there.
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  There are links in the show notes.
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  I will do six posts this week to give you two from each blog.
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  While Lori and I blogged about sex for only one in seven posts,
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  the vast majority of the most popular posts are about sex.
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  So I've come through the top posts to find a slightly better mix.
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  Today, I will start with Lori's story, originally published on December 20th, 2008.
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  It's been updated only to brag on having grandchildren and to add a more recent picture.
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  I wanted a female voice, but Lori wasn't up to it. So I let A.I. do it.
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  So here's my wonderful wife in her own words. Hi, I'm Lori.
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  I'm a wife and mom of two kids and five grandkids. I've walked with the Lord
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  most of my life, with seasons of ignorance, walking in the wrong direction,
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  and dealing with the usual fallout from living in this world.
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  I've known abuse divorce and a host of other hurts as i'm sure many of you have,
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  but again like many of you i still wanted to do good,
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  to love well and live fully it all seemed to escape me my life slipping away
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  in the busyness of my day my relationships a sad shadow of what i hoped they would be,
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  i saw my marriage begin to develop some serious cracks the kind that eventually
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  cause your marriage to break into little pieces,
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  i was busy dealing with the chaos of life and frankly I wasn't sure how to go
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  about, building my marriage.
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  You hear that term all the time, but no one really tells you how to do that,
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  except perhaps to have a date night.
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  I realized also my mouth was tearing things up, expressing fears,
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  doubts and generally being snarky, sarcasm can actually kill, a marriage at any rate.
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  I carried emotional baggage I wasn't dealing with and I had no good models from which to learn.
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  I knew I was in a mess, that I was a mess, but I really didn't know what to do.
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  I figured at the very least I could stop saying anything unkind or rude.
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  So for a while I didn't say much.
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  It actually felt pretty good and it taught me a lot about my inner workings.
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  I started praying and asking God to teach me about real love and how to walk
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  that out in my marriage, and he was, and continues to be, faithful to answer.
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  I gave a lot of thought to what I really wanted to say to my husband and how
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  I would want that said if he were to say it to me.
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  Kindness quickly became a motivating factor.
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  It can be a very scary thing to envision how you look to others when you talk.
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  I started thinking about what I wanted from him and asked myself if I was returning the favor.
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  More than that, did I really know him well enough to give him what he might
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  want, seeing he was a different person with different preferences.
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  Learning to ask good questions then became important, as well as learning his
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  moods so the timing of my questions wouldn't drive him mad.
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  Eventually, I began to see changes, small at first.
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  I could live with myself better and the twinkle was back in my husband's eye,
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  i knew if i would just stay on the journey i would be giving my marriage the
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  chance it needed to not only survive but flourish,
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  the hints of success were there i began to see glimpses of that loving well
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  and living fully i so very much wanted,
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  today my kids are grown and i have five grand babies my husband paul and i work
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  together and actually enjoy it We continue to invest in our marriage and reap
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  the benefits of it, we are best friends, and hugely in love with each other.
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  A few years back I got a wild hair and decided that sharing some ideas would
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  be a good thing and the generous wife was born.
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  Not to be outdone, my husband created the generous husband and later the XY code.
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  It is our ongoing joy to infect others with the desire to bless their spouses.
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  Our home is in the beautiful Northwest, USA. We spend out days blogging and
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  working for the marriage ministry that took on a life of its own several years
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  ago We enjoy sharing life with the many friends we have made along the way,
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  This is Paul, and Laurie is most certainly the generous wife.