Creating A Marriage Check In

I’ve always felt a little odd sharing anything about marriage when Teddy and I have only been married for about a year. I know there are so many people who are wiser and more experienced and have overcome things we haven’t yet in our relationship. So even though I’m married, I still feel disqualified at times based on the length of marriage to share any helpful any thoughts or insight.

But more recently I’ve been reminded that I find the people who are just ahead of me in marriage to be the most helpful to learn from (this applies not just in marriage but in most things). They don’t have so much time under their belt that they forget what it’s like to be newlyweds or figuring out what it’s like to just be the two of you navigating the relationship together. They may not remember some of those early hurdles or what it was like to before the family grew. I think the most helpful insight doesn’t necessarily matter what experience someone has, but is best when it’s thoughtful reflection on the experience.

James Clear shared this quote a few years ago that’s stuck with me, “It’s almost always better to learn from peers who are 2 years ahead of you than mentors who are 20 years ahead of you. Life evolves and most insights get outdated.” While this more specifically targeted to your professional life, I think it applies here as well.

The Check In

So with that in mind, I’m sharing some thoughts on a marriage rhythm that we call our Check In. Before I met Teddy, I was always curious what made marriage work well. I had read a few books on both marriage and relationships in general. Since getting engaged and now being married, we’ve spent some time learning together about relationships and the marriage covenant specifically.

One of the things we took away was how many couples at various stages in marriage have talked about some type of check in or calibration. The questions during the check in vary as does the frequency based on season of life, but so many people have talked about just how important it is to check in with your partner on a regular basis about the actual relationship, not just on the logistics of meals, family commitments, and other events.

Because we knew how important this would be for our relationship, during our engagement we started going over some questions I had saved prior. We asked those applicable to us and found how helpful it was for us to touch base on things below the surface. Now, I say helpful, not easy. Sometimes our Check Ins would be 20 minutes during a car ride and other times they’d be a 1-2 hour conversation because some important topics came up that we either had to navigate or revisit from the week. While they don’t always feel great in the moment because you’re having to put on humility and receive feedback or apologize for something, we know our relationship is better because of them.

Since we got married, we’ve adjusted the questions a bit to better align with the season of life we’re now in. There’s some regular questions we ask each week and then sometimes we’ll add in some others based on what we think will be helpful for our conversation.

Your marriage is the most important human relationship you’ll ever have on this earth (yes, even more important than your kids). Nobody gets married with the intention to divorce. But over time, small things lead to larger space between two people, and eventually it gets to a point where it feels like there’s no option other.

The Questions

With the realization that 50% of marriages end in divorce, I want to do everything I can to invest in our marriage and our Weekly Check In as well as our date nights are a big part of that. If you’re looking for some questions to start you out, here’s some of the questions we always come back to:

What was the highlight of your week?
What was the low of your week?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate our emotional connection this week? What could make it better?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate our intellectual connection this week? What could make it better?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate our intimacy for the week? What could make it better?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate our friendship this week? What could make it better?
What is one thing you really appreciated that I did for you this week?
What’s one thing I could do to better invest in myself and our marriage?
What’s one thing you’re looking forward to this week?
What’s one thing I can do to help you over the upcoming week?

Putting It In Practice

Commit To It – If you and your spouse have never done something like this before, it may feel weird to start. Embrace the weird. It going to be odd, it’s new! But keep reminding yourself that this is an investment in the most important human relationship you will have. And be proud of yourselves for committing!

Plan It – Once you’re committed to both showing up to intentionally check in on your marriage, consider what frequency makes sense. Ideally, weekly or biweekly would give enough time that you can likely still recall the past week or two without much issue. If you go for monthly or longer, it may be more difficult to think about the month as a whole, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good starting point. Commit to what you can now, while recognizing that ideally you will want to do it more frequently in the future.

The other part of planning is also where you plan to have the conversation. Ours is often Sunday afternoons. Sometimes this is in the car on the way back from camping or on a hike or just at home sitting outside. If it doesn’t happen during that time, we try to prioritize it Monday evening so that we still get it in and touch base prior to letting another week pass.

We personally don’t like to couple it with date night, since our focus for date night to have fun, laugh, and try something new together. To bring up important topics for us isn’t what we are aiming for on date night. Now, we also don’t have kids so we are able to plan a Thursday date night and a Sunday afternoon Check In without issue. If you have kids or other commitments, you may need to couple these together, or get creative in your schedule. Maybe you eat dinner together while the kids have a movie on one night during the week, or you go on a walk together one evening and check in, or have your Check In after the kids go to bed. You know what is most reasonable for you.

Customize It – Pick the questions that are helpful for you. Use some from the bank or create your own. If you just want something easy, you can download the Weekly Marriage Check In bundle we use here. See if you can type up the questions in a Note on your phone and reference each time or grab a notebook to use or screenshot the downloads from Etsy. If you’re not married yet, but are moving in that direction, pick some questions that are appropriate for your season of relationship.

Adjust It – Over time, we’ve added and removed some questions based on what’s providing the best conversations for us. We’ve pulled some that we’ve learned from resources while also creating our own. For us, we liked adding in something you appreciated about the other person that week so that we each know what could be helpful to do more of. We also added in how to help the other so it’s another opportunity to show up and serve the other person throughout the week in the way that will be most meaningful for them.

Marriage is refining. Having someone spend so much time with you puts a mirror up to you in a way you may have never experienced prior. While sometimes I don’t like the feedback Teddy shares with me, I know that I’m becoming better because of it. I’ve appreciated getting to know him on a level I wouldn’t have accessed without these questions. I’m still surprised by some of his answers and feel really lucky that just a few questions allow us to get to know each other in such a new way.