The 10 Minute Rule

(look at us, so young, such babies. No idea what we were going to do with our lives, but MAN, we had our love)

Fast forward 3.5 years and here we are, with our little dude, coming up on year 4 of our marriage! Let me just say that marriage is hard. Fortunately, I married my best friend. But even so, it takes work on all parts to STAY best friends. Not that (almost) 4 years of marriage is all that impressive, and considering my loveless past before Trevor, I really shouldn't be giving relationship advice;but this isn't really MY advice, so I'm going to share it anyway. 

Quick disclaimer - Trevor is extremely sassy ALL THE TIME. It's part of the reason I love him so much, but it does make some things difficult. For instance, we 'argue' a lot. Most marriages have their share of disagreements and ours, like many others, are mostly based on who's right. Yes, you can get plain white shirts at Old Navy, no Chipotle on Rancho Vista opens at 10:30, you can turn left here, etc etc. This is where the 10 minute rule comes in - quick backstory....

Trev and I rarely stay in one house for more than a year, I don't know, call it our gypsy souls, but anyway, right after we found out we were pregnant, we had set a time to meet with a realtor and the owner of a beautiful house on the golf course to try and rent from them - mind you, we at the time, and kind of still now, did not look like people you would see living in the prestigious golf course community. All of my tattoos, both of us with large holes in our ears, Trevor(a welder) ALWAYS dirty, and myself, a kitchen manager for a pizza place, was covered in flour and marinara sauce, overly emotional and newly pregnant. So, needless to say, we were nervous.

But something clicked when we met the owners. They loved us! The husband(I won't say any names) was also a welder! And never having kids of her own, the wife was overjoyed to think that there would be a little one in their home. It was KISMET. We moved in about a month later and became very close with the owners.

Anyway - one day, the wife had come over to visit on one of my days off and see how I was doing after Trevor had come home from work, and she had heard one of our 'arguments,' probably about whether one of our restaurants in town delivered, and after laughing, gave us this nugget of advice...when you need to bet, bet your time.

It works like this - say you're arguing like Trevor and I do, about I don't know, whether or not Auto Zone is open on the weekend. Let's play it out. 

'Why don't we just go to Auto Zone? They're open today.'

'Uh, no they're not.'

'Preeeeetty sure they are.'

'I bet you 10 minutes they're not open today.'

'DEAL.'

Alright bare with me now, one of you(or both if you're paranoid like Trevor and I) will check whether or not Auto Zone is open today. Then it goes something like this -

'HA! Told you they were open today!'

'Fine, you're right. YOU WIN.'

'You owe me 10 minutes. Tonight.'

Is this making any sense? Here's how it works in a nutshell. So you had the little argument, and Person A wins said argument, because they were right that Auto Zone was open, so Person B owes Person A 10 minutes of their time later that day. 10 minutes doing anything Person A wants. Make sense? 

Okay granted I'm not good at explaining it but I know why it's so important. Every little argument is just that, a LITTLE ARGUMENT. It's a small thing, and with the 10 minute rule, it does 1 of 2 things..

1. Gets your significant other to back down and agree(the wife's favorite reason)

2. It brings something GOOD out of your little tiff. A little disagreement turns into 10 minutes of cuddles, foot rubs, back scratches, youtube videos - BONDING TIME. Even just 10 minutes to bring you closer together.

It's advice that's always stuck with both of us and something we still do to this day. It's simple, but the simple things in a marriage are what keeps it together, right?

Do you have any marriage tips you use to stay close to your significant other??