I feel incredibly blessed and humbled to be happily married.
However, I know that many people do not share my experience of joy in marriage. As I shared in Five Marriage Lessons From a Newlywed, one of the main messages about marriage that I heard from so many people before I got married was one of negativity; and that marriage is mostly hard work.
That has not been my personal experience nor the experience of many of my friends, so I was thrilled to discover Fawn Weaver and her website Happy Wives Club. Fawn recently released a New York Times bestselling book of the same name: Happy Wives Club. Let me share with you a little more about Fawn and her mission to discover the secrets to a happy marriage!
Finding Other Happy Wives
Fawn started the Happy Wives Club online because she knew that, despite the ongoing negative marriage narrative around us, there had to be other happy wives out there like herself.
Fawn shares, “Decades of the media bombarding us with visions of unhappy wives and daunting divorce statistics made me think about the rarity of my marriage and the joy I feel as a wife. Then it hit me! I can’t be the only one. There must be others out there who view marriage and spending time with their husband as one of the absolute greatest blessings in their life.”
The Happy Wives Club has grown online to have more than 700,000 members in over 100 countries with regular blog contributors who encourage one another in their marriages.
But Fawn wanted to take it a step further. So she decided to travel around the world, to 12 countries on six continents, to see if she could discover the secrets to a happy marriage. During her travels Fawn interviewed couples who have been happily married for 25+ years and out of these interviews she penned her book that is filled with interesting stories about each couple’s life and the wisdom they have learned in their marriages.
Wisdom From Around the World
The book is a fun and interesting read, with great descriptive writing about each of the countries Fawn visits. For those who enjoy travel, it’s worth reading simply for that aspect. But more importantly, Fawn gained important wisdom from each of the couples she interviewed, and in the process discovered twelve reoccurring “secrets” that were present in the happily married couples she met.
Those happy marriage secrets are:
- Respect
- Trust
- Belief in God
- Laughing together
- Keeping outside interests
- Creating a daily ritual
- Dating your spouse
- Supporting your spouse
- Being friends with your spouse
- Nurturing your marriage
- Taking divorce out of the equation
- Choosing friends who speak life into your marriage
On the French-speaking island of Mauritius Fawn received a piece of wisdom from a long-married cab driver. He shared that in French the concept is called “donnant, donnant”. It means, “You give, you get. The key is not what you receive in marriage, the key is what you give.” (p.65)
Another happy husband on Mauritius shared, “Love passionately and you’ll see that life is wonderful. Love becomes marvelous when you become content with that you have.” (pp. 71-72)
Gloria, a wife in the Philippines happily married for over 50 years shared about her marriage, “Everything we’ve done from the beginning we’ve continued to do until now. Ben was very loving, thoughtful and generous from the start. And he hasn’t changed.” Ben added, “We always consult each other before we make important decisions.” (p.143)
Regarding a couple she interviewed in Argentina, Fawn realized, “Observing the contentment and partnership that Marcello and Silvina had, it was clear that creating goals and working toward them together was one of the greatest gifts of their marriage…They invest in each other’s dreams, and as a result, they’re living a life that is a bit of a dream itself.” (p. 219)
A Happy Marriage is Possible
Whether you are already happily married, or looking for advice that will infuse more joy into your marriage; or even if you’re not married yet…I highly recommend reading Happy Wives Club. Take this journey around the world with Fawn and allow yourself to be encouraged by so many happy, long-married couples. As the book says: happy, healthy marriages do exist–and yours can be one of them!
To enter to win one of two copies of Happy Wives Club, please leave a comment on this post. Winners will be randomly selected and announced on Monday, March 31th.
UPDATE: The winners have been chosen and will be notified by email. Thank you all those who entered the giveaway.
