This post is part of the Happy Wives Club Blog Tour which I am delighted to participate in, along with hundreds of inspiring bloggers. To learn more and to join us, click here.
Fawn Weaver is the founder of the Happy Wives Club, “an upbeat blog dedicated to positively changing the tone about marriage around the world,” and she’s “on a mission to find 1 million women, like me, who are living their happily ever after.”
Her blog has long been a place for happily married women — and those who desire and celebrate happy marriages — to congregate and share encouragement and wisdom. She now takes that mission on the road, with the recent release of her first book: Happy Wives Club: One Woman’s Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage.
This is not a self-help book, with a “10 steps to happy marriage” approach. Instead, it reads like Fawn’s travel journal as she navigates countries across the globe and discovers the beauty of these locales and the happy marriages within them.
She speaks with couples from California, South Africa, England, Croatia, Australia, and more and brings the reader along to hear their insights.
There are some differences among the couples indeed. They vary in ways beyond the different cultures they represent. Some marriages grew from whirlwind romances, some arose from slow-building friendships, and one couple’s marriage was even arranged by their families. Some seem to have skipped through their blissful years of marriage, while others experienced hardship yet found their happy groove.
Still, all of these couples seem to share certain characteristics, the qualities that Fawn recognizes as the “secrets to a great marriage.” Thankfully, Fawn herself has known deep happiness in her marriage and believes that happy marriages are more than possible — they exist everywhere.
As her trip unfolds, the reader can see the secrets coming together like threads woven into a beautiful fabric — each marriage unique, yet sharing certain colors. Although these secrets can be listed (and yes, you’ll find them in the book), they emerge instead as stories of Fawn’s journey and the happy couples she meets.
There are a few aspects Fawn didn’t highlight as much, but which struck me as interesting. Each of these long-married, happy-ever-after couples seem to be happy people. That is, I got the sense that they had individually learned happiness as well, a goal I suggest we wives aim for in our lives. Also, these wives have a strong sense of themselves, through meaningful work and relationships. And several of them mention good role models in their family, which encourages me all the more to attend to my own marriage and provide a healthy example for my children.
One aspect Fawn did highlight, which I love, is the importance of laughter in a marriage. Not laughter at your spouse’s expense. Rather, the perspective that life shouldn’t always be taken so seriously and that belly laughs are good for the marriage and good for the soul.
Fawn starts her journey as a happy wife and ends it with greater wisdom, great encouragement from other happy couples, and important secrets to a great marriage that she shares in the pages of Happy Wives Club.
Personally, I relate to those wives who have struggled, who had to work on their marriage, who had much to learn to find the happiness that God desires us to experience in marriage. My own journey has had its challenges, but I am now definitely, definitely a happy wife. Count me among the million.
What do you think it takes to be happy in marriage? What’s the one secret to a happy marriage you would share with others?
Happy Wives Club is Fawn’s journey across the world to meet new friends and discover what makes their marriages great. You can find her book about the best marriage secrets the world has to offer by clicking here.
Lots of grace! God’s grace! Also, communication, truth, intimate times spent alone with each other, and fellowship with other married couples.
Personally, I have become much happier in my marriage since I started letting go of the little things that I was trying to change in him. In fact, most everything that bugs me falls into the “Does it really matter at the end of the day?” category. Once I accepted the fact that my husband is his own person and has the right to be who he chooses to be, I have been so much more free to enjoy him. And even through a big issue, I had to set it aside and love him unconditionally… that kept me sane. I’m not suggesting that we ignore major issues, but we can still love our husbands during the midst of working through those issues and not let the issue be front and center of our every waking thought.