With Valentine’s Day, just around the corner, I’ve been thinking a lot about what does it mean to really love my wife, and to love well?
In this bonus episode, we pulled a favorite clip from our archive with Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, therapist-turned-coach, longtime mentor, and returning guest on the podcast, in which we asked her: “What does it mean to cherish your spouse?”
Her answer is thoughtful, wise, actionable, and hopeful as she teaches how to build truly loving marriages.
Resources and Events
- Don’t miss this amazing opportunity to love and make love with your spouse better! Next Level Loving: A Virtual Intimacy Getaway (Feb 13-14): https://getyourmarriageon.com/next-levels-virtual-lovemaking-retreat
- Intimately Us & Just Between Us apps (Valentine’s Intimacy Challenge started on Feb 1!): https://getyourmarriageon.com/our-apps/
- Get Your Marriage On Coaching Program: https://getyourmarriageon.com/program/
- Get Your Marriage On Cruise: https://getyourmarriageon.com/cruise/
- We had a cancellation for our retreat in the spring! Snatch this spot while you can! https://getyourmarriageon.com/couples-retreat/
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Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors or inaccuracies. For the most accurate and complete experience, we recommend listening to the full podcast episode.
JFF-cherishing
[00:00:00]
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: who am I going to be? Right? What kind of person am I going to be in this marriage? Am I going to love? Because true love is an active agency. It’s not just in reaction to being loved. And so we have to reference our own integrity, our own higher self.
Dan – May 2025: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Get Your Marriage on Podcast with Valentine’s Day, just around the corner, I’ve been thinking a lot about what does it mean to really love my wife and to love well? A few years ago, I sat on a project to prepare for podcast episode number 200, [00:01:00] which was a major milestone for me.
And I interviewed top mentors and people that I really look up to, and I asked them this question, what does it mean to cherish your spouse? And I’m going back into the archives today and pulling out a snippet of a conversation I had. With Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife and her take on it, and I loved her answer, and I want you to hear it again too.
I want you to take this into your Valentine’s Day season, whether you’re celebrating it officially With romance or you think it’s the silliest holiday in the world, I don’t care. As long as you know to love and cherish your spouse, well, we need that reminder all the time. Anyway, if you haven’t heard of Dr.
Jennifer fil and Fife, she has her PhD in psychotherapy from Boston College and she’s a therapist turned coach that’s committed to helping Christians understand sexuality better. In their marriages. She’s a frequent guest on my podcast and also a personal mentor of mine that’s really helped me understand intimacy in my own marriage.
And you can check out her online courses that she has and material on her [00:02:00] website, finlayson five.com. Now, before we begin to hearing from Jennifer, I do want to point out that we have our April in-person couples retreat. It’s been sold out for months, but we did have a last minute cancellation.
It’s two months away. If you’re interested in coming, please apply now and you might be able to get in and take this spot that just opened up. Furthermore, we have our first Get Your Marriage on Cruise Setting Sale this October. This is a great opportunity to implement all the principles we talk about on our podcast.
It’s gonna be a little bit sexier ’cause we’re bringing on a Boor photographer. And we have some other fun things planned. You get to meet with me and my team on the sea days. So you get a vacation with us and do a deep dive on intimacy in your marriage. It’s gonna be a really fun and sexy experience for you and your spouse.
You’ll find those details in the show notes or on our website at get Your Marriage on.com also. So ready? Here we go.
Dan: So [00:03:00] Jennifer, what does it mean for you to really cherish someone in your marriage?
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: Well, I think, many of us, want our spouse, or we need our spouse, to cherish is to move into a, a somewhat different position, which is to really choose your spouse. To say, I know you’re different than me. I know who you are. I know that you engage in the world in ways that are different from my own, but I love you. I value you. I care deeply about your presence in my life. And so it’s the ability to truly value someone. And when we need our spouse or we’re getting married to kind of solidify something for ourselves. We aren’t yet in a position to cherish. to cherish. is to be able to recognize this is a person that is separate from you, that has many qualities [00:04:00] different from your own, and you have the capacity within yourself to value them and to be grateful for their presence in your life and to let them know it. To show it to them in a regular way. Yep.
Dan: like that. I once was in a business partnership that didn’t work out. And we’re supposed to split things 50 50, but I felt like I was doing far more of my share of the work, according to our agreement, than he was. And so I would justify, well he’s not working that hard, so I wouldn’t work so hard myself.
I would stop working as hard. And I think he would look at me and see my drop in productivity and justify that for not doing so much in his work, too. And I think this happens in marriages, too. We just, can you talk more on this dynamic that happens in a relationship?
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: Yeah. Well, I think a lot of us going back to the way that most of us get married is more in the idea of what marriage will give to us because we’re just not [00:05:00] mature enough to really think about what we’re promising, which is to love this person. That’s in many ways, dramatically different from you.
That’s why you’re attracted. when we really think about what we’re committing to is that I’m going to love you, bring my best to you, care about you, In times that are good and bad and do that for the entirety of the marriage.
And that, and that’s a big commitment. And most of us are actually have a secret idea inside of us. Well, I’ll do that as long as you do that for me,
as long as you’re loving me and, you know, speaking my love language and making me feel good about myself, then I will love you in return, but you go first.
And I think a lot of us. it’s easy to run into the resentments in marriage because when we first fall in love, it’s really about sort of hyper validation that’s happening in that dopamine drenched state of, of falling in love. But once we bump up against more reality and the expectation to [00:06:00] share a life and to find a way to create realities that can accommodate two different people, Well, it’s really easy to start feeling resentment, you know, like I love having you here.
I don’t want you to go anywhere, but why can’t you do things the right way? I mean, this is really easy for us to feel and then to resent when our spouse doesn’t comply. So resentment and anger and hostility even are just a pretty normal response. Cherishing is more the aberration. It’s more deliberate.
It’s more courageous. It’s the willingness to love even when you’re not getting what you want, you know, and I teach a lot of online courses, but, uh, this, my relationship course, consider the core thesis of the course is how you behave when you’re not getting what you want determines the marriage.
Dan: Right.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: that’s maybe not a very romantic idea for most of us,
but really, like, are, [00:07:00] are we able to do the right thing? Are we able to love even when we’re not, when it doesn’t feel good to do it?
Dan: that’s the real measure of the marriage. How do you handle yourself when things don’t go well? Not when things are always fine and you have no trouble, right?
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: Right. Exactly.
Yes.
Dan: Any final tips on how to handle yourself when you’re in that crucible moment, when things just aren’t going well, when it’s so easy to become a victim to what’s happening, how do you step into something more courageous
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: first of all, I think we have to kind of see that we’re inclined to this. Justification mindset. You know, you were so such a jerk when you said that, or that was so dumb or unfair, therefore I can be dumb and unfair back. I think we have to wake up to that because again, it’s a death spiral.
It’s, it’s going to take the marriage down when we’re running it by the worst in ourselves. So if we can understand that impulse. And see it in [00:08:00] ourselves. Then we are in a position to ask ourselves, who am I going to be? Right? What kind of person am I going to be in this marriage? Am I going to love? Because true love is an active agency. It’s not just in reaction to being loved. And so we have to reference our own integrity, our own higher self. We have to, we have to earn our own self respect. More even than the respect of a partner. That is, I have to be the kind of person that I know is respect worthy, that I can feel good about my behavior.
If you want a chance of a good marriage and a chance of being happy in your marriage, because if you live into your lesser self, even if your spouse lives into their better self, you won’t be happy because you know, That you’re not really someone that you respect. And that’s a big deal.
Dan: I can see how if I were to live into [00:09:00] my better self, especially in those moments when it’s so easy to, justify victimhood or whatever. If I can really live into my better self, it actually makes me a easier person to love. Like
for my, yeah, I become a better choice in that moment too. At least not, not in that moment, but maybe the next moment or the next, next time it sets me up for more success down the
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: absolutely. And I think when we’re really, truly coming from a stronger place inside a spouse, a child, a friend. Can map that pretty quickly. Like they can feel that it’s not reactive, that it’s not manipulative, that it’s not justified and it pulls for the better in them too. It, you know, your spouse, they always have their agency, but usually what we do in our relationships is we kind of just move into a reactive system.
And so we’re just reacting at the level that the system asks of us in a way, even [00:10:00] though we’re co creating that reality. So when you bring her stronger self, you’re actually, you’re inviting your spouse to bring more integrity, more courage, more love to that engagement as well.
Dan: That is so good. These are great concepts, they might feel a little abstract to someone just listening to this. Any stories from your own life or from those that you know that kind of illustrate, kind of put flesh on these bones a bit? The time maybe when it was easy to justify withholding
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: There’s like so
Dan: a different choice.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: micro moments really,
you know, I, I feel like I have a
spouse who’s just isn’t indulgent, doesn’t get reactive. I mean, sometimes, but not the infrequent thing. And that’s just been a huge blessing in my life. But I think if I were to kind of just pull a story, my mom was also very much that way. And, I don’t know how quick of a story this is, but, my mom had a neighbor. Um, [00:11:00] this was a few years ago and my mom had purchased this house from this neighbor’s mother, basically a decade before,
and including a lot of the furniture and so on. And a decade later, my mom was starting to redecorate some things.
And so she was giving some, some of the furniture away.
Dan: hmm.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: the neighbor, this was fully legitimate to do because not only had my mom bought the furniture and the house, and it had been a decade, right?
Dan: Right.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: It was not even profiting from it. She was giving it to people that needed it, but the neighbor’s mother had recently died.
Dan: Uh
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: And So she went into a very, and she’d had a very conflicted relationship with her mother.
Now, we didn’t know any of these things were going on at the time.
Dan: Hey, a couch is just a couch. A chair is just a chair. Uh huh.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: exactly
what my mom’s just redecorating the house a
Dan: Right.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: And she comes over and, and [00:12:00] rings the doorbell and I was there and just very aggressively goes on the attack.
Just like completely like comes out of nowhere. It feels very irrational. I’m just like, wait, who is this person? And what is she doing? You know? So I’m,
I’ve got my defensiveness up, but my mom knew her. My mom had, you know, hadn’t seen her a lot for a couple of years, but had been friends with her. And my mom just came into this moment of, she’s really just off the rails.
The, the neighbor, when she shows up, it really just acutely regressed. And I just watched my mother just step towards her and say, Oh, you know, I am so sorry because I think it slipped out somewhere in there that her mother had died and how disrespectful it was in a sense of what we were doing. But my mom did not get defensive, didn’t even justify herself.
She just went in and said, I am so sorry about what you’re going through. And, and I want you [00:13:00] to know how much we have loved this house and how much we’ve loved the things that your mother had here and how much they’ve benefited us. And they’re now benefiting others. So my mom gave some context, but. Was genuinely, I mean, it was, I think what was remarkable to me is that I just felt like, who is this person?
And like, I felt the kind of defensive self righteous energy.
And I just sat there and watched my mother’s brilliance just come in and care about this person and the whole thing just softened and stepped down and she was apologizing by the end. And I was like, super impressed. And then the other thing was like, I was telling my sister about it and I’m like, you wouldn’t believe this lady, sort of crazy, like shows up at the door.
I’m sharing it. In a kind of indulgent way.
Dan: Uh huh.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: And my mom just didn’t participate. Didn’t like, she just was like, you know, I think that that’s been a hard relationship. Like my mom was just kind of caring about her in a way that I just thought was [00:14:00] very impressive. And I’m. Grateful that I’ve had that kind of a role model, even though apparently I’m not nearly as good at it as she
Dan: huh.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: But yeah, I think that was really kind of impressive in that moment to watch my mom come in with so much grace and kindness.
Dan: That is so good. Is there anything else you want to share for this recording? Right.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: Well, I think just something I would say is that cherishing, sometimes we don’t do it because it’s very exposed to truly love. Like it’s one thing if your spouse says, I love you, and then you say, I love you back, or they’re kind to you and you’re kind back because you’ve got the cover of them already exposing themselves. But to truly love is to step out in front. It’s to be willing to say, I’m going to let you matter. I’m going to care about you, even if you don’t care about me. Um, I’m going to do right by you just in a unilateral way. And so [00:15:00] it, it there’s risk in it. There’s exposure in it. And so we resist it
Dan: there’s no guarantees.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: There’s no
Dan: right. Uh huh.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: back or do the right thing or, you know, or receive it even.
But I think that, so we often hold back out of our perceived idea that it makes us safer.
Dan: Uh huh. We
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: doesn’t make us safer. We, we limit our lives so much when we live in that reactive, um,
Dan: maybe even.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: yeah, transactional and cowardly way, really.
And I think when we dare to love, I mean, we, we create an environment and a reality that we then get to live in. So it takes courage, but it’s a much easier way to live ultimately. So, you know, I. Often encourage people like go and cherish your spouse. Let them know, let them [00:16:00] feel the ways that they matter to you.
The ways that they bless your life, that you’re grateful that they’re just simply there, that you love them because they exist mostly because they’re present in your life. And because learning how to cherish another human being flawed, as we all are imperfect, as we all are, it just is part of our spiritual and relational growth. But it’s also where the happiness is. It’s where the freedom is. It’s where the joy is and it’s a process and it’s not easy often to even know what it means to do right by another person, but it always requires more of us and it requires courage from us, but we’re blessed for it. It makes our lives richer.
Dan: Gotcha. Maybe someone listening to this might be in a situation where they, they get this concept, they want to cherish more, but they really don’t know what that looks like in the end. Maybe some good advice there would be, well, just take the one next right step, right?
[00:17:00] Towards,
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: I would
say the kind of the first way to think about it is to live in gratitude, like to cherish your life is to live in gratitude for the fact that you get to live it, that you’re here at all. It’s very easy to think about all the things that went wrong today, but the fact that you were able to wake up is a privilege that a lot of people didn’t have today. And you were given the gift of a day and people in your life that you take for granted because it’s our default. Yeah. But if you could imagine losing them suddenly, right, how deeply your life would be devastated, right? And so It’s just allowing your gratitude and the acknowledgement of how much these people bless your life to be more present in the relationship. So it’s just being more honest in a way, being more acknowledging. And so I think. You know, one of the things we did when I was growing up is that my mom had us on the birthday of the, of the sibling. We would all say what we loved and appreciated about the person. [00:18:00] The thing that was great about it is it just got it to be normal, to express gratitude.
At first it was awkward, but with time it just became a normal way of being in relationship. And so, you know, I just. I just tell my spouse all the time, things I just, I can’t help myself. I just always saying the things that I love and value because it’s just a way of like, it’s a way of making the abundance in the relationship more present. And it’s good, not just for your partner. It’s not good just for the relationship. It’s good for your own soul because the more we acknowledge the good in our lives, the happier we are. And so it’s just a really good habit to be in to, to acknowledge the good, even in the face of the difficult. There’s always difficult, but there’s always good too.
Dan: you’re saying kind of sounds like the grass grows greener where you water it.
Right where you’re putting your attention and it’s so easy to put your attention on the negative the faults the shortcomings [00:19:00] But can you take a step back and also and know there might be shortcomings there might be limitations because hey We’re all flawed right? But what about the good? What about like are you watering that or at least giving it equal attention? I think you’d
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: Yeah.
And you know, my husband sometimes just said things like every virtue has its correlating vice. And so that is to say, oftentimes the things in our spouse that we. Love have a negative side as well, or vice versa. And
Dan: Yes.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: we buy into the whole package like that and they do with us. And so that’s just life and we got to get over ourselves if we think somehow it should be different than that, or we should be living in a problem free or a stress free relationship.
That’s just, isn’t how life seems to be set up. And so the more we can actually get out of our entitlement and into our gratitude, [00:20:00] the happier we are.
Dan: That is so good. Thank you so much.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: my pleasure.
Dan: fantastic.
Dan: Thank you for listening. Please share this podcast with all of your married friends. I promise they will thank you for life. Download the Intimately US app if you haven’t yet, and share that with your friends too, and go get your marriage on.
