Days Seven through Nine.

We took a break for a few days, and then came back to the book and started again. The day before yesterday was day 7.

Day 7: Love believes the best.

This chapter talks about how we all have positive and negative attributes. In the beginning, we spend a lot of time thinking about our partner's positives, but over time, we think less and less about the positives and tend to dwell on the negatives. "Everyone fails and has areas that need growth. Everyone has unresolved issues, hurts, and personal baggage. Thus us a sad aspect of being human. We have all sinned. But we have this unfortunate tendency to downplay our own negative attributes while putting our partner's failures under a magnifying glass."

The dare says to get two sheets of paper. On one, write a few positive things about your spouse. On the other, write negative things. Place both sheets in a safe place for another day. Pick a positive attribute and thank your spouse for having it.

The journal asks "Which list was easier to make? What did this reveal about your thoughts? What attribute did you thank your spouse for having?"

I think the positive list was easier to make. I thanked Andrew for being willing to do so much for our relationship.


Day 8: Love is Not Jealous

This was actually about envy, not jealousy. It says not to be mad if your spouse is better than you at something, or more popular or whatever. You're supposed to be your spouse's biggest fan and supervisor. You should celebrate their successes rather than being resentful.

The dare says to become your spouse's biggest fan and reject any feelings of jealousy. To focus on their achievements, take yesterday's list of negatives and destroy it. Then tell your spouse how glad you are about one of their recent successes.

The journal asks how hard was is to destroy the list. It was super easy for me. I made my list on my computer rather than paper, so I just had to highlight and hit the backspace key.


Day 9: Love makes good impressions

It says it's important to enthusiastically and lovingly greet your spouse in the morning, when they get home, on the phone, etc.

This is something we already do, and so we didn't have to do anything different today.