Marriage Fitness 5

Let’s continue our series on Mort Fertel’s Marriage Fitness and look at Step #2 – Give Presence. Step #2 can be summarized with a simple equation much like Step #1.

Love = Knowing

Here Fertel focuses on express love by learning our spouse and communicating that knowledge to our spouse through gift giving. In yet another pun, Fertel talks about “in-to-me-see,” the need to express that intimacy by learning and communicating an inner knowledge of our spouse. The assessment in the chapter asks, how well do you know your spouse in much the same way Kerri asked last week. There are only two exercises in the chapter:

1. Interview your spouse in order to know them better
2. Give them gifts that express that knowledge

Gift giving is an important way to express value in a relationship. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to fall into the falsehood that the monetary value of a gift is the most important factor in determining the value placed upon a relationship. This just isn’t true. I’ll concede that there is some positive correlation insofar as we generally has to convert our time into money. (See Step #1)

I would argue, with Fertel I think, that a better measurement of the value expressed by a gift isn’t how much money the gift cost but rather how well that gift expresses knowledge of the recipient. An expensive gift can meet this test, but so, too, can a simple, inexpensive one.

For example, Kerri and I exchanged Sweetest Day gifts last weekend: She let me pick out some new earbuds for my antique iPod; I brought home roses (Two dozen for $10 from the local market!) and McDonald’s after letting her sleep in late. Neither gift was expensive, but both express a great deal of value, because they express shared knowledge within our relationship.