If you’ve been married a while, I don’t have to explain conversational ruts to you. I doubt that marriages in any other culture or era have had as many moving parts as ours. When I started ministry, writers addressed multitasking as an art. Now, most address it as a necessity. Most modern marriages must develop routines or what our tech friends call shortcuts to keep pace with the demands on our lives.
Unfortunately, with routines or shortcuts come ruts. In seeking to streamline our work, parenting, caregiving, extended family, meal planning, ministry, neighborhood, friends, side-gigs, housekeeping, and yardwork efforts we can find the conversations between spouses limited to shallow, functional, need-to-know kinds of statements. The more we have on our plates, the more likely the conversational ruts.
If you’ve ever driven dirt roads or through a field, you know three things about ruts:
1. Once you’re in a rut, you don’t just drift out of it.
2. The longer you’re in a rut, the deeper it gets.
3. In the rut, you’ll go where others lead you, whether it’s where you want to go or not.
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