Filling The Love Bank

When my wife and I dated we used to make tapes and share favorite songs with each other. We had a pretty similar musical taste, but through her I grew to appreciate groups like The Cure and Fleetwood Mac, while I introduced her to Paul Simon and The Eagles, just to name a few examples.

Then after we were married we got out of the habit. We did enjoy going to a few concerts together (Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles and the Moody Blues) but our practice of sharing favorite songs, particularly romantic songs, fell by the wayside.

In recent years as our children have developed an interest in music my wife started listening to new music again, starting with Radio Disney (the Mom station) and then steadily branching out. With the stress of motherhood and marriage the songs gave her a way to put feelings into words.

I, on the other hand, tended to listen to news and talk radio (NPR primarily) and only occasionally to music, and when I did it was mostly the same stuff I had always listened to or latin. In short, our musical tastes diverted. We still liked the same songs and bands we always had, but she was now into the newer artists and so this was no longer something we had in common.

Flash forward to late last year: with me away in training with ASA we both decided we had to improve our marriage. Somewhat surprisingly to me (because I'm dense) I learned that sharing music is still something that my wife enjoys and appreciates. Ever since then we have been sending songs back and forth via email. I try and send a new song most nights when I'm away. It has made a real difference. Not only have I expanded my musical taste, but more importantly we have this in common once again, and has added deposits into her love bank.

Today I went a step further. We typically send songs from YouTube to each other. Often others have made their own videos to go with a given song. Some are naturally better than others, generally consisting of photo and art montages. Last week I tried making a video of sorts using Power Point, but lacked the ability to make it into a real video. So yesterday and today I taught myself to use Windows Movie Maker and created my own video for my wife. Yes, there are better programs, but this one was on my computer already and works for my basic purposes. Did I mention it was free? I haven't sent it to her, so I can't give away anything here (to all three or four of you who ever read this besides her) but I may post it at a later date.

It was fun, albeit somewhat time consuming, but I feel like I created something of value, and I have been thinking of her all day. I should add that this also gives me new appreciatioin for my wife spending hours and hours editing the videos she makes with her students. Mine was simple. I can now begin to imagine what she's had to do. I won't be doing this every week, but once in a while when I have some spare time sitting on reserve I may just do it again. Hopefully it will make the balance that much higher in her love bank.

Edit: She liked it! Here it is below. Be sure and pause or disable the Playlist music at the bottom of the page in order to hear the song.