Healthy Marriage

The following are excerpts taken from a book by John Wooden called “Wooden:  A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court”

Nellie and I Agreed to Be Agreeable

Nellie Riley caught my eye the first time I ever saw her back at Martinsville High School in Indiana.  It was on a warm star-filled night at the carnival during the summer of my freshman year.  I think we probably fell in love right away and didn’t even know it.

Folks think Nellie and I had a perfect marriage, but it was because we worked at it.  There are rough patches in any marriage.  Very early we understood that there would be times when we disagreed, but there would never be times when we had to be disagreeable.  We kept to that rule for over half a century.

Nellie and I have a great love for one another, but we understood that even love takes some work.

Love and Marriage

Love means many things.  It means giving.  It means sharing.  It means forgiving.  It means understanding.  It means being patient.  It means learning.  And you must always consider the other side, the other person.  You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.

And all those things you must not take for granted, but continue to work at.

I agree with Abraham Lincoln.  He once said that the best thing a man can do for his children is love their mother.

Marriage is Not Courtship

Of course, love is the first characteristic of a good husband, or a good wife.  If you have the love you should have, you’ll find everything else is there if you work at it.

Young couples get married and don’t realize it’s different from courtship.  You have to work at your marriage; it’s two-sided, and you’d better realize that.

I had a successful basketball career, but I believe I had an even more successful marriage.  In both work and marriage you must be considerate and sincerely care about the welfare of the other person.

When Marriage Weakens

Did your marriage start from love?  Of course it did.  So, look back.  Were you more considerate then?  Have you lost that for some reason?  Marriage requires that each partner listen to the other side.  It’s like what I say about leadership: “You must be interested in finding the best way, not in having your own way.”

The same is true in marriage.  Don’t be stubborn and insist on having your own way.  Look to find a way that works for both of you.

Team Wooden

People ask if I raised my own family the way I ran the UCLA basketball team.  I tell them, “No, I ran the team pretty much like I ran my family.”  Only with the family I had the greatest co-coach working alongside me, by the name of Nellie.

Watch a video of John Wooden

photo source: http://www.achievement.org/achievers/woo0/photos/woo0-016a.gif