2017 is almost over, can you believe it?! How did that happen?

A LOT has been happening here in the past year. A few highlights:

• In January, we switched our name from A Thing Called Love Blog to Marriage Laboratory
• We focused the whole year on Gary Chapman’s 5 Love Languages book and held five month-long love experiments based on each of the love languages (more on that below).
• You may not have noticed, but in April we added ads to our site. I joined with a company called Mediavine to manage all my ads. So sorry if you dislike this change (it was hard for me to do it!), but now I make predictable income each month from the blog, which has allowed me to grow it further, which hopefully allows me to help you more. So thank you!
• We’ve grown our email list from about 70 people to over 1500 people! Yay! Thanks for joining the Marriage Lab! I’ve had so many wonderful email interactions with so many of you this year and it has made ALL THE DIFFERENCE to me! Thank you for replying and sharing yourselves with me.

It’s been a GREAT year here!

Love Experiments Re-cap

It was so nice to have a structure all year for my posts based on the 5 Love Languages and to hold corresponding love experiments.

In February all our posts were focused on words of affirmation and our love experiment was to write your spouse a love note/text/email everyday (explained more here). I described the experiment results here.

In April the focus of the month was quality time (my fave). The love experiment was to spend 10 minutes really connecting with your spouse each day (full details here). I wrote about how it went here. 

June was all about gifts. The experiment was to give your spouse a gift once a week for a month (detailed here). Here’s how it went.

The ever popular September was all about physical touch. The experiment, which proved to be both the most difficult and the most rewarding was to have sex with your spouse every other day for the month (explained more here). I described all about how it went here.

And we just wrapped up our last love language experiment in November, where we focused on service. The challenge was to ask your spouse what you could do for them each week and then to do everything asked of you (more info here). Here’s how it went.

 

Excited for experiments I’ve got cooking up for next year! 🙂

Also, I wanted to share our most popular posts from the year in case you missed them:

Marriage Laboratory Most Popular Posts of 2017

1. 40 Loving Texts to Send Your Spouse RIGHT NOW to Make Their Day

I’ll be honest, I wrote this post in somewhat of a rush and I feel like its not my finest work. But for whatever reason, this pin went viral on Pinterest. Tens of thousands of people have re-pinned it and even more have clicked on it.

I blame that fashionable gal in the stock photo. Look how cute she is- she MUST be in a happy relationship.

2. 27 Stay At Home Dates You Can Do from Your Couch

This post, on the other hand, I’m VERY happy is doing well. I worked hard on this one and I actually think it can be really helpful to people. For all those times you don’t have enough money to go out, or a babysitter to watch your kids, or enough energy to do something that requires moving.

So every week. 🙂

3. 14 days of love letters

The past two years, I’ve kicked off every February by writing Rich 14 love letters- one for each day leading up to Valentine’s Day (and I post each one on the blog, so everyone can bask in our public sap-fest). This post announced the 14 prompts I would use this year.

4. 46 Just Because Gift Ideas to Make Your Spouse’s Day

This is another good one. I wrote it for gifts month, and then re-posted it for service month because there was so much overlap. Gifts of service. A good read if you are looking for lots of quick and simple ways to make your spouse smile 🙂

5. What Would Happen if You Had Sex Every Other Day for a Month

Ah, the sex posts. Those always do well 🙂 Every post that month did well. But this one came out on top. Here, I’m re-capping our September love experiment- to have sex every other day for a month.

6. The Myth Behind Communication Issues in Marriage

I think this is one of the most helpful posts I’ve written this year. It’s all about having the right mindset and the right tools to make any marriage thrive (and they don’t involve your spouse at all, these are all about YOU).  I’ll be giving it to my children as pre-requisite reading before they get married.

 

My favorite posts of 2017

Because the vast majority of my site’s page views come from Pinterest, I think how well a post does has more to do with the pin I create than the actual content.

With that in mind, I want to include my personal two favorite posts from this year, which did not come in Pinterest-friendly listical form 🙂

1.  The Very First Step Toward Your Happy Marriage

I would love for every single visitor to my site to start on this post (and I say so on my about page). I think its so crucial to the happiness of any marriage. Building block #1.

2.  The Best Way to Get Your Marriage Out of a Rut

In this post I explain a tool that has gotten me out of a marriage rut time and time again. It hasn’t failed yet. I recommend it.

 

2017, you’ve been great to us.

And the re-cap would be lacking if I didn’t take time to express a sincere THANK YOU to everyone who has read a post, written me an email, liked one of my posts on Facebook, written a comment or pinned one of my pins. Seriously, THANK YOU!!! You guys make all this work worth it 🙂 I have the best readers- here’s to a great 2018!