Praying for your partner is important. But praying with your partner also can strengthen your relationship together.
According to research, praying together helps couples increase relationship satisfaction. Shared prayer also increases relational commitment and decreases infidelity.
In a study entitled “Praying Together and Staying Together: Couple Prayer and Trust,” researchers asked couples to either pray with and for their partner two times a week for four weeks, or discuss positive news stories for the same amount of time.
The results showed that partners who prayed together felt more trust and unity with their partners than the partners who just shared positive news stories. The researchers said that it’s possible that prayer increases trust—and reduces behaviors that damage trust, such as infidelity.
But you don’t have to wait until you’re husband and wife to start praying for and with each other.
In fact, laying the foundations of a healthy prayer life can only help your marriage discernment. Invite the Holy Spirit into your entire relationship process.
Don’t know how to spend your prayer time as a couple? Here are three prayers for couples to say together:
1. The Rosary
“The greatest method of praying is to pray the Rosary,” Saint Francis de Sales once said.
If praying together as a couple makes you a bit nervous, the Rosary is a great place to start. There’s a place for spontaneous prayer, but the familiar prayers of the Rosary are comforting.
Another beauty of the Rosary is that you can incorporate other prayer styles into it. Say a petition Rosary, thinking of someone who’s asked for prayers at each Hail Mary. Pray a scriptural Rosary, reflecting on the passages from the Bible that compliment the mysteries of the Rosary.
You can also incorporate meditation into your daily Rosary! Thousands of people use this audio Rosary podcast daily.
2. Reflect on the daily readings together
There are so many Bible verses that can help you pray together as a couple.
But where to start? Don’t play Bible roulette. Instead, pray with the daily readings. You could go to Mass together as an aspect of your relationship prayers. But you could also pray through Scripture at home with tools like this website and Magnificat. There’s even a special price on Magnificat subscriptions for young Catholic adults!
After you reflect, share with each other what struck you. In Scripture, you’ll read about things like peace, forgiveness, and the wisdom and faithfulness of God. These themes can lend themselves to good discussion topics for you and your partner.
You’ll also be praying with the rest of the church, who daily joins together to reflect on the word of God.
3. Write your own prayer
When I was dating my now-husband, we wanted our own prayer to pray together. We knew what areas of our relationship needed improvement, and where to ask for graces and strength. So, we sat down during a date night and penned a prayer together.
We prayed that prayer all the way up to our marriage.
Here’s the prayer that we prayed at the end of every phone call together:
“Heavenly Father, I thank you for your grace which you so generously and continuously bless us with. You are worthy of all praise and all glory, and I lift my hands in humble worship and adoration. Bless and empower my words and thoughts today. Let my words be pleasing to you, my rock and redeemer.
I pray that you continue to guide our footsteps and our lives as we walk in agreement with your will. I trust that our relationship is a blessing from you. God, I pray that you guide us and show us what we need to know. Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, and reveal anything that is not of you. Bless our relationship and draw us both even close to you and to your will for our lives. Lord, teach us and guide us that we may always seek you first in everything that we do. May our love be filled with genuine affection and may we honor each other at all times.
Bless our lives in our journey together and fill us with your glory. May we be bonded together in the type of love your son Jesus showed on the cross. May our lives be a reflection of your grace as we abide in it forever. In Jesus’ name, I humbly pray, Amen.”
Writing a prayer for your relationship together is a great way to spend time with your partner!
