The Heartwarming Reason Why This Dad Constantly Cleans His Wedding Ring

When you and your partner first said “I do,” it was hard to imagine everything you two would experience together. Since then, there have probably been a bunch of thrilling moments. Yet, for every crazy-wonderful memory, there have been about a dozen more stressful, heartbreaking, chaotic and downright mundane ones.

Fast-forward years later and you now have a house, kids, a dog and never a dull moment. But no matter how crazy it may get, always remember the love that brought you two to this point. Jeff Hardy has a ritual he’s been doing for years to keep his marriage strong, and the best part—it’s easy. Just clean your wedding ring.

“This morning, I was cleaning my wedding ring—I do it about once a week or so. I got to thinking about how cleaning my wedding ring kind of symbolizes a healthy marriage for me,” the Oklahoma City dad explains.

Lots of friends don’t understand the dad’s reasoning, and even poke fun at him for caring so much about how his ring looks. But, the thing is, it really has nothing to do with the ring’s appearance at all.

“Everytime I clean it, it reminds me of the small things in our marriage I should be doing,” Hardy says. “When my wife comes home from work, have I listened to her day, like really listened? Put down my phone, turn off the TV and make her day the center of my world, listen?”

Because when you’ve been married for so long, it’s the little things that mean the most.

“It doesn’t have to be extravagant, just something small to let her know, ‘hey I was thinking about you and I thought you would like this.’”

According to Hardy, that’s the secret to a lasting marriage.

“See, you don’t just ‘fall out of love’ one day when you wake up. It happens over time, because you stopped doing the little things,” he explains. “Every day I wake to my wife, I pretend she is a stranger that I am madly in love with and think how can I make her fall in love with me,” he explains.

What he’s saying is, “yes, I will continue to wash my wedding ring.”

Between school lunches, car pools, practices and breaking up sibling fights, your marriage has probably been on the backburner lately. The good news? There are easy ways for you and your partner to work on strengthening your connection. Take the Lasting app, which is a marriage health app set up to be like marriage counseling, but on your time. The personalized database provides quizzes, exercises and recommends areas in your relationship in need of the most work.

Because the happier you two are, the better parents you will be for your little ones.