A Different Way to Start Off Your Marriage

Getting married? Consider this challenge!

When my husband James and I went through marriage prep back in 2014-2015, the priest who guided us strongly encouraged us to designate the first six months after the wedding as a “cocoon period” for our marriage. He told us that none of the couples he’d prepared previously had taken him up on entering the cocoon, but he insisted that it would pay dividends for our marriage.

Based almost exclusively on the strength of his conviction, coupled with our knowledge of his personal holiness, we chose to enter in. And he was right. Now, we encourage all engaged couples to take a cocoon period for the health of their marriage. (Already been married a few years? Keep reading! The cocoon can benefit you as well!)

But what IS a cocoon?

The cocoon, demarcated by several rules and guidelines, essentially provided time and space for us to create a solid, stable foundation for our married life together. At its core, by adhering to stipulations of the cocoon, we learned to habitually prioritize our marriage, with both our time and attention, before all other (earthly) relationships.

The rules included: 

1. Going to bed each night, together, in our own bed at our house. Necessarily, sleepovers, nights away at a relative’s house, etc., were excluded. 
2. Spending our free time together, by and large. Ladies nights out or nights with the guys were few and far between during the cocoon. When we did socialize, we went out together. 
3. Keeping day-to-day “fights” or disagreements just between the two of us. Running to my mom, his buddy, my sister, etc., for advice or commiseration was off-limits. We worked things out, just between the two of us, or between he and I plus my M&M blizzard for comfort. *Obviously, we determined during our marriage prep that we didn’t have any major red flags to moving forward with marriage. Any serious issue would, of course, have naturally warranted professional help. 

That sounds...hard. And ridiculous. Why would you do that to yourselves? 

If you ever saw the 1961 hit movie The Parent Trap, or its 1998 Lindsey Lohan remake, you’re already familiar with the rough outlines of a cocoon period. When the warring twin sisters get in big trouble after carrying out increasingly escalating pranks on each other’s tents, they’re banished to a cabin on the outskirts of camp to work out their differences together, and largely separate from the other campers, until the end of the summer. 

Like the sisters in the movie, the rules of the cocoon don’t legislate what, for instance, you ought to do or discuss during your time together. There is no handbook you have to read by the end, no specific content you have to cover during those six months. (If you’re looking for something to work through, though, we found this book particularly insightful while we were dating, and  this book very helpful during our engagement!) The point is that you are prioritizing your spouse and your marriage in concrete ways every.single.day. 

Also like the sisters, our relationship benefited significantly from the intense focus of the cocoon period. Knowing that our spouse wasn’t going to tattle-tale or complain about us to anyone else enabled each of us to let our guard down and to enter more honestly into conversations, especially uncomfortable ones. Being unable to run away from our problems by escaping to a girls’ night out or a beer with the buddies meant that we learned to address issues head-on, even if we didn’t work them out perfectly or always communicate well the first go-round. 

It helped us break old habits and develop new ones.

At the time we got married, I personally had a tendency to overcommit, outsourcing the firstfruits of my time, energy, and talents to other people and projects. The cocoon period began the slow reversal of that trend, nudging me to give the best of myself to my marriage and our family. 

We found that going to bed together in our own home each night pushed us into developing a nighttime routine of sorts that incorporated each person’s preferences (he goes to sleep right away, she works on a Sudoku, so the bedside lamp should go on her side of the bed:)). 

We’ve heard many couples express fear that conceiving a child in, say, the first year of marriage could keep them from having time to find out who they are as a couple. Certainly, spending so much alone time together as a newly married couple lent itself to growing our family sooner rather than later! We conceived our son in the third month of our marriage, and thanks to the overall togetherness requirement of the cocoon we didn’t feel shortchanged on ‘couple time’ by conceiving ‘so soon’ after the wedding. 

That sounds good theoretically, but we’re already married….

The cocoon isn't just appropriate for newly married couples. The case for the cocoon is strongest for newly married couples, in the same way that bootcamp makes the most sense before you enter battle, but it has value for any couple seeking to reconnect in meaningful ways. The cocoon is particularly relevant for any couple who is struggling with communication in their relationship, especially with having time to really enter into tough conversations, or with getting too many 'outside voices' in their married life, be those the voices of (hopefully!) well-meaning family of origin members, friends, or the couple’s own children. 

Again, the cocoon is really about committing to make time for the other person and for communication with the other person in specific ways.

It creates availability of time and presence, a space for conversations to happen and for things to get worked out. The parameters of keeping disagreements between the spouses serve as guide rails for those conversations when they do happen. Prioritizing the other person in your schedule, spending physical time near each other (particularly going to bed together at your home every night) are healthy things to do, even if the conversations or interactions themselves don't go perfectly, especially at first.

And there's a real security in knowing that you are having these tough conversations as a couple without the fear that your spouse is going to run to their sibling, friend, parent, etc. to talk about you behind your back. Mutual respect grows in that context, and that’s a prerequisite for marriages to thrive. Give the cocoon a shot!