Over the weekend, I ran across a good read in the form of a Q&A interview over on ESSENCE.com. ESSENCE Relationships Editor Charreah Jackson chatted with Hollywood power couple Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil (Mara is the mastermind behind hit television shows Girlfriends and Being Mary Jane while Salim is the director of The Game.) about how the married couple makes their love work. As with any relationship “advice” or commentary, it is important for all of us to our discernment. I truly feel every relationship has it’s own DNA yet there is something validating about seeing and hearing from people that look like you in [seemingly] healthy and happy marriages. Check out this interview snippet and then leave a comment with your thoughts.

MARA BROCK AKIL: We live in a culture that wants you to fall in line like everybody else. Two days after you get married people start asking “When are we going to have the kids?” What’s been successful for our marriage, and just every entity that is a satellite to our marriage, is we have defined for us what our life should look like: personally, professionally, spiritually, and so on. If you compare yourself to other people, then you get distracted on the wrong thing and can’t see your own blessings. I have to give Salim the credit for that, because he is the leader of our family, when things were getting tense. We would sit down and have the conversations about what does life look like for us. Even the decisions about how we spend our money.

SALIM AKIL: The best asset that we have in our relationship is that we’re friends and we value our friendship. We’ve had rough patches, and it wasn’t because we didn’t love each other. I was away a lot from home working, so we figured it out for each other. We married creative people, and we’re blessed to be employed, so we should use as much creativity in our relationship as we do in our work. If it means that I’m in Toronto and you’re in LA and we have to meet in New York, let’s do that, even if it’s just for 48 hours.

Read the rest of the creative pair’s ESSENCE.com interview here. And check out these past Marriage Matters posts here.