4 ways to find more time for marriage with kids in the way

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Post written by Corey Allan

It’s late in the afternoon and the work to do list continues to pile up. Emails are left unanswered. The new message light is still blinking on your phone. It’s endless.

You get home after picking up the kids in time for a quick dinner, unless it’s take out, again. You spend a little bit of time talking as a family, maybe. Unless there’s a school activity, sports practice, homework, meeting, or something else scheduled.

You collapse into bed maybe hours after your spouse, and wake up to do it all over again.

If you have kids living under your roof, I know you’ve been there.

Today’s family is under a tremendous amount of strain. So is marriage. With all the things vying for our attention, it’s easy to have the important slip through the cracks in order to address the immediate.

Many marriages suffer due to this strain. It’s hard to find time for each other in amongst the schedules and routines of life.

Whether you are lost when it comes to finding even a minute together with your spouse or you are looking for a bit of a spark to take the marriage to another level, here’s a few ideas to incorporate.

1. Create a schedule.

Life runs on schedules already, so why not use a bit of this in marriage. Plan weekly dates. Schedule in rendezvous during the week. You may think this will kill the passion and spontaneity… really? You mean that you’ve never spent any time thinking through how you’d like an encounter or date to unfold? By having something scheduled, you create room for anticipation.

2. Tell your kids your marriage is important.

Strictly speaking, your kids belong to you, it’s not the other way around. Inform your kids, better yet show your kids that your marriage is important. Go on regular dates. If your family is like mine, your kids are done eating quickly in order to go play, spend time at the table with your spouse after they’re done. Sure you conversations will be interrupted, but it’s a great way to connect.

3. Utilize babysitters.

If you’re lucky enough to have family close by, let the kids have a little family time while you and your spouse go out. The beauty of this option – the kids get someone new to play and interact with, while you get a break together. It’s amazing to me the number of couples I’ve met that have not had their kids stay over night with family members or friends. Not only do you and your spouse benefit from this time, your kids do as well. They experience an expanded range of people who love and care for them. This can set a foundation for greater self-confidence and growth as they develop.

4. Create secret signals or code words.

It’s difficult to have conversations that may lead to deeper, more intimate connections when you are interrupted every five minutes by one kid tattling on the other or needing something from you for their homework or wardrobe. This can be overcome by creating another language or codes to use with each other. This language or code should be based on whatever you would be saying to each other if given the opportunity. If this type of language is not part of your normal dialogue, then it would need to be created all together. It could be as simple as lighting a candle that is centrally located in the home as a signal one of the parties is interested in an encounter. Whether the encounter is sexual or emotional is up to you. Or it could be as complex as learning a second language. How cool would it be to woo your spouse in another language? And if your kids begin to understand the language, they would only discover more about the love and desire you have for your spouse. There are far worse things they probably already know about you.

Kids in the home present many obstacles to passion in marriage, but they aren’t the only reason passion wanes. By overcoming the hurdles of kids, you are faced with what else may be going on in the marriage. The kids can provide a buffer for a stale marriage. If that’s the case, more work will need to be done individually and relationally to address the other concerns.

Marriage is effort. But the things in life that require effort have more value.

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24 Keys to Remaining Friends With Your Spouse

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Would you like to be friends?

Not necessarily with me … but with your spouse?

Popular culture would say we should start with strong lust, but if your goal is a marriage that will last, friendship has more staying power than desire and needs to be acted on first, middle, and last.

Paul Coleman, Psy.D., author of The 30 Secrets of Happily Married Couples and a contributor to All-in-One Marriage Prep, says, “Friendship is a form of intimacy. It represents a sharing, an openness, a willingness to be vulnerable. It requires a degree of trust. Friends show caring to one another by their availability, their thoughtfulness.”

All of that translates into ensuring you have many different experiences with your partner over time before your engagement and definitely before your wedding.

When we are friends with our partner, we watch out for what’s best for one another. We support through thick and thin. We enjoy each other’s company, help each other laugh, and work and play well with each other. We don’t squabble over the toys in the sandbox; we are adult partners together. Although a water balloon fight once in awhile might be a fun idea!

A key part of being friends is offering encouragement. We help each other excel. We anticipate potential pitfalls. We make connections. We nurture creativity. We listen to the tears and complaints…for awhile…but then nudge or boot each other along into the light.

Friends pray together and play together.

Who wouldn’t want this in a spouse?

Is it everything? Not hardly, but it’s a key piece.

Dr. Coleman says, “It is the brick in the foundation–a necessary part of a marital foundation, but incomplete without other factors that hold the brick in place.” Like faithfulness, love of children, and more.

When we are friends together, then we also recognize when we have mutual friends who are in support of our relationship or marriage. These friends help remind us of what we love in our mates, encourage our commitment, and support the strength of our bond. They validate that our relationship is healthy and viable…or that we need to get some help.

Not everyone is a fan of checklists, but sometimes it really is a good idea to take a gentle, loving inventory so we can set goals to improve.

Here’s mine so you can say whether your relationship is at low, medium, or high level on each factor:

Qualities of an Excellent Friendship

  1. Good communication; ability to share honestly about positive and difficult matters
  2. Acknowledgement and affirmation of positive qualities in each other
  3. Enjoyment of quiet, peaceful time together
  4. Play, fun, and laughter
  5. Acceptance; allowing both partners to be themselves
  6. Support and appropriate sympathy, empathy, and help during difficulties
  7. Enthusiasm for individual and shared goals and achievements
  8. Loving, spiritual connection (such as through prayer, meditation, activities)
  9. Encouragement
  10. Loyalty
  11. Trust that shared information will kept confidential and not used hurtfully
  12. Reliability; trustworthiness
  13. Willingness to suspend judgment and avoid jumping to conclusions
  14. Common experiences and bonding memories
  15. Ability to work together on projects
  16. Agreed-upon boundaries and expectations
  17. Shared interests
  18. Willingness to learn together and from one another
  19. Ability to disagree peacefully and constructively
  20. Shared values
  21. Ability to reconnect easily after being apart
  22. Motivational feedback or nudging that constructively influences the other to grow
  23. Attitude of forgiveness, not holding grudges, and willing to grant another chance
  24. Respectfulness and equality

If you measure up well on these factors before marriage, then check them out again each anniversary and keep going. As Dr. Coleman says, “When passion has its ups and downs, friendship is the stabilizing force. It says ‘I care…you are important to me…’.”

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6 ways to self soothe your way to a better marriage

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Post written by Corey Allan

To become acquainted with oneself is a terrible shock. ~ Carl Jung

Marriage, or any committed relationship, has the ability to bring excitement and passion into our lives.

At the same time however, as the relationship progresses and more roadblocks and perpetual issues arise, we may begin to feel distant from our partner.

Think back to when you first began your current relationship.

It’s likely that you believed you had found the answer to life’s problems, you’d found a partner to share in life’s journey, you’d never again be alone, and it would be smooth sailing from here on out. It’s equally likely that if your relationship was based on these assumptions, it wasn’t long before you were sorely disappointed that your partner failed to live up to your expectations.

Here’s a truism for Simple Marriage: if you look to another person to provide fulfillment, you will begin to focus on the failings of that person as the cause of your own disappointment.

In every important relationship, you’ve brought your own legacy of fears, anxieties, and unresolved problems – so has your partner. As the relationship progresses, it’s often uncomfortable to come to terms with your own baggage. So much so, that when you’re unable to look within yourself, you’ll attribute the problems to your partner rather than accepting the fact that your partner is just being themselves and likely has the best of intentions.

Whenever you’re uncomfortable about something your partner says or does, it helps to realize that your discomfort may derive from a source you’ve yet to examine within yourself – a control issue, a jealousy, an insecurity or fear, etc.

This is part of your growing up – becoming emotionally mature. One key to emotional maturity involves the art of self-soothing.

When you blame your partner for your discomfort, this tends to create distance within an emotionally committed relationship. This distance then, creates a feeling of further discomfort. The trick to dealing with this dilemma is to learn how to soothe your own emotional pain.

Which in turn, can open the way to more passion and closeness in your relationship.

Here’s a few suggestions that will help:

  1. Don’t take your partner’s behavior personally. Even if your partner doesn’t make all the changes you’ve made, don’t take it personally. If you and your partner are having a conflict, try some inwardly focused relaxation techniques. Focus on your breathing. Stop talking and try to slow your heart rate. Lower the volume of your speech and work on relaxing your body. In other words, you take care of you.
  2. Keep the current conflict in perspective. Think about past instances of the same type of conflict. What resources did you use in the past for dealing with the conflict? Think about how discomfort will surface again in the future – and if you learn now how to deal with it, you will be better off in these future instances.
  3. Control your behavior, even if you can’t regulate your emotions. While you may have difficulty in controlling your emotions, especially in the face of a conflict, you can have control over your behavior. Prevent yourself from saying and doing things that you will regret later. Tell yourself: “I don’t have to take action on my feelings.”
  4. Stop the negative thinking. Thoughts drive your feelings and behavior. When you find yourself engaged in negative thinking, make the change to more positive thoughts. Accept what is happening – then calm down.
  5. You may have to break contact temporarily with your partner until things cool down. When you are engaged in a conflict, you may need some time to get in touch with your self again. Look on this as a time-out, not a separation. Tell your partner that you need some time alone to calm down and that you can discuss the issue better later, after both of you have had some space from each other.
  6. Self-soothing does not involve substance abuse, the abuse of food, or emotional regression. You need time to confront yourself and understand what your part in the conflict may be. This does not mean hiding out, sleeping, binge-eating, or the use of drugs or alcohol, which are all ways to avoid self-confrontation.

The ability to validate your own perceptions, feelings, and self-worth, and soothe your own heartache and anxiety when the inevitable marital disappointments, frustrations, and misunderstandings occur opens the door for the relationship, and both of you, to experience more. Your “relationship with yourself” determines how you’ll handle the good and bad times of life.

Paradoxically, the better you are at soothing and validating yourself, the less you need your partner to “be there” for you and the more you can “be there” for others. Likewise, you can let yourself be influenced by your partner, taking their needs and opinions into consideration without feeling like you’re weakening your own position or interests in the process.

Your ability to self-validate and self-soothe is absolutely vital to maintaining long term passion in marriage.

Adapted from David Schnarch, Ph.D.
(photo source)

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How to go from good to great in marriage

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Post written by Corey Allan

When asked, most everyone will state that they want a great life – a great marriage – a great job.

This is natural.

It’s almost universal.

It’s an entirely different thing however to actually attain it.

The reason is simple.

Good is the enemy of great.

This also applies to marriage. A good marriage is the enemy of a great marriage.

This is why so many people wait to work on their relationship until something’s gone wrong. It’s why couples delay an average of six years after a problem occurs before they seek out professional help.

When things are good, it’s hard to find the motivation to make things great.

After all, you risk screwing up the good in the process.

But the problem with settling for good, at least in my opinion, is good only satisfies for so long.

So how do you move from good to great?

It doesn’t happen by chance. It takes effort.

But the nice thing is, your spouse doesn’t necessarily have to be on the same page for you to be able to create a great marriage. Granted, they will have to come around eventually, but you can start without them.

Here’s a few ideas to get you started.

  1. Read books. There are some tremendous resources that will help improve your relationship and life. While many of the books shouldn’t be taken hook, line, and sinker (except of course A Simple Marriage, and Buck Naked Marriage, wink, wink), there are usually some great nuggets and ideas that can be applied to your situation.
  2. Read blogs. You already have a jump on many people because you’re reading Simple Marriage. But there are many other great sites that will help as well (here are several worth checking out). The greatest thing about blogs and online resources is you can do more than just read, you can join in discussions with other readers in the comments or you take an online class that will help you navigate common marital issues.
  3. Disconnect and connect. There are many people who believe in the power of the “date nights.” I like the idea as well, although I will add that you don’t have to find babysitters, get out of the house and go somewhere together. Steal time together after the kids go to bed. Play a game. Watch a movie. Head to the bedroom and lock the door. Whatever you do, do it together. No phone. No work. No kids. You can find time to connect at home if you look for it.
  4. Find a marriage retreat or seminar. There are many churches and organizations that offer marriage retreats or seminars. I’ve been to several. Some are good, some are not. But like the marriage and relationship books out there, all of them have some nuggets to offer. If nothing else, you get time together while you’re there. Shameless plug: In July I’m speaking at the Better Marriages Fiesta in Albuquerque, NM and plans for a Simple Marriage Getaway are in the works.
  5. Share marriage with others. Live life with other people. Find other couples to hang out with. Go to dinner. Laugh. Tell stories. In other words, share life with them. Everything is so much better when shared with others.

What do you think would happen if you spent at least one weekend every other month doing something to improve your marriage?

__________

Speaking of improving your marriage,  beginning Monday and through the week (June 13 – 17) the Sexy Summit Teleseminar Series is happening.

Ten experts; five days; better sex – all from the comfort of your own home.

It’s worth checking out!

(photo source)

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What’s wrong and how do I fix it?

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Again

Post written by Corey Allan

The dominant question for humans isn’t what’s my purpose or why am I here, it’s what’s wrong and how do I fix it.

This question shapes our worldview, our parenting, even our relationships.

We live in a fix it society. As if everything going wrong in the world can be “fixed.”

This idea is largely responsible for the consumerism in society. If you believe there is something wrong or missing in your life, then some company or industry has a product that will correct what’s wrong, or at least make you feel better about it.

Watch any amount of TV and you’ll be bombarded with this idea. I’m all for doing our part to take care of the world we live in, but focusing solely on what’s wrong is a black hole.

When it comes to marriage, this type of thinking is common. How often do you hear or say “When are you going to…?” or “You always…” Arguments in marriage come along due to focusing on what’s wrong.

It’s important to realize that in committed relationships, roughly two thirds of the problems are unresolvable. Two thirds!

With the amount of issues in marriage that aren’t resolvable, how do you create a lasting and passionate marriage?

It boils down to choice and focus.

First, choose to stick it out. Marriage is work, there’s no way around it. The conflict and struggle of marriage only increase it’s value. The things in life that you fight for have more inherent value due to the fight. Hang in there.

Second, what you focus on – grows. This philosophy is true. If you focus solely on what’s wrong, everything will appear wrong. Don’t believe me, watch only the national and local news and tell me how this affects your worldview. Better yet, watch CNN or FOXNews for 24 hours straight. You’ll likely think this whole world and everyone in it is evil incarnate.

Instead, focus on yourself and your contribution to the marriage.

Ask this: would you want to be married to you?

One of the things I’ve loved to do since I was a child is snow skiing. And one thing I like to do while skiing is ski through the trees. The powder’s better, it’s quiet, and the added risk increases the adventure.

Want to know the key to skiing successfully through the trees? Don’t look at the trees! Instead, focus on where you want to go between them.

This principle applies to life as well. If you focus on where you want to go and your role in the process, by default you’ll avoid most of the pitfalls and issues along the way.

Interested in learning more about this? Pick up a copy of A Simple Marriage.

(photo source)

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Married lifestyle design

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Post written by Corey Allan

“So how’s the old ball and chain?”

“Are you sure you want to be tied down for the rest of your life?”

These are two of the many question you may have been asked before you chose to get married, or they may be questions you are asking yourself currently.

Marriage is choice.

And I believe this choice is a tremendous blessing.

Every person has within them a desire to be with others. Hanging out with friends, talking about life with coworkers, sharing serious thoughts with close friends, and sharing intimate moments with a lover. Whatever it may be in life, it’s often better when shared with another person.

But what about the other side of things? The side that each of us have that longs to be the designer of our own life. That doesn’t want to submit to the tyranny of others.

The truth is, we fluctuate back and forth between these two extremes. We move towards the togetherness side of things until those needs are met then we move to the separateness side.

Take a look at your life the past few weeks.

Can you see when you sought time alone?

Or time with another person?

Chances are you will be able to recognize this process in your own life when you look for it. This also plays out in conflict, as usually the conflict stems from this thought, “I want to be with you but don’t tell me what to do.”

The key to lifestyle design for married people rests in the ability of each person learning to handle more time together as well as time apart.

Let’s use sex as an example.

One of the most intimate aspects of a marriage. Where you are physically as close as you can get to another human.

However, often this physical closeness does not correlate with emotional, or mental, or spiritual closeness. During sex you may be miles apart. Fantasizing about someone else, going over the day’s to do list, spectatoring (focusing on performance), or any number of other ways to disconnect from your spouse.

The point is, you’re not connected. Often the reason for this disconnect is you can’t handle the anxiety that is produced from a close connection.

Whenever you get too close to another person, it’s common to do something that will create distance and separation in order to feel better.

For instance, you may want your spouse to be more emotionally open and share their feelings, but you interrupt them when they say things you find unpleasant or disagree with (in your view, you may just want to keep the conversation “accurate”). You want a more expressive spouse, but want to control what (or how) they express.

Another example involves asking your spouse to take more responsibility for initiating sex, but you want to dictate when, where, how, and why sexual initiations should be made.

You want a spouse who can think for themselves – and you want to tell them what they should think!

So how does all this tie into lifestyle design for married people?

1. Marriage is choice. Whenever you fall victim to the idea of being stuck in marriage, you give up your power. You still have an amazing amount of control over your own life in marriage. Granted, this control comes with natural consequences. But it’s control nonetheless. By choosing marriage freely each day, and allowing your spouse to do the same, you up the ante in what you could experience in marriage.

2. Include your spouse in the design of the marriage. This may seem like a no-brainer, but I’m amazed at the amount of couples who’ve never had this discussion.

Marriage often seems to happen by chance with most people. Take charge of your life and marriage and design it!

1. Baselining your marriage.

Sometimes, wiping the slate clean and dreaming is too daunting a task. The quintessential lifestyle design question is the “money question.” And the money question goes something like: “What would you do if you had all the money in the world?”

The problem with this? It feeds the notion that monetary abundance is the primary freedom enabler.

Try starting with the idea of Baselining. The process of baselining involves writing down everything you don’t have to have, be, or do, to live a happy and fulfilled life.

For example, I don’t have to fill my house with the nicest things, I don’t have to get the latest techno gadget, I don’t have to be able to tell a coherent story about how I make money. If you’re serious about doing a thorough job of baselining, get out a notebook and write down how much money and time you’ll eliminate by doing away with existing possessions, obligations, and self-images.

Cutting back on things may actually increase the passion and energy in marriage. I realize cutting back on things and simplifying life runs counter to popular culture, but it really is helpful. Living simply has been a tremendous blessing for my marriage, my family, and myself.

2. Dreamlining your marriage.

This involves spending some time with your spouse and dreaming. What are some of the things you both hope to do? Own? Become? Put them all down on paper.

Anything goes at this point. It could be family dreams, marriage dreams, and even personal dreams. They all need to be included. Have fun with this step. A couple of our dreams include living in the mountains one day, having our children experience a service project on every major continent before they leave for college and traveling the country exploring America.

3. Go to work.

Now that you’ve determined what are the things you can do without, and some dreams to aspire towards, go to work.

Not your job or your career, but working towards your dreams. Plan out each other’s roles in the process. Hold each other accountable for making things happen. When you are both working towards similar dreams, a synergy will be created in the marriage.

Then when these dreams are realized, you get to share them with a co-creator of them as well as someone you love. How great is that?

(photo source)

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The paradox of relationships

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Post written by Corey Allan

How many chameleons do you meet each day?

People who have the ability to blend into the group they’re with.

I know you’ve met a few, perhaps you’ve married one, or you’re one yourself.

A chameleon is the person who becomes whatever they believe the people they’re with want them to be in order to be liked. He’s the guy who uses the big words when he’s with his smart friends, talks sports with his athletic friends, cusses and swears with his work friends, is the perfect son when around his mother, and all business talk when with his father.

Underneath it all, the chameleon has no idea who they are or if anyone else would like them if they were able to just be themselves.

What drives them is the desire to be what they perceive others want them to be because if they don’t, they’re afraid they’ll wind up alone.

The irony of all this – they likely already feel alone most of the time anyway.

Since chameleons do not believe they are okay and likable just as they are, they will go to great lengths to convince themselves and others that they are lovable.

If you’re a chameleon, you may focus on something about yourself, or what you do, or even who you’re around in order to attain the approval and validation you seek from others – things like your looks, talent, smarts, work ethic, kindness, attractive spouse, cute kids, nice house or nice car.

While everyone gives these parts of life some thought, chameleons attach these parts to the perceived value it provides for their life. Let me give you an example:

Steve uses the various parts of his life to win approval and love from others. He prides himself for always being in a good mood, dressing well, living in the right neighborhood, driving a nice and always clean car, having cute kids, and an attractive wife. When he and his wife go out, he’s very concerned about how she looks because of the reflection her attractiveness to others has on him.

Steve also wants to be seen as a good dad, so he likes to dress his kids so they look cute, then take them to the park. He believes when others see his kids they will smile and perceive him to be a good father.

What’s interesting is that no one really values Steve for his attachments, as none of these things have anything to do with who he is as a man.

The Dilemma Of Close Relationships

Relationships, especially close ones, present a problem (and we all face this problem).

There’s no way that you can be in a close, committed relationship, and not have your partner discover who you really are.

This is the reason intimate relationships are so difficult. They’re balancing acts.

Every committed relationship carries with it the fear of hurt or betrayal due to vulnerability and the fear of isolation or loneliness if you’re not close. How you navigate this balancing act is the mechanism for growth in the relationship.

In reality: You can get as close as YOU choose in your relationships.

Perhaps you’ve believed the opposite – that your partner has to be open and available in order to create intimacy in the relationship. This is known as “other-validation,” and it’s very common in relationships (especially marriage).

Other-validated intimacy looks like this:

“I’ll tell you about me, but only if you tell me about you. If you don’t, I won’t either. But I want to, so you have to. I’ll go first and then you are obligated to disclose too: it’s only fair. But before I go, you have to make me safe and secure. I need to be able to trust you.”

When you approach relationships with too much emphasis on the other person and their reaction, response or validation – you create the chameleon. And being in a relationship as a chameleon, or with one, almost ensures that neither partner will experience the intimacy and love both are seeking in the relationship.

Being intimate with someone doesn’t mean you get the response you want.

There’s a fundamental truth at work in every relationship – relationships (good, bad, and everything in between) are co-created.

In order for there to be a relationship, the partner’s have to collude to create it.

This may hit you like a punch in the gut, but it’s truth.

To move beyond the chameleon and use your relationships to grow, here’s a few rules to follow:

  1. Confront yourself for the sake of your own integrity and personal development.
  2. Don’t count on your partner confronting him/herself … that’s his/her business.
  3. Stop taking your partner’s reactions personally.
  4. Don’t react to your feelings.
  5. Stop trying to change your partner.
  6. Stop trying to make your partner listen, accept or validate you.
  7. Forget about working on the relationship, and start working on yourself.
  8. Focus on your self, and not what your partner isn’t doing.
(photo source)

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Getting Married? Becoming Parents? Going Through Transitions

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Post written by premarital columnist Susanne Alexander of Marriage Transformation.

Transition. What do you think of when you hear that word?

It means “change” of course. But it applies to the big shifts in your life, such as becoming engaged, married, or parents.

These major transitions usually trigger an array of feelings, such as joy, grief, and anxiety. But sometimes our friends, relatives, and the media tell us we should be feeling only the happiness. Then, unfortunately, relationship-undermining doubts can arise.

Sheryl Paul, one of my collaborators in creating All-in-One Marriage Prep: 75 Experts Share Tips and Wisdom to Help You Get Ready Now, and an expert in relationship transitions says, “The problem isn’t the feelings; it’s our interpretation of the feelings. For example, we know it’s normal to feel anxious about graduating from college or starting a new job, but culturally we don’t know that it’s normal to feel scared about getting married. We put so much pressure on engaged couples to feel joyous, that we don’t leave any room for the more difficult feelings to surface.”

One of the values in marriage preparation education lies in its ability to help couples talk about this significant transition and build their confidence with new knowledge and skills. Sheryl says the couple can “discuss the grief about letting go of being single, the fear of making a lifelong commitment, and the normal and healthy questions about love in a long-term relationship.” (Paul offers an excellent Conscious Weddings eCourse: “From Anxiety to Serenity”)

What about the transition into marriage?

If the couple hasn’t dealt with their anxiety, and they go into the marriage with it unexpressed or addressed, how can this affect the stability of the marriage?

Post-wedding depression can be common, says Paul, and sadly more affairs can result, partially because couples question whether they made a mistake.

Addressing the normalcy of the feelings related to such a big transition before marrying is good divorce prevention. Paul says, “It’s quite tragic that people end perfectly good marriages simply because they don’t understand that it’s normal to feel anxious, scared, confused, and sad around the transition.”

For couples who deal with the emotions and go confidently into marriage, and who are successful in establishing their marriage on a firm foundation, becoming parents can be the next major transition. Couples who are discussing whether to have a child can often experience concerns about the permanence of such a step, and it can cause questioning about the quality of their marriage. Conversations with other couples who went through this transition, or with a coach or counselor, can be beneficial. Parenting training courses can also help build knowledge, skills, and confidence.

Once parenthood occurs, then marriage strengthening steps such as regular dates, an occasional workshop, and time with other married parents can provide support in reducing anxiety.

Marriage is a constantly shifting experience, and couples benefit from time alone together and help from others. A strong marriage is a primary gift couples give their children.

When we experience any major change, especially transitioning to marriage or parenthood, we can feel as if our life is somewhat out of our control. Discerning the emotions that are happening, sharing them with appropriate people, and understanding and accepting them, all allow us to move forward with confidence.

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