How to commit to the end
This post is from Tess Marshall of The Bold Life
January 14th is my 40th wedding anniversary.
I was 17 and pregnant when I got married. I was mom to four little girls by age 22 (my third pregnancy was twins).
The odds were stacked against us.
The first 10 years were filled with drama and insanity. We talked about going our separate ways. Deep down we knew we never would.
We knew there had to be a better way.
A friend suggested we seek professional help.
We overcame the fear of change, the fear of getting real, with ourselves and with each other, and the fear of getting professional help.
In 1982, every Wednesday night for six months, we hired a babysitter, drove 45 minutes to town, and paid $50 an hour out of pocket to see a therapist.
We were ready for change, we let go of blame, excuses and took responsibility. We were willing to look at the good, the bad, and the ugly. Our therapist would give us homework. We never missed a lesson.
The secret to a loving relationship is to do the work it takes to grow lovingly and peacefully into the future.
We learned to take down emotional barriers, open up and reveal our true selves, and do away with long silences. We learned to choose to be happy over needing to be right. We learned how to be good friends.
Most importantly we learned to forgive.
Today we know how to work together and be together. We know how to give each other space and trust each other. We know how to have fun, play, and be adventurous together.
We also argue, blame, get mad, forgive and begin again.
When it’s difficult, we take it slow. We take a time-out, walk away, get centered, and look within for the answers. When it’s difficult, we lean on each other.
You don’t have to wait for tomorrow to be again. Every moment is a clean slate.
When it’s easy we celebrate. Over time, you learn how to do “easy.” The other is too exhausting.
Once you commit to the end, there’s a certainty, a knowingness that brings inner peace and peace to the relationship.
The following tips when practiced will help you have a long and healthy relationship.
Kindness creates a mood of love.
Make a decision to be kind. Set a loving intention each morning. Use your manners. Look at each other with loving eyes. Love is a choice. The more love you choose, the more joy you feel.
Let go of fear.
?Love is letting go of fear. Learn to trust each other and count on each other. Know when to speak up and when to calm down. Open your hearts and offer each other a sense of safety. That’s how trust grows.
Your partner isn’t the source of your pain.
?You are 100% responsible for your relationship. If your partner is abusive, you’re responsible for “being” there. Get help and do what you have to do. Give up blame and learn to be accountable.
Focus on changing your own annoying habits.
It bothers me when my husband eats too fast. I only need to focus myself. Drop your attack thoughts. Add the words, “Just like me,” to anything you want to accuse your mate of doing. For example, “You eat too fast” changes to, “You eat too fast, just like me.”
Make forgiveness a way of life.
Think of yourself as a forgiving person. Grow into it. You can’t experience love when your heart and mind are full of hate. Let go of hurt and resentment.
Give up the pain of the past. It’s impossible to have a loving relationship without forgiveness. Impossible! Turn your burdens into blessings.
Create a spirit of unity.
Learn to ask for and receive love. Give more than you receive. The more love you share, the more love you have. Point all of your actions to love. Believe the best is yet to come.
Create room for intimacy and sex.
Turn off your electronics and spend quality time alone. Intimacy can be described as, “the ability to open up and reveal your true self or in-to-me-see.”
When you create intimacy in your relationship, sex is filled with meaning and love.
Seek help.
If these steps seem to difficult, reach out and get help. Don’t use money ask an excuse. If you have to scrub toilets or collect garbage for extra cash, do it. Your marriage is sacred. Learn to value it above all else, never let it fall apart or die.
Tess Marshall is the founder of The Bold Life and author of the new ecourse (just launched this week), Take Your Fear and Shove It.
(photo source)
10 Guidelines for Couple Decisions
Post written by marriage columnist Susanne Alexander of Marriage Transformation.
Here we go again!
Every time we need to discuss something, we have trouble doing it without fighting.
Help!
Having effective discussions and reaching peaceful agreements that work are often challenges for married couples.
Increasing skillfulness in this area will help your marriage mature in a healthy way and stay strong and happy.
For a couple to reach decisions without conflict, new skills are needed.
Here are 10 key guidelines for couple decision-making that will help you gradually improve:
- Remind yourselves of the importance of love, harmony, and unity between you. Take a pause break as needed throughout the discussion if this becomes at risk.
- Pray together before starting a serious discussion.
- Focus on a common goal. Agree on what the problem or issue is, so you are not trying to solve multiple problems at once or work at cross-purposes by trying to address different issues.
- Avoid being attached to a particular outcome. Determine to discover the truth together. Avoid stating something as absolute fact. Contribute thoughts towards building consensus and watch for when your perspectives coincide.
- Once you have expressed your thoughts and feelings, visualize them going into a central discussion “pot”. This allows the discussion to flow freely without either of you holding on to what you said.
- Encourage and freely share thoughts, feelings, and opinions with love, respect, and kindness. Strictly avoid criticism or domination of each other. Strive to be open to all expressions without taking offense.
- Carefully monitor and modify your attitude and tone of voice. If underneath your words is criticism, disrespect, or sarcasm, your spouse will hear them, even when your words are positive.
- Listen to each other carefully and without interruption and request clarification as needed.
- Strive for unified decisions, even when it takes longer. At times, consider deferring to the other’s solution, but still look at and carry out the decision as a unified couple one. However, avoid deferring regularly rather than taking the time to thoroughly discuss an issue. Thorough discussions usually result in better and more creative solutions.
- Review significant decisions after some time trying them out to assess whether they are working or whether you need to change direction. Stay aware for when you need to involve someone else in a discussion or decision for maximum effectiveness as well.
Decisions work best when you have equal voices in couple discussions, sometimes known as “couple consultation”. It is vital for you both to express what is on your minds and hearts freely. Either withholding your input or dominating the conversation will both negatively affect the outcome. If one of you tends to be more dominant in speaking, you will need to use self-discipline to give the other an opportunity to speak. The less dominant of you may also need to practice assertiveness. Free expression happens when you are both willing to listen patiently to one another and not interrupt.
It is vital to ensure the purity of your motives and intentions in any discussion. If either of you has a hidden agenda—an unspoken intention or goal—or you want to manipulate one another, the couple consultation is on a weak foundation from the very start. Be very aware if you have developed the habit of manipulation, particularly toward those of the opposite gender. Consultation is not a method to get your own way. You will be wise to help one another in changing this pattern, or it will have a consistent negative effect on your relationship.
Author John Kolstoe shares this wisdom about consulting together:
Since its purpose is to find a solution, consultation should not be used just to gain sympathy or to dump on someone. It’s not consultation when talking degenerates into a gripe session or gossip or complaining. These activities merely rehash the problem, making it worse. Rather than letting the anger out, this sort of dwelling on the unpleasant things of life causes delay, magnifies the hurt, and interferes with long-term healing. … In consultation, the intensity of suffering is diluted while the solution is developing. (Developing Genius, p. 201)
While it is normal and healthy for people to have different perspectives, and couples need to learn how to reconcile them, serious and regular conflict is an indicator of a marriage in trouble. John M. Gottman, PhD, and his team at the Relationship Research Institute in Seattle, Washington, have discovered a number of couple communication behaviors that warn of a conflicted couple (The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work).
The warning signs are:
- Starting interactions negatively and harshly
- Criticizing your partner’s character (character attack)
- Showing contempt for your partner (sneering, mocking, being superior)
- Reacting defensively to your partner (a form of blame)
- Shutting your partner out and avoiding communication (stonewalling)
- Experiencing a flood of strong physical responses to your partner’s negativity, such as increased heart rate, blood pressure, or sweating
If you are experiencing serious conflict in your marriage, and find that you are unable to build new skills on your own, please consider seeking professional help from a therapist.
Most couples, however, can decide to try new ways of interacting and make positive changes to reduce or eliminate fighting or serious disagreements. Think about how you feel when disunity arises between you, and make a determined effort to find new ways of reaching harmonious decisions.
(photo source)
How to live a great story
Welcome to 2012.
This year, same as the past several years, I’m on a mission to write and live a better story.
How is living a better story accomplished?
There are several parts to a great story (taken from Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years).
- The characters.
- They have to want something.
- They have to move into the conflict in order to get what they want.
- And there has to be a climactic resolution.
So how exactly does this apply to you?
Every story has a main character.
That’s you … check.
The character has to want something.
Again, this is up to you. What do you want in life? This year? Today?
I’ll share a few things on my list. I also want Simple Marriage to be one of the best resources on the web for marriage and relationships. My wife and I both want to volunteer more in our community. We want to share life more with friends.
On a relational level, my wife and I want to continue to connect even more. To have more adventures, deeper conversations, better sex (yes, she’s on board with this, it’s not just my wish), and overall more fun together. To make this happen, we have to do more of the following.
The character has to move into the conflict in order to get what they want.
In the movies, this is called the inciting incident. It’s what sets the stage for the climactic ending where the main character saves the child, or defeats the bad guy, or goes the full fight with the much younger boxer.
On a marital level, we are presented countless opportunities to move into the conflict, but often this option is counter intuitive. Whenever you and your spouse disagree or see things differently, this is a great time to move into the conflict.
Bear in mind however, moving into the conflict doesn’t necessarily mean you must win.
If you enter into relational conflict with the plans on winning, you often wind up losing in the end. After all, if you must always be the winner, what’s that make your spouse?
I used to think that conflict was something to be avoided. That I could somehow navigate life and relationships without it. I’d take the easy way out of things. Even going so far as not speaking up if I was given the wrong meal at a restaurant.
During the first several years of marriage, I’d do almost anything to avoid conflict. I lived by the old adage - “happy wife, happy life” or “happy spouse, happy house.”
It didn’t take long to realize that when I lived according to other people’s happiness and when I habitually tried to avoid conflict, I harmed myself in the long run.
Conflict produces change.
Truth is, none of us really want to change. That’s why so many new years resolutions fail.
So what does it look like to move into conflict?
For you it may mean you finally voice your opinion on something. Or you speak up during sex because you’re getting nothing out of it at the moment. Or you start your own business on the side. Or you tell important people in your life “no” for the first time.
For me it meant speaking up and risk upsetting or disappointing my wife. It meant quitting a career to finish graduate school faster.
Basically, moving into conflict often is more about following your gut. In the midst of conflict, you generally have a gut feeling about the best way to handle the situation. Many times however, this is ignored and you simply react.
Slow down, breathe, listen to you gut.
There has to be a climactic resolution.
This is not simply when you die, although that definitely is a resolution. This is when you achieve your goal. When you connect deeper with your spouse. When you stand on top of the mountain.
Whatever it is, begin with the end in mind.
Imagine what it would be like to stand on top of the mountain. Or to truly have a mutually satisfying sexual encounter. Or a deeper connection.
This will help you envision the steps that may be necessary to get there.
Then move into the story and don’t look back.
What do you think?
(photo source)
Secrets of Marriage
In Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project she compiles a list of truisms about life as an adult – The Secrets of Adulthood.
While marriage is best when it involves two grown ups, relationships often have slightly different rules and truths.
So what are the Secrets of Marriage?
Here’s what I’ve come up … add your thoughts in the comments.
- It helps tremendously if you can laugh at yourself.
- Women really do enjoy flowers and chocolates.
- The quality of sex ebbs and flows.
- Laughter really does cure a lot.
- The same result does occur if you keep doing the same thing.
- Worries can be self-fulfilling prophesies. Let them go.
- Conflict will happen.
- Expectations are planned disappointments.
- Little things are the things you love the most.
- Learning more about anatomy really improves sex.
- It’s easy to be infected by your spouse’s mood, but you can only change yours.
- By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.
- Most decisions don’t require extensive research.
- The days are long, but the years are short.
- Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy.
- What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE.
- You don’t have to be good at everything.
- What’s fun for other people may not be fun for you–and vice versa.
- It’s okay to ask for help.
Your turn.
Don’t bother rekindling your marriage … create something new
Post written by Dr. Corey Allan.
There is a popular belief in the marriage and relationship world that when the doldrums hit and you find yourself more numb than really alive, you should look for ways to get back what you once had.
Call it a spark. A zest. A passion. Whatever.
The point is, something’s missing and since you once had it – you can go back and find it again.
Wrong.
Life is not lived backwards.
Our past is important.
Who we once were is what our spouse found attractive (since that person caught the eye of your spouse and reeled them in the rest of the way). But the previous version of you is long gone and trying to go back and find him/her is a path to more frustration.
While you may be able to produce a brief spark by reminiscing about when you were dating, it won’t be a lasting spark.
The main reason – you’re up against the “love drug” in your brain.
When you first met and fell in love with your spouse you both experienced a chemically induced high. Your brain flooded with a chemical called Phenylethylamine (PEA), which remains in your brain from 6 months to 2 years. PEA produces a feeling of euphoria, a sense of belonging, and a feeling of obsession (which is why you want to talk and be with your new found love every moment).
As PEA fades over time (and it will) many people believe that you can recreate the same levels of emotion within the relationship. Problem is, you can’t.
You cannot go back a manufacture PEA in your brain within the same relationship (although I’m sure the pharmaceutical companies are trying to figure out a way).
What you can do, increase the levels of Oxytocin in your system.
Oxytocin is known as the “bonding” chemical. It produces the deep connection to others, the lasting bond that long term relationships create. Oxytocin is released when you bond with another person – the most intense experiences are mother and infant while nursing and during orgasm. But other contacts create this bond as well: massages, eye contact, hugs, holding hands.
On the other end of the spectrum, going through crisis and tragedy together dramatically increases the levels of Oxytocin as well.
This is why it is worth it to work through the rough patches in marriage.
What it produces is a deeper, more lasting bond.
Now that you know what you’re up against when you face the monotonous times in marriage, here’s a couple of ideas to help up the Oxytocin in your life:
1. Catch romance where you can
You can learn to build romance at unexpected times — during your daily commute, while doing laundry — you can even do this through a long, lingering kiss or just holding hands. In other words, the next time you hear find you’ve got a couple of minutes to yourselves, make use of it — give that Oxytocin a boost.
2. Nurture your separate selves
Having your own hobbies isn’t a sign you are drifting apart. On the contrary, developing individual interests allows for a richer life as a couple. Taking personal responsibility for your own well-being relieves the your spouse of the pressure to “provide” happiness — so go ahead and nurture some solo adventures. That’ll also keep each of you stocked with plenty of adventures to chat about, which also tightens your bond.
3. Take on a project together
Separate interests aside, exploring new ground together is also important since it strengthens your history of shared experiences (Oxytocin boost). Commit to run a 5K together. Create a project for your home or kids. Big projects together offer increases in Oxytocin because they are often filled with highs and lows, but the lows will create a bond as well. Couples who take on adventures together get a sense of daring and accomplishment that can really kick up their chemistry!
4. Touch each other (sexually and non-sexually)
The boost of connection you receive from human touch is huge. And every touch doesn’t have to be sexual in nature. Sure, sexual touch is important and will increase the connection, but so will non-sexual touch. Hold hands, hug, sit close beside one another, cuddle. Each little (or big) gesture can cause a boost of Oxytocin for both of you.
Got any more to add? Share them in the comments.
(photo source)
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