Normalize therapy.

Do you find yourself always taking the blame for everything? I mean, not so much in the sense that your spouse won’t accept any, but that you just find that YOU blame yourself for everything? Even your spouse thinks you take too much responsibility for things?

Last week we discussed differentiation. Remember, differentiation is the process of learning to simultaneously separate from and connect with a loved one.

If you find yourself always taking the blame and never taking the risk of putting yourself out there and defending your position, you may be challenged with this idea of differentiation. Or, if you find yourself NEVER willing to take responsibility but you just state the facts, explain everything very rationally, and point out logically what is right or wrong, you’re also challenged with differentiation.

Now, we don’t want to be creating a bunch of fights where spouses think they need to stand up for their own rights fully, 100% of the time, and never back down… No, this is for those of us who are always ready to take the blame (you know who you are) or who are NEVER willing to take any blame (you know who you are too!).

There are two categories here, so let’s go through them.

The Self-Blamer

The Self-Blamer, in its extreme form, looks like an abused and battered woman who has experienced physical violence in an intimate relationship. These women report the highest levels of self-blame and lowest levels of perceived control, tending to say, “It’s all my fault, I’ll try to better next time.” (Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2000)

Reich et all (2014) found that the higher our self-blame, the lower our self-esteem.

If this is you, you’re probably blaming yourself for having low self-esteem – that’s what is so hard about this! Your recovery starts when you say “I deserve to be treated with respect! I am going to make a plan, and execute it, to take myself (and kids) to a safe place where we will be treated respectfully.”

Listen to me. No one EVER deserves to be abused. You deserve love and respect! Don’t let anyone ever tell you differently!

A more mild form of self-blame looks like the spouse who is always apologizing and taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong. This can happen in relatively happy marriages. What is NOT working here, however, is the differentiation piece.

Self-blame actually lowers anxiety in the short term as it reduces risk – you can control all of the accommodating that needs doing by doing it all yourself. Instead, you should be saying, “Well, this is my part and I own that, but I need you to do this part differently.” State your needs and wants, and give your spouse the opportunity to adjust rather than just take the blame yourself because it feels safer.

How can you do this? Try slicing it a little thinner! Look at the situation this way. When something currently happens, you’re taking the whole situation and putting it on your plate (basically saying, “This is my slab of meat, I am to blame”). What you need to do is slice it a little thinner and genuinely own what is your fault, but then put back on the other person what is theirs. (Take your slice of meat, but leave what is their fault/issue on the plate for them to deal with).

If you’re in an abusive situation, this is going to create more abuse. So, your first step in slicing things a little thinner is realizing that your ‘part’ is accepting that you have accepted the role of an abused spouse and then choose to no longer be accepting of that. And get yourself to a safe place. Make a plan. Know what you’re going to do, and when, and how. Find out the resources available to you – there are a lot of them. Then execute the plan!

For those that aren’t in this extreme situation, you’ll want to learn to pause and stop yourself from taking the easy way out. Own what is truly yours; where you have genuinely misbehaved, or misspoken or wronged your spouse, but leave the rest on the table. Your spouse doesn’t actually want you taking the blame all the time because things don’t get settled that way!

Think of the word mutuality – that’s give and take. You both contribute to the problem – you both take responsibility for the problem. You both contribute to the loving moments in your marriage – you both take responsibility for that!

The No-Blamer

A better phrase for the No-Blamer is having a “super-reasonable stance” which the famous family therapist, Virgina Satir, discussed a lot.

This looks like a person who hides his or her feelings behind an aura of control, logic, and fact-finding. Super-reasonable – as in unflappable. “Feed me your emotionality, your personal garbage, your over-reactive nonsense and I will deliver you back some good calm, sterile, facts – solutions to your silly problem.“

No matter what level of emotionality your spouse throws at you, you are like a computer. This is just information which needs to be processed.

Here’s why it doesn’t work: it impedes open and honest communication because the super-reasonable person is fundamentally unwilling to be vulnerable which doesn’t let the spouse in to see the real person. They’re insulated from true feelings and downplay the feelings of others.

I know this sounds harsh – and if this is you and you’re reading – please read carefully and don’t rationalize this away. You have the same core wound as the self-blamer; low self-esteem and self-worth. You’ve just learned to cover your messy and painful emotional because you don’t feel permitted to be yourself. You have learned that you can feel safe at a distance and rely on your intellect to keep yourself from feeling and from being vulnerable.

The next time you find yourself being factual and cutting your emotions off at the neck, try stopping the conversation. Just pause… then say, “I feel vulnerable”. You will totally floor your spouse!

Your spouse is probably attacking when you go into the super-reasonable mode, but the one thing he or she most deeply wants is to see that little wounded boy inside you – or that scared wee girl you’ve got hiding behind all the logic. Your spouse wants to give that little one a hug and tell him it’s going to be ok – she wasn’t mad at him, she was just afraid she’d never see him.

Maybe you’ve identified yourself as a no-blamer. Now, how do you work with yourself on this?

Really, there are two parts to this: an elevated sense of self (compensating for low self-worth) and a negative, untrustworthy sense of others. This comes from your own unmet needs for love and validation (which sadly, and ironically, this coping stance perpetrates), and a failing to release self-defeating beliefs and perceived criticisms from self and others.

The way out of this is through this. Give voice to your needs, soothe yourself through it, identify healthy core feelings in response to this and allow those healthy needs to transform the unmet, maladaptive stuck feelings.

Yes, that’s a lot of therapy in couples sentences… “The goal here is to allow yourself to become a connected person who can hold him or herself in close physical and emotional contact with your spouse and other important people in your life.” (Schnarch)

We all carry some of these features in our interactions with our spouse. Healthy differentiation is about being willing to allow yourself to experience that without going and hiding behind your own anxiety. Think rather, “I want to be with you but not overwhelmed by you”.

When we are in that healthy place, we are optimally positioned to comfort and be present with our spouse.

In marriage, we need to strike a healthy balance between independence and dependence on each other. This is where we sort out the sticky stuff like needing you as my spouse versus just being needy - being an individual without taking away from a sense of ‘us’.

Differentiation is a key paradox of healthy marriage and is one of those concepts that when the skills are embodied takes a marriage from ordinary to extraordinary. It pushes the constant growth of the relationship and the individuals within it.

So, what is differentiation? It is the process of learning to simultaneously separate from and connect with a loved person.

This is different from a merger where there is an urgent, even desperate desire for one’s spouse to meet one’s needs. When the needs are not met, this is taken as abandonment or rejection.

Here’s an example of a merged relationship (Grau, Pastoral Psychology):

A husband tells his wife that the house is dirty, that she never fixes dinner anymore, that she is uninterested in sex and has no libido. A wife tells her husband that he is a “slob,” that he drinks too much, that he is a dictator. The husband says that if she would change even a little, he would be happier and their marriage would be better. The wife wants the husband to change and when he doesn’t, she tries to convince him, perhaps employing emotional and physical coercion.

They don’t realize that in requiring the other to change, they are giving their power away. This is a merger. It is a relationship that says “I need you to meet my needs”. Their happiness depends on the other’s behavior and it controls them.

A merger doesn’t work because the requirement that the spouse change sets up a hostile environment and the pressured spouse will distance, resist and retaliate in order to survive.

Going back to Grau’s story, let’s think about why they are doing this.

He is withdrawn and looks like an authoritarian or a drunk. He is acting unappealing (slob).

She is disengaged too: no interest in sex makes coming home and being at home unappealing. She attacks a lot which maintains the distance.

They are separating from each other but there are no words. When they talk, they are confrontational and not trying to connect. There’s a lot of blame and accusation.

They are both anxious about the relationship, but when they talk about it and how they act around it all serves to keep the distance. They keep the distance because they’re anxious. So they’re in a crazy cycle.

Let’s go back to differentiation now. Remember, differentiation is the process of learning to simultaneously separate from and connect with a loved person.

It may be easiest to use an example to explain what I’m talking about…

Not long ago, Caleb and I had a conversation about lingerie. He revealed to me some thoughts, expressed what he wanted, and how he wanted to feel.

That’s him asking me for something that relates to him. In doing so, he was separating himself from me: stating ‘this is my position’. In that same moment – simultaneously – he was connecting with me by giving me a picture of his inside world. That is differentiation: simultaneously separating from and connecting to his beloved.

Caleb was putting himself out there – he felt anxiety. But he didn’t withdraw and mull over or ruminate over thoughts like, “I wish she would do this or that”. He put himself out there and made himself vulnerable.

That’s the first step! This is not about getting away from anxiety, but about using it instead of letting it control you. Our typical response is to be like the husband or wife in the merger example that withdraws or retaliates.

“I had to self-soothe and self-comfort,” Caleb says, “and take the risk and put myself out there.” This is the hardest thing to do but in the end, he stated a desire that he had and left the ball in my court. His happiness did not depend on me fulfilling that desire, but he made himself vulnerable by stating something intimate that he wished for.

He simultaneously connected with me by stating his intimate desire but separated from me in that his happiness did not depend on me. Sound familiar? Somewhat like differentiation?

Going back to the research for a moment… The research shows that if a husband is emotionally cut off, there is going to be more marital strife. This emotional strife is typical of relationships where there is a merger. At the same time, greater emotional reactivity predicts more marital distress (Skowron, 2000).

In other words, if I’m not available to you we’re going to fight more. And if you’re freaking out on me all the time we’re going to fight more. We want to work on self-disclosing in a relatable way that leads to intimacy, not distancing.

Yes, there is always a risk. When you reveal yourself and differentiate, your spouse may not respond favorably.

If your spouse says “No!” do not move into conflict and start blaming or accusing. Pause, and reiterate your experience. If you get nowhere, leave it for later – maybe even years later.

But here is the critical point: your happiness is not predicated on your spouse doing what you need. Rather, become attuned to what you need, your feelings, experience, and point of view. Accept yourself, and then accept your spouse.

This is differentiation. The separating is Caleb putting himself out there stating what he wanted that I wasn’t doing, but in a way that is connecting with me by revealing his inner world.

It’s a paradox really – the pulling away from and moving towards simultaneously.

Our title is If I Need You, Does That Make Me Needy? Perhaps it should read something like, “I want to live more fully with you, but I’m not going to be needy about it”. Wanting to be close is good if it comes from a place of fulfillment and abundance (accepting yourself FIRST!). Neediness comes from a place of anxiety and insecurity.

Which leads us to the next layer in all this - Autonomy and Relatedness.

Autonomy is my independence, and your independence; our individuality. Relatedness is the closeness between us.

In a study from the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy looking at 386 couples, they found that high levels of autonomy and relatedness characterized the best marriages. Also known as differentiation…

One of the beliefs that these “best marriages” held was the provision or encouragement of one construct for a spouse is not necessarily at the expense of the other. Here’s another personal example, quoted from Caleb:

“So, Verlynda is an avid extrovert. I encourage, cherish and appreciate that about her but have no need myself to try to become like that. It’s not a threat to me. I don’t feel deficient because she is way better at meeting new people than I am. We still feel closeness but in a crowd, we act autonomously. I will have a deep conversation with one or two people. She will connect with and enjoy relating to several people. Our constructs of personality don’t have to clash. We are able to be different and both be ok with that!”

The study also found that when spouses encourage a sense of autonomy in their partners, their partner feels more positively about the relationship.

However, concerning autonomy, there is a key gender difference. Wives are more likely to perceive the encouragement of autonomy as a threat to the relationship. Often, couples present for marital therapy with wives expressing concern that the couple is not close to each other and the husband expressing desires that both spouses develop more autonomy.

If this is the experience in your marriage, you need to do two things:

Accept that both sets of concerns (autonomy and relatedness) are valid simultaneously

Work on increasing the sense of relatedness first.

Our marriage was like this at the start. Caleb wanted more autonomy, which made me feel threatened. There was a long period in there where we really worked on that sense of relatedness and togetherness. In the last number of years, we’ve started to step up the autonomy as well. It’s worked really well for us.

So, to start really building differentiation in a marriage, you need to have a strong sense of relatedness first – then start to bring in autonomy.

Often a key part of autonomy is learning healthy self-disclosure – revealing personal information about yourself to your spouse. This is an act of intimacy.

Another study looking at self-disclosure found that couples do this best when they have the characteristics of responsiveness and high self-esteem. Responsiveness is just the ability to draw someone out in the discussion. Self-esteem seems to affect men more than women.

Men tend to withdraw with then self-esteem is low. They want to hide because the world says that men are not to be weak. If you have high self-esteem as a male, you’ll be stronger at self-disclosure.

For females, on the other hand, their self-disclosure is based more on how they esteem their relationship. If they value it highly, they’ll be more likely to self-disclose.

In summary, every strong couple needs to be related and independent at the same time. In so doing, they will increase the skill of differentiation and in so doing take their marriage from ordinary to extraordinary.

We live in a quick-fix society. Everything is easy, cheap and disposable. Somehow we’re trained to think about what we get OUT of things, rather than what we can build into them to make them better.

Sometimes marriage can seem complicated. Daily rituals are the little things that can combat the rough areas and make a difference in the day-to-day-living of a couple. They are easy and are sure to really boost your marital happiness.

We’re not talking about one-off try-this-when-you-get-home-today ideas, but things that you can weave into the daily fabric of your marriage. Be intentional about building daily rituals into your marriage and families to make them bastions of love and security. Make your marriage a safe harbor to return to daily!

First, let’s look at the “why”, and then we’ll give some suggestions for the “how”.

Why are Rituals Even Necessary?

Rituals in marriages and families have two parts: (1) behavior and (2) its meaning or symbolism. There is a very practical component (the habit, or behavior) and a symbolic component (meaning) that makeup part of your couple-identity.

We all have routines, but rituals are different – they have meaning. The meaning may never be stated or agreed on, but the meaning is still there. Other times it might be something explicitly discussed and agreed to.

A brief, personal example here: one of our daily rituals is that at night, we hold each other in bed. Almost always in the same position…It’s not sexual…We don’t sleep like this because we’d overheat…But it’s several minutes long and we pray together. That’s the behavior. The meaning of this is it’s one of our moments when we feel most together, it brings joy, and it’s a way that we ground ourselves after a crazy day because yes, even though we help other marriages, ours is not perfect! But this ritual just reassures us that no matter has happened, is going on, or is going to happen…we are together!

Some of the benefits of marriage rituals were identified in an article from the Journal of Family Psychology as follows:

Identity – they help define who you are as a couple

Provides a sense of lovability

Increases cohesion

Provides stability during times of stress or transition

Provides a sense of belonging, closeness and group membership

Overall booster for psychological health and functioning.

Another study showed that families who were more invested in rituals experienced more positive relationship quality and closeness.

But sadly, in some marriages rituals are absent. Haugland & Storm (2005) found that there was a drastic increase in unpredictability when couples or families stopped practicing routines and rituals. The family cohesion was weakened (the sense of togetherness decreased) which led to the family not feeling as safe.

Maybe it’s the word ritual that makes it sound airy-fairy, but these meaningful habits actually have a huge impact on the happiness and satisfaction of your marriage.

How Can I Add Rituals to my Marriage?

You probably have some of your own daily rituals of connection, and that is awesome! Acknowledge those and then take it up a notch – add a few more to the routine. Here are ten ideas of Rituals of Daily Connection:

Morning hug or cuddle – start the day off well! Even if you get up at different times, or one leaves for work super early, make sure you connect, even briefly before you go your separate ways for the day.

Touch Base around lunch – Whether it’s a text or a phone call, take the time to be in touch with your spouse and let them know you’re thinking about them.

5 for 5 – Spend the first five minutes at home within 5 feet of your spouse. It just gives those few moments of reconnection and lets your spouse know they’re the most important thing to you in your day.

Coffee or Tea together – Pardon the personal reference, but this is one of the favorite times of my day; Caleb and I have breakfast and coffee after the girls get on the school bus. Whenever one of us has plans and it doesn’t happen, I really miss my husband. Sometimes, in the evening, we’ll make a coffee and sit and chat at the table after the dishes are done – we know some parents that have to do this in their room with the door locked to get that one-on-one time. Whatever works! J

Walk or work-out together – I love going for walks with Caleb. Not so much working out, I prefer to do that on my own. But I know other couples that love that bond that comes with exercising together. Whichever you do, make sure you’re keeping your body’s healthy!

Hold Hands in the car, on the couch, whenever you have – Touch! Seriously, just touch. It doesn’t have to be sexual or even lead to anything, but that physical touch has physiological benefits as well as emotional benefits.

Go to bed together! This is SO important. I can think of quite a few couples who ended up with major issues in their marriage (affairs, pornography use, etc.) who conducted the illicit behavior after their spouse went to bed. So not only does the time in bed together give you a time of connection, but it also protects against the enemy.

Six-second hug – Make sure you hug, every day, for at least six seconds. And no, do not count out loud! (Caleb will count every once in a while just to bug me…) Relax into your spouse and feel your spouse relax into you. Let them know, physically, that you’re there for them.

Dishes together – Remember, what happens in the bedroom starts at the kitchen sink! Not only that but helping your spouse makes them feel supported – that they’re not alone in this relationship.

Meet & Greet – Always greet or send off one another at the door with a hug and a kiss. It’s so easy with our busy lives to just yell ‘good-bye’ over our shoulders, but stop and take the time to show your spouse you care that they’re leaving or have just arrived home. As a bonus – your kids will pick-up on this too. It is awesome to see our girls run to Caleb for a hug when he comes home from work.

There are so many rituals that you can build into your daily living that can add cohesiveness and connection. It takes a little effort to work them in, but the impact is enormous.

What are your favorite rituals in your marriage?

There is a lot of discussions nowadays in the business world about work-life balance. Today I want to challenge and inspire you to think seriously about your work-marriage balance!

Materialism is the excessive desire to acquire and consume material goods. Think about the choices and values you place on material things (things you can buy) and how that affects your satisfaction with your marriage.

Not that wealth is bad, nor is it wrong to prosper. Owning and enjoying material things is not bad either. What we see from the research is that it is not so much the value OF things but the value we GIVE to things and wealth that influences our marital satisfaction.

We’re going to look at four things: how marriage makes you wealthier, how work impacts marriage, how materialism itself affects marital quality, and how starting a family sooner or later (as a financial/career decision) affects life and family satisfaction.

Marriage Makes You Wealthier

Zagorsky published his findings in the Journal of Sociology (2005) after conducting a study of individuals in their youth, then into their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. He found:

Single people slowly increase their net worth over time

Married people experience a 77% increase in net worth than single people

On average, their wealth increases by 16% for each year of marriage.

Divorced people: wealth starts to decrease 4 years before the divorce and they end up experiencing an average wealth drop of 77%

The message is NOT: Stay wealthy – don’t get divorced! The message is, you have the opportunity to get married, go for it, and take care of your marriage because one of the usual blessings is an increased likelihood of growing your net worth.

Another thing, putting the heartache and really difficult consequences aside, it’s way cheaper to do counseling or coaching or marriage enrichment work early on and even when you feel like you don’t need it, than it is to go through a divorce. Be proactive about enriching and maintaining the quality of your marriage!

Work Impacts Marriage

Maume and Sebastian surveyed 372 couples (Journal of Family Economics, 2012).

They discovered that for men, working a fixed night schedule lowered marital quality compared to men who worked fixed days. Also, marriages suffered when work schedules limited the time they could spend with their spouses. We’re not condemning you if this is what you need to do. We have good friends that have done this, but it’s hard!

For women, it was a little different. Because of the expectations to get things done at home, outside-the-home-work was a disruption to family life, time for herself and time to engage with family members. This culminated in a negative marital effect if she was working rotating schedules, in particular.

If you’re feeling really stuck and feel you have no other options for work, then your task is to figure out ways you can make the best of it and compensate for this challenge.

Infidelity is something to keep in mind when in the workplace. A separate study showed that men with higher incomes are more prone to engage in infidelity. (Interestingly, for women, it’s the opposite.) Perhaps it’s because they spend more time in the workplace to create wealth, or perhaps only due to the fact that their professional and personal lives include more opportunity to engage in these illicit relationships.

“Researchers have found that around one-half of participants who had cheated on their partner and who sought therapy (due to problems in their primary relationship) had met their extradyadic partner through their work”.

We definitely need to be cautious about the impact that work can have on our marriages! Be aware of how decisions around work and career impact our marriage for better or for worse.

Spending Affects Marital Quality

In 2011, Carroll et all looked at how aligned couples were on how their money should be spent and how that influenced their marriage. The findings were really interesting:

Even when aligned, if both were pro-materialism, they had a lower quality of marriage.

Mid-range quality marriages were those where one was high on materialism.

The best quality of marriages occurred when the couple was both low on materialism.

Another study led by the same researcher found that materialistic attitudes led to higher perceptions of financial problems (more so than income levels), which in turn negatively affected levels of marital satisfaction.

Family Planning

One of the big decisions we make is when to start a family - that’s where emotional and relational issues meet head-on with financial and career issues. Rather than give you our opinions on this (as it can be quite a hot-topic!), we’re just going to go straight to the research.

A US national study of 3504 individuals showed that both men and women reported lower levels of life satisfaction when they had previously decided to delay family for their career. Both men and women reported more work-family stress.

Another study pointed out lower rates of having children is directly linked to materialism, and “those who do not delay relationships and family tend to experience significantly more satisfaction with life”.

In summary here, I think I have to say, “Ouch!” Just talking about this has challenged me on what I believe in life in general and how that affects my marriage. I hope it has done the same for you. Sometime to grow, we need to have the facts pointed out and be challenged!

I also think we really need to think about the value we place on material goods! The Lord Jesus taught in the book of Matthew, “Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also.” In other words, whatever you love (where your heart is) is where your value will grow the most (there will your treasure be). So, it’s what we love or what we value that matters, not if we have a lot of value.

Some food for thought, on a winter-Wednesday!

Because of how sexuality is portrayed in media and how we are socialized to perceive it in our culture, I think there’s this perception that arousal is just something you flip the switch on to get things warmed up for sex. In reality though, what happens in the marriage bed starts much earlier, and much differently!

This week, we really want to challenge you to push the idea of intimacy out past the bedroom and to think about it as part of the fabric of your daily lives.

We have this simplistic idea that intimacy equals sex and sex equals intimacy. We need to move away from this to a broader definition of intimacy that includes a connection between the two spouses in marriage on every level: body, soul, and spirit (or physical, emotional, and spiritual).

In particular, look at the emotional and spiritual as being precursors or even prerequisites to the physical!

Did you know that “we are most emotionally invested in a relationship when we depend alone on that relationship for sexual intimacy” (Hill, 2002)? That commitment to sexual fidelity should cause us to try to nurture and deepen our emotional intimacy.

Intimacy-killers such as affairs, pornography and mommy porn (through books or movies like 50 Shades of Grey) rob marriages of emotional intimacy. Fidelity and loyalty are critical (marital commitment is one of the top 5 predictors of marital success), so make sure you continue to build them into your marriage. Remember, being close emotionally leads to being close physically!

There are a couple of interesting little tidbits in the research about this. 1 – Men are more likely than women to expect sexual behavior in the absence of emotional closeness and 2 – Women are more likely to agree to sex when her husband expresses value for her and provides nurturance and comfort to her.

These facts emphasize our point to husbands – Husband, touch your wife’s heart before you touch her body!

Emotional intimacy is more important as a segue to arousal for woman than it is for men. I don’t know if this is rooted in our DNA or if we’re just so socialized for it that it works out this way, but that’s how it is!

Another study we looked at couples in mid-life. Yes, it’s an older age group than most of you, but this is where you’re heading so it’s worth noting. The couples were asked the question, “What do you think of sex without love?”

The results came in for both men and women, that if their marriage relationship was strong on emotional pleasure, they were far more disapproving of sex without love. These more mature couples realized the overall value and meaning of emotional intimacy as part of their sexual intimacy.

The research also showed that the higher the emotional quality of the relationship, the greater the frequency with which the couple would have sex!

All this information just highlights the fact that intimacy is more than sex. It also highlights the fact that while media and popular thinking is selling cheap, instant gratification sex, what is more satisfying is the making love out of a relationship that has been lovemaking for a long time.

If you focus on emotional intimacy, you receive a wider spectrum of benefits that includes more sexual intimacy.

So, how do we do that?

Establish some basic rituals of emotional connection. An easy one is daily talking and sharing. Try to have some time, even if faced with the challenge of young children or conflicting schedules, when you can just share your days.

We use 5 for 5 - five minutes with five feet of each other within five minutes of getting home from work. We also have breakfast together after the kids get on the school bus. When we don’t do this, we start to feel like strangers and really miss it.

And before you start thinking that Caleb and I are unique somehow and have always had the perfect marriage – we haven’t. In fact, there have been times when I wasn’t sure if our marriage would make it. But we’ve worked at it, and made the time to talk, and learned how to communicate and build emotional intimacy, and are living proof that this stuff works!

It takes commitment, not only to set aside the time to talk but also to learn the skills to communicate effectively.

Emotional intimacy – and even sexual intimacy – is built on the back of being able to talk to each other. If you want help with this, check out Talk To Me 101, a powerful communication course for smart couples.

What if you could focus on just five things to make sure that your marriage is a success?

Relationships can sometimes seem pretty complicated. For this reason, we took a step back to ask the question, “What are the core things that we MUST focus on to make sure we’re on the right track towards marital bliss?”

We found (through the research of the National Marriage Project and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values) that the top five things to bring happiness to your marriage are:

Number 1 – Above average sexual satisfaction

The research says that “sexually satisfied wives enjoy a 39-percentage-point premium in the odds of being very happy in their marriages, and that sexually satisfied husbands enjoy a 38-percentage-point premium in marital happiness.”

From this we conclude that couples with a better sex life report to be happier in their marriage!

It’s normal for sexual activity to decline immediately following the birth of a child, but it’s important that couples rekindle and renew this part of their relationship as quickly as possible. (Keep a lookout for a great upcoming episode – “How to get it on when you really don’t feel like it” or something like that!)

Husbands, here’s a newsflash for you… “Woman are more likely to report that they are sexually satisfied when they report that they share housework with their husbands. What happens outside the bedroom seems to matter a great deal in predicting how happy husbands and wives are with what happens in the bedroom.”

The research also shows that men and women are more sexually satisfied in marriages “marked by high levels of generosity, commitment, religious faith, and couple-centered quality time.”

I always knew that sexual intimacy was more than just what happened in bed, but I didn’t realize that it was affected by so many areas of life!

Cultivate a great sex life – you’ll have a happier marriage!

Number 2 – Above average commitment

“The association between commitment and marital success is striking. Spouses who score above average in terms of commitment are at least 45 percentage points more likely to report being “very happy” in their marriages, and 29 percentage points less likely to be prone to divorce. In other words, above-average commitment more than triples the odds of marital happiness for husbands and wives and reduces their divorce proneness sixfold.”

Wow! This tells me that more commitment equals more happiness in marriage. It also shows that more commitment equals a significant drop in divorce risk.

How committed are you to your marriage? How are you building that commitment? And how are you communicating that commitment to your spouse?

Deepening your commitment so that it is above average is a top predictor of a very happy marriage.

Number 3 – Above average generosity to your spouse

First, let’s define generosity in the context of marriage. It is simply “the virtue of giving good things (we don’t mean jewelry) to one’s spouse freely and abundantly. It encompasses small acts of service (like making coffee for your spouse in the morning), the expression of affection, displays of respect and a willingness to “forgive him/her for mistakes and failings”.

Embrace a spirit of service – not entitlement, and genuinely look for ways to serve one another. Add to that frequent displays of affection (hugs…kisses…holding hands…smiles…winks) and being ready to forgive, and you have a winning combination!

Learning to serve each other generously in this way leads to a very happy marriage!

Number 4 – Above average attitude towards raising children

I found this part of the research interesting. “Fathers and mothers who spend lots of time with their children in activities such as playing, talking, or working on projects together also enjoy significantly higher levels of marital happiness and lower divorce proneness (and also enjoy more couple time with one another)."

Some research has indicated in the past that more family time means the couple isn’t as happy; as in, kids make marriages less happy. However, these researchers found that high family values correlated with happy marriages.

Notice the piece in brackets though: it is especially effective when you add couple time. They also found that "wives who spend quality time with their spouses once a week or more are about 50 percent more likely to be “very happy” in their marriages.

In other words, a regular date night appears to be part of the recipe for marital success among today’s parents."

Both things together are the strongest. Celebrate your marriage, celebrate your parenthood. Don’t resent the kids because you wish it could be just the two of you, and don’t be so child-centered that you have no sense of being a couple as opposed to just co-parenting. BOTH AND, not EITHER OR!

Be engaged as a parent but make sure you romance each other as a couple. If you’re struggling with a child-centered marriage, make sure you check out Episode 2!

Placing a balanced emphasis on marriage AND parenting predicts a happy marriage!

The first four predictors of marital success were equal for men and women, but number five is different. Let’s go with ladies first…

Number 5 for wives – Social Support

For a woman, having friends or family who are supportive of their marriage is very important.

The classic movie image of four wives bellyaching over their salads about their husbands is NOT GOOD. It’s so easy to put ourselves in a situation where it is acceptable to complain about our husbands.

Remember, they say that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. What if we say, your perception of your own husband is the average of the perceptions of the husbands of the 5 woman you are closest to? Where does that leave your view of your husband?

Surrounding yourself with friends and family who support marriage (and your marriage specifically) will make you a woman very happy in her marriage.

Number 5 for husbands – Marital spirituality

Marital spirituality is linked to beliefs and behaviors that strengthen the marriage bond. Meaning, a husband who believes God is at the center of his marriage is more likely to report a higher level of commitment (number 2 above) and show more generosity to his wife (number 3 above).

So here’s a call to husbands to put your marriage and your family into a spiritual context that honors and cherishes marriage. As in, go to church together! It amazes me how some people will give priority and be religious about taking their children to Sports or 4-H or Boy Scouts or Cadets and yet will miss church at the drop of the hat to do other “family” things.

Listen, if you want to bless your marriage and your family, put God at the center of that and then build the other activities around it. Why? Because placing an emphasis on God at the center of your marriage is not only the right thing to do Biblically, but it is also confirmed by the research that this will make men very happy in their marriage.

There you have it: 5 things to focus on to create a very happy marriage. Take the time to review and challenge your marriage this week. You want to succeed – so focus on the things that really work!

As I sit here, gazing at a picture of my handsome husband, I am asking myself the question, “Should I talk to him about it? It has been bugging me for a few days… Oh, I know! I’ll just shoot him a text message and hint at it – that’ll work out well!”

NOT!

I think the age-old question of “Should I bring it up with my spouse or just let it go?” needs some good wisdom thrown at it.

To start with, I want to quote Caleb who says, “Marriage is a crucible for character formation – but only if we’re willing to act as a catalyst of change for the benefit of our spouse.”

Our spouses see the ugly side of ourselves the most and the neat thing about marriage is they can point out the uglies (in a nice way, obviously!) in the secure bond of a loving relationship, and it gives us the chance to change and grow. If they never pointed anything out (were never our catalyst for change) we wouldn’t have that opportunity to improve!

This brings me to the topic of ideals. [Hear me out for a bit as I’m going in all different directions. I will pull it all together, really! :)]

Ideals… Idealism scares Caleb and I. We always thought that ideals were this level of perfectionism that we could never achieve. Then, all the research he looked at about ‘confronting or letting go’ centered on ideals!

We were thankful to learn though that the research also says not to have unrealistic high standards. In other words, don’t set your ideals so high that they are difficult or impossible to live up to. Ideals should be realistic and achievable standards.

So, what can we do to bring about change in our marriage, and not set ourselves up with unrealistic ideals? Here’s a hint, sitting back with your arms crossed and mouth shut and expecting your spouse to achieve your ideals doesn’t work… Here are two things to work on: all based on communication.

1. Quantity of Communication.

This is simple. More is better.

The research shows that couples are happier with their marriage when they think their relationship matches their ideal standards. Sounds obvious enough!

Given that a marriage does not start with all our ideals aligned, how do we align those ideals and make the marriage more satisfying? Or, What if we get them aligned and then move into a different phase of life where things have to change, again?

That’s where quantity matters! Spouse’s ideals align best when they are communicating more about them. By talking about them, the ideals can align, and because of that, each spouse becomes more satisfied with their marriage.

One thing we hear a lot when talking to people that are struggling in their marriage is language around misalignment. “She’s just not interested in working on this part of our marriage,” or “We just can’t see eye to eye on this particular issue.”

Our answer to that is to communicate about it! Seriously, if you want to get your ideals lined up because you believe this leads to relationship satisfaction – talk about it. Talking allows you to influence each other’s viewpoints, which influences how you experience reality. The biggest influence on connecting ideals to satisfaction is communication. You have to be talking this stuff through!

2. How You Communicate

Not only is the quantity important, but you also need to be strategic about HOW you communicate your ideals!

The first step is to do some thinking yourself! Be clear on your own ideals and ask yourself if they are realistic. Here is an example of an unrealistic ideal versus realistic:

Comparing your wife to models in magazines, or, worse yet, women in pornography, is NOT a realistic ideal. It’s VERY unhealthy and wrong, actually. Expecting your husband to match the ideals in your romance and harlequin novels is equally wrong.

It IS realistic to hold an ideal that BOTH of you try to bring a healthy – not perfect – body to your marriages, in so much as you are able to control. It IS realistic to expect both of you to act romantically, and get your sexy on with each other.

See the difference there?

Now that we’ve thought it through and have a realistic ideal, how do we go about communicating this to our spouse?

Here are some ideas of what does NOT work (from Overall et all, 2006, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology):

Repeated and unsuccessful attempts to change your spouse can be damaging to the relationship. When an attempt is unsuccessful, we add more powder to the cannon, which make us more unreasonable, which makes the chance of our attempt more unsuccessful – and we’ve got a pretty crazy cycle going nowhere good.

Pursuing change and trying to ‘manage’ your spouse towards your ideal communicates a lack of acceptance and negative views. Another word for this is nagging. Nagging at your spouse just leads to them feeling unaccepted, and leads to less satisfaction in the relationship.

Remember, whether or not you bring something up with your spouse is LESS important than HOW you decide to bring it up. The topic doesn’t matter. The WAY you talk about that topic does. Which leads me to the next point…

3. Pull the Bandaid Off Fast!

Some people ask for a change in their spouse, it happens, and the marriage is happier. What do they do that makes them more successful?

Let’s go to the research to answer this. Overall et all conducted another study on 61 couples. They videotaped the couple discussing an area of change they would like to see in their spouse. They measured marital satisfaction before the discussion, immediately following the discussion, and then followed up with the couple every three months for a while.

The results? If a couple was direct in the discussion about the change they wanted to see, the rating of marital satisfaction immediately following the discussion went down and the couple believed they were not very successful in promoting change. If they were indirect, immediately following the conversation both spouses felt better.

What was interesting to me was the results over the following year: The researchers found that over the year, things went opposite on them! Direct strategies led to greater change and indirect strategies led to less change. So while pulling off the bandaid slowly felt better in the short term, ripping it off fast produced a more positive outcome in the marriage over the longer term!

Indirect communication is tactful and patient. It uses positive affect (being warm and loving) to soften the conflict but usually fails to motivate.

Direct communication, on the other hand, is open and frank, forthright and direct. It makes the problem clear and points out the consequences of the spouse’s behavior. Note that it does NOT include attacking, blaming, name-calling, etc.

But when you are forthright and direct, you are clearly communicating the severity of the problem and as a result, the nature and degree of change needed is vividly conveyed.

[I want to bring up defensiveness here. If you’re anything like me, it’s easier to get defensive and throw blame back at your spouse rather than make changes in your own life. This is where the response of “You might be right” can be a huge help. (Read more about defensiveness here)]

Now, to bring all this together (I told you I’d get here eventually!), it is good to bring issues up with your spouse and get them sorted out. First, make sure your ideals or standards are realistic before you approach your spouse, then talk about them…a lot. Not only your ideals or wishes but your spouse’s too! And when talking, use direct communication. Tell your spouse what you need. Be firm but fair, and don’t keep nagging them – that doesn’t work.

Rip that bandaid off fast – while there will be more discomfort right at the start, healing and change will be more effective.

It’s Valentines Day this weekend! Happy Valentine’s Day!

We specialize in marriage and love so we’re supposed to be all enthused about Valentine’s, right!? So, why do we have mixed feelings about it all?

First, some history…

There is no firm historical record of how Valentine’s Day came to be, but there are a couple of commonly held possibilities.

Apparently, there was an ancient Fertility festival called Lupercalia which occurred on February 15th. This lovers’ holiday traces its roots to raucous annual Roman festivals where men stripped naked, grabbed goat- or dog-skin whips, and spanked young maidens in hopes of increasing their fertility.

Another source we found said that during the festival, young women would place their names in a large urn. The young men would draw a name from the urn and then be romantically linked with that young woman for the following year.

Either way, I’m thankful we’ve moved on to a more commercialized version of Valentine’s Day!

The Catholic church, however, says it has nothing to do with these ancient pagan rites. Rather, the day’s celebration stems from three possible St. Valentines.

The most probable of which was a young priest who was put to death for marrying young Christians against the orders of the Roman Emperor. Before being put to death on February 14th, he sent a letter to the jailor’s daughter – with whom he had become friends – and signed if “From your Valentine”.

Regardless of which Valentine the holiday is named after, in 469 A.D. Pope Gelasius changed the date of Lupercalia from the 15th of the month to the 14th, in order to distance it from the rituals of the Roman pagan love festival and connect it with St. Valentine.

The last alternative of the history of the Valentine story is also probable.

The Roman Emperor at the time, Claudius II, prohibited young men to marry because he believed that unmarried men made better soldiers. St. Valentine took pity on these young men and began to perform secret marriages so they could be with their lovers. Emperor Claudius became aware of what St. Valentine was doing and had him imprisoned.

Emperor Claudius attempted to convert Valentine to worship the Roman god, but St. Valentine refused and in return attempted to convert the Emperor to Christianity. Emperor Claudius did not respond well to this and sentenced Valentine to be killed. After his death, Valentine then became what is known as a “Patron Saint.” Some consider him the spiritual overseer of an annual festival in which young Romans would distribute cards of affection to those they wished to formally see. This festival was held each February 14.

Apparently, there are Valentine cards in museums worldwide that date back to 1415 and massed produced valentines began in the 1840s with the first “chocolate box” introduced by Richard Cadbury in 1868.

Back to today…

Here are some interesting statistics:

In 2014, the National Retail Federation estimated that US Consumers would spend $17.3 billion on the Valentines Day holiday! OVER $17 BILLION!!!

Women purchase 85% of all Valentine’s

64% of men will buy flowers on Valentine’s Day.

This raises the interesting subject of expectations! What do we expect of each other? And what do others expect of us?

For us, we just see this as a commercial event. There is NO RESEARCH that says that the billions of dollars spent on Valentines in North America actually do anything to benefit marriages.

We don’t need it for our marriage, but we don’t want to Grinch your Valentine’s either. Some folks have a very warm, romantic tradition around Valentine’s – and that’s awesome!

What makes us start to grumble is what others expect of us. That’s where you have to have your own love languages and set boundaries on other’s expectations of you. And both be ok, together, on that!

Talk to your spouse about your expectations for this holiday. You might be ok with not doing anything, but if the girls at the office hear you don’t get anything, will that make you feel bad? Or maybe, you could really care less about receiving flowers and chocolates knowing that society guilted your spouse into buying them. Or perhaps you have very strong expectations that your spouse do certain things, and your spouse doesn’t feel that way… That could get awkward unless you tell your spouse what you’re expecting from the day!

Chocolates and flowers may last a week or two, but this Valentine’s, why not give something that will deepen your intimacy for the rest of your marriage. The gift of communicating, the gift of listening!

Image courtesy of AquaOwl under the Creative Commons license.

In 2015, couples are saying that communication is their biggest struggle. Why, when we’ve never had so many ways to communicate and keep in touch as we do now, are people still struggling with this?

The research is somewhat ironic. Well, not the research itself, but the fact that the topic of marriage communication was studied, documented, tallied, hashed out, etc. back in the 1980s and ’90s. However, in 2015: couples still say this is their #1 area for improvement.

Why is that?

Let’s look to some research to help us. In 2010, Family Relations studied stress, communication and marriage quality in 345 couples. Their conclusion was that the level and quality of marital communication mediates the amount of effect that stress has on marital quality.

To make this simpler, think of stress as a downpour of rain, and communication as the umbrella. The bigger and the higher quality (ie. more waterproof) the umbrella, the better the couple fairs. The umbrella mediates the impact of the rain on the couple just as communication mediates the impact of stress on a couple.

Our communication umbrella needs to include quality and quantity. The communication technology we have in 2015 improves the quantity of all communication sources (for example, you are exposed to way more content of way more lives via Facebook) but not the quantity from your spouse. Not the quality either: if anything the quality of communication is lower due to greater distraction!

Another fascinating study looked at couples having a dinnertime conversation. After dinner, the researchers then had a separate 15-minute discussion regarding a conflict in their marriage. Gottman and Drive (2004) found that the enthusiastic response of the husband to his wife in the dinnertime conversations influenced her affection towards him during conflict. And vice versa: her dinnertime enthusiastic responses drove his affection during conflict.

I love this as I am a huge advocate of enthusiasm!!! – Verlynda

The point of the research is that every day we have positive interactions we are building this tremendous line of credit, so that when ugly comes out and we’re fighting it’s going to go way better if that line of credit is ready to go than if it is depleted.

To link that back to our umbrella analogy where communication regulates the impact of stress on marriage quality, we really see that stuff as simple as dinnertime conversation is having a measurable, real impact on our times of conflict.

What is your dinnertime like? Turn the TV off, put the cell phones somewhere so you won’t hear every ding, and practice the art of being fully present.

This begs the question though, “What happens when we are not fully engaged?” It’s easy to think that ‘not enough’ of a good thing just means it won’t be as great.

Well, the research debunks that idea. Wagner (Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2005) looked at 53 married couples and the impact of one spouse not staying fully present during a discussion. He found that the effect of not engaging properly actually disconfirmed the other spouse’s identity!

In other words, it left the other spouse feeling like they were not understood. Not being understood leads to thoughts that my position is not verified, and actually leads to disconfirming my identity. To put it simpler, it’s saying that if you ignore me, you’re sending a signal that says the part of me I really want you to see is not worth seeing.

Ouch!

A lot of pain comes from not being fully engaged in conversations. It’s not like you forgot to add enough salt but it still tastes OK; lack of engagement is acidic and corrosive to the relationship because it’s undermining your spouse’s sense of identity.

If you’re not present and engaged with your spouse when communicating, you’re actually hurting him or her.

If communicating is important to you, make sure you check out our Talk To Me 101 e-Course. It is a communication course for smart couples. You can take the course together, and we teach you everything you need to know to become very effective communicators as a couple. It’s series of short, powerful video lessons and you can check that out at Talk To Me 101 dot com. 

Image courtesy of Duncan Harris under the Creative Commons license.

What does faithfulness, or fidelity, mean in your marriage? What does it look like? Are your boundaries strong enough to protect your marriage from an affair?

What got us started down this road of thinking is the observation that you can be in a committed marriage and never have sex outside that marriage for forty years, but still be giving members of the opposite sex a lust filled looking over.

This begs the question about what loyalty and fidelity mean in a marriage. If you proudly say “I am faithful to my wife… but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the scenery”, is that really fidelity?

Let’s assume for a moment that we’re all clear that the extremes of unfaithfulness are wrong: we’re not talking about adultery here, or pornography use, or any act of physical intimacy, or even an emotional affair with a person you’re not married to.

However, disloyalty can go in all sorts of directions, and show up in many different ways:

A wife makes a comment about some famous Hollywood actor being ‘eye-candy’? There is no hope of an actual act of infidelity occurring there, so is it OK?

A husband rubber-necks as he drives through town on a warm summer day. Is it OK for him to check out other women?

A spouse says, “Why can’t you look like that?” (Ouch…)

Perhaps it’s just the joking and camaraderie that kind of fringes toward mild flirting – even in a group setting. Is this allowable?

While some definitions of fidelity are really clear (like having sex), others are very much going to be defined by each couple. In The Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy (JMFT), Blow reported that a breach of trust has more to do with the perspectives and beliefs of the individuals within the relationship than any overarching norms. In other words, the couple creates their own standards.

[Again, we’re holding this up in the assumption that we’ve already established that there are objective, moral boundaries that must not be crossed. Like, no sex outside of marriage. We are NOT promoting ‘open’ marriage; we promote the Biblical values of faithful marriage.]

For example, a wife or husband on a business trip sits down on the airplane beside an attractive, friendly member of the opposite sex. For one couple, the expectation might be to limit the interaction to a friendly greeting and then plug in the headphones or read a book. They’re comfortable with that boundary.

For another couple, it may be totally OK to have an engaging conversation and share pictures of your spouse and children. No flirting, just friendly and proper, and then that spouse relates the conversation when he/she gets home to the other spouse. Both spouses in that marriage are comfortable with that boundary.

Neither scenario is morally wrong. Does the second approach carry a higher element of risk? Yes, probably! This is where couples need to discuss what they consider reasonable and what they can tolerate in their marriage.

There is a subjective element to fidelity. Scheinkman and Wenecke in the Family Process also support this subjective aspect.

Nevertheless, here’s what’s so important to know. It IS a fact that there is a slippery slope from smaller disloyal thoughts and behaviours towards an affair.

The Clinical Psychology Science Practice (2005) pointed out that the decision-making process before extra-marital involvement consists of smaller decisions and steps. Like, having coffee with an opposite-sex coworker…then spending more time with them…then engaging in more intimate conversation.

This is where we start to get some practical checkpoints for early warnings of infidelity. Following are two items you need to watch for in order to be proactively working against affairs in your marriage.

1. Pros VS Cons

Decisions to engage in extramarital involvement are conscious decisions that involve weighing potential costs and potential benefits. Ask yourself, am I doing a cost/benefit analysis about the behaviours or thoughts I am engaging in? If so, I could be on a slippery slope towards infidelity.

2. Suppressing Thoughts

Individuals who begin to develop feelings for a potential extramarital partner actively suppress thoughts related to that partner. This increases the intensity of the thoughts, which is problematic, but here’s the point: if you find yourself working to suppress thoughts, you have another signal to yourself that you’re heading into dangerous territory. Ask yourself: am I actively suppressing the thoughts of another person?

Are you having thoughts that you’re trying not to think about? Are you weighing costs/benefits about interacting more deeply with someone? Are you rubbernecking?

You need to stop and own your thoughts and behaviours. Admit that you are having them, then ask yourself why? Have you become less vested in your relationship? Are you not getting what you need from your marriage? Is that because you’re not investing in it what you should be? Have you allowed yourself to believe things that aren’t true? (Like, a more attractive spouse will lead to better sex).

At the end of the day, we need to come back to the fact that “Commitment is one of the most important determinants of marriage stability” (Clements and Swenson - Current Psychology).

Don’t give your spouse reason for jealousy by lending your admiration to other members of the opposite sex. Show your commitment and have those conversations about what you’re both comfortable with. The willingness to discuss and uphold those values together is a huge step towards fidelity that will strengthen your marriage and make it resilient against unfaithfulness.