Normalize therapy.

By Caleb & Verlynda Simonyi-GindeleSociety & Culture Health & Fitness Mental Health Education Self-Improvement Relationships

Normalize therapy. episodes

January 21, 2015 Four Critical Habits to Deepen Your Love
Ahhh...the science of love.
It’s pretty cool that something as amorphous as love can be studied. And even cooler when you find research that identifies the daily habits that catalyze the deepening of love.
Withdrawer or Pursuer?
Some of the most helpful research on love falls under what is known as Attachment Theory. It’s a superb framework for understanding the emotional bond of family and marriage relationships.
In the context of marriage, the theory provides for the idea that a spouse will default to a withdrawing or pursuing role. Most often, each spouse will compliment each other: one typically pursues and the other typically withdraws.
A withdrawer tends to be more turned inwards and less likely to voice wants and needs and also finds it more difficult to self-disclose.
A pursuer, on the other hand, is more characterized by blaming. He or she may be more volatile and outspoken in conflict and tends to attack when hurt rather than pull back and shut down.
In our marriage, I tend to be the withdrawer and Verlynda the pursuer. That’s actually the most common format: husband withdraws, wife pursues.
But is that normal?
In this episode, I posed a question to Verlynda: in the relationship between Jesus Christ and the church, which one is usually pursuing and which one is usually withdrawing?
Right. Christ is the pursuer. Here’s the connection: in Ephesians 5 we are given a model for marriage where husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loved the church.
God calls husbands to be the pursuers.
But we’ve been socialized in North American culture to lay the responsibility for relationships at the feet of the wife and mother in our families. In my opinion, as males, we have abdicated one of our critical roles.
So, how do we fix that?
Four Habits to Deepen Your Love
Husbands: I’m calling you to lead in this. Here are four areas in which we can develop healthy habits that deepen our love for one another. Hear me when I say this: these are all doable. This is not out of your reach!
Everyday Talking and Sharing
This comes from research our team found in the Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy.
You can create daily companionship very easily by having conversations about personal matters. This is a simple tool that creates powerful leverage for building the love bond between you and your spouse.
Just share things like your activities for the day, plans for tomorrow or the weekend. Get face to face, make eye contact, put your cell phone down and share. Listening to understand is a key part of this..
Everyday interaction is easy, straightforward and it’s important.
Recognize Your Role and Compensate
If you’re a withdrawer, push yourself to voice your wants and needs.
Self-disclose. I know you want to – I feel the desire and the resistance myself. But the more you share and open up, the deeper the intimacy goes.
If you’re the pursuer, your job is to soften your responses and respond more positively to wants, needs, and disclosures from your spouse. Resist defaulting to a blaming stance and do what you need to do to make the connection safer.
When both work together on this through the challenges of daily life, stronger attachment (i.e., deeper love) is the result.
Healthy Physical Intimacy
Think about how you bring yourself to the physical intimacy in your marriage. Are you relaxed and confident? Or are you using sex to gain reassurance or avoid rejection?
Do you communicate your needs openly and respond to your spouse’s equally? Or are you demanding and only focused on your own pleasure?
People: this is called “making love” for a reason. Closeness should be both the cause and effect of sex. Go for that deep emotional connection that comes when you lose yourself in your spouse.
Spiritual Intimacy
This is taking your emotional connection into another realm altogether. But a vital one for deepening the love in our marriages (Harris & Marshall, 2008).
Pray together. That’s a habit that took us a while to develop. In a way, it’s really just a reformatting of #1 above: you're talking about the stuff in your lives that matters most. It’s just that this time the two of you are talking to God about it. And that’s a bonding experience.
Involve yourselves in a church together. Further, develop a shared sacred vision and purpose. Something that you do together, as a couple, that is for God and for His kingdom. For us, OnlyYouForever is a huge part of that. We have friends who foster kids, others have adopted, others serve in missions work and others immerse themselves in serving their church or community.
And be willing to forgive. This weaves the emotional and spiritual together and extends the power of the Gospel into the fabric of our marriages.
You see, the science of love comes down to some pretty simple daily habits. But those habits will have a profound impact on your marriage and maybe even the world as well.
16 min
January 14, 2015 How Are You Enriching Your Marriage This Year?
One of the things we want to get you thinking about at the very start of this year is what you are going to do, with deliberate purpose, to enrich your marriage this year.
Marriage is an easy thing to take for granted.
Think for a moment about the things you value most. What do you do with those things? You get insurance for them! There is every kind of insurance out there which most of us have on our valuable possessions, like life insurance, medical insurance, disability insurance, house insurance, car insurance, business liability insurance, even extended warranties are a form of insurance.
We spend thousands of dollars per year on insurance. Yet we balk at a $30 expense or even a $300 weekend of marriage enrichment. Does that really make sense?
Think practically for a moment. The cost of divorce drops your net worth by at least 50%, plus it’s like $30,000-90,000 to deal with all of the actual fallout with lawyer fees, etc. Never mind the emotional cost or cost to our children, family, and friends.
Our marriages are super valuable, but isn’t it ironic, and really kind of foolish, that we spend money on insuring other valuable things in our lives, but not our marriages.
We want to encourage you in 2015 to insure your marriage by engaging in some sort of marriage enrichment. Here’s why:
Bray & Jouriles (1995) found that should difficulties arise, couples responded better to marriage counselling when they had increased problem solving and communication skills, were less distressed at the onset of counselling, and were more emotionally engaged with each other.
McAllister, Duncan & Hawkins (2012) found that marriage enrichment worked on those very skills listed above: communication and relationship quality (emotional engagement and less distress). The point being that marriage enrichment programs address key areas that lead to better outcomes should the need for counselling arise.
As we spoke about in our series on fighting, repair after the fight is much more successful if positive mojo had been inputted into the marriage long before the fight occurred!
Every couple hits rough spots. At the very least, marriage enrichment programs help you get through those tough times, but should you both decide you need extra help, they also create an incredible advantage for going the extra mile with counselling.
Our CHALLENGE for you this year is to do something deliberate to enrich your marriage. Even if you can just save up $30 a month and aim for a weekend away at the end of the year, you’re taking that first step. If you can’t do that – you can get a good book from the library for free. Read it, then discuss it together.
We’ve all heard the objection, “Well, you only need that if you've messed up.” Not so, says the research! Research by Doss, Rhoades, Stanley, Markman & Johnson (2009) showed that more distressed couples and those at risk for divorce were less likely to attend marriage enrichment programs than couples that were in more healthy relationships.
Interesting that the couples that made it a priority to enrich their marriages were less distressed and at less risk for divorce.
So, what kinds of resources are out there? There are really three approaches:
Self-directed: You can do this at home, at your own pace with no professional involvement. Books and online programs are a good example of self-directed enrichment.
Traditional: This is done in a classroom or group setting. It usually requires more time commitment and more money.
Blended: A combination of self-directed and traditional. This could entail a workbook plus a group setting, or online eCourse plus coaching or counselling.
The research mentioned above (McAllister, Duncan & Hawkins) shows that self-directed is better than nothing and has many benefits. Traditional is the most popular and is better than self-directed, and the Blended method is the most effective.
The Internet really shines here because you can do a blended approach online with a video course and then do some coaching (even remotely/Skype) with that. You really get the best results!
In addition, with the internet, you have the benefit of being able to find resources, not in your area. It is often hard to find a Christian marriage counsellor or coach who is a good fit. With video calls, you are no longer restricted to finding someone who lives within a short drive of your home.
We hope this year, that you’ll take the opportunity to do something specific, preferably together, to take your marriage to the next level. Don’t be one of those couples that doesn’t realize how good they had it until after it all went up in smoke. Going from married to single is incredible hard: we’ve walked with some friends through it and it’s just brutal.
Decide today to find a weekend, or course, or even just a book to read together.
**If you’re looking for a particular resource, get in touch and if we don’t have something that can help you directly, we’ll help you find a resource that meets your specific needs.
We have Talk To Me 101 launching again in the next month, which is an eCourse on communications. We’ll also be offering a coaching option with that eCourse to created a blended approach – enter your email at the top of the screen to make sure you’re the first to hear about it when it launches!
We like to use a tool called PREPARE/ENRICH, for both pre-marital and marital counselling, via a coaching package. It gives you a helpful report of strength and growth areas with 4-8 feedback sessions where you’re taught how to discuss and understand those areas within the context of your marriage.
Image courtesy of North Dakota National Guard under the Creative Commons license.
16 min
January 07, 2015 Sleep Your Way To A Better Marriage – Shawn Stevenson Interview
Here’s a fresh thought for fixing or just strengthening your marriage this year: try improving your sleep quality. Really? Yes, really. In this episode of our marriage podcast, we interview Shawn Stevens. He is a best-selling author and the creator of the Model Health Show, currently the #1 Nutrition and Fitness podcast in the world on iTunes. [youtube id="zAM6iPk53m8"]
Watch the video for the full interview. I invited Shawn for an interview because I wanted him to help us understand how we can take care of our marriages by taking care of our sleep. As Shawn says at the start, “When you’re tired, your best friend can look like your worst enemy!”
The Case For Sleep
In the interview, we discuss various research articles that identify the impact of reduced sleep. The bottom line is, when you don’t get enough sleep, you limit your brain’s ability to help you relate to others. Sleep is the only state we experience that helps to rebuild our bodies and minds. Yet, it’s often the first thing we reduce when we begin to feel overloaded. Ironically, we reduce one part of our daily lives we need the most. Reduced sleep affects men and women different. For men, poor sleep predicts more negative ratings of spousal interactions the next day. For women, negative daytime interactions take away from sleep that night. You can imagine how quickly a destructive cycle can form from this interaction. Clearly, there is a well-established link between relationship quality and sleep quality.
Sleep and Stress
Sleep is also an important part of stress regulation. Marriage is a great source of stress relief but Shawn identifies how critical sleep is as part of managing stress. But the challenge is that stress makes for poor sleep and poor sleep makes for more feelings of stress. How does a person break out of this cycle?
Strategies for Improving Sleep Quality
One of the critical take-home lessons from this interview is the importance of exercising in the morning. This has a huge impact on the amount of time spent in the deepest (and most restorative) stage of sleep. Exercising at night, or late in the evening, is counterproductive to being healthy. You might be exercising, but you’re eroding the restorative potential of your sleep. Another critical take away is to observe a caffeine curfew. Caffeine has a half-life of about eight hours (depending on your metabolism). Consequently, Shawn’s recommendation is that there be no caffeine intake after 2 PM in the afternoon. Intake after that time is going to impact your body’s ability to get the quality of sleep it needs. Shawn also notes the importance of moderating body temperature. Running our house too warm, especially at nights in the bedroom, takes away from sleep quality. The research recommends running one’s bedroom temperature between 60 to 68 F (16 to 20 C) is ideal. There’s a side-benefit to a cooler room: more cuddling! That can’t but help the marriage too, right? Finally, we discuss the impact of sexuality on our sleep quality. The body releases a wonderful cocktail of hormones following orgasm with one’s spouse. Those hormones promote deeper and more restful sleep as well as reducing the impact of stress on our bodies.
More from Shawn Stevenson
Be sure to check out Shawn’s website, and podcast to learn more about how you can improve your health and fitness. As well, be sure to pick up a copy of Shawn’s book, Sleep Smarter: 21 Proven Tips to Sleep Your Way To a Better Body, Better Health and Bigger Success. I have read his book and highly recommend it. It is very digestible, a great read, and really takes you through many actionable ways that you can start improving your sleep tonight.
35 min
December 31, 2014 Differences in Sexual Desire: A Checklist for Your Marriage
Sometimes after a long day, you just want to climb in bed and go to sleep… but your spouse has other ideas!
Differences in sexual desire are very normal. Usually, there is one high desire and one low desire spouse in a marriage – sometimes desires are equal, but not very often. Normally, the husband is a high desire and the wife low desire, but there is nothing wrong if it’s the other way around!
We want you to be aware of how these differences in desire can affect your marriage.
On a side note before we start; we are making the assumption that the difference in desire is NOT due to one or both spouses engaging in sexual activity outside of marriage, whether that’s masturbating to porn, or having an affair, and so on. Those are issues that need to be dealt with, but outside the scope of today’s post.
Gender Matters
Research indicates that men generally want sex more often than women and that they rate their own sex drive higher than women rate theirs. On an interesting note, men and women respond to initiations equally. The man just feels rejected more often because he initiates more. So some of the difference between genders is simply about perception.
Byers and Heinlein (1989), who performed the research above, also found that individuals with greater sexual satisfaction responded more positively to initiations. In other words, having higher quality sex leads to greater desire and arousability.
Here are five points that we want you to consider with regards to any differences in sexual desire in your marriage:
1. How is the quality of your relationship?
The amount of emotional intimacy going on in your relationship is a critical component, especially for the low desire spouse, as physical intimacy is an extension of emotional intimacy. Are you really connecting at that “heart” level?
Another thing we need to distinguish between is desire and arousability. Just because you don’t initiate a lot doesn’t mean you are not interested in sex. The ability to be fully sexually engaged can be just as strong in both spouses. The low desire spouse needs to allow himself or herself to be aroused and the higher desire spouse needs to realize that a rejection is not a personal slight.
A person may want sex because they are feeling close, but the inverse is also true. They can want to be close by having sex. As long as this “want” is coming from a place of fullness (think, overflow of the heart) rather than a place of neediness (to calm anxiety about the relationship), it is a healthy thing.
2. How is the quality of your sex?
Good sex leads to more sex. Are you sexually competent and skillful? Some of us were raised in a faith background that continually told us, “sex is bad”. Then we get married, and it’s hard to switch into “sex is good” mode!
We need to develop sexual competence – male and female! Have you had a real orgasm? What does it look like? How do you know if you’ve had one? It’s easier with men, but what does it take to bring her to orgasm?
Make sure your sex is not a goal-oriented event. His or her release is not the goal – closeness and intimacy is! Neither spouse should feel used.
How you speak of your sex is also important. Don’t be critical of your spouse or your sex before, during or after the event.
What do you think about sex? Do you believe it is good? Has one spouse been abused or suffered sexual trauma? All these beliefs affect the quality of our sex.
And the last thing to think about with regards to the quality of sex is your beliefs about your own sexiness. In a Christian marriage done right, the only place you are sexy and seductive is within your marriage. We need to learn to allow ourselves to see ourselves as sexy in that context.
3. How is your health?
Self-care is so important. Good general health is as important as good sexual functioning. Also critical is positive sexual self-esteem. It will be extremely difficult to undress if you believe your body is ugly or that you don’t have the skills to please your spouse.
If things are not working, mechanically, there is help out there. There are disorders of both desire and arousal and there are qualified sex therapists that can help you work through both types of issues. Seek help and enjoy full sexual arousal rather than suffer in silence or miss out on this incredibly rich gift that God has given to marriage.
4. What role does gender play?
We already spoke about how gender matters and some of the differences between men and woman.
Think about desire over the human lifespan. In the short term, men are always ready to have sex. Yet, the more sex he has, the less he will push for it because he is more satisfied. In the long term of a man’s lifespan, his sexual desire fades and gradually decreases in later years.
On the other hand, a woman’s sexual desire in the short term is connected to her monthly cycle. Yet, in the long term, her sexual desire peaks in her 40-50’s and then slows down later on. Another difference between genders – the more a wife has quality sex, the more she wants it.
(Here’s a hint for men – if you want more sex, increase the quality and pleasure for your wife!)
5. What else is going on?
Life happens. The season of life you are in will greatly impact the level of sexual desire in a relationship. If there are babies in the house and one or both of you are up half the night, sex will be low on the priority list. Sleep will be higher! If you are caring for aging parents in the home, it may be draining energy that you might have once saved up for your spouse. We need to show ourselves—and each other—mercy during this phase of life.
Research also shows that if a wife has a full-time job, the number of sexual initiations in the marriage is lower.
This calls for us to be realistic and reasonable about matching our expectations with the season of life that we are in.
So yes, there are differences in sexual desire. Go through the five points as a couple and talk about the impact any might be having in your marriage today.
We want to wish you a wonderful new year, full of warm love, hot sex and romantic moments!
Image courtesy of Randal Cooper under the Creative Commons license.
18 min
December 24, 2014 How Jesus Almost Grew Up With A Single Mom
Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy and cheer with everybody bubbling over with joy. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it just plain hurts. It’s the time of year when there is so much stress and tension. Maybe you’re alone this year, and there is a lot of grief and pain involved. No matter what we’re going through, God has a story of redemption for our lives.
Let’s start with the Christmas Story from Matthew 1:18-25
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
Let’s sympathize with Joseph for a few minutes here. He was engaged to be married to Mary, whom he thought was a virgin. Instead, he finds out she is pregnant and he knows the baby is not his.
What would you have done? What do you do when your spouse lets you down?
I think our natural inclination and the first response is like his: walk away. He made that decision (resolved) but then thought it over. That’s where God steps in and says “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife.”
The whole story of redemption begins with redemption in the story of Joseph and Mary’s marriage.
I don’t know what you’ve gone through this year in your marriage. Maybe your marriage is awesome and part of why it’s awesome is because you do things to enrich it like listening to marriage podcasts. On the other hand, maybe 2014 will be a year that you remember where some really hard things happened in your marriage.
We just finished a four-part series on fighting – fighting sucks. It’s painful. Sometimes it’s prompted by disappointment, like the disappointment Joseph felt when he initially found out Mary was pregnant. Some of those disappointments can be severe.
I want to encourage all of us – because we all let our spouse down, and get let down by our spouses – to look for the story of redemption that God is writing into our lives. God is calling us to be leading characters in that story. It’s his story, but it’s our role to join in and engage rather than to walk away, push back or abandon the story entirely.
There are some that are reading this, and this Christmas is especially painful for you because you are ready to engage in that story of redemption but your spouse isn’t. In fact, you may be facing your very first Christmas alone.
Our hearts go out to you. That’s hard. It’s sad, and we know it must be a very lonely experience.
But that’s where I want you to be encouraged! Step back from the story of redemption you wish was being written into the larger story of redemption that is always being written in and through the power of Jesus Christ.
Our little kingdoms can be in chaos. But God’s big kingdom is always ruled by a benevolent, loving God who was willing to go through his own loss, grief, and sorrow in the giving of His Son to this world so that we could take him, crucify him, and put him away. Right, when that story seemed like it was no longer being written, the angels that appear here to Joseph appear again to another two Mary’s in Matthew 28 – it’s an angel of resurrection.
Listen, I don’t know how your story is going to be written, or how my story is going to be written. I would like to be able to promise you hope for your marriage and to promise you that a day of redemption for your marriage is coming. But I can’t honestly do that. We don’t know how our personal stories end, yet.
However, I can tell you how God’s story of redemption ends. It’s a perfect ending. I can promise you that it ends well! God’s plan for your life as a child of God ends with perfect, complete redemption in an unbreakable, secure, eternal relationship with a God of love, peace, and joy.
So, wherever you’re at in your journey, and whatever chapter was written in the story of your life this year, we want to compel you to stop and consider the Savior. When we have Him, we can truly have a Merry Christmas!
God bless you all, and have a very Merry Christmas!
Image courtesy of gwynydd michael under the Creative Commons license.
10 min
December 17, 2014 How To Repair After A Fight
After a fight, you basically have four options: you can exit the relationship, you can be patient and loyal by waiting for your spouse to change, you can neglect your spouse, or you can repair. (Branau-Browna & Ragsdale, 2008)
We’ve discussed fighting in the last few topics: why fighting for your marriage is good, different fighting styles couples use, and basic ground rules for use in a fight. This last topic in our series, about how to repair after a fight, is definitely the most important of these four topics!
Really, thinking that the repair comes after the fight isn’t really accurate. To set your marriage up for success, repair also needs to come before and during a fight!
Before
Start with way before! Stafford and Canary (1991) list five factors that gauge the quality of a relationship and that you want to make sure are in your marriage long before a disagreement occurs.
Positivity – create a positive atmosphere for communication.
Openness – practice the habit of being open and honest with each other. Don’t put up walls.
Assurances – use statements designed to reassure your spouse of the well-being of the relationship (like “I’ll love you forever”, “I will never leave you”).
Task Sharing – share the daily work-related for a family and home.
Support Network – involve family and friends in the relationship (not someone you’ll go complaining to your spouse about, but someone who will support and help you both through whatever comes)
We want to challenge you to be strategic on the long term, visionary sort of basis! Build these qualities into your marriage and set yourself up for success before a conflict is even on the table.
As another researcher says, “the quality of the friendship between husband and wife” predicts whether repair attempts will work. Foster that friendship multiple times daily!
During
In 2010, Driver et al found that “all couples attempt to repair during conflict.” It’s a natural thing to do, but what we need to learn is to initiate repairs sooner and more often, and recognize and accept when our spouse is offering them!
During a fight, down-regulate your negative emotion or try to dial down how upset you are! This does not mean you may not be upset; you just need to contain it for a reasonable amount of time. When you are stuck in negativity or dish it right back when you receive it from your spouse, you get into the zone where relationship damage occurs.
Bloch, Haase and Leveson (2014) found that down-regulating was directly correlated to marital satisfaction over the long term. They reported that when you’re in a place of prolonged negativity and high emotionality you can’t understand each other, you can’t respond well to your spouse’s repair efforts and you are not going to get to collaborative problem-solving.
Try to calm yourself down when you’re feeling flooded with emotions and know that you’re getting negative. To do this, stop and take a few deep breaths - in through your nose, out through your mouth. To ground yourself back to reality, try running your hands down the side of your pant leg, or along the arm of your chair. Pay close attention to the feel of the fabric under your fingertips.
These actions will remove you far enough from the overwhelming emotions so that you can think more clearly.
To attempt repair during the conflict, try some of the following tips:
Take a break (“I need some time to calm down”)
Use humor when appropriate (very powerful)
Reaffirm the security of the relationship (verbally or physically [reach out])
Validate your spouse’s position (You might be right)
Offer a compliment
Remember, if you don’t have the previous mojo of positivity, there may be a backlash against repair attempts during a fight. Repairing before the fight is so important!
After
Apologizing, offering forgiveness, reconciling with each other and showing affection are a few things you can do to “make up” after a conflict.
But really, this is very little literature on repair after a fight. The time to repair is before and during the conflict. So, don’t get the idea what you can go at it like wildcats and then apply a few band-aids at the end to jump back into marital bliss!
Focus on creating positivity in your marriage, building a solid friendship, and then in the conflict, looking for ways to repair.
19 min
December 10, 2014 Ground Rules For A Good Fight
Most of us have the wrong idea about conflict in marriage.
We fear the conflict could lead to the disintegration of our marriage.
That’s a reasonable fear, in many ways. But we paint with too broad a brush. You see, it’s not the conflict itself that puts the marriage at risk but rather the behaviours within the conflict.
If you’re just jumping into this series, this episode and show notes are the third in a series of 4 on fighting in marriage. In the first show, we talked about why fighting is good for your marriage. Then we went over fighting styles in the second episode: some work and some do not! You want to be sure to have a style that isn’t destroying your marriage.
In today’s episode, we’re interested in the actual behaviors that we engage in while we fight because those can take a marriage down over time too.
Long Term Ground Rules for Fighting
We need to have a long view of marriage. Conflict is inevitable and so it is going to come again and again. But did you know that there are behaviors you can engage in that will strangle your affection and love over time? They are:
Exploding and getting out of control
Just giving in to your spouse on the issue – every time
Withdrawing during conflict: shutting down and refusing to talk
These three behaviors were identified by Hanzal and Segrin (2009) as being particularly dysfunctional over the long term. They will wear down your spouse, leaving him or her less and less able to deal with them over time.
Wives are particularly sensitive to this.
You see, husbands react more to in-the-moment behaviors. They get stressed but then they calm down.
Wives in conflict develop a stress load that just builds and builds. They carry their marital conflict history with them and then begin to get charged up more quickly facing future discussions.
So being explosive, or just caving in every time, or withdrawing are all ways to alienate your spouse. Why? Because there is no actual resolution to the issue that prompted the conflict.
The long term ground rules that you and your spouse agree on should include a commitment to keeping one’s self under control during conflict as well as being dedicated to seeing an issue through to resolution.
Behave Yourself!
There are three categories of behavior that occur during fighting, and I came across an article from the Journal of Marriage & Family (October 2010) that explained them nicely:
Destructive: include overtly negative reactions to marital problems such as yelling, insults, criticism, belligerence, and contempt.
Constructive: involve overtly positive reactions such as saying nice things, calmly discussing the problem and actively listening.
Withdrawal: entail disengaging from the conflict or person and may include things like leaving the situation entirely or just checking out by keeping quiet.
On the positive side, constructive behaviors actually lead to spouses feeling better and more satisfied with the marriage.
On the other hand, destructive behaviors in both newlyweds and longer married couples predicted divorce up to seven years later. “Predicted” is a keyword there: it means that an increased presence of the destructive behaviors showed a higher probability of divorce. Withdrawal behaviors were no better (research from Gottman and colleagues).
Here’s the takeaway: marital conflict, or fighting, is not the problem. Bad behavior while fighting is.
The Bottom Line on Fighting
There’s probably nobody alive today who has studied marital conflict more than Dr. John Gottman. He summarizes all his extensive research on successful and unsuccessful marriages in one simple sentence:
”Skills based on gentleness work best to produce happy and lasting relationships”.
Simple enough? In the words of wise King Solomon, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”
Whether you take thousands of hours of research or a proverb written over 3,000 years ago you have the same truth. The one key that makes all the difference regardless of how long your fights last, what you fight about or what your fights look like:
Be gentle.
Image courtesy of smile_kerry under the Creative Commons license.
17 min
December 03, 2014 What Is Your Fighting Style?
“How couples argue and disagree about issues appears to be more consequential to the success of marriage than what they argue about or how often they experience conflicts.”
To reword the above quote taken from an article by Hanzal and Segrin in the Journal of Family Communication, you could simply say “how we fight has far more influence on the future of our marriage, than what we fight about”.
Therefore, our fighting style, or how we fight, really matters.
Before I get into the different styles of fighting, we need to be aware that gender differences make a big difference in our fights. In fact, a husband and a wife will experience the same fight differently. Not just because they have different perspectives, but because they are different genders.
You might not be a typical couple, and that’s not necessarily a problem, but the following things, about how most couples operate are good to keep in mind.
Women tend to be more negative in conflict and use confrontational behaviors that say “this is all about me”, rather than the marriage. The behaviors include being demanding, hostile, threatening, insulting and insisting that all the change should come from their husband.
But to stereotype men for a moment… Men are more likely to avoid. They get scared of the big emotions, so feel safer avoiding them altogether.
Another thing for men to keep in mind is that the less influence a woman feels she has in her marriage, the bigger the artillery she has to use to gain influence, so the more confrontational she will be.
Husbands, if you want a happier wife, receive her influence!
Remember, both husband and wife have the same end goal of trying to save the marriage, but they come at it from two completely different angles.
Anger
One thing that surprised me when Caleb and I were discussing the fighting in marriage, was that an angry wife has a far greater negative impact on marital satisfaction than an equally angry husband. The Proverb that says ”It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman” apparently is very true!
Wives, we need to take our anger seriously! It not only lowers our marriage satisfaction but our husband’s as well.
The angrier we become (this goes for both husbands and wives but I’m specifically thinking of woman), the more tempted we are to use nasty behavior such as demand, withdrawal, contempt, and criticism; all of which are particularly corrosive to marital well-being.
Styles
So now that we know that our fighting style really matters and that each gender comes at a fight a different way, let’s look at some of the different styles of fighting in marriage.
This model of fighting styles is taken from Dr. Gottman’s study in 1993. The first three are functional and work fine. The last two are considered unstable.
1. Avoiders
Avoiders don’t think they are avoiders but don’t have any specific strategies for resolving conflict. They may wait stuff out or even talk stuff out, but never really go deep with each other. They kind of state their points, reaffirm their common ground and move on after coming up with some ambiguous solution. The challenge with an avoider’s marriage over the long term is that you can end up distant and lonely.
2. Volatiles
Volatiles come straight at each other. They disagree and try to persuade each other. They produce a lot of drama: both positive and negative. They value arguing and really work hard at convincing each other. These folks can bicker pretty good but passionate love-making with likely follow.
3. Validators
Validators tend to walk the middle line. There is conflict but there’s ease and calm too and each spouse is trying to validate the other. This could look like clear empathy or a lot of “Mm hmm’s”. If you see this couple in conflict, you get the idea that they are both working together on a problem. This is a calmer approach to marriage, and it sounds rosy (and is!) but the romance can dissipate and the marriage can end up as a close friendship.
4. Hostiles
Hostiles have very negative conversations. There is always lots of defensiveness, lots of globalizing and each spouse is very judgmental. It is always a downward spiral.
5. Hostile/Detached
Hostile/Detached couples normally have little or no emotional involvement with each other. Occasionally they may get into a hostile spat, often about trivial matters.
So, what kind of couple are you?
Ideally, you want to be validators and have a little avoidance so you know you’re normal and then a sprinkle of volatility just to spice things up a bit!
How Can We Do Better?
Avoiders: Agree to start opening up to each other. Make sure you grab our Talk To Me 101 course that teaches you communication and conflict resolution skills.
Volatiles: You’re doing ok, but make sure you catch next week’s episode on fighting ground rules. Be careful you don’t shift to hostile and remember you need to have a solid fondness and admiration system as a base in your marriage.
Validators: Watch out for differentiation. This is the ideal model in behavior marital therapy but there is a point where you need to cut the empathy and tell your spouse the uncomfortable things they may need to hear. We never grow if we don’t know that we need to!
Hostiles or Hostile/Detached: These styles are destructive so please, actively seek help. At the very least, get some good books, like Dr. Gottman’s; ideally, get coaching or counseling.
Be sure to catch the fourth episode of our fighting series, which will be published in two weeks, about how to repair after a fight. This is a critical skill if you want to stay married!
Image courtesy of Raul Lieberwirth under the Creative Commons license.
21 min
November 26, 2014 Why Fighting is Good For Your Marriage
Fighting is something I am passionate about. Probably because I was so bad at it when we first got married…
I would get mad and come across as hostile, crying and flinging words that I didn’t always even mean.
Caleb would try to apologize, calm me down and say whatever it took to get himself out of the situation.
And what did the fighting accomplish? Nothing! The issues never got resolved.
Enter Caleb’s grad school where he learned how to teach others to fight. Thankfully, he taught himself and his wife a few skills too, and our fights look much different today.
In fact, we can even vocalize the hard truth that needs to be stated without the other spouse getting hurt.
I love the fact that we can actually resolve issues now – get them dealt with and out of the way, rather than have them resurface time and time again.
Caleb and I are firm believers that fighting is indeed good for your marriage! But, something that we need to make clear from the start is that the fighting that we’re talking about that actually deepens intimacy in romantic relationships is ‘well-handled’ conflict. ‘Poorly-handled’ conflict, on the other hand, has negative implications for the relationship.
First, let’s rule out the bad stuff that is not good for your marriage. This includes hostility, anger, physical or verbal aggression, threat, and personal insult, yelling, insults, criticism, belligerence, and contempt. These are not acceptable and do not resolve anything in marriage. If used, they may shut the argument down for a short time, but the issues have not been dealt with and will definitely arise again in the future.
However, we’re not here to discuss the negative so much as the positive aspect of fighting. The following facts about why fighting is good for your marriage are summarized from the research of Gottman, Satir, Siegert and Stamp.
The goods on fighting:
#1: It helps you to learn about each other.
#2: It builds cohesion and commitment.
#3: Dealing with stuff is better than ignoring stuff.
#4: It is a catalyst for personal growth when you’re forced to confront your own humanity.
#5: It’s a catalyst for spiritual growth. You have to enact the gospel in your life so faced with sin and brokenness; we have to deal with grace, forgiveness, redemption, reconciliation, mercy, and altruism.
In the next three episodes in our mini-series about fighting, we’ll describe different fighting styles, some ground rules in handling conflict well, and how to repair after a fight.
For now, know that if you have conflict in your marriage, you are normal!
We always seem to want to know though, “How normal are we? Do other couples fight about the same things that we do?” Well, here’s a list for you from Dr. Gottman. He says that couples fight most about communication, finances, children, sex, housework, jealousy, and in-laws. Sound familiar?
To end, I want to give you a tip that you can start today, that will build good mojo into your marriage and help it survive the fights that do come up. It can be summed up with the words turn toward your spouse.
Turn toward each other for emotional connection.
Do things that deepen emotional intimacy.
Get inside each other and become students of each other.
Court each other, romance each other, nurture and nourish each other.
Work at having great sex, at playfulness, fun, and adventure.
Let’s rearrange the words in the title for a moment. Instead of “Why Fighting is Good For Your Marriage”, think “Why Fighting For Your Marriage Is Good”! When you turn toward your spouse and build that positive connection, you are fighting for your marriage.
And I am passionate about fighting for my marriage!
Image courtesy of Ed Yourdon under the Creative Commons license.
19 min
November 19, 2014 3 Ways To Make Your Marriage Happier Today!
Ahhhh, marital bliss! Socrates himself apparently once said, “By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”
We joke and we laugh about terrible wives and worse husbands. The truth of the matter is, unless we invest in our marriages, we will never have a deep, intimate, rewarding relationship with our spouse.
So today's post is nice and simple (even if it gets a little deep at times)! We give you three things you can do to make your marriage happier.
#1 – Be Willing to Change Your Beliefs
I questioned Caleb on this one as I’d always been taught to “buy the truth and sell it not”. How would it make my marriage happier to sell that truth!?! He informed him, however, that it did NOT mean changing my spiritual beliefs but about being willing to change what I think makes the perfect marriage.
We head into marriage making a covenant based on the assumption that nothing is going to change. But we DO change, and we need to roll with that and always be thinking about how we can bring our best to our marriage.
To quote Karney, from a study done in 2003, “Couples who stay happiest overall are the ones who change their beliefs about what is important in their relationships.”
For example, when we first married, I loved Caleb’s spontaneity and adventure. Now that we have kids, however, I appreciate the stability that Caleb gives our family.
The marriages that stay happy by shifting beliefs decide “that whatever aspects of the marriage have declined must not be so important after all”. If I still clung to the fact that spontaneity and adventure were essential for happiness in my marriage, I would look at Caleb’s shortcomings and grow resentful.
So, we need to be willing to change our beliefs about what is important in our marriage.
#2 – Positivity is the Fuel for Happiness
A bunch of researchers published a study in 1998 in the Journal of Family Violence, comparing the perceptions of marital positivity between healthy couples, distressed couples, and distressed and aggressive couples.
They found that happily married spouses engage in more frequent and special types of pleasurable communication. They also found that happily married spouses engage in higher quality spousal-specific caring gestures.
What lessons can we learn from these findings?
Be deliberate about vocalizing positive thoughts towards your spouse – that’s going to increase marital happiness. As it says in Proverbs 17:22, A joyful heart is good medicine! Philippians 4:8 reminds us to think on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, and worthy of praise.
Also, stop to think about what specific actions, gestures or things you can do that show you care.
Gratitude is so important in marriage. A study from 2011 (Personality and Individual Differences) found that more gratitude equals more marital satisfaction. Not only that but my FELT gratitude is a predictor of YOUR satisfaction, but my EXPRESSED gratitude is not. It’s not good enough just to say something, you have to actually mean it!
#3 – If You’re Going to Fight, Get in the Ring and Do It Properly.
Sort of…
Positive fighting has more to do with engagement. Research, published in 2009, found that if either spouse is disengaged during a conflict, especially in the early years of marriage, the couple ended up experiencing their marriage as less trusting and intimate and were more distressed in their marriage overall.
As humans, we don’t like to fight (at least most of us don’t!). I think we kind of hold back or check out in the moment because we don’t want the fight to get out of control. While we don’t want fights to get out of control, this is NOT the right way to go about that.
The research also found that conflict avoidance predicted greater marital distress. Are we scared of our anger, or our spouse’s anger? Perhaps we have a martyr complex and just tell ourselves to suck it up? Avoiding an issue will only further excavate a growing chasm between you. You may feel safe, but very alone.
If something comes up that upsets us, we can’t just avoid it because we don’t want to fight. Conflict resolution is critical. So much, so that for the next few podcast episodes we are going to be tackling the subject of fighting in marriage and how to do it right. You won’t want to miss those episodes! We will teach you how to have healthy fights with happy outcomes.
So, what can you do TODAY to make your marriage happier?
Be willing to change your beliefs about the positive aspects of your marriage
Use positivity and gratitude more often. Both think on it and verbalize it to communicate your pleasure and show that you care
Make sure you fight properly. Avoiding is never a great strategy. (I’m having a chuckle here as it sounds like I’m telling you to go have a fight so you can be happier. That is not it at all! What I am trying to say is if a conflict does arise, deal with it respectfully rather than try to avoid it. More on that next week!)
Image courtesy of Sam Stanton under the Creative Commons license.
21 min

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Formerly: The Marriage Podcast for Smart People. Co-hosted by Caleb and Verlynda Simonyi-Gindele. We are married to each other and are both counselors who have worked extensively with couples and…