How awesome does it feel to be completely understood by someone – to feel that they ‘get’ you when you are explaining a problem!? Do you want to be a spouse that is able to give this blessing?

Listening to understand is one of those skills in marriage that doesn’t have a very sexy label, but is going to go a long ways towards building a thriving, passionate marriage.

I know you’re probably thinking, “But everyone knows how to listen, right? How could it be such a skill?” The reality is, most of us listen to respond, rather than listen to understand!

There are 4 kinds of active listening responses: clarifying, paraphrasing, reflecting and summarizing. These come from the work of Cormier and Nurius.

Rephrase to understand. Try using, “Are you saying…?” or “So, you mean…?”. By rephrasing what was said and repeating it back to the sayer, clarifying helps to deal with ambiguity and vagueness.

For example:

Wife [after hectic day]: I just feel like it never stops.

Husband clarifies: Are you saying you’d like me to be more involved with the kid’s bedtime routine? (pulling clarification from the context of the day).

On a complete side note here – all you ladies, listen up! Try to avoid “women-speak”. If you need help, ask for it. It is so much easier on the relationship, and on ourselves, than hinting and hoping our husband catches the hint!

Rephrase your spouse’s content and repeat it back to them. This helps them get more specific. It also helps them to know if you’re interpreting their meaning correctly and lets you dig a little deeper into what they really mean.

For example:

Husband: I tried talking to Fred about his lack of results in sales last month, but it was really difficult. He would hardly say a word and I don’t know what to do with him.

Wife paraphrases: Fred is not responding when you’re trying to coach him?

Reflecting is like paraphrasing but pulls the ‘feeling’ words out. This is huge for communicating that you understand, and for helping your spouse to feel understood. It helps them identify core feelings, issues, and concerns. It really goes past the content of what they said to the process of what they’re feeling about a situation.

For example:

Wife (for the full effect, read this out loud – take a big breath and let it all come spilling out in a rush!): Little Jimmy came home today and blasted in the door, threw his backpack into my arms and blew right by me shouting over his shoulder that he was heading to the neighbor’s to play on his new game console.

Husband: So you felt disappointed? Maybe kind of hurt and angry about being treated like you were his maid rather than being greeted respectfully as his mom?

(At this point, I, the wife, would yell YES and fall into his arms because he actually understood me!!!)

Summarizing really ties multiple pieces together. It is a combo of 2 or more of clarifying, paraphrasing and reflecting.

For example:

Husband: I am just so done with my brother, Joe. I am sick and tired of his negativity and criticism all the time. It was great when he was in that sales job but since he’s been unemployed it’s like he’s so bitter and hard to be with. I don’t know what to do with him or about him now.

Wife: Sounds like you’re kind of sad about losing the old Joe that you knew and enjoyed so much. Are you saying that you wish you could find a way to help him?

That sums up the four kinds of active listening, but another great tip is to use good questions.

Use open questions rather than closed questions. Open questions require a longer answer, while closed questions only require a yes or a no. Rather than asking, “Did something happen today?” (yes or no answer), you could ask “What happened today that made you upset?” (needs a few more words!).

As we’ve mentioned before, be aware of the timing! Some times are just not great to have deep discussions. You know those times: right before company comes over, or on the way to church, or in front of the kids. If something comes up that you want to discuss so you can listen to and understand your spouse better, put it aside. Agree on a time to return to the topic, and make sure you do just that.

Nonverbal cues are also essential to show your spouse you’re listening. Things as simple as head nods, open gestures, and posture (no arm crossing and turning away), or even silence can go a long way in showing your spouse that you’re listening and understand what he/she is saying. Eliminate distractions, turn off the TV and the cell phone (or at least ignore it if it dings), and show your spouse they have your undivided attention.

So, next time your spouse says something, try clarifying, or paraphrasing, or reflecting, or summarizing. Ask an open question. Their response may just surprise you.

A question from Mike: “we are in a time of life when taking my wife out for a date is hard work. We have three kids under 6, and in addition to the family, I’m trying to balance my work and our ministry. Do you have any good suggestions for how I can more consistently date my wife?”

This is such a good question! We’ve definitely gone through this and I’m sure you have too. Listen to the podcast for our answer and let us know if you’ve got some suggestions that have worked for you that we can pass on to Mike.

Thanks to KH Wilson for a great iTunes review!

This is a quick episode again as we are still vacationing in South Dakota!

Dr. John Gottman, a leading researcher in the field of marriage therapy, encourages couples to establish what he calls, “rituals of emotional connection.”

There are hundreds of possibilities, but in this episode we share with you a quick one that we practice nearly every day. We use it in that busy time between getting home from work and eating our evening meal together.

It’s simple, and it’s geared typically towards husbands who come home to their wives after work in the evening. It could be tailored to fit your circumstances if they are different.

What I do is spend five minutes, right after I get home, within five feet of Verlynda. That’s 5-for-5: five minutes within five feet. I put my iPhone down and just spend the time finding out about her day, and talking to her about mine.

Now, life is never so simple that eight or ten hours can be summarized in five minutes, but it’s a quick summary. More importantly, it’s a quick way to reconnect and fortify that healthy sense of togetherness.

HT to Michael Hyatt for this tip!

And let us know how it goes.

Or, maybe you’ve developed some quick-and-easy ways of connecting. We’d love to share those with other members of the OYF clan so please feel free to reach out on Facebook, Twitter or shoot us a note.

Please leave a comment below!

We hope you’re having a great summer too!

I know we all can come out with some doozies in a rip-roarin’ marital. However, one of the most important rules of fair fighting is: the threat of divorce is never on the table.

So this is a short episode because we are on holidays! But we wanted to leave you with a good tidbit to chew over.

We’ve noticed a few different folks mentioning that their spouse threatened them with divorce, if they did or didn’t do certain things. Now, we don’t want to be too severe, but…

This one is simply unacceptable.

Marriage is a sacred, permanent covenant that should only ever be broken by the passing away of one’s spouse. In the heat of an argument, some have thrown this question into the fray in a manipulative way as a scare tactic. That is never acceptable.

But what is surprising is the number of folks we’ve heard recently using this as a passing remark. “Oh, if you ever went out in public dressed like that, I’d divorce you!” Is that OK to say?

We say, “No!”

Now we can certainly understand that there are some things we feel very strongly about. But to use the threat of divorce, even in a flippant way, is a small but unnecessary threat to the sanctity of the marriage bond.

There are other ways of expressing distress. Instead of creating a threat, give your spouse a window into how strongly impacted you are (or might be) by their choice. Try, “If you ever went out in public dressed like that, I’d feel like I was with my grandmother instead of my wife. Please change!”

So this is just us asking you to stop and think before you speak.

Understand what is bothering you so severely.

Frame that into a language your spouse can receive without feeling threatened, and language that opens up your heart to him or her.

Remember, we’d love to hear from you. Please leave us a review on iTunes or send us your comments or a question for a future episode to [email protected].

And thanks for putting up with our mini-episode while we enjoy a family holiday in the Black Hills of South Dakota!

Consider a couple who has been married twelve years. They are sitting on opposite ends of the same couch on a Sunday afternoon. The kids are at her sister’s. She is folding laundry. He is half-watching something on his phone. Neither of them is unhappy in any acute way. But neither of them has touched the other in days, and the silence in the room is not a peaceful one. It is the silence of two people who are not sure what their physical relationship is for anymore.

That couple shows up in our practice often. They are not the couple in crisis. They are the couple in slow drift. And the question they bring is some version of this one: what is the point of sex in a marriage that is already past the early years, when the children take most of the energy, when desire does not announce itself the way it used to, when frequency has quietly dropped without either of them being sure when?

It is a fair question. And the honest clinical answer is that sex in a long-term marriage is not what most people grew up thinking it was. The point is not procreation alone. The point is not pleasure alone. The point is not even closeness in the abstract. In a long marriage, sex serves at least five distinct functions: pair-bonding, repair after rupture, stress regulation, differentiation, and mutual pleasure. Each one can do something in the relationship that is hard to replace.

When these layers are alive, sex feels like a place the couple comes back to. When some of them stall, sex starts to feel optional, or transactional, or like something to negotiate. And when most of them stall, couples start asking the question that brought them to our office in the first place.

Most articles on this topic frame sex as either reproductive or recreational. The clinical reality in a long marriage is more layered than that. Here is what we see sex actually doing in the room, in roughly the order it tends to surface.

The first job sex does is keep two nervous systems tuned to each other. When you have sex with the same person over years, your body learns to associate their voice, their breathing, their skin, with a specific cascade of neurochemicals. Oxytocin releases at touch and at climax. Prolactin and endorphins flood the post-coital window. Some studies find measurable drops in stress markers, including cortisol, that can carry into the following day.

This is what attachment researcher Sue Johnson calls the “hold me tight” function of physical intimacy: it is not just an act, it is a regulation. In couples who are otherwise safe with each other, regular sexual contact often seems to make co-regulation easier in the rest of life too. They reach for each other faster when one of them is upset. They de-escalate quicker after a fight. The shared nervous system is more responsive because it has been kept in practice.

When that practice slows, you notice it first in the small things. Bedtime conversations get shorter. Touch in passing gets rarer. The couch on a Sunday afternoon gets quieter. The bond is still there, but it is no longer being topped up.

Sex is one of the few channels through which couples re-enter emotional contact after conflict. It is not the only one, and it is not a substitute for the repair conversation. But for many couples, especially those who find words difficult after a fight, physical reconnection is part of how trust resumes.

This is worth saying carefully. Sex cannot fix what has not been talked about. If one partner is hurt and the other reaches for sex without first reaching for the hurt, the sex will land as bypass and the hurt will go underground. The order matters: acknowledge, repair, reconnect. When that order is honored, the physical layer becomes part of the healing. When it is reversed, the physical layer becomes one more place the rupture is felt.

Recent research is clear that sex has a measurable effect on the stress response. A 2024 study in Health Psychology found that sex on a given day was associated with lower next-day blood pressure and reduced stress reactivity. Older work on cortisol and partnered sexuality points the same direction: in safe, wanted sexual contact, regular intimacy can help dampen the baseline tone of the stress system.

Most of the popular write-ups frame this as an individual health benefit. The more useful clinical frame is couple-level. When two people share a sexual life, they share a stress-regulation tool. Hard weeks land softer. Worry about the kids, about money, about aging parents, finds a place to discharge that does not require either of you to fix anything for the other. That is not a small thing. In our practice, the couples who have lost this layer often describe their relationship as feeling “heavier,” even when nothing major has gone wrong.

This is the purpose nobody talks about, and the one we find ourselves explaining most often. Differentiation, in the Bowen and Schnarch tradition, is the capacity to stay yourself while staying connected. Sex with a long-term partner is one of the most precise tests of differentiation a person ever encounters.

In the early years, novelty does most of the work. Later, you have to keep showing up as a particular person, with particular wants and a particular body that has changed over time, in front of another particular person who knows you. You cannot hide behind newness. You cannot collapse into anxious pursuit (“just tell me what you want me to do”) or avoidant withdrawal (“I am too tired, every time”) without something going slack between you.

A mature sexual life in a long marriage is in some sense the practice of being seen and choosing not to flinch. That is hard work. It is also part of why couples who do this work tend to describe their sex life at fifteen years in as deeper, not thinner, than it was at year three.

And then, of course, pleasure. Pleasure was always one of the purposes, and we do not want to bury it under the clinical machinery. Bodies were made for this. The point worth naming is that pleasure in a long marriage looks different than pleasure in a new one.

Researchers like Rosemary Basson and Emily Nagoski have reframed how desire works, especially for women, in ways that are useful here. Spontaneous desire (the lightning bolt of wanting that comes out of nowhere) is one mode. Responsive desire, where arousal arises in response to context and touch rather than preceding it, is just as legitimate, and tends to be more common in long-term relationships. Couples who understand the difference stop waiting for spontaneous desire to return and start building the conditions in which responsive desire can show up. That single reframe can spare couples from the assumption that something is broken.

The question we hear most is, “How often should we be having sex?” It is the wrong first question, for a clinical reason. Frequency is downstream of meaning, not upstream. When the meaning is intact, the frequency tends to follow at whatever rate the season of life allows. When the meaning has thinned, no number on the calendar will fix it.

That said, the data is interesting. Greenblat (1983) found that three-quarters of couples in their first year of marriage were having sex more than twice a week, and that this dropped to about 1.5 times per week by year six. Sprecher and Schwartz (1995) confirmed that age is the strongest predictor of decline, followed by relationship happiness and the presence of young children. Twenge, Sherman, and Wells (2017) showed that across the population, adults are having sex about nine fewer times per year than adults were in the 1990s.

What the research consistently does not show is a magic number. The closest thing to one is a single-study finding that subjective well-being tends to improve as sexual frequency rises up to about once a week, and then plateaus. The clinical takeaway is not “have sex weekly or else.” The clinical takeaway is that frequency is a follower, not a leader. When the meaning is tended to, frequency has a better chance of finding a level that fits the season.

That level may shift over the years. Exhaustion is real. Small children are real. Perimenopause and andropause are real. Health changes, medication side effects, and aging bodies are all real. None of those make a marriage broken. They make a marriage a long marriage. The work is to keep the meaning available while the frequency moves with the season.

One of the older findings on couple sexuality is from Byers and Heinlein (1989), who studied who initiates and how partners respond. Two things stood out. First, men initiated more often than women, which surprised nobody. Second, men and women responded to initiations at almost identical rates. At least in that study, the cultural story that women refuse and men pursue was more complicated than people often assume.

What they also found is that sexual satisfaction predicted both initiation and response. Satisfied partners initiated more and accepted initiations more. Dissatisfied partners initiated less and refused more. What often sits in the middle is meaning. If sex is felt as mutual, desired, and worth protecting, frequency is usually easier to talk about and tend. If sex has started to feel like a demand, a chore, or a measure of someone’s adequacy, the system collapses on both ends.

This is where the responsive-desire frame matters. In the early years of a relationship, desire often arrives spontaneously and either partner can act on it. Later, especially for the partner with lower baseline drive, desire tends to arrive responsively. The interest is not absent. It is just not pre-loaded. It needs context: a relaxed evening, an unhurried conversation, a non-sexual touch that builds without an agenda. Couples who learn to build that context together stop reading “I am not in the mood right now” as a verdict on the relationship and start reading it as information about the conditions.

Here is what we see in our practice. Couples come in convinced the problem is frequency. They have read articles, they have tried scheduling, they have had the conversation about “how often should we.” Six weeks of trying harder has not moved anything, and now they are demoralized.

What is often happening, when we slow it down, is that one of them has stopped feeling chosen. It is not that the sex is missing. It is that the sex stopped meaning the thing it used to mean. The wife who said in a session a few years ago, “I don’t want him because he only wants the act, not me,” was not refusing sex. She was refusing a kind of sex that no longer felt like contact. The husband who said, “Every time I reach for her I feel like I’m asking for a favor,” was not over-pursuing. He was responding to a relational layer that had thinned without either of them noticing.

The clinical move there is not to push for more frequency. It is to ask what the sex used to mean and what it does not seem to mean now. Usually the answers are about something else: a season of unresolved hurt, an unspoken loss of admiration, a slow accumulation of unfair labor at home, a betrayal that was not fully repaired. Sex did not break first. It just registered what was already happening one layer in.

Of course you would lose interest in sex with someone you have stopped feeling chosen by. Of course you would stop reaching for someone whose face keeps showing disappointment. The sex is the canary. Find the air leak and the physical relationship usually gets a chance to breathe again.

Here is the smallest, most practical move we know. Most couples never ask each other directly where they are sexually because the conversation is loaded. Naming a number takes the temperature down.

The check-in goes like this:

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how amorous are you tonight?”

What it does: it makes the truth available without anyone having to defend themselves. A 1 is not a rejection. A 7 is not a demand. They are simply two readings of two people who happen to be in the same marriage tonight. The next move is collaborative. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe a long shower together with no agenda. Maybe just an honest conversation about why one of you is at a 1 right now.

Many couples who do this regularly say something similar after a few weeks. Once the question is in the air, the answers stop feeling like verdicts. The relationship becomes the place where the two of you can be honest about what you have to bring to each other today, and trust the long arc to do the rest. That is also, not coincidentally, what emotional intimacy looks like in practice.

If sex in your marriage feels off, the first question is not how often. The first question is what it is doing, or not doing, between you. Is it still bonding you? Is it still part of how you repair? Is it still regulating the stress of the week? Is it still asking each of you to keep showing up as yourselves? Is there still pleasure in it?

If most of those answers are yes, frequency may simply be following the season, even if it still deserves care and conversation. If most of those answers are no, the work is not in the bedroom. The work is in the layer underneath. That is the layer we spend most of our clinical time in. Couples who do that work, who let sex be the indicator rather than the whole project, often find that the physical part becomes easier to approach again.

A few honest questions to sit with this week. Has your physical intimacy dropped off? Is it because of natural causes (children, exhaustion, life stage) or because of relational dissatisfaction? Who initiates the most, and what does that imbalance mean? Are you holding back from your spouse out of a hurt you have not named? Are you reaching for your spouse in a way that has started to feel like a demand?

If you do not know the answers, that is information too. Sometimes the smallest first move is just to ask: “On a scale of 1 to 10, where are we?” Then listen to what comes back. Pay attention to what your spouse is actually able to bring tonight.

Clinically, sex in a long-term marriage serves five distinct functions: pair-bonding through shared neurochemistry, repair after conflict, stress regulation at the couple level, differentiation (staying yourself while staying connected), and mutual pleasure. The point is not any one of these alone. It is the layered function of physical intimacy as a place the relationship comes back to.

Yes. Some couples have satisfying relationships with little or no sexual contact, particularly when both partners are aligned on that reality. The clinical question is not whether the marriage can survive but what is being substituted for the functions sex usually serves, and whether anything load-bearing is going unaddressed. When both partners are at peace with it, the marriage is not broken. When one is not, the absence is usually a signal.

Research suggests adults average about once a week, with frequency declining over time and life stage. One study found that well-being rises with frequency up to about once a week, then plateaus. Clinically, the better answer is that frequency follows meaning rather than the other way around. Get the meaning right and the frequency will find its level at whatever the season allows.

The 7-7-7 rule suggests a date night every 7 days, a weekend away every 7 weeks, and a longer trip every 7 months. It is a reasonable scaffold but there is no clinical evidence behind the specific numbers. What actually predicts couple satisfaction is not adherence to any rule but the consistency of small acts of attunement: noticing each other, responding to bids for connection, repairing quickly after rupture.

Often it does not, even when it looks that way. One partner may experience spontaneous desire (interest that arises on its own) while the other experiences responsive desire (interest that arises in response to context, touch, and emotional connection). Neither is more legitimate. They often get misread as a mismatch in caring. Couples who understand this stop reading “not in the mood right now” as a verdict and start reading it as information about the conditions.

If you and your spouse are wondering what your physical relationship is for anymore, or if you have noticed a slow drift you are not sure how to name, that is worth bringing into the room with someone. Sex is rarely the first problem. It is usually the indicator. Working with a clinician who is comfortable in both attachment work and sexual functioning can help you find the layer underneath and put words to what has been missing.

If you would like to talk with one of our therapists, we offer a free 20-minute consultation to see whether we are a good fit for what you are working on. You can also explore our work on related questions: what to do when frequency has dropped or our checklist on differences in sexual desire. To book a consultation, visit our couples counseling page.

Sometimes it is just too scary to let someone else make the decisions. Other times the fear of losing someone is so powerful we won’t even let ourselves get close to them. These sound rather extreme but are more common in marriages than we might think. Let’s take a look at what triggers these fears.

Weeks and Treat state, that “Healthy relationships are based on mutual control. Partners share the power and control in the relationship.” That is our baseline and our assumption here, that there is some give and take to the control in the marriage. We see the balance in the Bible verse that precedes the classic text about marriage in Ephesians 5: “Submit yourselves to one another”.

Submission is not something to brow-beat your spouse with – it is something to be mutually given in marriage!

Alright, back to the Fear of Control after a little side rant there… 🙂

A spouse with this fear may actively resist or else passively give in to their spouse. This fear is actually very complex as a person may fear that getting too intimate will result in a loss of control of one’s life. There are two levels of meaning here:

If you are in the first group, you will not let your guard down to let others know you. Often there is an assumption that the knowledge that comes from being vulnerable will be used against you. At the same time, you may not know how to assert yourself properly.

This often comes from parents who were over-controlling and did not promote competency and maturity. You may have been a child set up to take tasks beyond your capability and then had your parents stand back and watch you flop.

These marriages have a hard time with intimacy because it is more parent-child than equal to equal. It is regressive. It creates something that parallels what happened in your family of origin where your parents were over-controlling.

Again, the response is to own your stuff and then work through the task of piecing your identity together. It will be a challenging but wonderful journey. You will benefit from having a supportive spouse who respects boundaries and will lift you to that equal-to-equal place rather than buying into the parent-child pattern.

In normal relationships, we all take this risk: the more we emotionally invest in our relationship, the more it hurts when the whole thing goes down in flames. Bring the fear of abandonment or rejection into this and it really complicates things.

If you have been hurt, you are wary to get too close too soon or to get close at all. If you have experienced traumatic abandonment (like death, divorce or desertion of a parent) and never had the opportunity to work through that, then it is even more severe. Or sometimes in adulthood, we can go through relational experiences that really build this fear up as part of our psyche.

The belief that is carried from all those experiences is: the best way to protect myself is to never get close to another person, then I’ll never go through that trauma again. For these people, the question “Is it better to have loved and lost, or to never have loved at all?” has an obvious answer!

Is it better to have loved and lost, or to never have loved at all?

Traumatic abandonment often makes a person believe that “I am unworthy and undeserving of love. Others are unworthy of my love and trust because they will hurt me. At the same time, there is this powerful drive to find worth and love. So I’ll want to be in a relationship and may even invest more in the relationship than my spouse, but I’m constantly insecure about it.” Phew, those are a lot of thoughts to be wrestling with!

This takes a lot of work! You need to learn the skill of who to trust, and how to trust. Start to undermine that voice telling you that all people are bad, untrustworthy, and will eventually hurt you. Then take time to reflect on the source of this fear and to work through that to gain healing. (This is good work to do with a therapist, especially one well versed in attachment theory.)

Start replacing unhealthy responses or thoughts with healthy, functional ones. The verse that comes to mind is “As a man thinks, so is he.” There is a retraining of the brain where you create new neural pathways that are grounded in a healthy view of reality.

Again, the underlying thread here as we’ve seen with our other fears it to name and acknowledge them, and then move towards them.

A big favor to ask all our readers today – please let us know what you think of our articles. You can leave a comment below, or send us a question or comment to [email protected]. We love feedback of all kinds, seriously!

From Anonymous (and yes, this is actually a real person who didn’t want to be identified – we’re not making these up!): How do you broach “intimate” subjects with your spouse – such as sex, pornography, suspicion of cheating, do-you-really-love-me-anymore?

A great question that we are sure all of us can relate to at some point in time in our lives! Listen to the podcast to hear the answer.

If you’ve ever come up against some really strong feelings – either your own or someone else’s – then you’ve probably felt yourself freaking out a little bit. Going into flight, fight or freeze mode! In Part 2, we talk about the fear of feelings and the fear of anger.

As we talked about last week, we all have the fear of intimacy to some degree. Which one (or ones), and the severity, is mostly due to what we experienced in our families of origin (FOO). But the exciting thing is these do not have to be perpetuated through the course of our marriages!

We can overcome fears by acknowledging them, identifying them, and talking about them with a safe, caring spouse. As we quoted last week, “Perfect love casts out fear”. We do not get perfect love from our spouse all the time, but at least a healthy, sincere love will do a great deal to uproot and disempower these fears.

As we jump into Fear #3, we again want to acknowledge the work and research of Dr. Gerald Weeks and Dr. Stephen Treat in identifying these fears of intimacy. Both of these individuals have extensive experience helping marriages and it is more of their hard work that we are unpacking in today’s episode.

This fear has elements of the previous two fears (see OYF009), but this one is especially about feelings. Some spouses have learned to fear their feelings – all of them!

Rather than feel, these spouses would rather think. They hide behind rationality, denial, intellectualization, or just plain rigidity about what is “right”, and in so doing, stay detached in order to keep space between their spouse and their feelings.

Or, a person who fears their feelings may marry some histrionic, overly dramatic, to further take the pressure off them having to face their own feelings. If they have to deal with your junk, they don’t have to do the hard work of working through their own.

If you grew up in a home with alcoholism, depression, child abuse, manic depressive behavior, or just sheer emotional unpredictability, then feelings were likely overwhelming. What do you do then? You shut the feelings down.

Or, perhaps your parents denied or dismissed your feelings. Maybe you even got punished for having some feelings. This leads to the belief that your spouse will discount your feelings, so you ignore them, minimize them, and keep them hidden.

There are two sides to the fear of anger. One is the fear of my anger, and the other is the fear of your anger.

Sometimes a spouse brings deep anger and resentment to the marriage. A classic example of this is in parentified children. These folks were asked to assume responsibility far beyond their capacity when they were children. Often they had to care for a parent – sometimes from very legitimate situations, or on the sadder end of the spectrum, a child with alcoholic parents having to be hyper-vigilant that a drunk, the smoking parent didn’t pass out with a half-smoked cigarette and set the house on fire.

These children typically either never had the opportunity, or were never allowed, to express feelings of anger and this builds up over time. In marriage, they become afraid of all that coming out uncontrollably so they keep their distance from others, including their spouse.

Or if a person has grown up in a very angry home and witnessed spousal abuse or experienced child abuse, this is also a common source of the fear of anger because they never want to repeat what they saw – being done in anger.

At the other end of the spectrum, a person may have grown up in a home devoid of anger so have the belief that anger is unacceptable or bad or destructive and so on.

And an example we can all relate to, regardless of our FOO: Maybe I just don’t have the skills to deal with anger so I just pent it up over time. Then BOOM it all comes out uncontrollably – and “Oh no, I have to make sure that never happens again.” So we stuff our anger inside and don’t deal with it… and then we have a perpetuating cycle based on, and reinforcing, fear of anger!

For individuals who grew up in homes with unpredictable, explosive anger, or in homes where anger was unacceptable, they may develop a fear of anger. Maybe they grew up in a state of constant fear about when the next anger episode would occur.

Put them in a marriage with someone who grew up in a home where it was safe to express anger safely, and all of the sudden normal anger is actually seen to be an incredible monster. This is not to normalize or justify abuse – remember, we’re talking about normal, healthy anger – but you can see how the angry spouse is not going to understand how the fear-of-anger spouse reacts so severely to what used to be his or her ‘normal’.

Again, this needs some ownership and a conversation about how anger was expressed and how you experienced it in your FOO.

In conclusion, we need to show the courage to move toward our fear. One great encouragement is the words of Paul to Timothy, for “God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and of love and of self-control.” (1 Timothy 1:7) He does not intend us to lead fearful lives or to have fear play a major role in how we relate to one another.

As we said last week, think about what fear or fears might be holding you back from close intimacy with your spouse. Acknowledging them, talking about those fears and sharing with our spouse can actually disempower the fear!

Try it today!

Just in from Christie: “Should you, as the wife, follow everything your husband desires/wants/chooses, etc for the family, even though you strongly are against it? How do you communicate to him that you strongly feel this is wrong for your family without making him feel inferior?”

List to episode #10 to hear how Caleb & Verlynda answered this relevant question!

So, if you’ve been married more than a week, you know there’s a difference between intimacy and sex. You can have either one without the other, but together, it is an incredible experience!

Fully engaged sex is when both spouses are fully present and there is a real sense of connection. It is the difference between just doing it and actually bonding, between having sex and making love. There is a lot that goes into a real sense of connection during sex, but one thing that we want to focus on here is eyes-open sex.

Eyes open sex is really emphasized by Dr. David Schnarch. He is a certified sex therapist who has run hundreds of workshops and surveyed thousands of people about sex. Here are some statistics from his surveys:

These statistics really raise the question about how engaged we are during sex. Why are we not more intimate?

Connection is what deepens intimacy. It happens on a number of levels, but if you have your eyes open and you’re in touch with each other rather than each being lost in your own private pleasure, that’s sex on a more intimate level.

The very opposite of connected a connected couple are ones who are bored and lazy during sex. They’re just doing their “marital obligations” and underneath they’re isolated and filled with their own concerns or insecurities. Their bodies are there, but they are not both fully present and fully engaged.

Mosher, in The Journal of Sex Research (1980) speaks about disengaged versus engaged sex like this:

When sexual trance is the preferred pathway of involvement, the setting requires freedom from distractions, the mood is relaxed and receptive, sexual techniques emphasize repetitive, sensual pacing, the sexual style is passive and inwardly oriented, fantasies are scriptless sensory images, and sex is conceived to be an altered state of consciousness or a trip that leads to intense absorption into sensation and orgasm with faded consciousness in which the person is transported. When engagement with the sex partner programs the sexual contact episode, then the mood and setting are romantic reminders of the love bond, the sexual techniques emphasize kissing, cuddling, and face-to-face contact, the sexual style is affectionate and mutually pleasuring, the fantasies are romantic, sex is conceived to be a loving merger, and orgasms are flowing with a loss of the self in a loving union.

The first part of that long technical paragraph speaks about disengaged sex where each spouse is focused completely inward. The second half speaks of a union where the couple is engaged. In both situations, people had an orgasm and had sex, but the levels of intimacy are at an entirely different level.

A couple engaged while lovemaking is like the sexual implications of the Biblical statement about marriage that “they two shall be one flesh”. Rather than 1+1=2, we want 1+1 to equal 1!!

You can do all the right moves and have great sexual technique, but if you’re not actually present and making contact with her, you’re not feeling her and you’re not experiencing your sexuality as intimacy. Intensity? Probably. Intimacy? Not so much.

Again, Schnarch emphasizes intimacy. We can touch without feeling: this might be called sex but it is not intimate. We may be regularly orgasmic but still not make contact. Closing your eyes, focusing on the sensations in your body, working on technique, making it look right and achieving orgasm can actually all be ways of avoiding engagement.

The goal is connection! Learning to engage more deeply through eyes-open sex is a great week to deepen that connection

Slow things down right from the start.

Engage in creative, eyes-open foreplay. See into each other’s eyes when you’re kissing. That foreplay is communicating about the pleasure that you are experiencing. There is a reason why we are the only creature in God’s creation that can mate face to face – Connection (aka, Intimacy)!

Think about contact, and being present with each other, not technique. Remember, this is not about doing your duty, performing or touching the right things, it is about connecting deeply and intimately as you get accustomed to eyes-open sex.

Enjoy each other – give and receive pleasure.

Don’t tune out; tune in!

One thing to keep in mind: most people can’t do this. But try it! It doesn’t have to be this way every time, but as Schnarch puts it this is an invitation for your spouse to look inside you.

A question from Edwin: “What to do when fighting. You mentioned not fighting in front of the kids, but once that’s happened, what do you do?”

Most likely we have all been in this situation. Listen to Episode #8 to hear what we recommended to Edwin!

As I mentioned during the podcast, Dr. Schnarch is an excellent researcher and highly respected clinician. The material in this podcast summarizes one of the most helpful sections from his book, Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships.

Dr. Schnarch writes with the goal to help couples deepen their intimacy in all areas of marriage through focussing on the marriage bed as a crucible for everything that is going on in the marriage. There is nothing un-Biblical about this approach but for our readers and listeners who are Christians, just be warned that this book is not written for Christians. It contains explicit language (I wish he would refrain from using “street” language when discussing sexuality in this otherwise fine piece of work) and is definitely one of those books where you have to eat the meat and spit out the bones.

By that I don’t mean to condone values that are contrary to my own, I just hold the belief that we can take what is good and leave what we disagree with without the need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I understand that not everyone is comfortable with this approach so if it’s not a good fit for you then I’d definitely not recommend his book to you.

We started with the subject of in-laws in Episode 6 and learned that there are some powerful but subtle psychological mechanisms that can come into play in our relationships with our in-laws. The more we are aware of these things and of our own “stuff”, the better equipped we are to maintain a healthy relationship with the new set of parents and siblings that usually come with marriage. Today, we finish our discussion before heading over to a fascinating question from a member of the OYF clan.

In summary, in Episode #6, we discussed the following dynamics based on some great research found in the Journal of Family Therapy:

We want to affirm again the need to honour our parents and yet we hope that by opening up these areas of struggle that it’ll help normalize some of the challenges of being in a relationship with our in-laws. In-laws can be a major marital issue, which is supported by research. In the Journal Of Marriage and Family (2004), Bryan, Conger & Meehan concluded the following:

Even in long-term marriages, conflicts in extended family relations will erode marital stability, satisfaction and commitment over time.

Those in-law conflicts can actually wear away at the marriage bond and that is why we want you to have some tools and ideas about how to approach these issues so that this can be a point of resilience in your marriage.

Going back to the research from the Journal of Family Therapy, let’s move on!

Every family is different, and flexibility is a huge asset in creating a successful marriage. That flexibility also needs to be extended to our in-laws as we all have our own expectations of what the relationship should look like. Whether it be family rituals, levels of parental involvement, or whatever, each one of us has an idea of how things should work out. When couples merge, some of those differences may feel like violations because we expect one thing and reality is another. That’s where boundary regulation comes in – the couple needs to support each other, have good communication, be together and realize that there are some differences that they’ll need to navigate their way through.

To emphasize again, the couple needs to be together at all times. A parent and child can never divorce, but a married couple can, so must do everything they can to preserve that bond. If the parents have overstepped a boundary, the couple (even if one thinks their spouse is in the wrong) needs to be together in the moment but also needs to sort out later (in private) what went on. Try to unpack things and look at it from the other family’s point of view. An apology may be needed, so be big enough to apologize if you were at fault!

If you think about it, the weird part about in-laws is that all of a sudden there’s a close, familial connection with people who are pretty much strangers. Those people have a 20 or 30-year relationship with your spouse, and you’re now received into this family with the same position but none of the history. We need to define those boundaries and how the relationship is going to look in a way that supports the marriage bond first and respect and honours the parents second.

What if, for their first baby, the husband has been looking forward to being Awesome Dad #1. He takes time off work, reads all the same baby books Mom does. He is committed to sharing the infant parenting 100% – for everything but the breastfeeding, things will be 50/50. The day after they get home from the hospital, the wife’s Mom shows up, and she thinks she’s the 50% the husband was planning to be.

There is plenty of opportunity for conflict here..and resentment…and bitterness!

This is about role-expectations. The Grandma thought she was doing the right thing and was just trying to help. The wife may have expected it and the poor husband is hurt. Nobody is at fault, but at this point, role expectations need to be negotiated. Some honest conversations are going to have to take place. Remember, the couple needs to be together first and respecting parents second.

In conclusion, all of these six points say the same thing: Spouse first, parents second.  Remember, in-laws generally want the best for the other family members but, because of the six points we’ve talked about, it may not look that way. If we keep the things we’ve talked about in mind, the conflict we find ourselves in may be easier to manage. Don’t internalize things if they don’t go your way, there was probably no intent to offend.

From Pam: How on earth does one go about helping others who have been involved in an affair or whose spouse has been involved in an affair?

This is such a great question, and an answer you won’t want to miss. Listen to the show to hear the answer given.

Image courtesy of Louish Pixel under the Creative Commons license.

I was at a magic show, when after one particularly amazing trick, someone screamed out, “Wow, how did you do that?” “I would tell you”, answered the magician predictably, “but then I’d have to kill you.” After a moment’s pause, the same voice yelled back “Can you tell my mother in law?”

Even though it would be impossible to host an episode about in-laws without a little off-the-cuff humour, we do want to acknowledge that parents are always to be given honour. Having said that, we recognize that in-law issues – both parent to offspring and offspring to parent – can be a really hot topic for many marriages!

The Journal of Family Therapy published an article called “The Problem With In-Laws” (2003). They identified six common areas where issues arise in Western societies with in-laws. They are:

These are not all words we use commonly every day so we will unpack them a little below!

A note to folks from other cultures that follow our show: you may have to take what we’re going to talk about and evaluate if it fits your culture. At the very least, this might be an interesting insight into how things happen in the idealized world of North America.

Regardless of culture, the guiding principle here from the ancient wisdom of the Bible is that a husband shall leave his father and mother and cleave (cling, unite) unto his wife (Genesis 2). This implies there is a clear separation that comes into the parental relationship and then a joining in the marriage relationship.

When you get married, your loyalty changes from your parents to your spouse. Time, attention and affection get re-directed to the spouse from the parents which may make the parents jealous. The spouse may also get jealous is he/she feels that the parents-in-law are still getting a larger portion of the attention.

To further complicate things, a spouse may actually feel like they’re betraying their parents to some extent when they leave home. There may be grief, but the couple needs to build their own bond to compensate.

Realize that most in-laws want the best for your marriage. Usually, parents are not out to thwart a relationship but want their child and spouse to be happy. It is each individual coming to the new relationship with their own expectations of what that should look like that causes conflicting tensions.

It is so easy to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves with others. That is no different in relationships than it is with anything else.

We can bring a lot of expectations into our marriage about what it means to be a good daughter-in-law (DIL) or son-in-law (SIL) and even compare ourselves with our siblings as to who is doing a better job as an in-law.

We may also compare ourselves to our spouse’s parents. For example, a husband may compare the house that he has provided for his wife with the house she lived in with her parents and wonder if he measures up.

It’s also easy to feel like we need to compete for the amount of time devoted to each relationship.

We need to manage our boundaries – put your spouse first and your parents second. As a spouse, we need to voice our concerns to our marriage partner if we feel left out. Talk about it and try to find ways where you can still feel connected with the parents but are not taking time away from your spouse. Rather than come at it with an “either-or” attitude (competition) try to find a “both-and” solution.

Transference is looking to your family (my in-laws) to provide something that was lacking in my family or fulfill the role of my parents. It may not even be a recognized need, but it is in the subconscious as a deep desire.

For example, if one family of origin (FOO) was not very good nurturing, that spouse may need his/her in-laws to provide that nurturing. If the spouse’s family held the belief that they should give the new couple as much breathing room as possible, the spouse looking for the nurturing may interpret that as cold and unloving.

Negative transference: disappointment from my family is now transferred to yours.

Positive transference: I overly idealize my new in-laws. They are perfect.

Be aware of the expectations we bring to the table.

Look to the marriage bond to help us meet our needs rather than the in-laws. This has to stay within the boundaries of a healthy marriage – we are not referring to deep psychological needs here. You cannot expect your spouse to fill those, you need to work through those and get professional help if you need it.

Displacement is me getting upset with your parents because that’s easier than being upset with you. Or, it may go the other way and again be my own issue – it’s safer to express anger towards your parents than against my own parents. If you’re on the receiving end of this from a parent-in-law, remember, it’s easier for them to be upset with you than to be hurt by their own flesh-and-blood.

For example, if I feel your parents are too intrusive (which is actually more about my own uncomfortable feelings towards them) and take on a victim role, they may actually begin to see me as needy and try to be more there for us. So it becomes a vicious cycle, and self-fulfilling, all because I was unable to originally identify my own uncomfortable feelings!

Most in-law issues are our own inability to look inside and deal with how we’re feeling. It’s easier to blame somebody else! Generally, we start into marriage when we are the least emotionally mature. That is a hard time to deal with complicated new relationships!

Be aware of yourself. Stop in those moments when you’re upset and ask yourself, “What is my own ‘stuff’?” Think about what you need to own, and then how you are going to deal with it instead of dumping/projecting/transferring your issues onto someone else.

This can be painful, but be honest. Talk to your spouse about your realities and needs. This is a great way to bond – talk about and unpack your insights together. Marriages strengthen and grow when we start to understand how and why we do the things that we do. That is when marriage becomes the tool to make us holier and refine our characters.

In-law dynamics #5 and #6 (Boundaries and Role Expectations) will be coming next week! Also, a superb question you won’t want to miss – especially for those of our listeners who are helping other marriages.

Thanks for listening and feel free to share in the comments what you’ve learned about effectively navigating in-law relationships!

Image courtesy of Louish Pixel under the Creative Commons license.