The Generous Marriage Podacst

In this episode of the Generous Marriage Podcast we discuss:

She would pursue by becoming controlling, demanding and critical of him. He would distance her, by closing up emotionally, over justifying himself, and simply going away.

Underneath that, she wanted to feel safe by feeling connected to him. He wanted to go for what makes him come alive without feeling guilty for it.

After understanding that, he made sure to show her that she is his number one person. And she made sure to show him she trusted him and wanted to support his freedom and individuality.

We prepared a worksheet to help you identify your triggers and your underlying feelings and needs, that can help you understand better the dynamic you engage in with your partner and how you could transform it to a positive cycle of care, nourishment and generosity.

To download the worksheet click the button below:

Welcome to the generous marriage podcast. Fight less feel appreciated and have a deeper connection with your spouse. And now your host, Shachar Eriz and Ziv Raviv.

Hello and welcome to the generous marriage podcast. This is Ziv Raviv today. Together with my partner in crime Shachar Erez, we’ll exploring another topic that affects your marriage that can make it a more generous marriage. And today’s very different in episode eight because we’re actually talking about a couple that he’s not married yet, but through understanding that relationship, we can learn a lot about something we call the relationship dynamic. and that’s like something that, Shachar, you are an expert on, on couple therapy, on relationships. So first of all, how about you? Shachar, welcome. I’m good. I’m happy to be here. Hi everyone. Hi Ziv.

And today the topic is not a couple is married. Just before we go into the actual story of Sherrill and Jordan and, uh, talk about that. Can you explain to us how different is it for you as a counselor when sometimes you treat people that are married and sometimes you play the people that are in a relationship? Is there a big difference? Well, actually there is a big difference. It’s about human relationship and the topic of the day, this relationship dynamic, it’s something that shows up for almost all couples. According to research, 80 to 90 percent have this dynamic. Sometimes it’s called the psycho, sometimes it’s called a dance. But everybody has it. It can be super annoying and when we learn how to change it, it can be super nourishing and transformative and the heal childhood wounds. Wow. So this is something that affects 80 percent of you guys listening to our right now. Wherever you’re driving right now or whatever you’re doing while listening to the generous marriage podcast, you’re probably affected by the dance. Oh, by the relationship dynamic. And uh, you say Shachar, that basically married couples, unmarried couples.

Both of them can suffer form and it’d be affected by the relationship dynamic. Is that right?Every couple that gets attached, which happens usually about a year into the relationship, creates this dynamic between them in which the way we react to each other pokes. The other is sensitivity and the way that the other defense, that sensitivity pokes my sensitivity. And that’s the cycle, the way we defend ourself is triggering for the other, and the way the other defense herself is triggering for me. And that’s like an infinity loop. I get triggered, I defend ourselves. She gets triggered, she defends herself. I get even more triggered. I defend myself. Hardships. She gets more triggered, more intense. It’s a downward spiral.Yup. Very familiar. So today we’re going to investigate this dance, this relationship dynamic, and how to actually step away, step back and find a way to overcome this.

I really love this topic, the topic of triggers and the topic of this dynamic because it actually has a lot of implications, not just our own relationships or on having a generous manager, but also on business. I’ll explain that later on because it just does. So let’s start with the story because we always have this structure. It’s really useful to know maybe this is your first episode with us in the generous marriage podcast. But that’s so the way we do it is we talk about a couple of the names that we use are not their real names because of confidentiality between Shachar and there are many, many couples that he works with. However, the story is based on realistic story that you might feel very familiar with, and then we’re going to talk about discovery problem.We’re going to discuss the tool to overcome the problem and even touch base with the research that proves that this problem can be healed. That this is something that you can actually improve in your marriage. If you want a more generous marriage, why should we want to know generous marriage? Well, first of all, it creates more opportunities for intimacy, creates more opportunities for feeling loved and supported, and as a parent it will also help you with the way that you raise your kids because you’re going to give some pretty amazing example. So many reasons why you would want to have a generous marriage. Let’s go right into the story part. Shachar. Take it away.

So Cheryl and Jordan were a young couple in their early thirties and they’ve been together for three years and both of them felt like the next step as a couple, what way to get married. But Jordan was having hard time committing. It’s hard to know what started it. It’s like a chicken and egg thing, but because he wasn’t committing, Cheryl would get triggered and more frustrated and become more demanding and critical and they would fight more. They had this dynamic, this dynamic where she would pursue him and he would distance himself and they would fight a lot which made him not want to commit. Why would you commit to an unstable relationship? But she wanted to. And it just seemed like there was no way out. Well, it’s nice to be very fascinating. They were together three years and the ages light like the 30. So like in many, many cultures you a 30 is a very modern age, uh, age to get married. And especially after three years, like I remember on a book by Alison Armstrong, I always go back to her books because I really loved them.

She mentioned how for women, after even nine months, she would feel in the relationship like he needs some commitment. Because there’s always the biological clock she needs to get to the next step in her life and so Cheryl was already you for three years in this relationship. What is going on? Where is it going? Where is it leading? And form Jordan’s point of view. He’s not ready for the commitment for some reason, and that’s might to be very frustrating and from his point of view, of course he’s scared to commit to this. Can I say beach that is constantly complaining about him not being committed enough so like it’s creates he spiral effect, like a snowball effect.It’s true. They were actually really sweet people, but when this dynamic was on, shit turned out to be this controlling. Yeah, bitch, I’m sorry for this word, but that’s how he described her and she would describe him as irresponsible fool. So here we go, a controlling bitch and irresponsible fool. Really not getting along. Really not getting their needs met. He was afraid to commit because he was afraid to. Because for many reasons, but one of them that he was afraid to lose his individuality, loses freedom.

She wanted to commitment because I didn’t say that, but she was a strong woman, a business consultant, powerful, independent. She didn’t really need him. But she needed him because she was craving letting go some. Leaving her responsibility and, and, and resting in his presence. But in other to do that, she had to feel safe with him. So she had to know he is committed to a future with her. So she could feel safe and let go and trust him.Wow. Well, I wonder where does this lead the end story of this couple and tell us a little bit about what is the actual problem in the relationship? You know, how, how does the actual dynamic was, was uh, expressed in depth. Because we understand the story that she wants to his commitment and he’s afraid. But how did it affect the day to day life? So in their day to day life, she would pursue him wanting more connection. But the way she did it wasn’t effective because she would become controlling and demanding and somewhat critical and he was sensitive to all that. He was sensitive to his freedom.

So when she came with demands, he would withdraw. He would distance himself, it would either leave the house or smoke some weed, then disappear in the yard or over explaining himself. Which didn’t make her feel understood and connected the way she wanted. So it was a hard dynamic. It’s, it’s actually a very common one. The pursuer withdraw our psycho.Can you explain to me like it wasn’t explained to me because this is very frustrating. I really can relate to not the weed part, but definitely the, you know, become distant part and why you do they do it. Why do the women come and try to get what they want in ways that are not efficient? You know what I mean? Yeah. Cause it’s a defense mechanism. They underneath it, they often feel scared because, for example, Cheryl, she grew up with an alcoholic father. Who Was it? It was hard to know how he’s gonna react to stuff. Sometimes it was sweet and sometimes it was a raging alcoholic, so she had sensitivity to instability. Whenever Jordan did something that made her feel unstable, she would try to gain control.

And the way she tried to get control was becoming more demanding and more controlling, which helps her not feel the fear. The terror, even of what she felt as a kid that was still arising with Jordan. But it wasn’t really creating stability. It was a defense mechanism. What she really needed to do, and what we did in therapy was find out everything that I just said, a historical wound that created this sensitivity and when Jordan was able to see the inner child, the wounded child he could see beyond the controlling bitch, you know, and become generous at helping her feel safe.I want to take a look at what you just said with the, with the, with the cavemen metaphor, right? There are a lot of time looking at the cave in our genetics. Looking at how we will build human beings. A lot of our genetics is all about being that, that’s Homo Sapiens Cavemen. I am livinging in, in, in small family tribes and imagine this, the lady in this case, let’s, let’s take the ancestor of ancestor of ancestor of Cheryl. Yeah. Cheryl, the cave lady. She. She knows that she cannot hunt a tiger by his self. She cannot haunt a deer by herself. Physically speaking. She’s smaller and not as strong as Jordan, the caveman.

The cavemen version. And Jordan knows that he’s really good at hunting that, that deer or that tiger and protecting the cave people that are within his responsibility and in this case it might only be even just sharing, but if he will go there and hunt, he will still need someone to help with the rest of the things like collecting the berries and gather them and maybe even being aware of the environment and cleaning and stuff. So for, for both of them, they actually need each other. Right. But the reason for Sheryl to go into this partnership of you go and hunt. I’ll collect the berries and wait for you here. He wants that because she needs protection. Right? It’s very. It’s a very integral part of Cheryl, the cave lady that her genetics scream at her and said, you need to make sure you have one of those big guys around to protect you. Now, of course, I don’t think that in the modern age you need to protect yourself for a tiger! And you don’t necessarily even need men to protect yourself.

You can protect yourself by yourself. However, our genetics still make us feel like, hey, we need one of those big guys around or in your genetics. Your mostly barely gather. You’re mostly aware of the environment and the way of how to improve it and how to make it better.But why should you? Why should you care about Jordan hunting stuff if it doesn’t really commit to, you know, to protecting you. Right. So feeling safe for a female, for a lady, for women, it’s very important. It’s a part of her to want to feel safe and she will, she will work to to make sure that she can feel safe and her way of working around it. You know, if she says this asshole Jordan, so you know, going and smoking weed in the yard instead of doing something to connect with her or doing something too to commit to something that’s very frustrating. That’s her triggering point. That’s where she’s vulnerable. She needs to feel safe and feeling safe can come in many ways like even when you’re sitting down after cooking a meal together. Even just giving a compliment about how lovely this meal is. Thank you so much for preparing it for me or with me or or whatnot. So there’s so many ways to make someone feel safe and it’s not something you do and then you’re done. It’s like something you need to constantly help the other side feel safe. Right. And like you said, because of genetics and also because of cultural influences, it’s the most common that women are more into the safety. That connection gives and men are more into freedom and individuality and providing. But I see other couples as well. Sometimes it’s the other way around.

The man is the pursuer and the woman is the drawer and sometime you know, in same sex relationship, this kind of dynamic happens as well. So, but it’s not necessarily something that everyone exactly the same. It’s not. Yeah, but they’re not. And this dynamic happens in almost every capital. It’s amazing. Yeah. Eighty percent. Wow. So I understand now I understand better and this is really important. Sometimes we forget, forget why they’re being a bitch and not being a bitch. They’re actually responding to the needs. The actual hill. Sometimes even genetic induced needs or culturally induced needs a, oh, history from going up. So they have real needs and when not met, they will respond to it and try to fulfill their needs in a different way. So now let’s understand a little bit about how did you work with them in order to overcome this relationship dynamic?The most powerful part of the work together was to describe their dynamic trigger each other and how they defend themselves. She would pursue him by becoming controlling, demanding, and critical of him. Hey would distance her distance himself from her by closing up emotionally, over justifying himself, or simply going away smoking with below that and this part they knew. That’s what I call above the hood. You know, that’s what is shown, and this is than knowing part of the dynamic. What’s more important is to realize the underlying sensitivity, the underlying need.

She wanted to feel safe by feeling connected to him. He wanted to go for what makes him come alive without feeling guilty for it. They’re missing experiences. She needed to hear from him. You’re my number one person. I want you to feel safe. I want to take care of your needs. Why? He needed to hear from her. I trust you. I want to support a freedom. I want to support your individuality. Which both didn’t get enough in the family where they grew up in. She grew up in a family that wasn’t very stable and she needed more stability and she needed to be admired more and he grew up in a kind of restrictive family where they didn’t really support his fund. They didn’t really support well enough. What makes him come alive, so it was a missing experience for him and one day realized that and we’re to sometimes, not always, but sometimes do that missing experience for each other to take care of each other’s attachment needs. It made a huge difference and from fighting all the time, they became generous with each other. And then when generosity was the main cycle they had sometimes when they visit each other, it wasn’t a big deal. They wouldn’t collapse over; they wouldn’t fight over it so much because some of the needs are now met. They didn’t trigger each other anymore. Right. Wow. Or, or even if they got triggered, it wasn’t a big deal because most of the time those needs were being met. We’re being fulfilled.

So it was easy, you know, their emotional account was full, so it was easy not to get super triggered about every time they missed each other.So basically you’re explaining about a situation, this dynamic relationship dynamic or the dance is a situation when we’re in the relationship, one of the people and it can change from time to time between the two. Yeah, but mostly h one stays more or one role. So one of you is probably more typical sewer. A lot of time that would be the lady in the couple. And she used her safety. She wants her connection. She wants her commitments from the spouse, from the relationship and the withdrawer, which a lot of time is the guy he wants his independence. It’s very, it’s very important for him. His independence. He wants to feel appreciated. He wants to feel freedom.

He wants to feel individuality. That we thought well once things and episode once things and those two things, those things that they want are actually in collide. They can collide, they can create a situation where the exact thing that we throw once, we make the pursuer feel triggered and the exact thing that the persona can sometimes create a trigger for the other side. So what basically the first step in understanding how to stop this relationship dynamic, how to you know, not be only with the hat of the withdrawer and, and not be only with the head of the pursuer is to understand one another. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about this tool of understanding yourself as a withdrawal or yourself as a pursuer or your couple as one of these. How can you reach a deeper understanding of the dynamic and fluid understanding, you know, become more generous and not be triggered as harshly as you used to.

Idea is to create a list of triggers. We all have things that we know the trigger us more than other things and it’s really good to create this list of triggers and then understand how we feel when we’re triggered. So Cheryl would get triggered when she didn’t feel stability. She would feel scared and she would need help in gaining stability and safety. Jordan would get triggered when he felt like his freedom is under attack, like his freedom is taken away. He would feel despair. He would need support in a going for what makes him come alive. So there is to create the list of triggers and then write down what you feel when you’re triggered and what you need when you’re triggered, and ideally you share it with your partner and it creates a change. It creates generosity. You learn how to stop or not stop because we keep on triggering each other forever, but less, you know, how to trigger each other less or when we do trigger each other, how to help each other come out of the triggered state and feel more regulated.So basically, uh, I mentioned before how this trigger topic is very close to my heart because although I really loved the topic of business and in business, mapping your own triggers is even like a mandatory thing in if you want to succeed.

You need to understand when are you triggered, because if you’re going to take action when you’re triggered, you’re going to take the wrong action. You’re going to ignore the fact and because of the emotions you feel from the trigger from the fact you’re going to wrongly analyze those facts and myths and behave in a way that is not focused on your actual purpose or goals. So in this process, I’ve been involved in like a business challenge. Uh, one of the initial tasks were to map all of your triggers exactly like you just did a mentioned like mapping. What is the thing that happens that triggers, what is the emotion that is triggered and what is the story that I tell myself about it, like why is it triggering me to the best of my knowledge, and then a very, very important thing is the last bit, which is what do you do when you are triggered?What do you use it usually do in that situation and those triggers they can be with your wife, that you can be with your girlfriend. It can be with your mom.

They can be with yourself. You know, but mapping them actually helps you with a very important element in life in a way which is to know that those triggers, they do not control what you do. They only control how you feel. So changing how you feel now. Oh Man, I don’t know if that’s even possible to maybe after you practice for very, very many, many years and meditate and I don’t know what. Maybe then you can feel a little bit less intense when something is triggering you. Maybe, but you definitely can control how you behave, how you act after you felt triggered. Have you felt all those emotions in you, so knowing that no, because you only mapped all of your triggers and even sharing that with your spouse?Omg. That’s the generosity because your wife basically just got a manual. If she wants to trigger you, she can just press the button and she can trigger you immediately because she knows what are your triggers, so by showing it to her, that’s a partnership.

That’s generosity because your vulnerable. Remember we talked about vulnerability. I last week on episode seven. Vulnerability is a wonderful thing. You mentioned how this is one of the very important keys in a relationship, so it’s not a coincidence that mapping your triggers and being vulnerable is part of a way to improve the relationship dynamic. They love it. I love what you said about this process because it helps come out of this habitual patterns of response and add some choice into them because yeah, we get triggered and we feel bad. That’s something that’s hard to change, but we can change the way we respond to our triggers and we can add choice and become more vulnerable and ask for what we need or take care of what we need instead of just responding in a hostile in a protective way.Let me ask you this, Shachar. Did Sherry and Jordan, when they did that mapping of list of triggers a, was that staffing that was improving the relationship and can you tell us what happened with them? It’s pretty changed their relationship and they get engaged quite quickly after we ended the process. It’s funny because commitment was still hard for them, so they got engaged, but they got married almost three years after they get engaged. But they did get married and they actually had me perform the ceremony for them. It was very touching. Wow, that’s wonderful.

That’s like A. I usually work with the problems, but to also be able to be there when they commit to each other. That was super powerful for me.That might be very meaningful. Must must have been very meaningful for you guys. If you’re listening right now to this and you might be thinking, Hey, what if my spouse won’t agree to this repairing list of triggers? How can I explain it to her? Well, first of all, in the document that Shachar is making for you, this bunos material that you can download. If you go to the generous marriage.com website and in the podcast tab, go to episode number eight and just press the button to download that. This bonus deal will be information for you that helps you explain yourself to your spouse, why it’s so important to list the triggers, and that is something that auction. Also, you can let her or him listen to this podcast to understand how important it is when you filled it triggers, but just on a personal level, I want you to know I did this myself without mapping the triggers like gluten doesn’t need to map help legals.I, I can map it for her honestly and I can. Nowadays we with the maturity of researching the topic of generous marriage.

I can understand why helped take us a triggers. Why is it so important for her by myself? So even if of course it’s always better to be generalists and to do it together, but even if you just do it yourself, you will see a huge improvement in your relationship because you will trigger your spouse less often. And you will be less triggered by yourself less often. So many times like I would look at it stopping that autumn will tell me like, why do I need to pick this up and I wouldn’t. I will no longer see that as a way for her to be controlling me. Instead, I would see it as she needs me to be aware of it. To make her feel safe.Just by knowing your own list of triggers and remembering that you don’t have to act upon your feelings when you’re triggered, you can decide how you will respond. Sometimes it’s okay to be triggered. To feel something and to act upon it. But you need to decide when and how you’re going to act upon your emotions when you’re triggered. Because many of the times, those triggers that are very well defined, it’s very easy to sit down for like 30 minutes and think about, hey, uh, yeah, every time this happens I feel this way. Every time that happens, I feel that way. So really powerful stuff to map your triggers and even do it by yourself. Let me ask you Shachar? Is there any research about the topic of, of this triggers thing?

So yeah, there is a lot of research about this. Uh, the main researcher is Dr. Sue Johnson who is the developer of Eft, emotionally focused couples therapy and her research and other people’s research finds that 70 to 75 percent of couples that go through eft process moved from distress to recovered. And approximately 90 percent show significant improvements. So couples therapy is highly effective. Highly, highly, effective. It’s really worth going to therapy and figuring out your dynamic and figuring out other ways to handle your triggers and your partner’s triggers.Imagine that. Imagine if you had like your, your, your back will ache or you had headaches or or you bloke, I dunno, like you had these feelings and you went to the doctor and you knew in advance that for 90 percent chance they’re going to heal you. That that is the huge, huge amount. Like I, I went to like 10 different doctors about my back. No one of them helped me. It was like I have zero improvement and like to know that 90 percent significant improvement will be achieved. If you go to a counselor and work on your relationship.

That is huge and this was researched and reresearched and that is why we will share with you very proudly the link to the research so you can take a look at that and learn more. Guys, we are wrapping up for today. If you go to the generous marriage.com website, you are not going to only found the bonus that explains how to do the trigger exercise and how to help yourself get away from the relationship dynamic from this very harsh game of life. Whereas pursuant with withdraw, you keep triggering each other. But through this exercise, this bonus document, you’re going to get information on how to make the triggers list and more efficient way does even a fill in the blanks section where you need to sit down with your spouse and mentioned like what makes you feel safe, what makes you feel appreciated, what makes you feel trusted, and more of these that will help you identify if you are with withdrawer or are you a pursuer?

And then the game of, you know, mapping what are your triggers will become easier. And from there you know, you will also be able to even see the link to the research. So everything is waiting for you and the generous marriage.com. Shachar has always, it’s been a real privilege and a very fun experience. We’ll talk with you about this very important topic. Do you think they. This will help people maintain a more generous marriage?Yes. I’m sure that this dynamic affects almost all couples and when you figure it out and learn how to manage it, how to handle it differently, it’s really helps create more intimate, more satisfying, more generous relationship. So this is not just about the relationship when you’re not married yet, even though Cheryl and Jordan did get married, eventually you will. Even during the ceremony, I conducting it, but we, what we’re talking today is not just for unmarried couples. It’s for everyone of you listening to right now to the generous marriage podcast. Guys, please talk about us at work. Talk about this on facebook. Thank you so much for listening and we will be seeing you next week on the generous marriage podcast. Thank you Shachar! Thanks Zaviv you everybody, who’s listening. We’ll meet again next week. Bye Bye. Bye Bye.

Weekly episodes with stories, tools and research that will help you make your marriage generous

Shachar Erez, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, 12 years married, father of two

Ziv Raviv, 16 years married, father of three

[email protected]

The post Episode 8 – The Relationship Dynamic appeared first on The Generous Marriage Academy.

In this episode of the Generous Marriage Podcast we discuss:

We prepared a fun game that can help you practice vulnerability with your partner.

To download the game, click the button below:

Welcome to the generous marriage podcast, fight less, feel appreciated and have a deeper connection with your spouse and now your host, Shachar Erez and Ziv Raviv.

 Hello and welcome to the marriage podcast. This is Ziv Raviv and together with me is Shachar Erez, and today. In episode seven, we’re going to talk about vulnerability. We’re going to explore a story of a couple that had an issue with vulnerability and also a tool that you can use in order to overcome certain problems in your relationship with your spouse that is related to that. As always, the goal of this podcast is to help you guys with practical tools that will make your marriage more generous. And in order to do that in a professional way, we just need someone professional on the team and that’s why we have our very own counselor and a marriage, a marriage counselor, relationship counselor, our very own, Shachar Erez. Hello Shachar, how are you? Hi Ziv , I’m happy to be here. Hi everyone. Thanks for listening.

Today we’re going to talk about vulnerability and through the story of Emily and Charlie, And I wonder, you know, even before we go into actually talking about the Emily and Charlie, I can listen maybe someone is raising his eyebrow, like what the connection is between, uh, between vulnerability and a good relationship. Can you just, I’m. So, that’s why I’m really quick. If they asked me what is the number one key for long lasting, happy, nourishing relationship, I would say there isn’t a one key. But if they pressed me, I would say it’s Vulnerability. Meaning for me, in my perspective, vulnerability is the most important thing a couple can do for each other.

When we dare to be vulnerable, every time we dare to be vulnerable, we fall in love again with each other. Wow. That’s really. The heart opens. There’s closeness, there’s intimacy. We also deep into deepened into our self and deepened into our partner. We understand ourselves better, we understand better our needs and our partner needs. It’s really, it creates magic in every relationship. Yeah. In a way, being vulnerable is like a question mark at the end of what you do. Like, it’s not what you say necessarily, sometimes you all vulnerable by by saying something. But the fact that you were willing to be vulnerable, it’s just like not knowing what will happen next. This is why you’re vulnerable because you might get hurt, you might, you know, something that you are asking for, might not be accepted. And so on and coming to a relationship with some question marks with some curiosity with, um, you know, opportunities to get help as well as a feel good. That is real life that is, you know. Without those question marks, it’s just going to be so boring and not efficient and not going to work for you, for my point of view. So I think in life in general, you know, coming to the world from a place of vulnerability from place of accepting the influence of the world on you in a way is also key. A really, really cool a topic. Let’s try to understand this topic even deeper by talking about Emily and Charlie. So take it away, Shachar. Tell us a little bit about them.

So Emily and Charlie were a young couple. They were in their early thirties. They were married for around three years and had a two-year-old girl. They came to me because they were fighting about sales stuff! Like a lot of capital to do that. For them it was about the chores around the house. They were both working. He was working full time job as a mechanical engineer and, she was a dance instructor and also taking care of, of, of a girl. And he was uh, complaining about how the house was organized and how clean it was and she was feeling like she was working really hard on their house, and then with the kid and the outside as an instructor. And then he’s always complaining and he felt like he is working full time job, coming back home, spending time with the kid and then doing all the chores around the house. He kept saying, oh, the chores with as if she doesn’t do anything.

By the way, using that word. I do all the chores. That sounds very much like we discussed on the last episode, like a criticism, you know. It’s like “I always, you never”. Whenever we use these words, it should raise a flag that something is off here that we’re not seeing reality as it is because almost nothing happens always or never. Yeah. And then it’s poisonous. And then there is an antidote antidote for that. Which is vulnerability. But you know how this poison affected Emily Charlie is they stopped having sex, right? That’s a big one, right? Fighting on small chores, sounds silly. But then not having sex for six months, that’s a big thing. It starts to hurt the relationship. It’s hard to come back from that to come, back to sex life too. Satisfying sex life. So this is now really a situation. They’re not just fighting the uh, you know, they don’t have any intimate relationship for, for how long? Around six months, by the time when they came to me. Well that’s a point. That’s a red flag altogether. Uh, for you to, you know, to consider some help maybe some counseling through which that point. He actually didn’t believe in counseling. He didn’t want to come to counseling. But six months without sex, that changes mind then they realize they need help. Yeah.

It’s really important topic I feel because even if you do have sex, but it’s not very frequent, like when I say very, very, it’s different before one, one, couple to another obviously. But um, I imagined that even, you know, having only once a month having sex, is, is, is something that should raise some, some sort of a flag in terms of your communication skills. Yeah. Some experts say once a month is sexless marriage. Wonderful. I love this definition. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Twelve times a year is a sexless marriage and it should read their huge flag and it should have go to therapy and get help. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with getting help. You only the like now by talking, by listening to this podcast, you’re getting some help. But there’s nothing wrong with just, you know, even by yourself or with your spouse to go and get some counseling. This is really something we believe in. yeah you know these guys, Emily and Charlie, they came for four sessions. Yeah, that’s it. And their relationship completely changed from not having sex for six months. They fell in love again. They were, it was amazing to see them.

Let’s talk about a little bit about what happened with them. It was really clear that there was a lot of shame between them. He felt like a victim, like everything is done to him and he has to do everything around the house and then his, you know. He would make a face and she would feel bad like she’s not good enough and they just throw the shame at each other. And shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed, and because we’re flawed, we’re not worthy of love and belonging. Meaning something we’ve done or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection. And as human beings, we are born into connection. We are hardwired for connection. Our psychology is all about connection. So if we that will flawed and because of that we’re unworthy of connection. It really hurts. It’s really painful. And do we need it? We need the connection. Yeah, exactly. We need as babies, we needed to survive. But even as grownups, we needed in order to to thrive, to feel good. To be happy. To be healthy. Yep.

So there was another shame between them and the antidote to shame is actually being vulnerable. Shame cannot handle light. When we talk about shame, it disappears. And, and let me talk a little bit about the difference between women and men with shame because the research finds that women and men experienced them differently.

For women shame is a web of unattainable expectations that say do it all. Do it perfectly. Yeah, I know we talked in different episodes how women see more details and those details are yelling at them. Take care of me, take care of me. Yeah, of course they can’t take care of everything. So there’s shame around that. In a sense, shame is something that is, I imagine, very common for women in that way because many of them has this, uh, you know, what, what Alison Armstrong explains a diffused awareness. And then basically they get all the surroundings is shouting at them, fix me! fix me! And they have this perfect lady, you know, navigating inside their brain. Or just the side that always telling them that ‘I could have been done better’ and ‘that should be fixed and that should be fixed’. And they just leave this way with all those voices. And that’s normal by the way. That’s just the way that defused awareness works. Uh, but it creates a lot of shame because they constantly hear that the, you know, not doing the things that they should do and how is for men.

So before I go to, when I come back to Charlie and Emily. Charlie was a little bit like this, uh, inner, a perfect woman that Alison Armstrong talks about. And whenever something was not perfect around the house, Emily would already feel better about it because she has the Seder, perfect woman. He would add more criticism. More shame to that, you know. He was an exaggeration of that perfect inner woman. So, so they just made the cycle of shame a worse.

For him just like for most men, shame was often related to the fear of being perceived as weak. We can’t tolerate being perceived as weak or as failing. Yeah. Actually, the feeling of shame that arises from that, from feeling. Yeah. I always thought it was just a disrespect. Like this is what I would. The way that I explain it when I feel that I’ve been shown is not strong enough or weak is that I feel disrespected. But that’s the other way of looking at the shame itself. So when someone looks at you in a disrespectful way, you might feel shame. So what? What’s the problem is not a disrespect of the problem. Like for my point of view is it just makes me feel shame. In a relationship, both are problems. You don’t want your partner to look at you in a disrespectful way. You want to create a culture of respect and when we don’t respect each other, shame arises. Awesome. So. So men just don’t want to be awake. It rises shame, shame in them when they are presented with facts or words or actions that make them feel weak. Um, and how, how is it important? How was that important for Emily and Charlie to understand the differences on the way that they perceive shame?

So the first step for cultivating shame resiliency is to understand shame. The first step is always psycho education and starting to realize how shame shows up for me. How it shows up in my body. Where I collapsed, what kind of inner conversation I have in my head. So it starts with a cognitive understanding of what shame is in general and what shame is for me. So that’s what I did for Emily and Charlie and they really got it. The next step is to start fighting shame or creating antidotes to shame is the best one is authenticity, it’s vulnerability. And what I did with Emily and Charlie, I just had them to have them talk to each other directly, with the talking stick. The idea of the talking stick is to slow down the conversation so they don’t get too triggered, and to help them connect to their hearts. I actually had them hold estate, take it to the heart, speak from their heart, and then give the stick too. The other and the other take that steak and fierce takes it to the heart and only Dan speaks, so it really slows down the conversation. It’s really focuses on the heart and not so much about thoughts and ideas and opinions and criticism. That really helps becoming more and more vulnerable. The depth of our vulnerability is almost endless. It takes time. There’s no one point that I become vulnerable. There’s more and more and more. And I had them talk about, you know, the stuff that was bothering them, about the chores around the house and as they deepened in that they could say that there were actually much deeper needs underneath, underneath those chores.

Some, some needs for partnership partnership. Some needs for, uh, appreciation. And when they heard each other needs, it’s really changed the dynamic. It wasn’t about the chores anymore. It was easy for them to be generous with each other and to understand each other better. I call this process negotiating needs in intimacy. Coming from the assumption that my partner wants the best for me and I want the best for her. And that even though right now it seems like a conflict or you know, for Emily and Charlie, it was about who was doing more chores. But we have plenty of other conflicts and really staying with the frustration that this conflict arise brings up and deepening into what is my deeper need? What is my deeper feeling around this? And then finding ways to collaboratively and creatively finding win-win solutions that help both partners feel satisfied.

So basically what you’re saying is when they expressed vulnerability, when they were talking from the heart and slowing down the response because you cannot talk back when you don’t have the stick right?  And when they expressed more and more layers of vulnerability, that created light that shone on top of the shame. And made it disappear and it made them see each other in this, in this new way, which is are both partners here, age of us, care about the partnership. And when we do something, when we complain about something, it’s not because we want to be bad, it’s because we have some, some people need that is not met. And talking about it, they understood each other better and we’re able to start to assume that the other side has a reason why he’s doing it. It has a reason that is good for the partnership, for the, for the, uh, connection, right? Coming from a positive perspective, assuming that the other has a good reason for what they’re doing. And this process allows to reveal that good reason. Both of them were the kind of people that didn’t show needs. And through this process they learned how to, to to find out what they need and then express it to each other. For her it was a lot about resting in his presence. Being able to let go of responsibilities. For him, it was a lot about partnership. He was really used to do things on his own then feeling like used, yeah, you know. Like he was doing everything. So part of what he had to learn was how to ask for what he needs and feel more like there’s a partnership between them.

Well this is very specific, but every one of us, you know, in a relationship with your spouse has those moments of, of shame. And those moments of conflicts that, uh, has a deeper reason and through, being vulnerable, through talking about your needs from a place where you know that there is a partnership and you want to listen. You want to, you know, not get hurt from the criticism from before or from the complaint. But to find the way to discuss it in nonviolent communication. In a generous way. You know, even just coming to the relationship and stating, you know. Both of us here, together as partners. We both care about the partnership we both wanted to work. That is a very generous thing to do. And then talking in a vulnerable way that is, uh, definitely the, I think to do inside the partnership. Right?

So tell us a little bit about what is this tool that you’ve been working with them? Because I understood, if I understood correctly, four weeks later, like four sessions later, they went back into having a sexual relationship. Is that right? It’s true, because they really took what I offered and, and it’s great. And Dave and created new practices. So Charlie loved really got the whole idea of shame and the power of vulnerability to heal it. And took on the practice of daring to be vulnerable with Emily every day at least once. And the Emily loved the practice so much. It made her feel generous and she started practicing it as well. And, and they discovered vulnerability shows up in many ways. It’s not just about negotiating needs in intimacy. Apologizing can be vulnerable. Sometimes giving a compliment can be vulnerable. For them asking for what they needed was super vulnerable. Brought up a lot of shame and initiating sex. Especially after six months of not having sex, it can feel vulnerable. And then saying, no. So it’s my treat vulnerable, you know, the, the, it shows up in so many different ways and they really explored it and they did a lot of work between sessions. That’s part of the reason the process was so quick. Yeah. Yeah.

After becoming masters of vulnerability, their emotional intimacy was of course really deep, deepened now. And they found out this was the challenge for, for, for, for sex, for sexual intimacy. They didn’t have emotional intimacy, so Emily didn’t one of the open up and have sex. Which makes sense. Most women want to feel safe to feel connected in order to, to have sex. So Emily was just a normal woman in this way, and Charlie was giving her so much hard time. She just closed up and then one connection. If she doesn’t want connection, she doesn’t tell the one sex. When they were able to change that, they came back to a happy sexual life and they even deepened their sexual intimacy, which made sex even more satisfying and more free and more fun. Yup. And we will talk about sex eventually in this season of the generous marriage podcasts because it’s the topic by itself that is important for, for, for the relationship with your spouse and for maintaining a journalist marriage as well. But for now I can just imagine that they’ve created this game almost, I can call it that every day. They expressed vulnerability. They know that they are in this journey together. It’s really every time they did it, the other side could feel you care about the partnership, you care about me. And that made them, uh, go back to communicating about stuff that were very hard for them to communicate. It allowed them to understand one another and uh, it’s just, just they managed to do the homework. So in four week’s time bring a huge change, a huge change like it. They didn’t have sex for six months. And then after one month of working on it and caring about it. Look at how huge the life changed for like Emily and for, in for Charles. And that’s going to happen to you too guys, if you do the homework.

And so a Shachar, you prepared some sort of like a bonus pdf file that explains another way of doing uh this vulnerability exercise. I can you can you tell, we just played a game the other week. Because vulnerability, always feels vulnerable right? Feeling vulnerable is scary. But it also, when we go through that, it also can bring out joy and happiness and playfulness. And really, Charlie and Emily taught me something about how fun it can be. So just created a game out of it that you can use with your partner, daring to be vulnerable every day and brings playfulness into your relationships through this. And when you gave me an element of communication with your spouse that, uh, for, at least for the men, you will really love points. We love to work for points. But it also creates, um, curiosity for, for the ladies. And it’s basically, you know, it’s fun. It’s just purely fun and good for you. And so all you need, you know, some time with each other and, and the dice and all the details will be explained even when you go and download this bonus pdf from generous marriage.com. So if you go to episode seven, you can download this document that will explain to you the rules of the game and if you play this game with your spouse, you, you’re going to have two different versions, one that even might end up with some intimacy and one without. So check with your spouse if she wants the version of the game that has intimacy or not. Basically we just want you to feel confident and like at ease with this game so that you don’t use it too to, I dunno, like don’t leak and get the game. Don’t leak the game. Check with your spouse what type of a of a game you like it, then go for it. So this game is going to be really fun. I’d like to play this game with my wife to autumn. I will report back. How was it? And let me ask you this Shachar, is this process of being vulnerable? Was it researched every anywhere?

So Brenda Brown is the number one, not number one, it’s Renee Brown is a researcher that makes shame popular these days. Shame is not a popular feeling. It’s one of the least. Shame is another popular feeling. It’s really hard experience and nobody likes to feel shame and apparently very few people like to talk about shame. So you can find hundreds of books in psychology about emotions, about anger, about fear, about jealousy. You can only find four about shame, but in the last two decades, Renee Brown, a researcher from the University of Houston has been studying shame, vulnerability, courage, and empathy. She became really famous a few years ago through her super, Super Popular Ted Talk. About vulnerability which has 35 million views by now, and then she gave another fair, another famous Ted talk about listening to shame, which also has around 9 million views, so super popular. And she’s a researcher and the storyteller, she has a lot of data about shame and the power of vulnerability to heal it and she just knows really well how to tell that story. So I really recommend watching her ted talks and going to her website. She has a lot of resources about that. She’s really interesting.

So guys, you will be able to download the PDF and the game, but also to get the links to Renee Brown’s wonderful ted talks. This is something that you should see with your spouse before you play the vulnerability game. Just that will be an amazing night for you. I guarantee that, uh, and this brings us to the end of yet another fun and educational episodes of the generous marriage podcast. We talked today about Emily and Charlie, and how they’ve experienced, um, friction in the marriage and fight. But after using the power of vulnerability to heal shame. They came back into a deeper connection and get back to having sex as well. And that was within four weeks of work and just wonderful and very, very optimistic. We talked about the game of vulnerability, how to gamify it. And we also discussed, you know, the research by Brenae Brown about how important it is to understand what is shame and what is vulnerability and how one heals the other.

Uh, this is been so much fun. Shachar, any words of advice for the ending of the therapy? It’s really about daring to be vulnerable. And when you dare to be vulnerable, your life becomes more authentic, more meaningful connections. Get stronger, and there’s just more joy and happiness. Try it. I’m into that brother Shachar and guys, uh, we always ask this, but it’s, it’s really important, like people need to hear about the power of shame and how to heal it through vulnerability. So if you only do one thing for us today, just take this podcast and tell about it to some friend of yours, maybe over coffee at work. Maybe you go to facebook and post a generous marriage.com and let people know about about this podcast. It will create accountability for yourself. About actually doing the work and it will help you in your journey to have a better and more satisfying, generous marriage. Thanks again for listening and see you next week on the generous marriage podcast.

Thank you everyone Ziv. Thank you everyone. Stay on you next week. Bye Bye.

Weekly episodes with stories, tools and research that will help you make your marriage generous

Shachar Erez, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, 12 years married, father of two

Ziv Raviv, 16 years married, father of three

[email protected]

The post Episode 7 – the Power of Vulnerability appeared first on The Generous Marriage Academy.

We prepared a guide for you, with tips on how to Dream Together in a fun and effective way.

To download the guide, click the button below:

Welcome to the Generous Marriage podcast! Fight less, feel appreciated and have a deeper connection with your spouse. And now your host, Shachar Erez and Ziv Raviv.

Hello and welcome to the Generous Marriage podcast! Here, together we investigate the topic of how to make your marriage more generous, how to fight less, how to improve the connection, how to have more sex, and that includes having an amazing relationship with your spouse. And in order to get there, we’re going to look at a story about a couple that are going through some hell, though you might feel like this couple is a little bit reminding you of your relationship with your spouse. I sure do feel that way sometimes when I relisten to the podcast. And we’re going to look at some tools that these couple has been recommended about that tool by our counselor and expert Shachar Erez and we’re also going to look at some research about that tool and in general that you should know of. So we’re almost ready to start, but before that, How are you? Hello, Shachar Erez! Hi everybody. I’m good. Great to be here again. Looking forward to this episode.

So Episode 6 is going to start now, dreaming together. That’s the topic of this episode. And this is so ironic, you know,  because I just today I posted on facebook how finally, after since the age of 16, for 24 years now, I’ve been involved in writing fiction and just today, I posted the graphics for my upcoming book. It’s actually in Hebrew, but fulfilling dreams together with your spouse and having a spouse support your dreams is a topic that I, I really love and I think it’s really important. So I’m really excited about today. Tell us a little bit about where this, this idea of dreaming together come from, through the story of the Deanna and Rob.

Right. So Deanna and Rob were really struggling. They came to me, they were together around 15 years and they were 40 something. And both of them had the career, but she wasn’t very focused on her career since she had kids and she became a very dedicated mother and when they came to me, their youngest son was around five or six so she didn’t have to be as dedicated as before. She had more time to herself and she remembered, she remembered she’s not only a mother, she’s also a person. She’s also a woman. And she started demanding her life back. She wanted more time to focus on her career, to focus on things that make her come alive, to be out of the house, so she needed Rob to be more in the house and she needed both of them to find even more resources because Rob still had to focus on his career and he was limited in how much he could be at home. So they were really struggling to find a new balance, to find new resources that could support them and support Deanna and what’s important to her. That wasn’t easy. It was a long, long process. Let me ask you, can you tell us roughly like the ages of Deanna? Yeah. They were, I think they were 40 and 42.

That’s very interesting because basically, Deanna had her clock ticking towards becoming the mom. I just, I can just assume. Yeah, it was a something meaningful in her life like it is for, for many women and of course for men as well. But specifically with Deanna. And actually now that she became a mom and like the kid became older and was already 6 years old, she had a different clock ticking and making her feel like there’s something that she needs to get, there’s something that she wants. And that was to go back in a way to becoming Deanna, to find out what Deanna wants and to get her career on the move. And that created a conflict with Rob. So what was the most difficult bits in the conflict? Like what was the problem basically.

So you know, it’s quite common. I want to make sure I paint this picture right. I don’t want the listeners to think like Rob and Deanna were like old time kind of couple. They were actually very legalitarian, very equal. But the way it happens, and it happens to many couples, they start very equal. But as the kids come, often the woman becomes more of a mother and often the dad focuses more on bringing money home. Yeah. Not because they’re not equal and not because they don’t think of each other in an equal chance just because it’s what they’re better at and what they like more to do and and also of course somewhat cultural. But then something happens and many times women get frustrated, like promise was not kept

And many times it’s just not discussed. It just happens and happens and happens and say little by little the there becomes a rift between them until their frustration is so big. A lot of anger comes out and the poor guy, good Rob was a great guy. Didn’t know what, what happened, you know, he was just doing what he thought he was supposed to do and suddenly Deanna  was getting so angry and even as he was really struggling to give her more time and he would come back from work earlier and work one day from home and spend nights working because it didn’t have enough time working during the day because he did the start supporting the kids more and still she was angry. It was was about this promised that wasn’t kept.

It’s very clear, I think, first of all, I can really imagine Deanna. Like I can really imagine how she’s angry almost all the time. She’s frustrated and Rob is in front of that. He doesn’t really understand what can he do to improve. He doesn’t understand what is the situation all about because Deanna was very good at being a mom and she was more inclined to being a mom and to be very involved with that and he thought that all he needs to do was to be a protector and provider and to work in his career and now that he knows that she needs his support in other ways, he tries to give that, but that doesn’t really solve the problem and that can be very frustrating when you see constant, ongoing, constant frustration with your spouse. It’s frustrating for a few reasons.

First of all, it’s hard, like we, the men, we really love our, our spouses. We really do want them to be happy. So by seeing them constantly frustrated, constantly nagging us on all sorts of things because they’re angry at us and they’re angry at the situation, that for us is very hard to bear. And sometimes it even can create distant feelings like you actually want to go and be by yourself. As a man, you just want to go back and walk because that’s where you get all the appreciation. When you’re coming back home, all you get is anger and not appreciation. Especially if appreciation is your love language like we’ve discussed on Episode One. So I can really see how it’s frustrating for both Rob and Deanna when, and Deanna, from her point of view, she’s right, like there was a promise when they, when Rob and Deanna got together, they decided, I bet, to walk in a way that is, to try and be equal. You know, obviously the rights are equal, the dreams are as important in a way. There is no reason why Deanna will not fulfill her dreams. Why Deanna will not get her opportunities. I can see where the anger, you know, spawn from. Like it was a seed that is planted when they were, when they got together and got married to be partners and to work together towards the goals and then, you know, life happens and life can be really demanding, but then she suddenly woke up from that, which is great.

Yeah. Like you said, life happened and the reason it created a problem is that it wasn’t talked. It just happened. And his life didn’t change as much as hers when they became parents. He still went to work every morning dressed up, put on the perfume and you know, went to do what he loves doing. And of course it’s hard and he worked hard and it wasn’t just easy but still what he was enjoying doing. And she also loves being a mother, but it’s different taking care of babies and then kids and staying at home. It’s a different struggle. Much more demanding in some ways being a mother. And both of them needed appreciation. It’s not like Rob did something to her. It’s not like he was oppressive in any way. Of course. They both needed to be appreciated for what they were doing. So a lot of our work together was about communicating. It’s about sharing appreciation and about finding resources that could help them as a couple because these days we don’t really get enough support from community and family. So how do we get paid the help and other ways of support and community support. So it was a long struggle.

And actually what I want to focus today is on the end of it because at the end of it we spent some time retelling their story. Just going through the 15 years they’ve been together and how can you tell the story again and make it a fulfilling story? Because for a moment there was a feeling of oppression by Deanna and Rob wasn’t oppressing. So how do we retell the story in a way that is fulfilling and satisfying.

And after retelling the story, let’s look into the future and that’s what we’re going to focus on today. Dreaming together. I had them dream together looking 20, 30 years into the future. What do they want to achieve, personally and as a couple?

That is, that is, I just want to emphasize, this is really amazing how you managed not in easy or fast way, sometimes it takes time, but you managed to kind of diffuse this bomb. I really see you as a SWAT team, a police officer that just comes in and see a bombs and it just diffuses it and it’s quite a process sometimes. Sometimes it’s faster and can take four weeks. Sometimes it takes a year. But it really a complicated situations. There’s a lot of layers of anger and of stories that Deanna and Rob told themselves and, and then you need to kind of peel like a big onion. You need to peel every single layer until you reach this bare bone naked truth, which is that they actually have, you know, a lot of good reasons to be a couple. They have a lot of potential together. They love each other and there’s a way to work together in a generous way.

So just the fact that Deanna and Rob agreed to go through the process to actually peel the onion, another peel, another peel, and actually get to the point where they are reframing their stories because they kept telling themselves all sorts of stories like Rob was telling himself, what is wrong? I’m doing everything right and I’m keeping my promises and I am bringing food to the table and he was telling himself those stories that are somewhat maybe even defensive stories that doesn’t really help him see Deanna, see her struggle. And Deanna on her part was feeling oppressed for some reason and she needed to tell herself a new story and just the fact that they were willing to do that, to re-frame their stories, to retell their stories, that by itself is a very generous thing to do.

However, we’re going to focus today on another generous thing they did under your guidance, Shachar, and that is dreaming and planning a future and planning big and thinking big and trying to find out some really exciting things that can be accomplished together and for each of them. So explain how the process goes. What is that?

Before I got into the process, Gottman talks about the story of us, the story of the couple. It’s really important to have a good story, a positive self story, a collaborative story. And that’s what Deanna and Rob did. From a story of oppression on her side and a sacrifice on his side, they made it into a collaborative heroes journey kind of story and how they did it together and how they look into the future to fulfill their dreams together and individually. And then what we did, which is the tool I want to talk about today is just a list of dreams. I had them write every little or big dream they have individually or as a couple. I encouraged them to write everything. Even stuff that probably would not be fulfilled. He wanted to go to the moon. That was one of the dreams on the list. I wanna go to the moon and it’s hard to know if this would be fulfilled in our lifetime, if there will be actual flights to the moon and you can fulfill it. But it’s nice to have it there. It’s nice because they know each other better. You know, it’s, it’s about creating love maps. It’s about understanding each other better and what’s important to each other and some of the dreams were easier. She had something to share the dream about a house with a yard. They had a house but she wanted a house with a yard. Or or he wanted to go to the Bahamas to some special island he read about and dive there.

Well, you know, even I imagine knowing those dreams will just change the day to day life. They might walk outside their home one day to throw away the trash or something. But then they will see the moon and then Deanna might say, “Hey Rob, you can go now. You can try …  now or something.” Like just to know of the dreams that that requires some, some exposure that might improve their day to day communication because they have that awareness.

Yeah. And and some days they’re able to fulfill each other’s dreams. And that’s so nourishing. You know, when I was 30, my wife, she wasn’t my wife then, but she was my girlfriend, but she knew I had the dream of playing guitar. For me it was a small dream. I wasn’t planning on actually learning how to play guitar. I was too, I thought it was too old and too busy and I gave it up. She knew about it. She went out and bought a guitar and gave me with the guitar, a card of a teacher. A guitar teacher to teach me how to play, you know, I didn’t have any excuse. I just took the guitar and started playing. And now I’m not a guitarist, but I know a few chords. I can play some tunes. It’s really fun. It’s super nourishing. It’s something that I gave up on already and she, totally on her own, knew that I had this dream and help me fulfill it. It’s awesome. It’s really created a lot of intimacy and appreciation and gratitude. All the good stuff we talked about here.

That’s that’s really, like I, I can imagine some of the guys listening to this, are feeling a little bit jealous right now at you and Judy because really having her pickup your dreams for you in a way, that is like an ultimate act of service and really like shows a deep connection. So I really feel, uh, you know, if you can do that for, for someone and help them fulfill their dreams, that’s just amazing and you cannot really fulfill someone’s dreams or helping, even just support him in some way, without knowing what it is. And by the way, I definitely recommend, like with my wife, she doesn’t appreciate surprises. She really love communication because her love language is quality time. So she really appreciates when we talk about things first. So I wouldn’t suggest that you buy a guitar without talking about it every single time. Sometimes it’s better not to buy the guitar and just to talk about buying the guitar, you know, as a metaphor. And then don’t surprise your spouse if she doesn’t appreciate that type of surprises. But she might actually do like surprises and then it’s a good idea. So I guess it’s a matter of knowing if your spouse appreciate surprises or not.

Yeah, that’s true. And you know, some people need surprises, some people need to talk about it. But even if you do talk about it, just talking about fulfilling someone’s dream. Wow, that’s awesome, you know.  They would love it. Yeah. Some dreams are more fun when you imagined them, you know. Sometimes fulfilling them is not as fun as imagining them, but collaborating on, on how to fulfill it can be such a fun time and it creates closeness.

Yeah. And I can also emphasize something that I recently experienced like just a few days ago. Rotem and I, we mapped our goal for just 12 months. So just the upcoming year, what is the five things that are most important for us. And you will soon explain the process of how you recommend doing it. And of course every way is legitimate. What, what, what happened for me when she explained her goals and for each goal she, she said, why? Uh, why is that important? We took turns. She said one, I said one in, for each one we say we only, you know, ask why, why, why is that important for you? And then, something clicked for me that first of all, some of our goals matched, they aligned. So they show that we are on the same path with the same values and with the same appreciation of what’s important.

But another thing that happened to me was that some of the things that I perceived as nagging for many years, like about the way that our house is in place, like in how, how orderly is our house, how often do I take things and put them back. Stuff like that. Like I felt for many years that I’m being nagged on putting stuff back in place. But then Rotem explained to me the way that the house, the way that it looks like, it’s not just that it’s one of her five goals for the year to improve the way that our house is shaped and looks like. She actually could explain why it’s important for her and that included some pretty spiritual things. Like, the way that you live and the things that you see, affect the way that you feel. And if you see a house that is a mess, you think that it’s legitimate to keep it a mess. Uh, we’re raising kids here. I want them to see that the easier way to live that is different, that is that everything has its own place. And she also quoted some lines from a book by Maricando, which explains some ways of getting rid of the mess in your house, which is wonderful, by the way. I really recommend the book and the ideas there. And what happened was that I actually throw a discussion about goals and dreams. I actually started to understand my wife better. Nice. So tell us what is the process that you recommend?

Alright so there is no one process, actually I really liked the process that you did. That every, that each one that you take turns and each one says a goal and the other ask them why it’s important. That’s beautiful. Another way that I do it in sessions is have the couple imagine anniversary party in 30 years from now. And everyone who’s present are people that love them and appreciate them. So they feel safe and loved and appreciated and it can be vulnerable. And they’re giving a toast. They’re talking about the past 30 years and what they’ve achieved and what made them happy and how their kids are and what happened in their career and what other things happened that were important to them and how they manage challenges and celebrations and through that a lot is revealed. Yeah, but you know there’s many ways to do it. At the end of it, what’s important is to have three lists. A list for one partner, a list for the other partner and the list for the couple’s dream. The shared dreams that they want to do together. And have it put somewhere that they can go back to it. In the kitchen and the bedroom. Someplace that they can go back to and check in with the list and find some inspiration of what they could do for each other and as a couple.

That’s really cool. First of all, the 30 years story to actually imagine how the 30 year anniversary ceremony will look like, how the party will look like and what you will share them. This really is a nice tool and a nice exercise because, imagine how you will feel, you are listening right now to this podcast. Imagine, how you will feel if in that anniversary, 30 years anniversary party, all you have to say is, “I’ve accomplished this, and I did that in my job, and I then became the department manager, and then became the CEO, and then, you know, we went overseas, and …” and then suddenly you look at your spouse and you hardly know what her dreams are, all she can say is, that she really raised three amazing kids and like, uh, and, and it’s an amazing accomplishment don’t get me wrong, but you don’t want to be in that anniversary for 30 years of your marriage being in a situation where you don’t even know what are the accomplishments and dreams of your spouse. And you can fix that. You can fix that. You can actually know. You can talk about it with your spouse. You can support your spouse through the process of fulfilling her dreams. And that anniversary can be something special for both of you. It can be something that both of you look at each other at the eye, and I can hear ah, the song, ‘I Did It My Way’ in the background, and you dance and you raise a toast, “Here’s for 30 more years!” And you share some of your success stories together. I’ve maybe show some pictures from that island in the Bahamas. So really dreaming together, I love the metaphor of imagining this party.

But then you also have to actually get the list made. So you can sit down together, to each first of all write his own list. And then to take turns on going one item at a time. And don’t be judgmental. Don’t worry about it. Maybe those dreams will never, ever come to, you will never meet the Queen in person and shake her hand. Maybe you will never live in a palace. Maybe you will never fly to the moon. But just make the list and ask why. Try to understand what is the reason why it’s important for you and even on the answer for the why question, don’t argue.  Don’t, don’t try to fix it. Don’t even try to plan how you will fulfill those dreams for your partner. That’s not the time. At the beginning, you really just want to map those dreams and to have the deeper connection and understanding of them. What comes later after that that that is a different story. So for today, we’re focusing more on how to understand one another. How to understand and map your dreams, and then to go into the shared dreams, that’s a pretty powerful tool because you wake up the day after and there is a reason for you to wake up for yourself, but there’s also reason for you to walk together because I imagine every single line in the least of your shared dreams, you cannot make that happen by yourself. Man, you need to work on that together. That’s the whole point. And that’s, you know, some, many times, it’s actually impossible for you to fulfill your joint dream list. Uh, you need to work together and that is, uh, like a re-promise, uh, that is being made like a vow, even.

Alright. For for example, like Deanna and Rob had the dream of living abroad for a year with the kids and the whole family. That’s not an easy one to fulfill. That’s only, that’s a dream they can only fulfill together, but they made it. I think they are now actually in France. Really exciting. So yeah, I loved how you suggested to do the process and it’s really just about being curious and writing it down and being open and letting life happen. Find ways to fulfill the dreams. Not right now. That’s later, the future.

Yeah, we, we men, sometimes, we are inclined to look for the solution. Just like with the video clip that we put on capital plea with the male in the head. Like we want to fix the problem. We hear problems and want to fix them. That’s how we think, as hunters many times. But that’s not the point here. The point is not to fulfill the dreams inside the talk or outline the exact steps. Some of the process for the second step or the third step should take some time. Should be debated and not just be done. So uh, it’s really important not to. “Oh, that’s your dream, I’ll go fetch that for you. I’ll go now and fix it for you.” No, that’s not what you should do, man. You should listen. You should really just ask why and listen. And that is where you will get the better connection from. So I, I really loved the importance of it and I understand that the tool and the three lists. That’s really cool. Is there any type of research done or expansion to, of information that we can share on the idea of dreaming together?

So, so again, we go back to Dr. John Gottman and he took all the scores or maybe hundreds of research he was involved in and he created a model he calls the sound relationship house. We won’t go to the whole model right now, but it it looks like a house and it has different layers. And the top layer, the attic of the house, is about creating shared meaning and making life dreams come true. So one of the ways to create shared meaning is by making goals and values intentional. A little bit what you shared you did with Rotem the other day. A little bit of what we’re talking here about dreams. It’s really about talking about them and making them surface. By that you create a shared meaning and that’s really important for couples. The research really shows it’s important. Yeah. So there are many ways to do it. Two of the ways are what you suggested with the goals for the next year and what I’m suggesting here with the dreaming for even longer for 30 years. And there are other ways it’s a lot about talking and communicating and being curious about each other’s values and dreams and goals and what’s important to each partner.

Wonderful. So, no matter how you do it, how do you make your lists of life dreams. Do you make one list or three lists? Do you talk about uh one year or 30 years? You can do it all. You can, you can do one list for the year and one list for 30 years. And if it’s too hard for you to do 30 years, you can do 10. You can do 5. You can choose. It’s not about the actual number of years. It’s all about communicating in a generous way. Being vulnerable to hear that your spouse has some dreams that maybe are very hard to accomplish. And just being there for her and listening to that and asking her why is that important. Instead of asking, “what should I do next to make it happen for you?” But there is a good time for that, potentially, later in another day.

For now, all you need to do is just listen. Just be there. And just be the, like a bucket, just listen and fill yourself with information for her and vice versa. When we share our dreams, we actually, many times we want to get them done by ourselves, it’s a part of the process that we’re looking for. So, it’s really a very generous thing to do to be able to know all of the dreams of someone else and to say, I want to help you. I want to support you in any way you see fit. And what’s the best way to support you in that, yeah, I agree. And we’ll, we’ll talk about that type of conversation. How can I support you in another day.

So, for today I would like to wrap up what we had was a story about Deanna and Rob and apparently from working together on communicating in a more generous way through counseling with you, Shachar, eventually they found out that they’re not fulfilling themselves fully. And so talking about dreaming together, they made the communication better and they actually even fulfilled some of their dreams like they wanted to live up old, they now uh work from France. And they took their kid there and exposed him to really cool experiences. And that is really, really amazing how just by talking about your dreams, it can lead to a chain of effects that will later fulfill your dreams.

And then we also discussed today how the tool that you can implement it is to write down your dreams together either on three different lists or on two different lists and either with one year ahead or 30 whatever you want. You can change the details.

However, we will give you some extra tips of how to make it a little bit more like a game. And how to improve the process of dreaming together. And that will be something that we will put into this bonus tool that we will put in the generousmarriage.com website. So, you could download the extra information about this tool. And the links to the resource and everything from generousmarriage.com. Just go to the podcast tab, type Episodes 6 Dreaming Together and that’s where you will be able to download additional ways of how you can dream together. It’s really, it’s really almost like a game and that is something that I think will make it even easier for you if you want more structure.

And finally we did mention Dr. Gottman and his research about the sound relationship house and how a part of the layers in the house includes making life dreams come true and includes dreaming together and mapping those dreams and so with great respect to Gottman, we will put the links to some resources and some research that was done about that and you can find that as well on the generousmarriage.com website.

Shachar, I want to thank you for yet another inspiring discussion on how to make your life and your marriage and your relationship a more generous one. Any words of advice to finalize the episode?

No advice. Just gratitude. This was fun. Thank you for being here Ziv. Thank you all for listening. I hope it helps you become more generous.

I shared that dream. So guys, go ahead and call your spouse right now. Maybe take her for a date. Tell her you want to dream together. You want to talk about your life dreams. And maybe even send this podcast to one of your friends. Maybe a colleague, maybe some uncle of yours, maybe send this to your Dad. I don’t know. It’s really important for us just sharing from facebook. We will really appreciate it. So, we are the generous marriage podcast. You can find us at generousmarriage.com and we will meet again next week on the generous marriage podcast. Bye Bye.

All right, see you then. Bye. Bye.

Weekly episodes with stories, tools and research that will help you make your marriage generous

Shachar Erez, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, 12 years married, father of two

Ziv Raviv, 16 years married, father of three

[email protected]

The post Episode 6 – Dreaming Together appeared first on The Generous Marriage Academy.

In this episode of the Generous Marriage Podcast we discuss:

We prepared a guide for you, with tips on how to manage conflict using NVC.

To download the guide, click the button below:

Welcome to the Generous Marriage Podcast. Fight less, feel appreciated and have a deeper connection with your spouse. And now your host, Shachar Erez and Ziv Raviv.

Hello and welcome to episode five of the generous marriage podcast. In this podcast, we explore ways to become more generous with our spouse in our relationships, in our marriage. And what will that give you? Well, it will make your life better. It will get you to have more sex. It will help you to have just a better time with your spouse when you’re sitting together over lunch or dinner, and it will make your family feel more relaxed around you. Because they will feel there’s a good connection. Together with me, is my partner in crime Shachar Erez. And Shachar is the man, the guy that actually teaches me all of those concepts and ideas. My mentor in becoming participants with my marriage and becoming more just having a person and more generous marriage and that is you Shachar. Hey, how are you? Hi, I’m good. How are you? Hi everyone. I’m happy to be here. Happy to talk to you again. And this is not really about me or about you, Shachar. In our journey is two dudes that talk about the concept of Generous marriage.

It’s about YOU that listens to these right now! Maybe you’re driving in the car and you’ll remember that fight that you had maybe even last night with your spouse and how shitty it feels to be in this situation. And boy, Oh boy, today we have some really exciting stuff waiting for you because we’re going to start with a story and in that story is a couple that actually is going through a process that is probably going to sound familiar for you. It’s your dealer. reminds me some things that I’m going through with my wife or them. And then we’re going to talk about a tool of which is an actual tool that these coupled to use and that’s tool will help you too if you implement it and we’ll also back it up at the end of this podcast with a research done. That actually gives some new information and new ways to understand what is this tool all about. So with that said, Shachar take it away. What is the story? Who are we going to meet today?

So today we’re gonna met Sharon and Rafael. Sharon is French and Rafael is American. And they came to me and because they were having hard time managing conflicts. They were actually exceptional friends you know. That was a huge resource they had. They really knew well how to play. Most couples these days, most parents these days we don’t play enough anymore. But this couple, that was one of the biggest strengths, they know how to play. So they were really good friends but they had hard time managing conflicts meaning and every small conflict they had it will blow up really quick, you know, huge fight from really tiny disagreements. So they had to learn a few things. One thing they had to learn was how to avoid high intensity conflict.

So basically, Sharon and Rafael we’re good partners. They will working together, they loved playing and that is something we might even do another episode about how, how to spend time together in a good way. But what happened with Sharon and Rafael is that when they did fight and did have a conflict, it was always high intensity. Now I imagine when we’re talking about high intensity sounds sounds very academic, but in real life it means there’s shouting involved. It means some, some words are said that later you need to apologize for saying those specific words and that. When these types of things happen, it can ruin your day. It can ruin your feelings for what, like a week. A lot of times it makes a man really feel crushed when there’s a high intensity conflict like that with his partner. It just makes you feel like you’re hopeless and your weak and those type feelings are not something that gives you motivation in becoming more generous. So it just does the opposite takes out. No, they were actually a lot of the times after it took them a long time to repair. A lot because they felt hopeless and helpless and kinda frozen. They know how to come back to each other and even though they were such good friends, the fights were so big and loud that really threw them off. They were really struggling. Let me ask you this. Do they have kids? Yeah. Three kids actually. So I can just imagine the horrible, horrible scar that can be put onto a kid if he goes through the process of looking at his parents’ fights that way. Yeah. And also, you know, as parents, we’re so, uh, sensitive to give.

Most of us feel like we’re not parenting good enough, so I don’t want to focus so much on the scar of the kid. I want to focus here on this podcast on how bad they felt because a lot of their fights, their kids were around and they saw their parents lose their minds and start yelling and calling each other names. And then after the fight they felt even more shame if their kids. So that’s. And this shame was part of the reason they had hard time reconnecting. So shame made it harder for them to go back into proper communication and then the kids saw everything. So now they have like motion because of that. But I also see some opportunity in the hardship, of the kids watching, because that by itself might be the reason why they came to you for counseling. Why that might be even the reason why some people are listening right now to us to talk about about problems that they know so much. Because if your kids are important to you that much, you need to understand when is your behavior being distractive towards them. When, when are you not doing the right thing because you’re actually creating a lack of confidence in them. When they see you on the verge of high intensity conflict, you’re right. Many times, couples in my clinic are so distressed. They tell me if we didn’t have kids who would have broken up and I say, thank God you have kids because it kind of makes you work on your issues and solving your issues brings a lot of personal healing and interpersonal healing and our society doesn’t encourage. It’s very individualistic, doesn’t encourage working on your relationship so much. So having kids, it’s great for that. It’s good. This is a good shame that you feel bad for what your kids are exposed to and you want to be better.

Yeah. It’s actually an opportunity in the end, like a, like one of the keys, even for a good relationship is that you have a reason in external motivation is key as well as internal. Right? But this big thing that is so important for you, it might be God. It might be your kid. It might be your culture, but your kid is very visual and it’s very there. And that’s a discussion about a high intensity conflict. Reminds me of this argument that I had with my wife for them. And that argument was becoming something very big entity. It even became like almost romantic I would say because we had to actually go through a lot to heal from it. And it was like the topic itself was ridiculous in hindsight. It was related to like my dog and who will feed it while I’m away on a business trip. And I was like sick and we were both like intense. Um, because of that in the discussion. And it came to the point where, you know, my wife basically say, I’m going to sell your dog. I’m not going to feed it. You solved the problem of who’s going to fill it. I’m not going to solve it for you if I’m solving it, I’m going to just sell the dog. And I was so offended because it came to that level of intensity. What is that all about? What? You’re not going to sell my dog. I’m just sick and can’t take over myself. And like I just had fever and wasn’t able to find who will feed my dog. Now eventually we found someone to feed the dog, but the scar was there for a good few months of recovering from that single argument. And I know that there are better ways to conduct such an argument in better ways to handle such issues. Like see, in hindsight you usually. It doesn’t make any sense to be so mad about something. I don’t blame anyone right now, it’s not about who is at fault. It’s know a lot about with the fort. It’s all about how can we that listen now to this podcast. How can we, talk about it. How can we be better? How can we maintain the more reasonable level of intensity in our conflicts? You actually found the tool. What did you tell Sharon and through our file, what would you suggest to them that they should do?

Well, no, it was multifaceted and one of the things we had to address was what to do when the conflict escalates and it comes what I call high intensity conflict and what to do then is just to stop. It’s really about stopping into your physiology. Is too flooded your aroused. You’re too much in fight or flight mode, and then it’s the defense mechanisms, so are pretending to be dialoguing. But defense mechanism don’t dialogue. They defend, they attack. They either run or attack, run away or attack. So when you are in this state and you’re too flooded, it’s really about stopping the fight. I think we talked about it in a recent episode. Today, I want to focus more on how to maintain the conflict. Low intensity meaning not to let it escalate so much. Sometimes we tell our partner something that we know, is going to be hard for him or her to hear. So how do we say those things in a way that a, yeah, it creates a conflict but not too big. Something that can be manageable.

So we’re basically splitting these into two steps. The first step is like the emergency aid where you just need to put the plaster and the plaster on this wound is just to stop. You need to stop the high intensity, but then the real fix, the real way to improve your health and the health of your relationship is through maintaining low intensity levels on the conflict. So how do we do that? Before I tell you how to do it, I want to say that’s important actually, even for Sharon and Rafael, it’s important for them and for their kids to be able to tolerate the frustration of a conflict and say that conflict can end in intimacy and closeness. In solution we even discussed about is just the episode four. When we’ve found out that the, that some fights are actually good for you and that you need to just make the right fights. You know the ones that you can heal from the one that you work on recovering from. Alright and going back to that research of Guttman, he could watch a couple in an argument and after three minutes, just by how they start the conflict, he could tell which couples will divorce and which will not. And out of that research, he suggests starting conflict because it’s soft startup. Meaning not to start the conflict with harsh blaming words.

Start softly, instead of blaming. Talk about yourself, use I statements. Talk about your feelings about your needs. What you ask for instead of blaming your partner for what they did wrong. Also, try as much as possible to use description of what was happening. Not so much evaluation or judgement. You know people don’t react nicely to judgements, so be more descriptive. And he also says, Guttman, that it’s important to be polite and respectful even though you’re in a conflict. Try to remember, this is your partner you’re talking to and be polite and respectful and appreciative. So Guttman basically suggest a few ways for maintaining low intensity communication in the conflict. So basically starting with the soft and startup, starting with just not being well intense with your tone of voice, you know. Something that helps me to breathe just to take a few deep breaths before you start. Maybe even if some sort of a text message or some sort of a touch base with your spouse to show them that you are feeling distressed. That you need some help. That you have a topic you want to raise, right? Just giving them the heads up of like, I need your help. I’m feeling bad about something. Can we talk? And then they’re on your side from the get go.

So that’s like a soft startup. Either you can, you can do it with the touch, you can do it with, with just controlling your tone of voice. You can do it by breathing a bit, just a few deep breaths can really do a lot on the way that you go there and confront someone. And even like with a text message to say a or a post it note to say, Hey, I feel so so bad about something. It makes me feel frustrated. I want to share it with you. I know you will help. You will understand me. Can we talk? And just by doing that you show your spouse. You’re on the same side. All right. I love the way you described it and it’s really a lot, a lot, a lot about the tone of voice. Even if you’re frustrated, if you feel something that’s hard, if you can take a few breaths and help yourself, sooth yourself. It’ll help yourself come back to regulation and use a soft tone of voice. It will change their whole conflict. The whole argument. If you start harshly the argument, the conflict will be harsh and most probably will not end well. If you start softly. It really makes a difference. A huge difference.

Yeah. Another thing that might soften up the situation is taking ownership. That you have to own the situation. Right. I just yesterday I finished a Webinar that I was giving. My sound was very high on the speakers and then I went away from the computer for my station, but then facebook started to make some notification noises. And it was very loud and my wife got alarmed and was all over the place with me saying, Hey, well, why? Well, why don’t you ever make it stopped at this push notification? Music is making a crazy like she was starting a at a certain level. I wanted to complain that she shouldn’t come so strongly. She should come slowly and shouldn’t complain in that intensity. I wanted to complain about that, but it’s my fault. Right? I was the trigger. I was the problem. You know, I didn’t remember to stop it, so I instead of just complaining about, Hey, talk to me nicely please. I started by apologizing. By acknowledging. Hey, I screwed up here. That was my fault that I didn’t put that sound off, but can you please next time? Do you mind just trying and talking nicely to me? Because I really want to not do those things. I will try better, but please try to be a little bit more patience with me. Not Stopping the speakers and she actually, she actually, you know, it may, it made everything low intensity. It made her not pick it up. It’s like, okay, now I need to fight with him. There was no need. I only be acknowledged that, you know, the whole thing was just a something that we both needed to steam out debate and everything was okay. And even on the next Webinar had she brought me water and I was so thrilled by this gesture. The really, it’s really important stuff. It sounds simple, but you just need to do. It’s just need to soften the start of the conversation to get better results. And not to blame anyone, try not to look for people to blame. Even if you feel like you were blamed, you shouldn’t blame back. Right? So what else? What are the other tools? That was a great example. Thank you for sharing that.

Other tools is while you are in this conflict again, when it’s not too high, so intense. Do small gestures that helps soothe yourself and your partner. A little words of appreciation. Some touch, maybe humor. Humor is great for making things light. Do some small things that can help regulate you, your partner, the whole situation. For example, yesterday I came back from a training and was in a hurry to go to work. And I had a short time at home so I called my wife and asked her to make some lunch for me that I could eat quickly and go away, and I also wanted to share some stuff with her from the training. I was quite flooded and when came back home and she was on the phone with some insurance company. And really the short time we had together, she spent on the phone with the insurance stuff and she was frustrated because she had a frustrating conversation with them. And I was frustrated because I wanted emotional support and in the five minutes we had together we were fighting. But when we were fighting, maybe because I was working on this podast, I could remember that it’s good to be appreciative to try to soothe each other. So while we were fighting, you know, why weren’t you there for me? Why were you talking to this insurance person? I needed you and stuff like that. I also remembered that she did prepare that lunch for me that I asked for. That I actually didn’t ask on the phone for that emotional support. I was kind of imagining that she would know me good enough to see me, but she was busy on the phone. So you know, just by being able to describe what was happening and not judge. And see that actually what I asked for. She did prepare for me even though she was in her own busy day. She took a moment to prefer that to warm up a lunch for me. So I was appreciative of her so she was able to soothe yourself and we were still in a kind of a conflict, but it ended with the kiss. Wow. And I went to work and came back and we were both way after the conflict so we were able to reconnect and apologize and explain and do the real full repair. But even while we were in that conflict and we didn’t have time for the full repair, we were able to remind each other that we love each other. That we’re friends, so right now it’s not easy and we’re in conflict, but here’s a kiss and I’ll see you later. It will resolve it.

That’s wonderful. It also reminds me, you say that you should show appreciation and that that’s something that I really relate to because it works. It’s just one of those one to five ratio that we mentioned in another episode. It just, you keep putting more coins into the emotional bank and that gives you a better vests, a better protection for when you have some complaint to make. So I started to appreciate the laundry making that my wife is responsible for. Because she’s so good at it and she enjoys it and she does it so fast and just to mention now. You should know that sometimes when you’re trying to be appreciative to your spouse, she might reject it. She might say, Oh, you never used to say that before. Why are you now saying that? And that’s okay. That’s okay. It just an opportunity to be descriptive. It’s okay to say, well, I didn’t say before, but that was title is not good. That was not good. That I didn’t, but I am saying it’s now and those clauses are looking amazing. They look clean, they a big bunch so it will be good for me for a few days, so I just want to say thank you.

That’s really cool. And the more you describe, the harder it is to actually reject your authenticity. Because if you’re just saying, oh thank you for the meal dear, that doesn’t feel so you know, it doesn’t feel. It’s like you just had the podcast and they thought you will be polite. Right? But if if you go and you say, damn, that’s a good chicken baby. I love chicken and I love this one and I’m just thankful I got to eat this and then I’m going to finish up all the leftovers of my kids. That’s a good chicken. Now she might be startle a bit and that’s what you feel and you described exactly why you feel that way. It will be a little bit clearer to her that you really do mean well. Yeah, and it’s really about the heartfelt appreciation, right? It’s about filling your heart in it and not just being polite. Being polite is important and being respectful is important even in the conflict, but do this investment in the emotional bank account that you mentioned, it’s really about feeling each other’s hearts. Yeah. What else can you tell me about this low level of intensity? How can we get to that?

So actually one hang for just the tool. Yes, which is called NVC non-violent communication. The person who really made it popular and known worldwide is Marshall Rosenberg who passed away a couple of years ago and it really simplifies. It creates a kind of protocol of which words to use that the other can hear well. And doesn’t get triggered so much. There’s a bigger chance that the other will not get triggered and we’ll be able to hear and reply. The way it works, it’s a four stage process. Starting with an observation again and nonjudgmental observation of what’s happening. Then expressing your own feelings in an ‘I’ statement. I feel, and then expressing your needs. What you need in the situation, and then requesting something.

So let me understand. Basically this NVC protocol that was created by Marshall Marshall Rosenberg. Wonderful. Actually helps you improve the way that you communicate and maintain the low intensity of the conflict and it’s actually something that is good for life. Not just with your spouse to be able to know how to use NVC to your advantage. But try to explain each one in particular, right? They actually use it now in corporations and in the military and, uh, international conflict resolution they used everywhere. Let’s use an example. Can I use the example with, uh, with your dog? Yeah. So a good way of using the NVC process. And that example was you could have said something like, wrote them when you threatened to sell my dog. That’s just the observation of what was happening. Right. When you say you’re going to sell my dog and not take care of it, that’s observation. Then we move into feelings. I feel. What were you feeling? Scared or abandoned or. Yeah, disappointed.

So, so again, when you said you’re going to send my dog, I felt disappointed and then comes a need. What did you need? I felt disappointed because they need or I value. Right, or they need your support. Yeah, because I need your support. Especially when I’m sick. Right now was the time that you were sick. So time when you said you’re going to sell my dog. I felt disappointed because I needed your support. Especially when I’m sick and then comes a request. What would you have requested? Would you be willing to be more sensitive to me? To my needs when I’m sick or understand better how the dog is important to me. It’s almost like a kid to me and I can’t imagine thinking about selling a. Well, I, I love it. Now it’s much clearer.

So basically you need to go through the whole four steps when you’re feeling something irritates you. Instead of, you know, blaming instead of making a judgment like, hey, you will wrong and you did that. You’re a bad person and all of that just that comes in your tone of voice instead of it. You start with just the facts. Just the observation when this happened and then you go into the feelings. I felt that and then you explain, so you give the needs. So you explained that because you needed. Yeah, because and, and that’s, that is very important. Like you don’t. Your feelings has to have some need that needs to be explained. It’s not about because I felt disappointed you should do it. No. You need to also be generous enough. Yeah. Just be generous enough to give the need. I felt disappointed because I need my dog and around me. Or, because I need you to support me or because I value communicating in a different way. A more generous way or whatnot. And then you go to your request, which I love the way that it says like willing. Will you be willing to because they don’t have to?

They don’t as a couple. We don’t have to fulfill each other’s needs. It’s good to here than it. It’s good to, to make our partner feels seen with their innate, but we don’t have to fulfill each other’s needs. So it’s good to request. And usually when you request something, the other feels generous and might generously just want to fulfill that need, but they don’t have to. Oh, they might have some conditions because they have needs. Yeah, right. Oh, this is. This is a very powerful tool. Right? And then I love what you just said. A lot of the times what you need to do is to negotiate needs in intimacy. Meaning you are connected to each other. You remember your friendship and each one of you have a need that seems like they’re in conflict. But if you’re really hear each other and express yourself and dare to be vulnerable. Usually there’s a way to find a collaborative, creative, win-win solution that fulfills both of your needs. That both of you feel like your needs are being met. Then sometimes it’s not possible. So even if they’re not met, at least they’re being seen and heard and appreciate it. And many times that’s even enough. Not all of our needs actually need to be fulfilled by our partner, but they do need to have room in the discussion, in our connection.

So, uh, so now we are the thing, what is the actual tool, the NVC communication means you make an observation of what you see or what you had, you tell, how it made you feel, but you also explain what were your needs. Why it made you felt this way before you move on to a request. Now this is really good stuff. It was that tool also researched, uh, in its effectiveness. So I couldn’t find the precise research on NVC itself, but the Gottman’s research really validates a lot of the things we said here. The host soft startup thing is NVC and the Gottman found that it’s good to observe and not judged. And it’s good to talk in I statements what I feel, what I need and make requests. And so it’s really, it really supports this tool. It just at Marshall made it. I love the protocol of it. It’s easy to remember. Observation, feelings, needs, requests.

I feel like there’s a place here for a practice sheet with a few sentences that are not well constructed. Like if you tell your wife, hey, take care of the damn dog, bitch, that’s not very constructive. But if you, uh, if you, if you reconstruct some sentences and according to the protocol that could actually help you memorize it and have that as a tool for you. We’ll give you like one example that is actually with the answer inside of how you use it. But then you will be able to practice this and you know it is worth it. If you just sit down, printed on your printer, have a pen ready and work on it. It will make your brain, you know, all the neurons inside will connect. Reconnect on a more, in a more generous way. It’s really worth it. It really works great for Rafael and Sharon. What did you get? What happened to the marriage? They learned how to fight in a positive way. They learned that if they’re too flooded, they stop and take care of themselves before they continue. They learned how to keep conflicts, in a low intensity. They really learned how to use this NVC method and how to use conflicts to feel closer to each other. And it was good for them, it was good for their kids. It was really nice to see them in a really change.

It’s not an, it’s not easy to remember this at first. You do need to practice it a bit. The idea of the practice it is a good idea because it takes some practice to remember. But then it really becomes second nature and it’s good for your romantic relationship, but it’s actually good for all your relationships and for your career. And we’re surrounded by people all the time when we want to be able to communicate in a way, that other people can understand and listen to what we’re saying. So I really like this tool.

So if people go to generous marriage.com and go directly to episode number five. Other episodes, you will be able to see this big button that allows you to download additional tips and practice sheet. And then you could use that and practice and you will see a change just like Sharon and Rafael. So a change in their relationship by maintaining low intensity in the communication, in the conflicts. And, uh, any final discoveries form from the actual research, Shachar? Just, I dunno, for me, it’s amazing that 69 percent of our conflicts will never be resolved, because every couple has personality differences. Sometimes with Rafael and Sharon, they had cultural differences. She was French, he was American. Some differences we can’t really bridge. So it’s not about resolving conflict. It’s really about managing conflict. That’s the big point Dr John Gottman made. It’s about managing conflict in a way that doesn’t create too big ruptures that helps you understand yourself and your partner better. And find solutions that are creative, collaborative and satisfying.

So basically Gottman did do a research that found that most of the conflicts are resolved and we’ll put a link to that research. Uh, so that you can read more details about it. But what it means is that you really do need to understand that even happy couples that are married for, for 30 years, 40 years and they are happy, they’re really do happy together. Those are like the masters, those that maintain one to 20 ratio. Even, they have conflicts that will never be resolved. Even years later, they’re still fighting about the same things which depressing. Or it can be if you look at it from the positive side, you can say, well, we’re different people. We have differences and we can celebrate our differences. It’s okay that we’re different and if we can find a way to be in a relationship while keeping our individuality and freedom and connection. Yeah, I really think it’s humorous in a way that we will made it this way, but at the same time and opportunity to work on the communication to maintain. It’s almost like we needed the reminders to be generous because every time you see a conflict with your spouse, that is like the world’s way to remind you, it is an opportunity to be generous. Amen to that. Brother Shachar. Thank you so much for these discussions and ideas and the research. Uh, we put a lot of work into creating this podcast for you and to make it valuable. Hey, if you want the data to download the practice sheet, just go to generous marriage.com, and you’ll find it there and do us a big favor. It will mean the world for us. Tell a friend, maybe at work. Maybe from your family about the generous marriage podcast. Sending Molina con facebook. Maybe it will mean the world to us. Thank you guys. See you next week on the generous marriage podcast. Bye Shachar. Bye Ziv. Bye everyone. See you next time. Bye bye.  

Weekly episodes with stories, tools and research that will help you make your marriage generous

Shachar Erez, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, 12 years married, father of two

Ziv Raviv, 16 years married, father of three

[email protected]

The post Episode 5 – Handling Hard Moments appeared first on The Generous Marriage Academy.

We prepared a guide for you, with tips on how to maintain a generous marriage, even when you don’t have enough time.

To download the guide, click the button below:

Hello and welcome to the generous marriage podcast. This is episode four and today we’re going to talk about maintaining a healthy relationship. I’m Ziv Raviv and together with me, my partner in crime in investigating what is the generous. marriage is Shachar Erez. Hello!

Hi everybody. It’s so great to be here. Again, excited to share some personal stuff we did today, about my own relationship.

And this is indeed exciting. I remember after we recorded episode three, I felt like that’s all he will do. Sounds like me a bit and in all sorts of aspects and it’s funny how you know, sometimes we hear the story and it feels like, Hey, part of that is actually about about you guys and about us guys and we think that this is the place to share the stories, to reveal ourselves to be vulnerable and at the same time to use that to leverage that to becoming better in maintaining a generous marriage. And today we are talking about maintaining a healthy relationship with your spouse. Before we go into the story, Shachar, I just want to mention when people work on improving relationship, they’re working on making it a more generous relationship and more generous marriage, what they get out of it is that they, they have a deeper connection and they have many moments of smiles and of warm hearts.

Where were they? Just feel the inner being expand and that is the nature of being generous with your spouse. That’s how you feel when you give someone your best focus and your best of times, and I’m really happy to investigate this because it helps me improve my relationship with Rotem and it helps you guys wherever you are right now, maybe you’re driving in your car. It can help you to find ways to improve your relationship with your spouse, so Shachar take us away into the journey. What is the story of today? This is a personal story. I’m excited to hear this myself.

Yeah, it’s actually a story about me and my wife Judy. I asked for her permission to share it with you guys and she generously agreed and the stories about the recent challenge we experienced. We’ve been together for roughly 13 years or married 13 years. We’ve been together a bit longer and last year we went through a big change because Judy and after being mainly a stay at home mom for the past five, six years, she started a business, the small business, an online business, but that took a lot of time and investment and creativity and it really changed the dynamic between us and the dynamic in the family and it was. It was challenging. One of the main challenges was that we didn’t have. We hardly had any time to meet and it’s hard to be generous and to maintain a healthy relationship when you simply don’t meet enough.

That’s interesting because before, before the change you, you had lots of opportunities to warm up the relationship, to be generous because she was a stay at home mom and you have two girls, six year old son and two year old daughter,

So you have two kids, so staying at home with them was definitely helpful by itself. And so now she becomes busier and busier and busier and being a mom is busy by itself, but now she is also doing the impossible. Something that requires so much mental health, so much mental focus and time and emotional focus and time. And that is to build a business an online business even. So what happens to the relationship?

So first it was really exciting, but then when the excitement, uh, kind of went away, I noticed we’re starting to move apart from each other. I’m a bit more, uh, avoidance. My attachment style is a bit more avoidance. So at first I thought I am enjoying it because the avoidance side, thinks he wants to be on his own but little by little this avoidance, it also feels lonely and they, even though, you know, we were still living here together, I started feeling lonely and started noticing I’m closing up. And uh, when I did a quick inventory of our interactions, whether there are more positive or negative, I notice that it’s not like we’re fighting more. It’s not like we have more negative interactions, we don’t have enough interactions. And the few negative interactions were usually around resources. We were fighting for resources. Suddenly she had to work. I had to work. What do we do? Who stays with the kids? How do we solve this?

So when you say resources, it’s things like time and time away from the kids and time away so that you could continue with your business of being a counselor for couples. And where you help relationships for, for many couples. And she needed time to actually build her business.

Alright. And we still wanted to be with our kids and we needed some time that we, that, you know, they weren’t at preschool but someone had to be with them. So a few things we had to do, one is to find more resources, asked my mother to help more find a babysitter. One of the huge successes was when we found a babysitter that could put our kids to sleep. That adds a whole new level of freedom. That was very helpful. Other things that are more about our interactions where I took on me. I took responsibility for my part in it and decided I’m going to create more interactions even when we’re apart. So I started sending more text messages saying, I miss her saying I love her saying, I’m grateful for this or that, you know, just giving her more attention, which I know it’s part of her love languages.

I know she loves it and they usually do it. But now I really took responsibility to do more of that. I started paying more attention to creating what I call moments of intimacy. We hardly meet. So when we met, you know, when she’s doing something in the kitchen and I’m just passing by. So I will make sure to touch her or to give her a kiss or you know, to do some quick gesture that creates a quick moment of intimacy. I’m talking about emotional intimacy even though it could be some sensual as well, but it’s not about sex. We’re not going to bed now. We’ll just creating a fun connection. Sometimes a sexy connection, but just a quick one.

Yeah. Basically your depositing, you are constantly looking for opportunities for depositing emotionally,

Right? Right. Depositing, just by, creating more connection to paying more attention to the connection between us.

By the way, before you tell us more ideas of what you did together and later we will understand why and what is the framework of, of doing all of those small moments of intimacy, adding them. Did you talk with her about it? Did she know that you are taking responsibility to creating more of these moments?

Yes. I did talk to her about it because we were going through a kind of a crisis. We were starting to notice that we’re hardly meeting and that we’re arguing more. So we had to. We both really love and care for each other and generally we think our relationship is pretty good, even great, but something was happening. It was winter and she was busy and so yes, we stopped. We even went for a few sessions with our couples therapist, you know, a couple of therapists go to couple counseling as well and that was a good opportunity to stop and see, to do a check in to see what’s happening, what’s missing, what we need more. And at first I was feeling more like a victim, like she’s so busy and now she doesn’t pay attention to me, but then when I noticed that that I’d done like feeling like a victim I prefer taking responsibility for my part, for what I can do. So instead of missing her, I just noticed I’m missing connection. So I decided to pay more attention to creating connection.

You basically reframed the story in your head instead of feeling like your situation is bad and there’s nothing you can do about it. Then you feel bad about yourself. Instead of that, you took responsibility, you took action, and you can actually decided to create this new reality, a new situation that is affected by what you do, even though you didn’t know for sure what she will do in return. You were willing to go ahead and invest in the relationship and be generous and do all sorts of things to help the situation.

Right. Because the situation wasn’t bad. It was actually great. I was actually really happy for her. That’s another thing I paid more attention to. Celebrating her successes. Even the small ones, you know, being a new entrepreneur is, is so hard. Some days are so hard. Some days are amazing. It’s easy to forget those little successes. So I took it on May to remind her. Okay, so today she feels unhappy because she didn’t do all of her goals, but look, you did 75 percent of your goals. Wow. You’re so amazing. You know, those little celebrating moments are are meaningful as well. Sometimes it’s hard to do it for ourselves and it’s really cool if we can do it for our partner.

What else did you do to try and reconnect and re-envoke the level of connection with your spouse?

You know, that’s a common advice that couples should have 20 minutes talk every evening. It doesn’t have to be too intimate. It can be technical. How was your day? What do we do with the kids? It’s kind of a check in at the end of the day every day and if it becomes a more emotional end and intimate, great, but that’s not the goal of it and we never had to do it because it will just happen on its own. But now that we hardly had time, we. We really scheduled it. We have a scheduled 15 to 20 minutes a meeting every night. Sometimes we miss, but almost every night and I’m guessing no TV while you’re doing that. Twenty minutes.

No screens, no distractions. It’s not quality time in the sense of close emotional connection, but it’s quality time when we do. The attention is on each other and even though part of it is technical, usually it creates some connection. It’s fun to be together with good. We’re good friends, so it’s a good reminder to our friendship even though what we talk about his parenting and stuff that needs to be done and that was your day at work and stuff like that. It recreates, it reminds us of our friendship and friendship is basic for a long term successful relationship. Yep. We also started to schedule a date, so because I’m a couples therapist, I work many nights so we don’t really have enough nights in the week two for a date night. So we have a date morning you would go for a coffee shop every Thursday morning and we spent a couple of hours together and that’s awesome. It was really important because you know, we always feel like we need this time to work, but when it’s in the schedule it’s actually too easy to work around it and other stuff.

Yeah. So all of those. Ideas are, staff that are each made self practical. Not complicated but the return on investment. We keep using this term because it applies to, you know, not just to business. It applies also to relationships and we sometimes men, we are the experts on energy conversion, so we want to make sure that we get some returns on what we invest in and so we keep going back to the term. But in your case, in the case of your story with the new challenge where your spouse started to, to become a business owner, uh, you needed to do all sorts of things that will be heard, that will be noticed. Um, so are you, when you did all of this, you actually used some tool to create the mindset of why you need to create those, those moments, and what in what quantity. So before we go into the actual tool, I want to ask you, did all of these efforts bringing any change?

Oh yes. Certainly. Yeah. We’re much closer now and we still have many challenges and still time is not a, we don’t have a lot of time, but when we do meet it’s really quality time and even when we don’t meet we leave each other, we send each other text messages and I started living here, posted notes like the example you gave the other the other week and that’s awesome. Super fun and creative and just finding post it notes of love and gratitude around the house. It’s great.

Since our last episode about it, when I read a post it note that my wife made for me, I, I since then got another two from my kids as well and it just, it just wonderful. Once you start to express generosity in a consistent manner, it just eventually overflows and you get a back. So it’s really wonderful to, to experiment with those tools.

Do you know another great thing that happened, happened thanks to her and many great things happened thanks to her, but one thing I want to, I want to share. She went to this workshop and she noticed she wants to be a queen and she noticed how a queen allows the guy next to her, the Queen, the King, sorry to give to her. So she noticed how many things, she doesn’t let me give her because he wants to prove that she’s capable. She’s independent, all sorts of stuff. And she started being more accepting of my generosity and that was a very generous move. When I’m able to give more, I feel better.

I want to send Rotem to that workshop I like seriously. So when you, uh, when you have gifts to give and your being, those gifts are accepted, just accepting the gifts is an act of generosity.  Yeah.  That’s really cool.

Quite a big insight for me that really made an impact. Yeah. So you asked me about where this, all of this is coming from. So this is actually coming from an idea by Gottman again, we talked about the Gottman last week and Gottman is super. Dr John Gottman is the most known research on couples and he’s been researching for more than 35 years couples and videotaping them and analyzing and just doing amazing amount of data on couples and he’s able to predict with a 90 percent accuracy if couples will be happily together six years and even 30 years later just by looking at a 15 minute interaction, they have a relationship and the main thing he’s looking for is the ratio of negative to positive interactions. What they found out that happy couples have a one to five ratio, so one negative interaction to five positive interactions even have one to 20, one negative to 20 positive.

So first of all two insights are very important. First of all, if if you have zero bad interactions, that’s not good. We talked about it last week, you need to sometimes fight, right? Even Gottman managed to prove that in his research that some certain types of fights are important but so you will have from time to time negative interactions. You’re not supposed to try and minimize those to zero. What you’re supposed to do is flood the negative interactions with positive interactions in a ratio, which is, you know, and one to five a is a is good for you and if you get to one to 20, then you are, you are what Gottman says, master’s. So I’ve got one says, you know, you might, you can be master, so or disasters as a couple and masters, they get that ratio down. They actually have five good interactions and you just mentioned in the beginning of the of today’s episode, all sorts of things that were positive interactions that you did and we have many other examples of that that will be available in the bonus pdf file that we’re making for you with some really clever ideas that you can do even when you’re away, when you’re at work, you can still be creating positive interactions with your spouse in a very generous manner. So we’ve created this pdf and if you go to generousmarriage.com, you can go to episode number four and just download it. It’s free and it’s valuable. It will make you already, you know, uh, get some points. So the tool or the basic, the basic level is to make sure that for each negative interaction, you need to have five positive interactions.

Yeah and Gottman in his lab. He’s actually counting every little gesture that we do that the couples do. The raise of an eyebrow when they touch each other, when they look at each other, when they look away all these are interactions that he counts. Looking at ourselves, it’s harder to notice all of that, but I think the main idea is, like you said, flood or give a lot of positive interactions to contrast the, the negative interactions, that’s the most generous thing you can do.

So the tool, the basic, there’s all sorts of ways of how you can use the tool. We started with the basic idea which is, you know, because you know there is the one to five need in the relationship to make it a positive relationship. You can make you to generous relationship. If you need to do those five positive interactions, that means that you need to flood the relationship with positive interactions and that sometimes is hard because you may be feeling hurt because of something that because of the negative interaction, usually the negative interactions makes you feel bad about the relationship. It doesn’t make you want to be, to come and do something positive, but that’s when the generosity comes into play. That’s when you remind yourself that you need to be generous and that’s when you know the tips on repairing the fights come in to play. You don’t have to come in, just apologize. You can just come and maybe touch the shoulder or maybe look at the eye or maybe offer some tea and later on you can get to the flowers and get to the text messages and to create more moments of intimacy. And I dare say even even sexual sex, just have sex with your spouse. That’s by itself sometimes can be a very positive interaction and an act of generosity on both sides.

Sex is so important that we’ll talk more about it in other episode, what you said about the rupture and repair process, a good rupture and repair has a good repair and a good repair has way more than five to one ratio of positive things you do for each other.

Yeah, it’s a little bit, uh, you know, it’s, it’s the sad truth that if you did something that created the fights, it will take way more efforts in fixing it. You need to know that that’s the reality of it. So it’s not enough to just bring flowers and then say, oh, but I’ve bought flowers. Did you bring flowers and sent text messages and talked with her mom and cooked something in the kitchen and cleaned up after yourself. Did you do all those things? And then, you know, feel bad about why the flowers, the flowers didn’t work and you won’t have to because the flowers will, will work if it will be with a ratio of one to 20 or one to five. And is that something that you can do by yourself or does it have to be mutual

Well the whole idea of generosity that when you’re really generous and you do it by yourself, you’re not looking for to positive return from your partner. But it would probably happen because generosity usually brings out generosity from the other, from your partner.

So this is important guys. When you’re listening to this podcast, we’re not saying that you need to be creating a one to five ratio of negative to positive. Where you are actually going to count down how many things the other side did for you. You just need to be generous. Just focus on what you can control. You can control your actions, you can control what you do to improve the relationship. And I want to mention, uh, you, you, you said before, something about celebrating the relationship, uh, and celebrating the, celebrating the successes of Judy with her new business. And I, I just, just the other night, uh, yesterday I had the same discussion with my wife, Rotem and she, we talked about how important it is to actually celebrate some of my business successes because I work very hard. Like now I’m going for a business challenge and we talked about the last year and many times I was hard on myself.

I would tell myself I need to reach a specific goal for specific launch and when I didn’t, I felt bad about myself. I didn’t celebrate the things that were achieved on that launch. And then later on I just went through an entire year of that every one or two months. And so, but, but looking back on the overall results, the overall results of the business are amazing. I just get you to achieve more and more things. And my wife is very proud of me that I’m very proud of the lifestyle that we managed to create ourselves, even though we didn’t separate those things. So we’ve decided that we will create celebration opportunities. So from now on, like we try to go out on a family night every, every week to eat outside. So from now on when we, when we eat outside, we’re going to decide why, what is the reason, why are we going outside to eat it? Because we celebrate Daddy, he did the launch and got $5,000 out of the launch or whatnot. So we’re, we, we work together on making the celebration process. Even if it’s a man, if it’s artificially created, we, we, we, we choose to create a positive interaction that is made up by us, which is to take something that happened in my business and make it into a positive for our family.

That’s beautiful. I love it. I think celebrating life is super important and people that tend to be too much on the perfectionist side and two critical, like myself and my wife, it’s really healing to celebrate successes and not just successes. Just celebrate moments of, of purity, of connection, of whatever. Just there’s so much to celebrate if you actually stop and look around. So I love your idea

And also I think we guys, we love working with points, so we play for the point. We don’t look at things as like if there is a problem with something, we look at the side which was accomplished and we say, Oh wow, 80 percent done. That’s, that’s amazing. We feel so good about it. And sometimes sometimes, yeah, the tendency of, of, of a woman of a woman is to look at the 20 percent that are still problematic and to draw and fix and to say, well there’s a problem here. It’s not completed but, and so this is where we can help our spouses. That’s where we can, you know, uh, encourage them because they will, they will have this ability to see all the things that a wrong. It’s just an amazing ability that, um, that the feminine has, which is to scan the environment and see all the other things that a good for them and all the things that are, that are troubling them. And we are, we are small, single focused. We go and we hunt. But that’s our tendency, but we love the points. So we can help our spouses and encourage them even for the smallest of successes and that will increase the ratio of negative to positive.

Yeah. And it’s not about being right or wrong. Both of us are right and we can celebrate what has been done and what still needs to be done there is no opposing each other. There’s room for both.

Yeah, there is room for both. That’s the, that’s the beauty of being in a relationship with your spouse and, and actually caring to make it meaningful and not just to be roommates. Uh, so, uh, you actually found out that the is a research topic of five to one is well researched by Gottman. Talk to us about the poof.

So he has this apartment in the woods of, of uh, his university where he gives a couple he wants to research he lets them stay the night then there and they video taped them. And that’s actually one way. Sometimes it’s not for a whole week. Sometimes just let them, interviews them and, and talk about their relationship and videotapes this. And it’s not about just about videotaping is so much that I also takes a physiological data. Uh, he also does, um, tons of, um, uh, questionnaires, it just has a lot, a lot, a lot of data about couples and long term research, a 35 year research on couples. So there’s a lot of profile they want to five ratio and even proof of the 90 percent accuracy that it gives of predicting divorce six years later and even longer than that. So yeah, I don’t know what else to say. It’s very well researched.

It just works it’s just the right solution for so many problems. If you own your marriage, feel that it doesn’t give you everything you need and you want to improve it and you want to be generous. The one to five ratio is the right tool for you. If you start to do that, you will see better results. And the research just prove that. And so we’ve created a document for you guys with not just ideas on how to make sure that your interactions, that you have a one to five ratio at the very least, but also to give you some things that you can do right away immediately, even just after downloading the pdf, you could immediately implement some of it and you could create positive interactions with your spouse and use the one to five ratio to make your, make your life better, make your connection more meaningful. Uh, all you need to do is go to the generousmarriage.com website. Find on the podcast tab, episode number four, and then download the pdf file. It’s free and you can use it in five minutes time from now. You will have already two positive interactions with your spouse.

Yeah. And even if you’re super busy and you don’t have enough time together, you can find some ideas there that will help you strengthen your relationship and make your connection time really high quality.

And if you need, even if you think, oh, you have a really good relationship with your wife, with your spouse, then just download the file so that you can see how to measure and verify that your ratio is good enough. Maybe you’ll find out that your your measure is one to four. Then you can still have some room for improvement. And even when you reach one to five, it’s better to get to that one to 20. You know how you sometimes see those old couple that are very nice to one another and they hold hands and they are just adorable. Those old couple that maybe you’ve seen some time, maybe it was on the TV, maybe it was, I don’t know, in a in a family event, we could all strive to be that old couple one day and being in such a meaningful relationship with your spouse that you, you keep rebuilding the relationship. You keep investing in the positive, positive interactions. And that is the real key for maintaining the relationship

Right!. You can fall in love with each other every day again and again and again. Wonderful! That’s main idea when you’re generous and you open your heart and you’re vulnerable with each other, you simply, oh, fall in love with each other again and again, with that positive message

We will just wrap up. So today we talked about the story of, of our very own, uh, and his wife Judy, and how her challenge in starting to become a business owner and a business entrepreneur have created a challenge in the relationship which was overcome through the hard work and will continue to over to be overcome through the hard work of using positive positive interactions. How many positive interactions at the very least one to five ratio of negative to positive. You need to create those. A lot of interactions. Uh, we also talked about some ideas of how to create positive interactions today and about the research that was done by John Goodman and how, you know, this is real stuff. You can actually improve a, your marriage and maintain your marriage if you use this tool. Guys we want to ask for your big help, please find someone in your life.

A friend maybe, maybe a colleague at work, tell them about the generous marriage, podcast, they need to know, even if they have an amazing marriage, even if they don’t have a marriage yet, if they’re not married yet, that doesn’t matter. We need your help so that we could, you know, become a community of people that care about, about implementing the generous, marriage concepts and investigated the generous marriage contest and one day even that challenges ourselves to improve our marriage in a generous way. So all you need to do is tell them about generousmarriage.com, about the podcast, and if you want to read more about the pdf, that bonus pdf that we’re doing for this episode, you can find that on generousmarriage.com, under the episode 4 post. Thank you again for listening and see you guys next week on the Generous Marriage Podcast.

Thank you Ziv! Thank you everybody. This was fun. I’m looking forward to see you next week and we will be talking about how to handle hard moments.

See you then guys.

The post Episode 4 – Maintaining a Healthy Relationship appeared first on The Generous Marriage Academy.

In this episode of the Generous Marriage Podcast we discuss:

We prepared a guide for you, with tips on how to fight, how to stop a fight, and how to reconnect after a fight.

To download the guide click the button below:

Welcome to the Generous Marriage Podcast. Fight less, feel appreciated and have a deeper connection with your spouse. And now your host, Shachar Erez and Ziv Raviv.

Hello and welcome to the Generous Marriage Podcast. I’m Ziv Raviv and this is where we explore together how to fight less, how to have a better connection, and how to have more intimacy with your spouse and create a generous marriage. I don’t do this by myself. I have my co-host, my partner in crime. It helps to investigate what is a generous marriage and today you’re going to be surprised because we’re actually going to try and make you fight more Shachar Erez what is that all about?

Great to be here. Hi everyone. Yeah, it’s funny how today we’re going to talk about how important is to fight, which is controversial sentence to say,

Yeah, I thought we were trying to help people fight less and now we’re trying to help them fight more. People are going to get confused, but that’s why you should stay around for this episode of the generous marriage podcast. This is episode three. We are available in generousmarriage.com and today as always, we’re going to have three things for you. The first thing is a story about a couple that has had a problem with fighting. They didn’t have enough of them and then we will talk about a tool on how to recover from fights, which is actually a topic that I am really keen on going into the debate and learning, just like you guys listening, learning tools on how to recover from fight. And then we will also share a research that’s brings, a new light to the way that we see fights and the tools that are around that. So let’s start with a story. Take it away Shachar.

So the story today is about Laila and Oliver. They came to me to repair their trust a few month earlier, she found out he was sexting with another woman and feel betrayed. And he agreed. He understood why she felt betrayed. It really didn’t fit his character. So as we were working on that, uh, they told me their story. Usually that’s how we start. They told me their story and in many ways their story was a beautiful love story, a fairytale in a sense. They met, they fell in love, they get married quickly. They had wonderful two kids. They had great jobs, great house, great lives, and they were really proud of how they never fought. They were no fighting. They were also kind of looking down about the couples around them that kept complaining about their partners and they saw them fighting and this couple light up and Oliver didn’t get it.

Why is everybody fighting so much? Then a few, more than a few years later, they had their third child and the little bit after that they found out she had breast cancer, a rare type of breast cancer that she had to go through a mastectomy, taking off one breast and then reconstructing it and it was a few years, they were fighting with the cancer and the consequences of it and it was a long and hard the struggle. She came out of it healthy and everything was okay, but in those years she was so ashamed of her body and and the scars and the whole process that she didn’t let him see her without the shirt and the and even without a wick.

Why is everybody fighting so much? Then a few, more than a few years later, they had their third child and a little bit after that they found out she had breast cancer, a rare type of breast cancer that she had to go through a mastectomy, taking off one breast and then reconstructing it and it was a few years, they were fighting with the cancer and the consequences of it and it was a long and hard the struggle. She came out of it healthy and everything was okay, but in those years she was so ashamed of her body and and the scars and the whole process that she didn’t let him see her without the shirt and the and even without a wick.

Wow. They had an amazing connection on the base of the foundation was that they were having two kids, lovely kids, good jobs, great house. They were in a relationship that had some problem in the past, some situation where the husband Oliver had been sexting with another lady and that was something that they worked on and had that kinda like it’s a scar too, kinda scar too. But then they had to go through breast cancer and that made the relationship go a little bit distant according to what you say.

So actually the sexting came after. Oh, okay. Okay. Let me explain that better. So there were a few years they were going through the healing from cancer and everything that’s around it. And then little by little the little, sex kind of went away because of all that shame. They still had a little sex, but it wasn’t as much as they used to have and as intimate as they, as they used to have. And she kept asking him if that’s okay. And he is a great guy and he supported her and of course it’s okay. And I understand. I understand why you’re ashamed and we can do it in your, in the pace that fits you and without being aware of the needs that weren’t met for him, the physical needs and more about the emotional needs. He started developing a gaming habit is a very successful guy. He owns the company and finds himself going to the bathroom in the middle of the work day a few times a day to play games on his phone. Weird, you know? Then he finds himself sexting with this woman, which really doesn’t fit his character, was way out of his character and in a sense when he was found out he was glad, he wanted to be caught.

Wow. And as we started exploring that, they realized they were avoiding each other. They were hiding a lot from each other. The fairytale life they had wasn’t really real. She wasn’t ashamed, only of her scarred body. There was shame about parts of themselves. Both. Both of them had shame about parts of themself. Most of them had shame about needs and feelings and ideas that they were afraid that the other couldn’t contain or wouldn’t have approved.

So they just avoid it. And overtime, that was the price of all this avoidance, this weird gaming habits, habit is a nice word. It was an addiction or almost an addiction because it wasn’t an addiction because he stopped, the minute he realized, and usually addiction is harder to stop. It was compulsive gaming and this whole sexting and betrayal and the whole shame about that. So after we realized that and I started talking with them, that’s some fighting is actually important, especially if you know how to repair, especially if you know how to come back to each other and recreate the connection and recreate intimacy and take responsibility for your part and express that you understand the other point of view and maybe they’re hurt or pained or whatever happened in the fight. Then this kind of fighting actually strengthened the relationship. It helps you understand yourself better, understand your partner better. It helps you trust that your partner will not run away in the face of conflict, that you can be yourself, even if it’s uncomfortable for your partner and they still state it actually deepens the trust.

You know you, you explained it, you shared the story. Now. Now it makes way more sense and actually I see how their fairy tale background was an illusion in the sense of there were underlying movement inside of each of them of needs that weren’t met and off of a certain emptiness in the emotional tank. And, uh, it sounds like she’s been going through a lot with shame, with feeling bad about yourself and it sounds like it wasn’t easy for Oliver either because he, he kept being unaware of his needs on, on some level and finding out his needs being met by other devices. So I see his need for maybe four points. And for appreciation, maybe I was met by those mobile games and, and potentially also you know with being involved with sexting with another lady. And that might have been why he felt this way.

And I see Laila was, was basically not open and didn’t want to go into fights, but she actually had all sorts of situations in her life that, that made her very good reason for a fight. Really good reason. So, so what, what um, the problem is those, those couple are in such a delicate situation to get to find out that your partner betrayed you. Oh my God, that’s a very hard struggle to go and overcome in some level. In some level it’s almost you know in the same category of hardship, like, like the actual cancer, it’s really hard. It’s possible, but it’s hard. Just like she recovered from cancer, they had to now recover from betrayal with the sexting. But that was something that is even more complicated because his underlying shallowness included becoming almost addicted to mobile gaming or to getting some points form from his phone instead of his wife or life. So what happened?

You really got it and I want to say something about affairs that affairs unfortunately are quite common. We don’t have accurate numbers, but they think that it’s between 50 to 50 percent, like half the couples to two thirds of the couples actually go through affairs. And I want to say affair is not a good reason to break up affair is a good reason to go deep. It almost always shows a need that was not met in the relationship and the person who had the affair went outside of the relationship to get that need met to get that need fulfilled, and if you go deep into that, usually there’s a way, not always of course, but usually there’s a way to make sure both of them feel like their needs are met in the relationship and they don’t have to go outside or if they go outside, maybe it’s with agreement.

Well, we definitely. We definitely, we should dig deeper on that topic in this podcast because that topic of affair is again, yeah, like you said, it’s so common, unfortunately, that people don’t get the… It’s common and so untalked about people don’t really share it with their friends.

Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of shame there too.

Right? Right. Next to Oliver, Oliver and Laila, it was just amazing to see them. First it was really funny and heartwarming to see them come back to me week after week and be proud about fighting. Of course they weren’t really proud about the fight. They were proud, of the deeper authenticity they were discovering and how they were able to express themselves more fully and it started with the relationship, but it went through all of their lives. They started to live more fully to to find what makes them come alive and go do that, not only together also individually, so it was just was really beautiful to see how they were growing, repairing the trust took about a year, maybe even more. They didn’t, at some point we stopped a meeting because they were doing well even though there was still some post trauma regarding the trust, but they were able to process it and be together in those hard moments, so they didn’t really need me and therapy for that, but I was feeling very proud to see how they change and how there’s so much more authentic and alive. That’s really beautiful.

It’s actually like every time they fought, they went through a self exploration process as well and the self definition process because why do you really fight? You fight when, when. First of all, you need to care in order to fight, but you need to not just care about the other side of the fight. You also need to care about yourself. You need to have something that you want to happen or that you want to know about yourself to be true. So like all of those fights, the sometimes there’s a there. They are very much justified. Sometimes we feel like our spouse maybe nags us on something and starts a fight. Maybe they had a bad day at work and they start a fight. All sorts of reasons why the fight might seem to us like something that is just evil and that’s it. Just a a behavior, but what if it’s not, you know, what if the fight was justified and I dare say that many of the fights are justified or at the very least an opportunity to take the fight to find out the root cause and to actually grow and get closer to one another because really it’s all about the partnership and making the partnership better and more suitable for the needs of the two partners.

Right, right. I agree. And it’s really important to take this opportunity. You know, some, some couples fight and don’t really repair. They know how to kind of move on, which, which is important. You need to know how to move on. You don’t really have to go deep in every fight, but you need to go deep in most of the fights you need to ever repair that. At the end of it, you feel close to each other. You feel understood. You feel heard, you ever. You want to touch or kiss or hug. There’s deeper intimacy.

That’s how you know that the repair was actually done. You feel it, your chest gets wider and your heart opens

So the secret for Laila and Oliver was not to have more fights, but to have more fights that are repaired, and through the repair comes the connection and the ability to improve and to meet the needs of your partner. So, that’s very interesting and a success story for Laila and Oliver, that through learning how to repair fights, they were able to pretty much change the direction of their partnership of their marriage. And again, make it a more generous one. So let’s go right into the tool. What is it? How can we do it? Sounds so hard. How can we repair fights?

So first I want to start with what to avoid. So fighting is okay, but don’t cross your red lines, meaning no physical violence. Of course, of course, of course. No cursing and even try to avoid contempt. Contempt is a serious poison for a relationship. So there should be an agreement that even if some contempt came out in the, in the fighting, you cannot double apologize for it later. You need to have an agreement that you want to avoid contempt. And some people that grew up with a lot of shame are more prone to contempt, but there should be in agreement of the couple that contempt should be avoided.

I understand. Of course, physical violence is out of the question and of course I can see why cursing is counter productive and I feel you know, how, how hard it is to get contempt. But can you give a few examples of contempt?

So contempt, generally speaking, is the experience when you make the other feel less than you,

I’m better than you and a way of, uh, many ways to show that. Sometimes it’s a roll of the eyes. Sometimes it’s the tone of voice. There’s a, there’s a face to, it’s something with the lid that kind of, you know, there’s like everybody would recognize it if they see it, but generally it’s about making the other field less than me. And that’s, that’s the number one predictor of a divorce. Contempt. So I work with couples that have contempt and they don’t divorce because they have an agreement to change that. It’s changeable, but if you don’t have this agreement, it’s a predictor of bad times. It’s really hard to be generous when you are confronted with contempt. Yeah. Why would you be generous if you feel less than if someone is shaming you and making you feel so belittled and small? It’s really hard to be generous.

It’s blocker, other blocker, other things to avoid is being too defensive in the fight and not bothering to listen to the other at all and criticizing too much. And another thing to avoid is a stonewalling, is closing gap and kind of giving the silent treatment that will probably have a whole episode about this four things because they are for poisons and we want to avoid. But for now we’ll just mention them quickly. And then let’s talk about how to actually repair, so first how do we repair slowly? Because after the fight, we’re unregulated, our nervous system is disregulated and we need to take time to come back to ourselves. It takes at least 20 minutes, usually more. And in those 20 minutes you need to think about other things, not about the fight because then you’re still there. And when you feel regulated enough, start creating connection with, with small gestures, uh, eye contact, a small light touch, or maybe offer a tea or tell your partner, hey, I’m making a sandwich do you want one? Small beads for connection? And if it’s a good day, even though you had a fight, your partner will notice those bids for connection and give some in return. And then little by little you start recreating the connection. And when there’s enough connection, I say dare to apologize. It’s really about daring because apologizing can feel exposed. I say with your partner there to apologize. Take, take responsibility for your part in the fight. Express your sorrow for the hards, the hard words and the hard things that happened and show you understand your partner. Show you understand if they got hurt and they even try to explain, explain what’s happened, what got you so triggered sometimes you know, sometimes I’m hungry. I came back from work and then too hungry and because of that I’m short and my wife says something and I know… Sometimes it’s really something silly.

Yeah, I’m hungry or I’m stressed or something. Not even connected to my partner. So it’s good to explain what happened. It’s good because it helps you understand yourself better and it helps your partner understand you better. And once again, it strengthens the understanding between you and the trust between you and the connection.

I like how the apology doesn’t come first I think that once your, after the fight and you already know you did some things that you shouldn’t, you should, you, you shouldn’t do like you want to be responsible, you were, you were talking not in a nice way or maybe you didn’t show enough appreciation or maybe you did forget to do some things that you were supposed to do. Some of the times, uh, I dare say many of the times we do have a reason why we should apologize for our side of things and take responsibility and own it. Own it. Even if we were only the trigger of the fight. Yeah. The trigger of the fight was that I didn’t put the towel in the right place and left it on the floor. Maybe that was just the trigger, but I still, you know, potentially, uh, Eh, I can own the fact that I did something wrong too.

And yes maybe the other partner use this as an opportunity to create a fight or something of that sort because she’s already aggravated. By by other needs that are not met. But that’s okay. It’s still my responsibility to own it. So, but asking for apology, it’s not easy and for me at least I see it as not easy because it’s scary, that it will not be received. So actually saying I’m sorry. That’s easy. That’s not the hard part. The hard part is overcoming the fear of what if she. What if my partner will, will be angry again, even of me just asking for apology. Like that’s the last thing we want in a fight. But, but you’re not saying start with an apology. You’re saying, Hey, first of all, go and take those 20 minutes. Obviously don’t take those 20 minutes to do some mobile gaming if that’s something that you do compulsory, uh, that will be bad for you and will make the situation worse.

But take 20 minutes to do something productive. Maybe go mow the lawn. Maybe go feed your animals, maybe go do a jog. Like just yesterday I felt so aggravated. I didn’t want to bring my hardship from a business meeting into my family and I just went on a one hour jog and when I came back with my family, waited for me and they were happy that I’m coming back and I didn’t have to fight about this when it’s not related to my wife and kids coming back after those 20 minutes or even more and starting with the small gestures and, and try to look at the I, that’s, that’s scary, but it’s not as scary as starting a conversation immediately, but just try to touch or to talk. I love it. It’s, it’s easier and it’s practical and then once you have the connection within, you can dare to do the next page to take ownership.

Yeah. Alright, it’s amazing how this little look, this little glance in the eye recreates connection and how hard it is many times to look at each other after a fight. Yeah. Ideally, both of you understand that and uh, read each other’s bits for connection and answer with another bit for connection. And that’s how do it together. It’s always about doing it together actually. And most of the times both of you will need to apologize. Most of the fights, both of the partners had some responsibility for the fight. One was triggered and did something and the other answered in a way that wasn’t seeing the first one. And from then it just escalates. And in a sense, both of them did that.

Yeah. In a sense a fight is a situation where one is triggered and then they do something or say something that triggers the other side and they keep triggering one another to the point of, of, you know, the fight just goes out of proportions that are out of control. Uh, so just the fact that you triggered first, does it mean you are all to blame and it’s not about finding who’s to blame. It’s about repairing.

Exactly. And no one is to blame and usually both have responsibility. Yeah. The research we’re going to share today is the research done by doctors, Lowell Krokoff from University of Wisconsin and by the famous John Gottman. Let me say a few words about John Gottman. So John Gottman has been researching couples for, I’m not sure now, probably 35, maybe even 40 years, and he has been video recording couples and analyzing what they do and, and it’s, it has, I think is the person that has the most knowledge about couples in the world and all of couples counseling is very influenced by him. And this podcast is very influenced by his findings and we’ll mention him many times. And today we’re actually bringing, uh, research, uh, he co-authored that shows, by the way, this research is, research is from 1989. That’s what almost 30 years ago, 29 years ago. And the research found that contrary to the common wisdom that’s fighting is a problem. Certain type of fighting can actually predict long term satisfaction with the marriage. So even though after the fight they don’t feel satisfied, they don’t like it three years later, that’s the longterm that they checked in this research. Three years later they’re more satisfied than couples who didn’t fight. Wow. Or couples that fought and use those things that I mentioned earlier to avoid.

So let me get it straight about the research that was done by a Dr. Lowell Krokoff and John Goodman. Uh, so basically they studied people that has fights versus couples that don’t have fights and also types of fighting, types of communication. And they actually we’re able to find which kind of fighting is fruitful, so what, what is it, what type of fight is fruitful?

So, so the, the fruitful fights are the ones in which the partner felt free to be angry with each other, felt understood by their partner. Now we go into the repair, they felt understood by their partner and finally came to a resolution usually involving some compromise.

Hm. The topic of the fight is not the key. It’s not that you can fight on certain things and don’t fight on other things. It’s more like how do you deal with the fights and how do you feel in the fight or after the fight that you feel understood. That’s very important that you feel understood by your partner that you were able to answer, to explain your point and their partner got It. Even if they didn’t agree with it, they understood it, you know, building up your marriage in a way that is with a foundation of a generous marriage. It’s not a sprint. It’s not like we’re trying now to take this one tool. And then, uh, guess, uh, the, the relationship to work and we’re done.

It’s an ongoing process. It’s a process. It’s a marathon and creating this loop of generosity where you’re being generous to your spouse and then they get to, to become generous back and you become more generous. And none of these good things that come from, for listening to the generous marriage podcast. All of that comes with hard work. And, uh, this tool is just one of many. And I love it that. It was researched that actually, you know, repairing fights will actually make you have a better, a better marriage with your spouse. And that is just one of the many things that you should consider, uh, when you are working on building the foundation of your, of your partnership and your marriage, and that something that you will always do. Always you will walk on that. And make it deeper and stronger and improve the level of generosity.

Yeah. I call it repair artists. It’s not really about the fighting. It’s really about knowing how to repair, how to come back to each other after the fight. And it’s a lot about courage and generosity, courage to recreate the connection and to be vulnerable and generosity. Even if my partner was wrong, I love her enough to be generous with her and recreate the connection and see how we can come through this misunderstanding.

What I like about the bonus pdf that you can download on generousmarriage.com is that it also includes some text example of how to do the repair, how to apologize, how to express himself. And I feel like that makes it a more concrete, easier to implement. And guys, all you need to do is go to generousmarriage.com and go to the podcast tab, choose episode number three, and then there’s a big button there waiting for you where you can download the pdf for free and improve your readiness for the next fight. And if there is not enough fights in your life right now with your partner, then maybe you should initiate one. What do you think about that Shachar?

Yeah, initiate one but makes sure you’re courageous enough to repair,

I love it. It’s really what it’s all about. This might one day, uh, the name of the podcast might be instead of a generous marriage podcast, it should be the courageous marriage podcast because a lot of time it needs, you need to be courageous to be generous. But, to put things in perspective, you can go and download the file, you can understand exactly how to do it, and you should allow yourself to take your partner seriously, to take them as your partner for life and to allow yourself because of that, don’t be just roommates, be partners and partners. They talk about those things that are troubling them. They talk about their needs, they fight if needed, but they repair. Yeah.

Today we’ve been looking at the story of Laila and Oliver. Laila and Oliver had been going through hurdles in their marriage that were repairable and in order to repair those hurdles, they needed to also fight and through fighting. They started to get rid of the shame and get a better connection and even enjoy the bonus effect of recovering from fights, which is sometimes sex, much better sex. So, uh, we didn’t talk about that deeply today, but it wasn’t the focus, but definitely we, we hope for you guys and for you that listen to get that benefit as well.

That’s really true. They actually kind of wish we did mention it because they started having not just more sex, they start having more intimate sex, more liberated sex. They were more free to express themselves and their needs and to be whatever part wanted to show up in life and in sexual life. And that’s very nourishing, super nourishing.

Yeah, we definitely, we definitely will touch base on the topic of sex in the future. It’s a key. It’s a key element on the relationship between, uh, between the couple, so definitely we will need to revisit that, but uh, in terms of, uh, of communication and the leveraging, leveraging fights to improve the connection, I’m really happy for Laila and Oliver that’s, that worked out for them and we saw the tool with how to do the connection to reestablish the connection after the fight out to repair defied. That was something that you can learn more about in the generousmarriage.com website. And finally, uh, we mentioned the research and the link for the research is already waiting for you. Just head over to generousmarriage.com and you can see the link and read the research from 1989 by yourself and get to see the same conclusion, which is that some fights are worth having, especially the one the kind of fights that are repairable, Shachar any words of advice before we wrap up?

I think that’s it. That was beautiful. I really enjoyed talking to you. Again, I hope everybody enjoyed listening to us and the fight more but have better repair..

Yeah, and just as a final note guys, if you’re listening to this and if you’re seeing any value with us sharing with you the stories and the tools and the research, go ahead and share this podcast with someone that you care about. Maybe it’s a friend from your work, maybe it’s a family member, maybe it’s your, your sibling. Go and share it with people. People around you become a more generous marriage people and that that is the right type of people to be. Thank you guys again and see you next week on the generous marriage podcasts.

Thank you. Bye. Bye.

The post Episode 3 – Fighting is Important appeared first on The Generous Marriage Academy.

There are many ways to practice gratitude in your life and in your marriage. We listed some of our favorites in a document for you.

To download the gratitude practices:

Welcome to the Generous Marriage Podcast. Fight less, feel appreciated and have a deeper connection with your spouse. And now your host, Shachar Erez and Ziv Raviv.

Hello and welcome to episode two of the generous marriage podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in for yet another episode of that can actually help you have less fights in your marriage, more sex and more connection with your spouse and all of that are good things that you probably want and that is why you’re tuning in and just the fact that you’re listening right now to us that will actually help you develop a more generous marriage together with me is my partner in crime, in investigating all things related to a generous marriage. It’s the one and only the person that actually is my mentor in understanding because you’re the guy that actually understand these topics, Shachar Erez.

Hi Zivi, thank you. I’m so happy to be here. Excited. Thank you everyone who’s listening. I’m really excited to share some of my knowledge with you today. The topic of gratitude will be talking about today is one of my favorites.

So the topic of today is again, gratitude. We’re going to do the same structure every week. You can already identify how we walk, how we think, and how we are trying to share with you a few of the tools that we are exploring and researching on the topic of generous marriage. So the first thing we’ll do is talk about a story about people that actually has a problem. Maybe the view will be able to relate to that specific problem today. And then we will go and talk about the tool which is related to gratitude obviously, and then we’ll even back it up with research. So every week, three things. Let’s start with a story about Jill and how she had some problems in communication in a marriage with her spouse. Take it away. Shachar tell us all about Jill.

Alright? So I used to see Jill in one on one sessions, not as part of couples therapy, but one of our main challenges, uh, one of the main things she talked about in our session was about Jack, her husband, and mainly about the things he lacked mainly, how he couldn’t provide her needs around emotional intimacy. She wanted him to listen more, to be able to understand her better, to contain her feelings better, he was a great guy, did a lot of stuff for her, but she kept coming back to this point, how he wasn’t there for her. He didn’t see her. She didn’t feel safe. She didn’t feel understood. She didn’t feel loved. She tended to be critical to go to criticism, especially when she was stressed. When she wasn’t happy. Part of our work together, I asked her to write a gratitude journal, meaning three things she’s grateful for everyday we’re just writing down in a notebook or a journal or something.

Three things she’s grateful for everyday. She took on the challenge and quite quickly she applied it to judge. He started writing three things. She was thankful for about him. First, she just wrote it in their notebook, but you know, slowly slowly started sharing it with him, telling him in person or in text messages, just thanking him for things he did for her and for things he was like for his personality, for how generous he was or how, uh, what a great daddy was. You know, just stuff she appreciated the not, not just with her, also with the kids and other people. Just amazing to see the results.

So before we share the results of what happened with Jill and what she experienced after implementing this tool, I want to emphasize a few things. Basically the beginning of Jill’s situation where she started was she was very frustrated. She felt like there was a problem in the connection with her spouse, with Jack. It made her feel frustrated. It made her feel that he doesn’t really see her needs. And there’s this one thing that, that I really love the metaphor and that is like, it’s suffering that I’ve heard, uh, Alison Armstrong talk about it in one for books and that is the notion of holding the bucket. Sometimes you just need to listen. Jill just needed someone to hold the bucket for her when she comes and talks and talks and talks and it just feels this connection where someone that you can actually just listen, just be there and listen.

And there’s a funny video about the nail in the forehead of some lady that talks with her husband and she tries to just get him to listen and he tries to solve her problem and get the nail out of her head. We should put the video, it’s a funny one. It just shows how sometimes the lady just wants to be held. That’s all she needs. And this is really something that I think Jill, she didn’t feel fascinated for no reason. She actually needs it. It’s a part of her being as an individual, as a woman, she needs to be listened it’s is how she feels love. But then Jack wasn’t showing that at that time in the way that she could feel appreciated and held. So what happened after she implemented the gratefulness?

Yeah. It was amazing to see the change because this log and you know more than the log, created a change in her, in her perspective of them. And she was able to become less critical of him and seeing more what is. And not just what isn’t, you know, not just saying what’s missing. Also saying the half full, a half cup, that’s full, so that helped her and through that it helped him. He started to feel more appreciated, more valued. Everybody wants to feel more appreciated and valued, especially men and because he felt that it was easier for him to come even closer to her. He was loving and intelligent and the caring guy already, but thanks to this change, it was easier for him to come closer and even provide some of those emotional needs she needed before that because he felt so criticized, you know, it wasn’t very interested. He was scared. It was a scary fields for him to come close to her because it might hurt now that she was able to appreciate him giving points, see him in a much more positive view. He wanted to come closer and just created this awesome feedback loop of positivity, of generosity, of gratitude. Just what everybody’s looking for right?

Yeah and I’ve heard also that when you are positive and optimistic about life, when you’re thankful, it just creates the situation. After it becomes a habit with the gratefulness log that you start to see more positive things. It just like when you just bought a Toyota Prius, suddenly everywhere you go, you see more Toyota Priuses on the street, but when you are starting to practice gratefulness and you’re grateful and you are thankful for stuff in your life, then you will from time to time starts to develop this as a momentum and you will see more things that help you feel thankful and that makes you think thankful and this will create a situation where the people around you also respond. Can you tell me something? Did you tell Jill to write the things that she’s thankful specifically about Jack?

Not really because we weren’t focused on her relationship. She, It kind of happened spontaneously through her. I just thought she was very critical of herself and life and and her spouse and just the critical person in. The antidote to this many times is a gratitude.

It’s so amazing. It’s just the opposite. If you are a critical person and a lot of times women can be critical to their environment in the sense that they see so much stuff, they can actually see stuff that a lot of times we men don’t even see those things, so by knowing that something is wrong and saying that, hey, this needs to be fixed, they are being conceived as critical to the environment and we men, it’s very hard for us to take all of these criticism. It actually creates a distance between men and women and then that distance made jack go away from Jill and that gave her what she needs, but once she started to create this positive loop and bringing in and bring him closer by, being generous with him, by being grateful for the stuff that he does do that made everything work better.

Right? And great in gratitude, you know, part of it is just saying thank you for those little things that we don’t notice anymore for taking out the trash, for taking care of the kids, from going to work, you know, the obvious things that we will do anyway. It’s really great. If we thank each other about them and not take them for granted. Yeah. Another level is appreciating our partner’s personality, you know, not just a thank you for doing this for me. Thank you for being generous. Thank you for being sensitive. Wow. That’s a big one. Yeah. That’s a whole different level of gratitude and appreciation. It’s a whole different level of points we get, you know.

Well, it’s different because it’s not when you’re. When you’re being appreciated about what you do. That’s one level of safety that you feel safe, but when you feeling appreciated by who you are in the world, it’s when you feel loved. Yeah. Yeah. So you need to both actually both. I agree with that. Yeah.

You need to show both. That’s really key. So now we understand Jill, Jill’s story, which is based on a real story. It just, we just changed the names and the story is universal. I imagined the people that are listening right now, they feel the same. Sometimes they want more appreciation.

It’s not just men and women. Sometimes it’s the opposite, but it’s very common that guys feel criticized by their woman. Yeah. But it happens in same sex couples and sometimes the man is more critical

Of course, when I generalize with men and women, uh, I just do it because it’s easier to get the point across, right? I definitely don’t think that everyone on the same. I had this huge discussion about this with my wife when I tried to tell her about how I see things about what I do as a man in what she does is a woman. She, she was fascinated about me categorizing her into this cubicle of what is a woman and that’s not her. She’s unique and I acknowledge her, every one of you guys are unique. Every one of the ladies in the world and the listeners, of course you guys are unique, but uh, it just, you know, tools are tools that sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. So before we go into,

I would just add another sign that we are unique and there are tendencies, you know, they are tendencies for men to be in some ways and women be some different ways, but these are just tendencies. It’s not that anybody’s wrong if they don’t fall into these tendencies.

It reminds me the same metaphor we used last week, which was the metaphor of if you are serving ice cream, an ice cream parlor, you will not force someone to eat ice cream that he doesn’t like the flavor. Well, t he same goes with men. All men are like ice cream. Some people just like chocolate ice cream. Some people like vanilla ice cream. Some people like strawberry ice cream. So each flavor, each man is different, but they have some attributes of ice cream the same, so all ice cream melts, all ice cream melts and all men has some characteristics that makes them men and it makes them the same. And of course there’s always rules that are broken by a specific case, but it’s good to know that ice cream melts it. Just good information. It will make you be careful not take the ice cream and just put it in the sun for too long. So knowing how to operate men is something that is good for everyone to know, including our self. Sometimes we don’t even know how to, how to operate it ourselves. So we see these Generous Marriage podcast is all about giving you tools to understand yourself better, to understand your relationship better, and to improve it, to make it more generous. And this tool right now that Jill was using is all about the gratefulness log. Take it away, tell me how do I do it? What are the specifics? How can I make it work for me?

It’s actually really easy. Maybe the easiest practice we’re going to offer it just about writing three things every day you’re grateful for and because we’re hearing about marriage, so it would be great to write three things you are grateful for about your partner, things they do, things they are, small things, big things, things they do regularly and and then you hardly notice them anymore, and also things that are out of the ordinary. Just good. Be Thankful and grateful and I would even add some bonus points. Explain why. If you tell your partner, thank you for doing something for you, explain why that is meaningful for you. Not every time, but sometimes when you can explain the meanings, that adds another layer of intimacy, of shared meaning, that’s also important in a relationship.

How long do you think they should keep doing this?

So for some reason the research is always, or most of the research is about three weeks, so writing three things for three weeks. That’s good enough. They see brain change, they see changes in the brain after three weeks, but I would say just do it for as long as you’re able to do it. It’s just a great practice forever. As a lifetime practice. It rewires the brain, it changes perspective in a good way. Many people are critical. I’m a critical, I have critical tendencies. I tend to be critical. It’s just so healing for this tendency.

Yeah. I imagine it might be even good for people that has the tendency to be perfectionist. So if you’re perfection you, if you are trying to make everything perfect in your life, you express your opinions about yourself, about life, about things, about business, and that makes it hard for you. So expressing your gratefulness and thankfulness can help you.

Yeah, it actually heals shame and shame is connected to criticism and to blaming others and to being perfectionist, and it’s actually not a great experience. So every time we can heal some of our shame, some of our perfectionism, some of our tendencies to criticize, we become better people. It’s just great to talk later about the research and about all the benefits of it. It’s just amazing.

Cool. So before we go into the research, I want to emphasize again the bonus points and give another way to look at this log, which is something that I’ve been experimenting with in the last 10 days or so. So I. I have some interesting input on that one. First of all, about the why. This is very important. Take your time with this on explaining why do you feel grateful, because that will actually help you learn more about yourself. So you’re getting value not just by showing someone that you care about them by expressing gratefulness three times a day like logging it, but you also learn so much about what ticks you, what makes you move in the world, what makes you feel like it’s important for you and being grateful will make you. It will change your life. And I wonder, before I go into my bonus points, do you think it matters if this log is private or if you share it with your spouse? What is your take on that Shachar?

Well, they’re both helpful. It’s good enough if you just write it to yourself and not share it with anyone. It’s really great if you share it with your partner. It strengthened this a cycle, this feedback loop of positivity and generosity, and it’s like there’s a, I imagine there’s a cup of gratitude. Then when I’m grateful, I put more gratitude in her cup and the her cup overflows and she puts more gratitude in my cup and my cup overflows. And just great. So much gratitude in the relationship. It’s really great. It’s very good. It’s very generous, right? So it’s good enough to write it to yourself. It’s great if you share it with your partner. I also know people that write it on facebook, which is another great way to share it and create more goodness in the world. People see your gratitude. It might tap into their own gratitude. It’s also another way to do it.

Wonderful. So you can do it either way privately, you can give it as a gift, so instead of giving away the three things that you were gratitude, for that you’re thankful for every single day, you can do that for a week or for three weeks and then put that in a nice binder maybe and give it as a gift for your spouse and explain the that you’ve been through a process you wanted to express the gratitude to her and here is the gift where she can look at three weeks of time in all, all the things that your gratitude for. So I, I love it. Cool. That’s really one of the fun things in this create the creation of the generous marriage podcast is. Well we, we, we do an infusion of ideas that are researched and that work in real practice with marriage for couples. And we combine that with thinking out of the box or with thinking, you know, practical tips on how to make it work for you.

So we’re hoping that you’re enjoying this. And by the way, we will give you some extra information about how to do this tool together with all the links and extra ideas inside the show notes of this podcast. So if you go over to the generous marriage podcast, you’re going to find them some bonus elements of this tool that were not included here today. You need to actually go to generousmarriage.com. Go to the podcast, episode number two, and then simply download this sheet. It will be, she will take you five minutes to look at the pdf to understand, not to feel gratitude for this tool of gratitude. So my final tip, which was something, that I’ve implemented in the last 10 days, and I think it’s really something that you will enjoy hearing that is a tactic about postage notes. So basically what I do for the last 10 days I’ve been experimenting with is it’s really fun.

Every day I take just a regular post it notes. It doesn’t matter what color it is, it doesn’t matter at all. And I write down one post it note for each of my kids in one post it note for my wife. Because one of my kids is four year old, the posting that I write for him is a drawing. I just draw something that he likes. I actually sit down for five or 10 minutes in front of Youtube and I research like how to draw a dinosaur. I don’t know how to draw a dinosaur, but the Youtube tip, just shows me how to do it. So I actually spent 10 or five meaningful minutes that I need for my business, but I spent them on making a gift for little Edan who is four years old and then I do the same for each of my daughters.

Every day I take just a regular post it notes. It doesn’t matter what color it is, it doesn’t matter at all. And I write down one post it note for each of my kids in one post it note for my wife. Because one of my kids is four year old, the posting that I write for him is a drawing. I just draw something that he likes. I actually sit down for five or 10 minutes in front of Youtube and I research like how to draw a dinosaur. I don’t know how to draw a dinosaur, but the Youtube tip, just shows me how to do it. So I actually spent 10 or five meaningful minutes that I need for my business, but I spent them on making a gift for little Edan who is four years old and then I do the same for each of my daughters.

One of my daughters likes to do exercises. She likes to stand on her hands. She exercises that she does and she’s practicing. It is. So instead of giving her a compliment and saying what I’m grateful for, I just tell her, please show me one of your exercises because that will make her feel that I appreciate her. And the same goes with my wife. I tried to show her that I hear her. I try to show her what I love about her. I tried to show her in my post it notes things that I’m grateful for, so just an act of generosity. We’re giving away one post it note every single day and the results of this is amazing. It just accumulates so when they see that you’re serious about being grateful for them, they become grateful back. So my kid will come to me and we’ll say, today I want these drawing and not that I get way more hugs, way more hugs in the last few days in comparison to before using these small and easy to implement tactic and just yesterday my wife wrote me back a post it note.

I didn’t ask her for the post it note. We didn’t talk about her doing this as well or something, so she felt so much gratitude that just like you said, the cup was overflowing with gratitude. She felt like she needs to go back and do this for me, and she said, how much I actually know. Here’s the. Here’s the actual note. It was even bigger than a post it note. I’m so grateful for her to say that it has the date. I will keep this, I will cherish that, and she says, thank you for all you we do for our family. Thank you for the efforts that you do for every single one of us. I appreciate the notes that you write for me and for our kids. I appreciate the efforts that you put into studying the topic of generous marriage and I want to support you and be a partner in your life. It’s amazing. It is. So these tools guys, it’s worth trying. It’s worth experimenting with those tools that we share. Go to generousmarriage.com, download the bonus section, the bonus, extra information that you were going to be surprised at how it makes everything click. It makes it easier to implement immediately, but I want to know can we really trust this tool? Was this tool researched in any way? Shachar tell us what was the. What is the research condition on this one?

The Gratitude Log

It’s actually very well researched. The gratitude has been a hot topic, I would say, in positive psychology in the last maybe two decades, and there’s plenty of research about the benefits of practicing gratitude and it’s just amazing. They found that people who practice gratitude are healthier. They have stronger immune system. They are less bothered by aches and pains they can tolerate them better. Psychologically speaking, they have higher levels of positive emotions. There are more alert, alive, awake. They feel more joy and pleasure. They’re more optimistic, more happy. It’s just amazing, just to say, you know, most of the research is done by gratitude log of three things a day for three weeks and they find the benefits. Like if you write the log in the morning, you will still feel better in the evening or other benefits. They can notice nine months after they stopped doing the log.

Longterm benefits just by, you know, five minutes a day, three weeks. It’s not even five minutes a day, a minute, a day, three weeks. I think it should be more than three weeks for the research. It needs to be limited, but in life there’s no reason to limit it. You can just enjoy doing it forever and today I want to also share about the specific research that was done on couples. Amy Gordon for University of California Berkeley conducted the research. She’s done a lot of research about gratitude, in this research. I’m going to share now with you and then later on the website she explains the cycle of generosity. She explains how when one partner feels gratitude, the other partner feels valued because they feel valued. It actually makes them appreciate the relationship better and act on it, and this action is not feeling. It actually promotes action, which in exchange for promotes more value and more gratitude than just expense. Really lovely. This cycle of generosity in research, really well done, so it’s worth looking into that. It is important for us that you guys know that those researchers are available or the generousmarriage.com website for you so that you can take a look that you can improve your understanding on the tools. Don’t just take our word on it. Take the word off of many researchers and many, many pieces of proof that can help you feel more confident on what you’re doing. We don’t want you to feel like you’re wasting your time, not by listening and that we’re implementing. So if we find the researchers, it means a lot and it is pretty much proven tactics. The there was, you know, those researchers were done by multiple researchers and specifically by Amy Gordon. She’s been researching this multiple times and in different ways and her insights from the research are astounding. Like if you can get so many benefits from even just three weeks, like I imagine how much harder it is or how much more expensive it is to actually get that done in another way. Like maybe go to a counselor that will be way more expensive than just sitting down with a piece of paper and writing a blog about what you’re grateful for. So you hear it here, you can take action upon it, you can save money and you can get healthier, actually healthier. Yeah, that’s really true.

Or you don’t have to go to a therapist to make a relationship better. And I say that as a therapist, I really believe in couples therapy, but many couples don’t really need therapy and they just need to use some tools and this is really great tool. Low on investment, big on return. It’s really, really great and that’s part of the goal. So this podcast, it is to find those tools, give you the best return on investment. So from your time invested here on listening for time, you invest in energy in, you invest into downloading this instruction sheet. Those two investments in your relationship will yield amazing results and we believe that it is better to do this together. When we listen together to the podcast every week, it just reminds us every single week to go back and be generous and to implement additional easy to implement tools that will help you become more generous. When we’re working together as a group, it creates accountability. It creates the feeling of habit and an actual habit you implemented, and then you get better results. So we need your help guys, we need you to take your time and let someone know about the generous marriage podcast that will create accountability for you as well.

You will become more accountable to the process of becoming more generous in your marriage by sharing this maybe for my friend at work, maybe over facebook, maybe just post the link for generousmarriage.com. We will really appreciate that. To summarize what we did today, today we talked about Jack and Jill and Jill was frustrated about her marriage, but after she decided to use appreciation and gratefulness, through the gratitude log, she managed to make a significant change with her relationship with Jack. We also talked about the tool, the gratitude log and Shachar is preparing for you, uh, some really interesting way of how to do it. Even better. So go, you will be able to find it on generousmarriage.com. And we also mentioned the research done by Amy Gordon from Berkeley and the link for that will be waiting for you in the generous marriage website as well. As always. Thank you guys for listening and thank you for sharing all of your insights with us.

Thank you Ziv! This was really fun. I loved your input as well. Thank you everybody who listened. I hope you find this beneficial and use it in real life. See you in the next session.

See you next week or the generous marriage podcast. Bye Bye guys. Bye.

The post Episode 2 – Gratitude Log appeared first on The Generous Marriage Academy.

In this first episode of the Generous Marriage Podcast we discuss:

Egbert, Nichole & Polk, Denise. (2006). Speaking the Language of Relational Maintenance: A Validity Test of Chapman’s (1992) Five Love Languages. Communication Research Reports. 23. 19-26. 10.1080/17464090500535822.  Leaver, Echo. (2015). Psychophysiology and The Five Love Languages.

In order to discover your Love Language, you may go to Dr. Chapman’s website and fill up a quick quiz.

We also recommend doing a more specific exercise that will help you understand your partner’s and your own love languages better.  

Welcome to the Generous Marriage Podcast, my name is Ziv Raviv and this episode is all about loving effectively, together with me is my partner in crime, in investigating all things about generous marriage is my co-host, Shachar Erez, hello Shachar. Hi Zivi, great to be here, I’m excited. Yes! And today it’s all about getting less fights, more intimacy and more connection with your spouse and that is, you know, our journey on the overall. We’ll talk at the end of this episode about what is this journey, what are we trying to accomplish with the podcast? How are we trying to bring you value? When you’re listening to this and you’re investing time in getting the generous marriage podcast, what will you get out of it? But before that, let’s just dive into this episode today where we will share with you a story from your practice, Shachar, where you, as a counselor, where you basically get to work with a lot of people. Of course we will not use the real names, but share with us the story about the problem that you know and later on we’ll talk also about a tool of how to make your marriage more generous and we’ll wrap up with a research related to the tool that we’ve mentioned. So let’s start with the story. Take it away Shachar.

Sure. As I said I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist and a counselor and I work mainly with couples and today I’m going to tell you a story about a couple. Let’s call them John and Mary. They’re in their mid-thirties. They have a cute two-year-old. When they came to me, it was evident they really love each other, but something was off. They were frustrated, they were hurt, she was feeling very lonely. He was feeling under appreciated. Even though they were showing love to each other, they didn’t feel loved.

And that sounds very familiar, honestly. Like on a personal level as a 40 year old dude that is married to Rotem and has three kids feeling under appreciated and seeing Rotem feel under loved, I relate to that. What happens with John and Mary?

You know, I started asking them questions, what’s going on? And it appears that he was working hard to make her feel loved. Well, he was working hard to be a provider. First of all. He was working in tech, working many hours, but even when he got home he would work in the yard. He’s a builder. So he built, kid’s stuff for the two year old and built a pizza oven, quite cool the things that he was able to do. He would cook for them many times. He would do a lot. She appreciated it, but she didn’t really feel loved. Thanks to all these things that he was doing. She kind of appreciated it in her mind. Not so much in her heart. It didn’t fill her up with with love and feeling cared for. On the other hand, she made sure to express her love by telling him I love you and sending him messages throughout the day of how she cares for him and he enjoyed that. But still something was missing there. When I introduced to them the concept of love languages, it became clear what was off.

So basically they were both communicating in a way where the were expressing love. They were working on the relationship and on the family. They were investing a lot of time. John was cooking and building toys before the two year old and Mary was texting all sorts of love message, but both of them felt something is lacking. What we’re going to talk about the five love languages in more details in the next section, but before we go there, after you worked with them with that tool and shared with them a deeper understanding of the love languages, did you see any results in their life?

Yes, you know, they didn’t really have to change much. They just have had to pay attention to their partner’s way of feeling cared for. So John kept on doing stuff that they are captured and cooking. He loves doing that. She does appreciate it, but he also understood how much it’s important for her, for Mary to have quality time with him. time when it’s just her and him. No distractions, no parenting, no phones, no screens, just intimacy, emotional intimacy. That’s her big thing. That’s what makes her feel alive and loved and cared for and sexy and capable. Really good stuff. When she feels this way, it’s easy for her to tell him how awesome is because it is awesome. He’s a great guy and he loves hearing that. You know, he works for points like many men do.

That sounds like me too. Like except for the building part. I don’t build. I do like being appreciated with the stuff that I do because you know, I built businesses instead of toys, but still I want to be appreciated and that’s something that’s very important for me. But it turns out that not everyone are built the same in terms of how they feel loved and they also not all expressed love the same way, which is very interesting. So let’s go right into this tool of how to improve your marriage, how to experience a more generous marriage.

Let me start with the challenge and the challenges that people tend to express love the way they want to receive love, or the way that makes them feel loved. That’s how they express love. They think that everyone is like them. If I feel cared for when someone tells me good things, I will just tell other people good things all the time and make them feel loved and cared for and important. But as you said, it’s not that way. We have different ways of feeling loved and Dr Gary Chapman and American pastor found out that there are five main rounds in which people tend to feel loved and express love. Then they call them love languages.

Let me start with the challenge and the challenges that people tend to express love the way they want to receive love, or the way that makes them feel loved. That’s how they express love. They think that everyone is like them. If I feel cared for when someone tells me good things, I will just tell other people good things all the time and make them feel loved and cared for and important. But as you said, it’s not that way. We have different ways of feeling loved and Dr Gary Chapman and American pastor found out that there are five main rounds in which people tend to feel loved and express love. Then they call them love languages.

That’s interesting. Those five love languages were defined by this Pastor many, many years ago, by Dr Chapman and they are suffering that I feel pretty much universal wherever you are. You either like to be loved in one of those five languages in the and before. Before you go into the details of that, I just want to portrait a picture for yourself, like imagine you are serving ice cream to someone and you have like 20 or 30 options of which ice cream flavor you’re going to give away, but when someone comes to you and say, Hey, I want some ice cream, you cannot just give them what you love. You need to listen and see what the other person loves and this is important. They will not accept your ice cream if it’s not the right flavor. Now this is when you have like 20 or 30 different flavors with ice cream. Luckily enough with love, there’s only five different languages, so it’s actually there’s a good chance that if you are aware of that, you will improve your relationship and your marriage to be something which we call a more generous marriage. I Love it Shachar, give me the tools. What are those five love languages?

So those five love languages are words of affirmation, which is just, you know, kind words that we use to affirm other people and make them feel good and show them that we appreciate them. And how great they are. The second is acts of service. When we do stuff for other people, you know, for some people, actions speak louder than words and acts of service really worked for them. Uh, the third is about gifts, receiving gifts. This is not some sort of capitalistic gifting. It’s more about the attention that the gift represents, that someone thought about me and invested time and energy and money and finding just the right thing for them. The fourth is quality time. Like I said before, this was Mary’s love language and this is about undivided attention. Really looking at your partner’s eyes and listening as if she’s the only one that’s out there in the world. Creating this bubble of intimacy around you. No distractions, no kids, no screens. It’s quality time. And the fifth is actually, I think the most universal. Almost everybody enjoys this love language and that’s just physical touch. I feel like many times touch is just so much stronger than words. When someone is activated with, with a small touch, we can make them feel loved and cared for and come back to their normal state.

You know about physical touch. It’s funny how I noticed there are times when I fight with my wife or feel unappreciated and then become distant from her for long stretch of time. Even like two weeks we have our own hurdles and then I will find it very hard to touch just to touch his shoulder or just a hug in the morning and that something that was one of the reasons why I went on this journey, to understand relationships better and to understand what is a generous marriage. So this is you know one of the reasons why I’m here, but I also noticed how when you do give a physical touch, it’s. It’s much more than the touch. This is not just about, you know, the intimacy that can later even become something else like cuddling or hugging or kissing or, or even having sex. This is all about being two people in the world that have decided to be partners, to be a part of something bigger and to be married and that is, you know, that the act of touching is that shows by itself a lot of generosity.

You know about physical touch. It’s funny how I noticed there are times when I fight with my wife or feel unappreciated and then become distant from her for long stretch of time. Even like two weeks we have our own hurdles and then I will find it very hard to touch just to touch his shoulder or just a hug in the morning and that something that was one of the reasons why I went on this journey, to understand relationships better and to understand what is a generous marriage. So this is you know one of the reasons why I’m here, but I also noticed how when you do give a physical touch, it’s. It’s much more than the touch. This is not just about, you know, the intimacy that can later even become something else like cuddling or hugging or kissing or, or even having sex. This is all about being two people in the world that have decided to be partners, to be a part of something bigger and to be married and that is, you know, that the act of touching is that shows by itself a lot of generosity.

I see a problem here because I’ve been through researching my own five love language and my wife Rotem’s love languages and we’re not aligned and when we went through the process of learning what are our love languages, we found out that actually it’s not just about this one leading love language, but you also have like a secondary love language and in the third love language that you still, you know, appreciate, love being expressed by not just quality time but maybe quality time and then the second one is physical touch or whatnot. But then the chances of alignment between two people. It’s almost like an impossible task. Like mathematically speaking. It’s like one out of 60 couples actually have a good chance of being exactly the same first, second and third. Because what happens is, let’s say my first love language is words of affirmation, but even if it’s number 3 for Rotem, she will still not show it in the quantity and quality that I am looking for. Because for me, it’s number one and every time that you express love in a way that is not aligned with what the other partner wants to receive, that creates friction and that friction can later become feelings of disappointment and it can become something that’s makes you feel unloved even though the other partner just tries to express love for you.

It’s a lot how John and Mary were when they came to me. Yeah.

Yep. So what is the tool? How can we use knowing what our five languages and improve ourselves?

Well, coming from a generous perspective, first it’s about the understanding that what makes me feel, it doesn’t make my partner feel loved and coming from a generous perspective, I want her to feel loved I’m doing so much anyway to make her feel, um, so maybe I can do things more effectively and maybe I will have to work less actually and get better ROI or you know better results on my investment. There is a really quick with, on Gary Chapman’s website, fivelovelanguages.com. It takes about a minute to fill it up and understand your love language and that’s very cool. I recommend doing something more effective even which is sitting in front of each other and asking your partner what makes you feel loved or what makes you feel cared for, and she gives a short answer and then you ask why? What does it symbolize? You know, if she says gifts, so you ask why and hopefully she explains what gifts means for her. And then you do it. Five rounds of this. Each one of you, she goes five times, you go five times and there’s a big chance. Most of it you will know already, depends how well you know each other, but still it will be a good reminder and there’s a big chance. You don’t really know why. So this will help you understand your partner better, which is very important. This is called love maps, which is how your partner thinks what makes your partner feel loved or field, whatever. That’s really important.

So basically the process is you can go into the link that we will put in the show notes were in Dr Chapman’s site. You can go through a quiz and find out what is your love language, but what’s important even more than that is what your, your spouse, your partner, what is their love language, and compiling this love map and understanding the why, so basically the game, it’s kind of like a game. It feels very, very nice. You ask your partner what makes you feel loved and then you shut up. If you’re listening to this and you are the why part of the partnership, then I want you to know as a man how important it is to listen for a long stretch of time to your men to give them the chance to find the words because we struggle with was it takes us longer, especially with this question of why.

Why do you want that? We need to connect to ourselves and it takes us time and I think it’s true for both sexes like men and women. When they ask how do you feel loved, you then shut up and then when they answer, you ask them why? What makes you feel loved with that? Again, just listen, just listen and then do this five times each and every one of you and you might be surprised by the amount of information just filling open in front of your partner like that. That by itself is an act of generosity and by implementing, what they say by changing your day to day and putting more emphasis on what they need instead of what you like that will improve your marriage and that helps John and Mary, isn’t it

Beautiful! That’s very well said. I just want to add two more things about that before we go to John and Mary that shut up and listen. I agree with that and listen with curiosity. Curiosity is super important in relationship and the other person can tell if you’re curious or if you’re being defensive and defensiveness is not one of the good things in a relationship. Curiosity. Awesome. Another point that is important to say here, if you’re in distress, some couples may use this conversation to criticize each other for the stuff that’s missing. That’s another ineffective way of creating change. If you want your partner to do, to show you love in a specific way, criticizing them for not doing it will not make them do it more appreciating and giving positive feedback when they do, that’s what will create a positive change that’s a much more effective way to creating generosity in a relationship and that was able to say that on John and Mary, they did very minor changes and wow, they. They created this cycle of generosity and love which became bigger and bigger as as he gave her the quality time that she wanted. She gave him more compliments and they both shared touch. For him, that touch was important just to feel safe and loved and for her it also created the emotional intimacy and it was just beautiful to see how easily this change occur.

And I want to share another tool that me and Rotem use and that is like we have our own whatsapp group that is just the two of us and it’s called look what I did and that is because I need appreciation. I need them to say, wow, look what you just did. You cleaned up the dishes and now for Rotem it’s. It’s absurd because she does so many things that around the house that I don’t notice, but she doesn’t really need me to see that as much what she needs is quality time, but we made this whatsapp group and I take pictures. She takes pictures of stuff that she does too and we have opportunities to say, wow, you did an amazing job for us for making our life better, for, for cleaning up the dishes or cleaning up the house or whatnot, and just another channel to show the appreciation.

I love it. It also touches on another topic that we should probably do another session on, which is gratitude, which is something that is quite research now in positive psychology world and it just makes you feel better. It makes the relationship stronger. It has effects on the same day. It has effect six months later. Gratitude is just awesome and we should do. Yeah,

Let’s do that. Even next week. This is one of the advantages of these journey. We’re exploring the world of the generous marriage and this concept is not easy. It’s not something that you can just grasp in five minutes. There’s all sorts of tools involved and all sorts of practices and you know what? It’s not even just to learn this and then you’re done. It’s all about the process of continuing to implement and restarting the concepts and really implementing and creating a positive change in your marriage and in your life and this is something that is so important, so Shachar. You have actually prepared a document that has a really good, clear and easy to understand. Short, concise explanation on how to conduct this conversation of how do you feel loved and the why question and all of these process. There’s a few tips there from your experience as a counselor and you have refined this document with so many married couples that by now, it really works and it is something that you can download. If you go to generousmarriage.com, there’s a podcast tab. Just go into episode one and download the tool on how to conduct a what make you feel loved conversation. We’ll put all the links inside, including for the quiz, which again, you can do the quiz by yourself, you can have your spouse do the quiz too and we’ll also put one more piece of information inside, which is the research, so let’s go right into the research part of this episode.

Yeah beautiful, there’s actually a couple of research done on validating this theory. One by Egbert and Polk attempted to validate and got some success and then that there is a love language and then there was a research done by leaver and Greene who did the research from my psycho physiological perspective, very interesting, and they measured the skin conductance, respiration rate and pulse rate that actually found that their physiological responses indicated a significant increase in arousal. When participants listen to their primary love language imagery,

Basically people actually physically respond. The body responds they’re aroused. They feel better by just imagining receiving the specific love that they need in their love language. I would say they feel more alive. Wow. That’s something that we all want. So this research basically confirms what the Pastor Chapman have discovered. We just see that there’s so much research being done all around the world on relationships and when we’re investigating tools for generous marriage, we want to bring you stuff that is not just working for your customers, for your patients in your counseling, but also that are proven tactic that we researched, uh, there was one additional thing you found on the research, isn’t it, about the leading like certain type of thing .

That’s actually quite interesting. There wasn’t a. yeah, there’s another thing, another interesting thing. This research found that the research had 89 participants. So it’s a preliminary kind of research what they found that by far touch and then quality time are the most popular, the most common, a love languages. Then words of affirmation and actually acts of service and the gifts were quite low. So that’s an interesting piece of information that needs to be further researched. One thing that is clear for me by this research is that how much touch, how touch is so important?

Wow, so guys, I welcome you to go into generousmarriage.com. Download this free tool that gives you, you know, all the explanation on how to conduct the what makes you feel loved, conversation It will expose you to know actually what your partner’s love languages that are preferred, their primary love languages, but more importantly what specifically you need to do inside that specific love language, because that is also important. Not all gifts are the same, not all words of affirmation are the same and it’s really important to you know, to know what is the good quality time, how do you conduct the quality time with your spouse? Does that include putting your phone on airplane mode? Does that include maybe making sure that the kids are not between your legs like seriously? There’s so many details involved and that document will help you all finding out what are those details? Shachar, thank you so much for today, for investigating together the topic of love languages. If you stay around after the music, you could hear a little bit about who is Shachar Erez and who is Ziv Raviv. Thank you guys and see you next week on the Generous Marriage Podcast,

Thank you Zivi. See you guys.

Hi, my name is Shachar Erez. That’s an Israeli name the Shacar and the America people call me Shahar. That’s fine as well. I live in Israel now. I’m married for 12 years. We have two kids, a six year old and a two year old and I have been interested in relationship and masculinity and femininity for more than 15 years. I’ve been leading groups about these topics and I also made it my profession as I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist in California and in Israel and I just love working with couples and have them fall in love again with each other.

That’s wonderful. I’m. Ziv Raviv, I’m a father of three kids and I married ever since I was 24, so now 16 years of marriage. I actually married my high school sweetheart. I am a podcaster. This is my third podcast that I’m involved in I ran online schools and I found out the hard way that my marriage is strategic to my well being, and to the success of anything I do in my life. I cannot be successful with my kids and with my businesses without reworking and rewiring my marriage. And that’s how I found out the passion to research this generous marriage concept. And that is why we’re here together, Shachar and me on a journey that I think would help you guys on understanding how to improve your marriage as well. Thank you guys for listening for this first episode of the generous marriage. Don’t forget to go to generousmarriage.com to download this special tool that we prepared for you. See you guys next week.

Weekly episodes with stories, tools and research that will help you make your marriage generous

Shachar Erez, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, 12 years married, father of two

Ziv Raviv, 16 years married, father of three

[email protected]

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