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Does Money Affect Your Marriage? Mar 11, 2015

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There is a lot of discussions nowadays in the business world about work-life balance. Today I want to challenge and inspire you to think seriously about your work-marriage balance! Materialism is the excessive desire to acquire and consume material goods. Think about the choices and values you place on material things (things you can buy) and how that affects your satisfaction with your marriage. Not that wealth is bad, nor is it wrong to prosper. Owning and enjoying material things is not bad either. What we see from the research is that it is not so much the value OF things but the value we GIVE to things and wealth that influences our marital satisfaction. We’re going to look at four things: how marriage makes you wealthier, how work impacts marriage, how materialism itself affects marital quality, and how starting a family sooner or later (as a financial/career decision) affects life and family satisfaction. Marriage Makes You Wealthier Zagorsky published his findings in the Journal of Sociology (2005) after conducting a study of individuals in their youth, then into their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. He found: Single people slowly increase their net worth over time Married people experience a 77% increase in net worth than single people On average, their wealth increases by 16% for each year of marriage. Divorced people: wealth starts to decrease 4 years before the divorce and they end up experiencing an average wealth drop of 77% The message is NOT: Stay wealthy – don’t get divorced! The message is, you have the opportunity to get married, go for it, and take care of your marriage because one of the usual blessings is an increased likelihood of growing your net worth. Another thing, putting the heartache and really difficult consequences aside, it’s way cheaper to do counseling or coaching or marriage enrichment work early on and even when you feel like you don’t need it, than it is to go through a divorce. Be proactive about enriching and maintaining the quality of your marriage! Work Impacts Marriage Maume and Sebastian surveyed 372 couples (Journal of Family Economics, 2012). They discovered that for men, working a fixed night schedule lowered marital quality compared to men who worked fixed days. Also, marriages suffered when work schedules limited the time they could spend with their spouses. We’re not condemning you if this is what you need to do. We have good friends that have done this, but it’s hard! For women, it was a little different. Because of the expectations to get things done at home, outside-the-home-work was a disruption to family life, time for herself and time to engage with family members. This culminated in a negative marital effect if she was working rotating schedules, in particular. If you’re feeling really stuck and feel you have no other options for work, then your task is to figure out ways you can make the best of it and compensate for this challenge. Infidelity is something to keep in mind when in the workplace. A separate study showed that men with higher incomes are more prone to engage in infidelity. (Interestingly, for women, it’s the opposite.) Perhaps it’s because they spend more time in the workplace to create wealth, or perhaps only due to the fact that their professional and personal lives include more opportunity to engage in these illicit relationships. “Researchers have found that around one-half of participants who had cheated on their partner and who sought therapy (due to problems in their primary relationship) had met their extradyadic partner through their work”. We definitely need to be cautious about the impact that work can have on our marriages! Be aware of how decisions around work and career impact our marriage for better or for worse. Spending Affects Marital Quality In 2011, Carroll et all looked at how aligned couples were on how their money should be spent and how that influenced their marriage. The findings were really interesting: Even when aligned, if both were pro-materialism, they had a lower quality of marriage. Mid-range quality marriages were those where one was high on materialism. The best quality of marriages occurred when the couple was both low on materialism. Another study led by the same researcher found that materialistic attitudes led to higher perceptions of financial problems (more so than income levels), which in turn negatively affected levels of marital satisfaction. Family Planning One of the big decisions we make is when to start a family - that’s where emotional and relational issues meet head-on with financial and career issues. Rather than give you our opinions on this (as it can be quite a hot-topic!), we’re just going to go straight to the research. A US national study of 3504 individuals showed that both men and women reported lower levels of life satisfaction when they had previously decided to delay family for their career. Both men and women reported more work-family stress. Another study pointed out lower rates of having children is directly linked to materialism, and “those who do not delay relationships and family tend to experience significantly more satisfaction with life”. In summary here, I think I have to say, “Ouch!” Just talking about this has challenged me on what I believe in life in general and how that affects my marriage. I hope it has done the same for you. Sometime to grow, we need to have the facts pointed out and be challenged! I also think we really need to think about the value we place on material goods! The Lord Jesus taught in the book of Matthew, “Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also.” In other words, whatever you love (where your heart is) is where your value will grow the most (there will your treasure be). So, it’s what we love or what we value that matters, not if we have a lot of value. Some food for thought, on a winter-Wednesday!

Touch Her Heart Before You Touch Her Body Mar 04, 2015

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Because of how sexuality is portrayed in media and how we are socialized to perceive it in our culture, I think there’s this perception that arousal is just something you flip the switch on to get things warmed up for sex. In reality though, what happens in the marriage bed starts much earlier, and much differently! This week, we really want to challenge you to push the idea of intimacy out past the bedroom and to think about it as part of the fabric of your daily lives. We have this simplistic idea that intimacy equals sex and sex equals intimacy. We need to move away from this to a broader definition of intimacy that includes a connection between the two spouses in marriage on every level: body, soul, and spirit (or physical, emotional, and spiritual). In particular, look at the emotional and spiritual as being precursors or even prerequisites to the physical! Did you know that “we are most emotionally invested in a relationship when we depend alone on that relationship for sexual intimacy” (Hill, 2002)? That commitment to sexual fidelity should cause us to try to nurture and deepen our emotional intimacy. Intimacy-killers such as affairs, pornography and mommy porn (through books or movies like 50 Shades of Grey) rob marriages of emotional intimacy. Fidelity and loyalty are critical (marital commitment is one of the top 5 predictors of marital success), so make sure you continue to build them into your marriage. Remember, being close emotionally leads to being close physically! There are a couple of interesting little tidbits in the research about this. 1 – Men are more likely than women to expect sexual behavior in the absence of emotional closeness and 2 – Women are more likely to agree to sex when her husband expresses value for her and provides nurturance and comfort to her. These facts emphasize our point to husbands – Husband, touch your wife’s heart before you touch her body! Emotional intimacy is more important as a segue to arousal for woman than it is for men. I don’t know if this is rooted in our DNA or if we’re just so socialized for it that it works out this way, but that’s how it is! Another study we looked at couples in mid-life. Yes, it’s an older age group than most of you, but this is where you’re heading so it’s worth noting. The couples were asked the question, “What do you think of sex without love?” The results came in for both men and women, that if their marriage relationship was strong on emotional pleasure, they were far more disapproving of sex without love. These more mature couples realized the overall value and meaning of emotional intimacy as part of their sexual intimacy. The research also showed that the higher the emotional quality of the relationship, the greater the frequency with which the couple would have sex! All this information just highlights the fact that intimacy is more than sex. It also highlights the fact that while media and popular thinking is selling cheap, instant gratification sex, what is more satisfying is the making love out of a relationship that has been lovemaking for a long time. If you focus on emotional intimacy, you receive a wider spectrum of benefits that includes more sexual intimacy. So, how do we do that? Establish some basic rituals of emotional connection. An easy one is daily talking and sharing. Try to have some time, even if faced with the challenge of young children or conflicting schedules, when you can just share your days. We use 5 for 5 - five minutes with five feet of each other within five minutes of getting home from work. We also have breakfast together after the kids get on the school bus. When we don’t do this, we start to feel like strangers and really miss it. And before you start thinking that Caleb and I are unique somehow and have always had the perfect marriage – we haven’t. In fact, there have been times when I wasn’t sure if our marriage would make it. But we’ve worked at it, and made the time to talk, and learned how to communicate and build emotional intimacy, and are living proof that this stuff works! It takes commitment, not only to set aside the time to talk but also to learn the skills to communicate effectively. Emotional intimacy – and even sexual intimacy – is built on the back of being able to talk to each other. If you want help with this, check out Talk To Me 101, a powerful communication course for smart couples.

Top 5 Predictors of Marital Success Feb 25, 2015

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What if you could focus on just five things to make sure that your marriage is a success? Relationships can sometimes seem pretty complicated. For this reason, we took a step back to ask the question, “What are the core things that we MUST focus on to make sure we’re on the right track towards marital bliss?” We found (through the research of the National Marriage Project and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values) that the top five things to bring happiness to your marriage are: Number 1 – Above average sexual satisfaction The research says that “sexually satisfied wives enjoy a 39-percentage-point premium in the odds of being very happy in their marriages, and that sexually satisfied husbands enjoy a 38-percentage-point premium in marital happiness.” From this we conclude that couples with a better sex life report to be happier in their marriage! It’s normal for sexual activity to decline immediately following the birth of a child, but it’s important that couples rekindle and renew this part of their relationship as quickly as possible. (Keep a lookout for a great upcoming episode – “How to get it on when you really don’t feel like it” or something like that!) Husbands, here’s a newsflash for you… “Woman are more likely to report that they are sexually satisfied when they report that they share housework with their husbands. What happens outside the bedroom seems to matter a great deal in predicting how happy husbands and wives are with what happens in the bedroom.” The research also shows that men and women are more sexually satisfied in marriages “marked by high levels of generosity, commitment, religious faith, and couple-centered quality time.” I always knew that sexual intimacy was more than just what happened in bed, but I didn’t realize that it was affected by so many areas of life! Cultivate a great sex life – you’ll have a happier marriage! Number 2 – Above average commitment “The association between commitment and marital success is striking. Spouses who score above average in terms of commitment are at least 45 percentage points more likely to report being “very happy” in their marriages, and 29 percentage points less likely to be prone to divorce. In other words, above-average commitment more than triples the odds of marital happiness for husbands and wives and reduces their divorce proneness sixfold.” Wow! This tells me that more commitment equals more happiness in marriage. It also shows that more commitment equals a significant drop in divorce risk. How committed are you to your marriage? How are you building that commitment? And how are you communicating that commitment to your spouse? Deepening your commitment so that it is above average is a top predictor of a very happy marriage. Number 3 – Above average generosity to your spouse First, let’s define generosity in the context of marriage. It is simply “the virtue of giving good things (we don’t mean jewelry) to one’s spouse freely and abundantly. It encompasses small acts of service (like making coffee for your spouse in the morning), the expression of affection, displays of respect and a willingness to “forgive him/her for mistakes and failings”. Embrace a spirit of service – not entitlement, and genuinely look for ways to serve one another. Add to that frequent displays of affection (hugs…kisses…holding hands…smiles…winks) and being ready to forgive, and you have a winning combination! Learning to serve each other generously in this way leads to a very happy marriage! Number 4 – Above average attitude towards raising children I found this part of the research interesting. “Fathers and mothers who spend lots of time with their children in activities such as playing, talking, or working on projects together also enjoy significantly higher levels of marital happiness and lower divorce proneness (and also enjoy more couple time with one another)." Some research has indicated in the past that more family time means the couple isn’t as happy; as in, kids make marriages less happy. However, these researchers found that high family values correlated with happy marriages. Notice the piece in brackets though: it is especially effective when you add couple time. They also found that "wives who spend quality time with their spouses once a week or more are about 50 percent more likely to be “very happy” in their marriages. In other words, a regular date night appears to be part of the recipe for marital success among today’s parents." Both things together are the strongest. Celebrate your marriage, celebrate your parenthood. Don’t resent the kids because you wish it could be just the two of you, and don’t be so child-centered that you have no sense of being a couple as opposed to just co-parenting. BOTH AND, not EITHER OR! Be engaged as a parent but make sure you romance each other as a couple. If you’re struggling with a child-centered marriage, make sure you check out Episode 2! Placing a balanced emphasis on marriage AND parenting predicts a happy marriage! The first four predictors of marital success were equal for men and women, but number five is different. Let’s go with ladies first… Number 5 for wives – Social Support For a woman, having friends or family who are supportive of their marriage is very important. The classic movie image of four wives bellyaching over their salads about their husbands is NOT GOOD. It’s so easy to put ourselves in a situation where it is acceptable to complain about our husbands. Remember, they say that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. What if we say, your perception of your own husband is the average of the perceptions of the husbands of the 5 woman you are closest to? Where does that leave your view of your husband? Surrounding yourself with friends and family who support marriage (and your marriage specifically) will make you a woman very happy in her marriage. Number 5 for husbands – Marital spirituality Marital spirituality is linked to beliefs and behaviors that strengthen the marriage bond. Meaning, a husband who believes God is at the center of his marriage is more likely to report a higher level of commitment (number 2 above) and show more generosity to his wife (number 3 above). So here’s a call to husbands to put your marriage and your family into a spiritual context that honors and cherishes marriage. As in, go to church together! It amazes me how some people will give priority and be religious about taking their children to Sports or 4-H or Boy Scouts or Cadets and yet will miss church at the drop of the hat to do other “family” things. Listen, if you want to bless your marriage and your family, put God at the center of that and then build the other activities around it. Why? Because placing an emphasis on God at the center of your marriage is not only the right thing to do Biblically, but it is also confirmed by the research that this will make men very happy in their marriage. There you have it: 5 things to focus on to create a very happy marriage. Take the time to review and challenge your marriage this week. You want to succeed – so focus on the things that really work!

Let It Go or Confront It? Feb 18, 2015

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As I sit here, gazing at a picture of my handsome husband, I am asking myself the question, “Should I talk to him about it? It has been bugging me for a few days… Oh, I know! I’ll just shoot him a text message and hint at it – that’ll work out well!” NOT! I think the age-old question of “Should I bring it up with my spouse or just let it go?” needs some good wisdom thrown at it. To start with, I want to quote Caleb who says, “Marriage is a crucible for character formation – but only if we’re willing to act as a catalyst of change for the benefit of our spouse.” Our spouses see the ugly side of ourselves the most and the neat thing about marriage is they can point out the uglies (in a nice way, obviously!) in the secure bond of a loving relationship, and it gives us the chance to change and grow. If they never pointed anything out (were never our catalyst for change) we wouldn’t have that opportunity to improve! This brings me to the topic of ideals. [Hear me out for a bit as I’m going in all different directions. I will pull it all together, really! :)] Ideals… Idealism scares Caleb and I. We always thought that ideals were this level of perfectionism that we could never achieve. Then, all the research he looked at about ‘confronting or letting go’ centered on ideals! We were thankful to learn though that the research also says not to have unrealistic high standards. In other words, don’t set your ideals so high that they are difficult or impossible to live up to. Ideals should be realistic and achievable standards. So, what can we do to bring about change in our marriage, and not set ourselves up with unrealistic ideals? Here’s a hint, sitting back with your arms crossed and mouth shut and expecting your spouse to achieve your ideals doesn’t work… Here are two things to work on: all based on communication. 1. Quantity of Communication. This is simple. More is better. The research shows that couples are happier with their marriage when they think their relationship matches their ideal standards. Sounds obvious enough! Given that a marriage does not start with all our ideals aligned, how do we align those ideals and make the marriage more satisfying? Or, What if we get them aligned and then move into a different phase of life where things have to change, again? That’s where quantity matters! Spouse’s ideals align best when they are communicating more about them. By talking about them, the ideals can align, and because of that, each spouse becomes more satisfied with their marriage. One thing we hear a lot when talking to people that are struggling in their marriage is language around misalignment. “She’s just not interested in working on this part of our marriage,” or “We just can’t see eye to eye on this particular issue.” Our answer to that is to communicate about it! Seriously, if you want to get your ideals lined up because you believe this leads to relationship satisfaction – talk about it. Talking allows you to influence each other’s viewpoints, which influences how you experience reality. The biggest influence on connecting ideals to satisfaction is communication. You have to be talking this stuff through! 2. How You Communicate Not only is the quantity important, but you also need to be strategic about HOW you communicate your ideals! The first step is to do some thinking yourself! Be clear on your own ideals and ask yourself if they are realistic. Here is an example of an unrealistic ideal versus realistic: Comparing your wife to models in magazines, or, worse yet, women in pornography, is NOT a realistic ideal. It’s VERY unhealthy and wrong, actually. Expecting your husband to match the ideals in your romance and harlequin novels is equally wrong. It IS realistic to hold an ideal that BOTH of you try to bring a healthy – not perfect – body to your marriages, in so much as you are able to control. It IS realistic to expect both of you to act romantically, and get your sexy on with each other. See the difference there? Now that we’ve thought it through and have a realistic ideal, how do we go about communicating this to our spouse? Here are some ideas of what does NOT work (from Overall et all, 2006, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology): Repeated and unsuccessful attempts to change your spouse can be damaging to the relationship. When an attempt is unsuccessful, we add more powder to the cannon, which make us more unreasonable, which makes the chance of our attempt more unsuccessful – and we’ve got a pretty crazy cycle going nowhere good. Pursuing change and trying to ‘manage’ your spouse towards your ideal communicates a lack of acceptance and negative views. Another word for this is nagging. Nagging at your spouse just leads to them feeling unaccepted, and leads to less satisfaction in the relationship. Remember, whether or not you bring something up with your spouse is LESS important than HOW you decide to bring it up. The topic doesn’t matter. The WAY you talk about that topic does. Which leads me to the next point… 3. Pull the Bandaid Off Fast! Some people ask for a change in their spouse, it happens, and the marriage is happier. What do they do that makes them more successful? Let’s go to the research to answer this. Overall et all conducted another study on 61 couples. They videotaped the couple discussing an area of change they would like to see in their spouse. They measured marital satisfaction before the discussion, immediately following the discussion, and then followed up with the couple every three months for a while. The results? If a couple was direct in the discussion about the change they wanted to see, the rating of marital satisfaction immediately following the discussion went down and the couple believed they were not very successful in promoting change. If they were indirect, immediately following the conversation both spouses felt better. What was interesting to me was the results over the following year: The researchers found that over the year, things went opposite on them! Direct strategies led to greater change and indirect strategies led to less change. So while pulling off the bandaid slowly felt better in the short term, ripping it off fast produced a more positive outcome in the marriage over the longer term! Indirect communication is tactful and patient. It uses positive affect (being warm and loving) to soften the conflict but usually fails to motivate. Direct communication, on the other hand, is open and frank, forthright and direct. It makes the problem clear and points out the consequences of the spouse’s behavior. Note that it does NOT include attacking, blaming, name-calling, etc. But when you are forthright and direct, you are clearly communicating the severity of the problem and as a result, the nature and degree of change needed is vividly conveyed. [I want to bring up defensiveness here. If you’re anything like me, it’s easier to get defensive and throw blame back at your spouse rather than make changes in your own life. This is where the response of “You might be right” can be a huge help. (Read more about defensiveness here)] Now, to bring all this together (I told you I’d get here eventually!), it is good to bring issues up with your spouse and get them sorted out. First, make sure your ideals or standards are realistic before you approach your spouse, then talk about them…a lot. Not only your ideals or wishes but your spouse’s too! And when talking, use direct communication. Tell your spouse what you need. Be firm but fair, and don’t keep nagging them – that doesn’t work. Rip that bandaid off fast – while there will be more discomfort right at the start, healing and change will be more effective.

Valentine’s Day. Love It or Hate It? Feb 11, 2015

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It’s Valentines Day this weekend! Happy Valentine’s Day! We specialize in marriage and love so we’re supposed to be all enthused about Valentine’s, right!? So, why do we have mixed feelings about it all? First, some history… There is no firm historical record of how Valentine’s Day came to be, but there are a couple of commonly held possibilities. Apparently, there was an ancient Fertility festival called Lupercalia which occurred on February 15th. This lovers’ holiday traces its roots to raucous annual Roman festivals where men stripped naked, grabbed goat- or dog-skin whips, and spanked young maidens in hopes of increasing their fertility. Another source we found said that during the festival, young women would place their names in a large urn. The young men would draw a name from the urn and then be romantically linked with that young woman for the following year. Either way, I’m thankful we’ve moved on to a more commercialized version of Valentine’s Day! The Catholic church, however, says it has nothing to do with these ancient pagan rites. Rather, the day’s celebration stems from three possible St. Valentines. The most probable of which was a young priest who was put to death for marrying young Christians against the orders of the Roman Emperor. Before being put to death on February 14th, he sent a letter to the jailor’s daughter – with whom he had become friends – and signed if “From your Valentine”. Regardless of which Valentine the holiday is named after, in 469 A.D. Pope Gelasius changed the date of Lupercalia from the 15th of the month to the 14th, in order to distance it from the rituals of the Roman pagan love festival and connect it with St. Valentine. The last alternative of the history of the Valentine story is also probable. The Roman Emperor at the time, Claudius II, prohibited young men to marry because he believed that unmarried men made better soldiers. St. Valentine took pity on these young men and began to perform secret marriages so they could be with their lovers. Emperor Claudius became aware of what St. Valentine was doing and had him imprisoned. Emperor Claudius attempted to convert Valentine to worship the Roman god, but St. Valentine refused and in return attempted to convert the Emperor to Christianity. Emperor Claudius did not respond well to this and sentenced Valentine to be killed. After his death, Valentine then became what is known as a “Patron Saint.” Some consider him the spiritual overseer of an annual festival in which young Romans would distribute cards of affection to those they wished to formally see. This festival was held each February 14. Apparently, there are Valentine cards in museums worldwide that date back to 1415 and massed produced valentines began in the 1840s with the first “chocolate box” introduced by Richard Cadbury in 1868. Back to today… Here are some interesting statistics: In 2014, the National Retail Federation estimated that US Consumers would spend $17.3 billion on the Valentines Day holiday! OVER $17 BILLION!!! Women purchase 85% of all Valentine’s 64% of men will buy flowers on Valentine’s Day. This raises the interesting subject of expectations! What do we expect of each other? And what do others expect of us? For us, we just see this as a commercial event. There is NO RESEARCH that says that the billions of dollars spent on Valentines in North America actually do anything to benefit marriages. We don’t need it for our marriage, but we don’t want to Grinch your Valentine’s either. Some folks have a very warm, romantic tradition around Valentine’s – and that’s awesome! What makes us start to grumble is what others expect of us. That’s where you have to have your own love languages and set boundaries on other’s expectations of you. And both be ok, together, on that! Talk to your spouse about your expectations for this holiday. You might be ok with not doing anything, but if the girls at the office hear you don’t get anything, will that make you feel bad? Or maybe, you could really care less about receiving flowers and chocolates knowing that society guilted your spouse into buying them. Or perhaps you have very strong expectations that your spouse do certain things, and your spouse doesn’t feel that way… That could get awkward unless you tell your spouse what you’re expecting from the day! Chocolates and flowers may last a week or two, but this Valentine’s, why not give something that will deepen your intimacy for the rest of your marriage. The gift of communicating, the gift of listening! Image courtesy of AquaOwl under the Creative Commons license.

Distraction is Killing Your Marriage Feb 04, 2015

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In 2015, couples are saying that communication is their biggest struggle. Why, when we’ve never had so many ways to communicate and keep in touch as we do now, are people still struggling with this? The research is somewhat ironic. Well, not the research itself, but the fact that the topic of marriage communication was studied, documented, tallied, hashed out, etc. back in the 1980s and ’90s. However, in 2015: couples still say this is their #1 area for improvement. Why is that? Let’s look to some research to help us. In 2010, Family Relations studied stress, communication and marriage quality in 345 couples. Their conclusion was that the level and quality of marital communication mediates the amount of effect that stress has on marital quality. To make this simpler, think of stress as a downpour of rain, and communication as the umbrella. The bigger and the higher quality (ie. more waterproof) the umbrella, the better the couple fairs. The umbrella mediates the impact of the rain on the couple just as communication mediates the impact of stress on a couple. Our communication umbrella needs to include quality and quantity. The communication technology we have in 2015 improves the quantity of all communication sources (for example, you are exposed to way more content of way more lives via Facebook) but not the quantity from your spouse. Not the quality either: if anything the quality of communication is lower due to greater distraction! Another fascinating study looked at couples having a dinnertime conversation. After dinner, the researchers then had a separate 15-minute discussion regarding a conflict in their marriage. Gottman and Drive (2004) found that the enthusiastic response of the husband to his wife in the dinnertime conversations influenced her affection towards him during conflict. And vice versa: her dinnertime enthusiastic responses drove his affection during conflict. I love this as I am a huge advocate of enthusiasm!!! – Verlynda The point of the research is that every day we have positive interactions we are building this tremendous line of credit, so that when ugly comes out and we’re fighting it’s going to go way better if that line of credit is ready to go than if it is depleted. To link that back to our umbrella analogy where communication regulates the impact of stress on marriage quality, we really see that stuff as simple as dinnertime conversation is having a measurable, real impact on our times of conflict. What is your dinnertime like? Turn the TV off, put the cell phones somewhere so you won’t hear every ding, and practice the art of being fully present. This begs the question though, “What happens when we are not fully engaged?” It’s easy to think that ‘not enough’ of a good thing just means it won’t be as great. Well, the research debunks that idea. Wagner (Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2005) looked at 53 married couples and the impact of one spouse not staying fully present during a discussion. He found that the effect of not engaging properly actually disconfirmed the other spouse’s identity! In other words, it left the other spouse feeling like they were not understood. Not being understood leads to thoughts that my position is not verified, and actually leads to disconfirming my identity. To put it simpler, it’s saying that if you ignore me, you’re sending a signal that says the part of me I really want you to see is not worth seeing. Ouch! A lot of pain comes from not being fully engaged in conversations. It’s not like you forgot to add enough salt but it still tastes OK; lack of engagement is acidic and corrosive to the relationship because it’s undermining your spouse’s sense of identity. If you’re not present and engaged with your spouse when communicating, you’re actually hurting him or her. If communicating is important to you, make sure you check out our Talk To Me 101 e-Course. It is a communication course for smart couples. You can take the course together, and we teach you everything you need to know to become very effective communicators as a couple. It’s series of short, powerful video lessons and you can check that out at Talk To Me 101 dot com. Image courtesy of Duncan Harris under the Creative Commons license.

Infidelity Starts Long Before The Affair Jan 28, 2015

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What does faithfulness, or fidelity, mean in your marriage? What does it look like? Are your boundaries strong enough to protect your marriage from an affair? What got us started down this road of thinking is the observation that you can be in a committed marriage and never have sex outside that marriage for forty years, but still be giving members of the opposite sex a lust filled looking over. This begs the question about what loyalty and fidelity mean in a marriage. If you proudly say “I am faithful to my wife… but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the scenery”, is that really fidelity? Let’s assume for a moment that we’re all clear that the extremes of unfaithfulness are wrong: we’re not talking about adultery here, or pornography use, or any act of physical intimacy, or even an emotional affair with a person you’re not married to. However, disloyalty can go in all sorts of directions, and show up in many different ways: A wife makes a comment about some famous Hollywood actor being ‘eye-candy’? There is no hope of an actual act of infidelity occurring there, so is it OK? A husband rubber-necks as he drives through town on a warm summer day. Is it OK for him to check out other women? A spouse says, “Why can’t you look like that?” (Ouch…) Perhaps it’s just the joking and camaraderie that kind of fringes toward mild flirting – even in a group setting. Is this allowable? While some definitions of fidelity are really clear (like having sex), others are very much going to be defined by each couple. In The Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy (JMFT), Blow reported that a breach of trust has more to do with the perspectives and beliefs of the individuals within the relationship than any overarching norms. In other words, the couple creates their own standards. [Again, we’re holding this up in the assumption that we’ve already established that there are objective, moral boundaries that must not be crossed. Like, no sex outside of marriage. We are NOT promoting ‘open’ marriage; we promote the Biblical values of faithful marriage.] For example, a wife or husband on a business trip sits down on the airplane beside an attractive, friendly member of the opposite sex. For one couple, the expectation might be to limit the interaction to a friendly greeting and then plug in the headphones or read a book. They’re comfortable with that boundary. For another couple, it may be totally OK to have an engaging conversation and share pictures of your spouse and children. No flirting, just friendly and proper, and then that spouse relates the conversation when he/she gets home to the other spouse. Both spouses in that marriage are comfortable with that boundary. Neither scenario is morally wrong. Does the second approach carry a higher element of risk? Yes, probably! This is where couples need to discuss what they consider reasonable and what they can tolerate in their marriage. There is a subjective element to fidelity. Scheinkman and Wenecke in the Family Process also support this subjective aspect. Nevertheless, here’s what’s so important to know. It IS a fact that there is a slippery slope from smaller disloyal thoughts and behaviours towards an affair. The Clinical Psychology Science Practice (2005) pointed out that the decision-making process before extra-marital involvement consists of smaller decisions and steps. Like, having coffee with an opposite-sex coworker…then spending more time with them…then engaging in more intimate conversation. This is where we start to get some practical checkpoints for early warnings of infidelity. Following are two items you need to watch for in order to be proactively working against affairs in your marriage. 1. Pros VS Cons Decisions to engage in extramarital involvement are conscious decisions that involve weighing potential costs and potential benefits. Ask yourself, am I doing a cost/benefit analysis about the behaviours or thoughts I am engaging in? If so, I could be on a slippery slope towards infidelity. 2. Suppressing Thoughts Individuals who begin to develop feelings for a potential extramarital partner actively suppress thoughts related to that partner. This increases the intensity of the thoughts, which is problematic, but here’s the point: if you find yourself working to suppress thoughts, you have another signal to yourself that you’re heading into dangerous territory. Ask yourself: am I actively suppressing the thoughts of another person? Are you having thoughts that you’re trying not to think about? Are you weighing costs/benefits about interacting more deeply with someone? Are you rubbernecking? You need to stop and own your thoughts and behaviours. Admit that you are having them, then ask yourself why? Have you become less vested in your relationship? Are you not getting what you need from your marriage? Is that because you’re not investing in it what you should be? Have you allowed yourself to believe things that aren’t true? (Like, a more attractive spouse will lead to better sex). At the end of the day, we need to come back to the fact that “Commitment is one of the most important determinants of marriage stability” (Clements and Swenson - Current Psychology). Don’t give your spouse reason for jealousy by lending your admiration to other members of the opposite sex. Show your commitment and have those conversations about what you’re both comfortable with. The willingness to discuss and uphold those values together is a huge step towards fidelity that will strengthen your marriage and make it resilient against unfaithfulness.

Four Critical Habits to Deepen Your Love Jan 21, 2015

Show notes

Ahhh...the science of love. It’s pretty cool that something as amorphous as love can be studied. And even cooler when you find research that identifies the daily habits that catalyze the deepening of love. Withdrawer or Pursuer? Some of the most helpful research on love falls under what is known as Attachment Theory. It’s a superb framework for understanding the emotional bond of family and marriage relationships. In the context of marriage, the theory provides for the idea that a spouse will default to a withdrawing or pursuing role. Most often, each spouse will compliment each other: one typically pursues and the other typically withdraws. A withdrawer tends to be more turned inwards and less likely to voice wants and needs and also finds it more difficult to self-disclose. A pursuer, on the other hand, is more characterized by blaming. He or she may be more volatile and outspoken in conflict and tends to attack when hurt rather than pull back and shut down. In our marriage, I tend to be the withdrawer and Verlynda the pursuer. That’s actually the most common format: husband withdraws, wife pursues. But is that normal? In this episode, I posed a question to Verlynda: in the relationship between Jesus Christ and the church, which one is usually pursuing and which one is usually withdrawing? Right. Christ is the pursuer. Here’s the connection: in Ephesians 5 we are given a model for marriage where husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loved the church. God calls husbands to be the pursuers. But we’ve been socialized in North American culture to lay the responsibility for relationships at the feet of the wife and mother in our families. In my opinion, as males, we have abdicated one of our critical roles. So, how do we fix that? Four Habits to Deepen Your Love Husbands: I’m calling you to lead in this. Here are four areas in which we can develop healthy habits that deepen our love for one another. Hear me when I say this: these are all doable. This is not out of your reach! Everyday Talking and Sharing This comes from research our team found in the Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy. You can create daily companionship very easily by having conversations about personal matters. This is a simple tool that creates powerful leverage for building the love bond between you and your spouse. Just share things like your activities for the day, plans for tomorrow or the weekend. Get face to face, make eye contact, put your cell phone down and share. Listening to understand is a key part of this.. Everyday interaction is easy, straightforward and it’s important. Recognize Your Role and Compensate If you’re a withdrawer, push yourself to voice your wants and needs. Self-disclose. I know you want to – I feel the desire and the resistance myself. But the more you share and open up, the deeper the intimacy goes. If you’re the pursuer, your job is to soften your responses and respond more positively to wants, needs, and disclosures from your spouse. Resist defaulting to a blaming stance and do what you need to do to make the connection safer. When both work together on this through the challenges of daily life, stronger attachment (i.e., deeper love) is the result. Healthy Physical Intimacy Think about how you bring yourself to the physical intimacy in your marriage. Are you relaxed and confident? Or are you using sex to gain reassurance or avoid rejection? Do you communicate your needs openly and respond to your spouse’s equally? Or are you demanding and only focused on your own pleasure? People: this is called “making love” for a reason. Closeness should be both the cause and effect of sex. Go for that deep emotional connection that comes when you lose yourself in your spouse. Spiritual Intimacy This is taking your emotional connection into another realm altogether. But a vital one for deepening the love in our marriages (Harris & Marshall, 2008). Pray together. That’s a habit that took us a while to develop. In a way, it’s really just a reformatting of #1 above: you're talking about the stuff in your lives that matters most. It’s just that this time the two of you are talking to God about it. And that’s a bonding experience. Involve yourselves in a church together. Further, develop a shared sacred vision and purpose. Something that you do together, as a couple, that is for God and for His kingdom. For us, OnlyYouForever is a huge part of that. We have friends who foster kids, others have adopted, others serve in missions work and others immerse themselves in serving their church or community. And be willing to forgive. This weaves the emotional and spiritual together and extends the power of the Gospel into the fabric of our marriages. You see, the science of love comes down to some pretty simple daily habits. But those habits will have a profound impact on your marriage and maybe even the world as well.

How Are You Enriching Your Marriage This Year? Jan 14, 2015

Show notes

One of the things we want to get you thinking about at the very start of this year is what you are going to do, with deliberate purpose, to enrich your marriage this year. Marriage is an easy thing to take for granted. Think for a moment about the things you value most. What do you do with those things? You get insurance for them! There is every kind of insurance out there which most of us have on our valuable possessions, like life insurance, medical insurance, disability insurance, house insurance, car insurance, business liability insurance, even extended warranties are a form of insurance. We spend thousands of dollars per year on insurance. Yet we balk at a $30 expense or even a $300 weekend of marriage enrichment. Does that really make sense? Think practically for a moment. The cost of divorce drops your net worth by at least 50%, plus it’s like $30,000-90,000 to deal with all of the actual fallout with lawyer fees, etc. Never mind the emotional cost or cost to our children, family, and friends. Our marriages are super valuable, but isn’t it ironic, and really kind of foolish, that we spend money on insuring other valuable things in our lives, but not our marriages. We want to encourage you in 2015 to insure your marriage by engaging in some sort of marriage enrichment. Here’s why: Bray & Jouriles (1995) found that should difficulties arise, couples responded better to marriage counselling when they had increased problem solving and communication skills, were less distressed at the onset of counselling, and were more emotionally engaged with each other. McAllister, Duncan & Hawkins (2012) found that marriage enrichment worked on those very skills listed above: communication and relationship quality (emotional engagement and less distress). The point being that marriage enrichment programs address key areas that lead to better outcomes should the need for counselling arise. As we spoke about in our series on fighting, repair after the fight is much more successful if positive mojo had been inputted into the marriage long before the fight occurred! Every couple hits rough spots. At the very least, marriage enrichment programs help you get through those tough times, but should you both decide you need extra help, they also create an incredible advantage for going the extra mile with counselling. Our CHALLENGE for you this year is to do something deliberate to enrich your marriage. Even if you can just save up $30 a month and aim for a weekend away at the end of the year, you’re taking that first step. If you can’t do that – you can get a good book from the library for free. Read it, then discuss it together. We’ve all heard the objection, “Well, you only need that if you've messed up.” Not so, says the research! Research by Doss, Rhoades, Stanley, Markman & Johnson (2009) showed that more distressed couples and those at risk for divorce were less likely to attend marriage enrichment programs than couples that were in more healthy relationships. Interesting that the couples that made it a priority to enrich their marriages were less distressed and at less risk for divorce. So, what kinds of resources are out there? There are really three approaches: Self-directed: You can do this at home, at your own pace with no professional involvement. Books and online programs are a good example of self-directed enrichment. Traditional: This is done in a classroom or group setting. It usually requires more time commitment and more money. Blended: A combination of self-directed and traditional. This could entail a workbook plus a group setting, or online eCourse plus coaching or counselling. The research mentioned above (McAllister, Duncan & Hawkins) shows that self-directed is better than nothing and has many benefits. Traditional is the most popular and is better than self-directed, and the Blended method is the most effective. The Internet really shines here because you can do a blended approach online with a video course and then do some coaching (even remotely/Skype) with that. You really get the best results! In addition, with the internet, you have the benefit of being able to find resources, not in your area. It is often hard to find a Christian marriage counsellor or coach who is a good fit. With video calls, you are no longer restricted to finding someone who lives within a short drive of your home. We hope this year, that you’ll take the opportunity to do something specific, preferably together, to take your marriage to the next level. Don’t be one of those couples that doesn’t realize how good they had it until after it all went up in smoke. Going from married to single is incredible hard: we’ve walked with some friends through it and it’s just brutal. Decide today to find a weekend, or course, or even just a book to read together. **If you’re looking for a particular resource, get in touch and if we don’t have something that can help you directly, we’ll help you find a resource that meets your specific needs. We have Talk To Me 101 launching again in the next month, which is an eCourse on communications. We’ll also be offering a coaching option with that eCourse to created a blended approach – enter your email at the top of the screen to make sure you’re the first to hear about it when it launches! We like to use a tool called PREPARE/ENRICH, for both pre-marital and marital counselling, via a coaching package. It gives you a helpful report of strength and growth areas with 4-8 feedback sessions where you’re taught how to discuss and understand those areas within the context of your marriage. Image courtesy of North Dakota National Guard under the Creative Commons license.

Sleep Your Way To A Better Marriage – Shawn Stevenson Interview Jan 07, 2015

Show notes

Here’s a fresh thought for fixing or just strengthening your marriage this year: try improving your sleep quality. Really? Yes, really. In this episode of our marriage podcast, we interview Shawn Stevens. He is a best-selling author and the creator of the Model Health Show, currently the #1 Nutrition and Fitness podcast in the world on iTunes. [youtube id="zAM6iPk53m8"] Watch the video for the full interview. I invited Shawn for an interview because I wanted him to help us understand how we can take care of our marriages by taking care of our sleep. As Shawn says at the start, “When you’re tired, your best friend can look like your worst enemy!” The Case For Sleep In the interview, we discuss various research articles that identify the impact of reduced sleep. The bottom line is, when you don’t get enough sleep, you limit your brain’s ability to help you relate to others. Sleep is the only state we experience that helps to rebuild our bodies and minds. Yet, it’s often the first thing we reduce when we begin to feel overloaded. Ironically, we reduce one part of our daily lives we need the most. Reduced sleep affects men and women different. For men, poor sleep predicts more negative ratings of spousal interactions the next day. For women, negative daytime interactions take away from sleep that night. You can imagine how quickly a destructive cycle can form from this interaction. Clearly, there is a well-established link between relationship quality and sleep quality. Sleep and Stress Sleep is also an important part of stress regulation. Marriage is a great source of stress relief but Shawn identifies how critical sleep is as part of managing stress. But the challenge is that stress makes for poor sleep and poor sleep makes for more feelings of stress. How does a person break out of this cycle? Strategies for Improving Sleep Quality One of the critical take-home lessons from this interview is the importance of exercising in the morning. This has a huge impact on the amount of time spent in the deepest (and most restorative) stage of sleep. Exercising at night, or late in the evening, is counterproductive to being healthy. You might be exercising, but you’re eroding the restorative potential of your sleep. Another critical take away is to observe a caffeine curfew. Caffeine has a half-life of about eight hours (depending on your metabolism). Consequently, Shawn’s recommendation is that there be no caffeine intake after 2 PM in the afternoon. Intake after that time is going to impact your body’s ability to get the quality of sleep it needs. Shawn also notes the importance of moderating body temperature. Running our house too warm, especially at nights in the bedroom, takes away from sleep quality. The research recommends running one’s bedroom temperature between 60 to 68 F (16 to 20 C) is ideal. There’s a side-benefit to a cooler room: more cuddling! That can’t but help the marriage too, right? Finally, we discuss the impact of sexuality on our sleep quality. The body releases a wonderful cocktail of hormones following orgasm with one’s spouse. Those hormones promote deeper and more restful sleep as well as reducing the impact of stress on our bodies. More from Shawn Stevenson Be sure to check out Shawn’s website, and podcast to learn more about how you can improve your health and fitness. As well, be sure to pick up a copy of Shawn’s book, Sleep Smarter: 21 Proven Tips to Sleep Your Way To a Better Body, Better Health and Bigger Success. I have read his book and highly recommend it. It is very digestible, a great read, and really takes you through many actionable ways that you can start improving your sleep tonight.

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