The Marriage Podcast for Smart People

Today we want to give you 10 simple but powerful ways to court your spouse in everyday moments. This isn’t going to be about going out for dinner or going to a movie – not that kind of courting. We’re talking about ways of being together. It’s deeper but still very concrete. Here’s a little reality about marriage – marriage is hard work. That’s true, but what does it mean? It means is that couples need to continuously engage in behaviors and activities that promote the health of the their marriage bond. Think of it as a love muscle – Use it or lose it! Use this post as a day at the gym, complete with supplements, some cardio and some strength training all for that love muscle. In fact, we even have a worksheet you can download to help you work through the content of this post. There’s a little proverb written by King Solomon that speaks to this, embedded in a fairly steamy passage of the Bible. He says, “Rejoice in the wife of your youth”, and that just encapsulates what we cover in this post. We want you to delight in each other, to invest in each other, and to enjoy each other! Think of ‘marriage is hard work’ as ‘marriage is good hard work’. It can be fun and joyful to create this time of marriage, really! It won’t make the marriage perfect or free from stress or times of frustration, but you can have a really good time creating it. Enjoy being married! Let’s start with why we need to court our spouse, and then look at 10 ways how to do it. Canary, Stafford and Semic (2002) say that “liking is the degree to which a person admires his or her spouse.” It is made up of affection and respect and is the outcome of maintenance behaviors (like the ten things we’re going to give you!). Think of maintenance behaviors as planting seeds in a garden. We need to be constantly planting these seeds in the soil of our marriage so that we can keep growing. If you stop planting, one day you’ll wake up and have nothing with which to nourish your marriage. At that point, you’re months from turning that around (just like seeds, maintenance behaviors take a while to germinate and bear fruit). Think of your marriage as having a year-round growing season – we want to plant new seeds every week so that we have this constant harvest of love and romance. Yes, this takes commitment, but it also creates commitment. When you have a great thing going, you want to keep at it! Researchers have found that if you do not engage continually in maintaining your marriage, things decline quickly. Another incentive to keep at these maintenance behaviors comes from Wilcox & Dew (2012) who looked at the value of date nights as part of The National Marriage Project. They found that husbands and wives who engaged in couple time with their mates at least once a week were 3.5 times more likely to report being “very happy” in their marriages, compared to those who enjoyed less quality time with their spouse. So, here are 10 ways to date your mate! These are not ideas pulled out of a hat, but are pulled together from empirically validated research. This stuff really does work and will make a difference in your marriage. 1. Be Generous Generosity is a willingness to reflect on your spouse’s strengths and work around weaknesses to serve him or her (JMF, 2013). It’s not surprising that this comes up again – it was number 3 of the Top 5 Predictors of Marital Success. This is giving good things to one’s spouse freely and abundantly – not necessarily jewelry or expensive vacations, but things like service and affection. Notice and comment on your spouse’s good qualities and forgive your spouse. The same study cited above found that as generosity increased in marriages, so did marital satisfaction. Also, conflict and perceived divorce likelihood decreased. 2. Be Sacrificial

My own daughter asked me today, “So, why do people do pre-marital counseling?” She’s 13. I’m glad she’s asking. You are likely wondering the same thing if you’re reading this and so I’d like to make a case for it. Not just for my own benefit – I do offer pre-marital counseling/coaching – but for your sake especially. You see, it does help. A lot. Is Pre-Marital Counseling Worth It? One meta-analytic research review we looked into showed that the mean effect size for premarital programs was 0.80. In plain English, this means that the average person participating in a program was significantly more better off afterwards than 70% of the people who did not participate. Okay, that’s still not plain English… In simpler terms, most people benefit greatly from Pre-Marital Counseling. Marriage is a big thing. It’s not to be entered into lightly. Verlynda and I hope to build a house in the near future and part of what we will do is sit down and figure out exactly what it is going to take to complete the project. We’re doing that because we want to count the cost before we start and be sure of a positive outcome. Pre-marital counseling is an opportunity to count the cost before you get into marriage and help secure a positive outcome. It is a time to really take stock of what you’re going to be building for the rest of your life. You have the chance to learn about the resources you’ll need to finish what you are starting. You’ll gather essential resources and information like communication skills, shared values, shared vision for your future, shared dreams, goals and so on. Verlynda and I actually had very, very little pre-marital counseling. But I am so thankful for what we did have as I did some major learning about how to be the husband I needed to be. It would have been very painful for me (and more so for Verlynda!) to learn that by trial and error! What Should You Be Looking For in a Pre-Marital Coaching/Counseling Program? There are basically three varieties of programs: * Self-directed * Therapist-directed * Assessment based One study we looked into compared these three and noted that the assessment based programs were the most effective both immediately following the program and 6 months later. This is the approach I use. Rather than being purely something I create extemporaneously, I begin with an assessment to determine strength and growth areas for the couple and follow through with skills training leading from what is revealed from the assessment. We then go on to discuss what each couple feels is most relevant to creating a successful marriage. What Are The Benefits of Pre-Marital Counseling? There are plenty of good reasons. But here are four backed by research from a 2001 article in an academic journal called Family Relations. First, pre-marital counseling slows couples down to foster deliberation. You will be compelled to stop and think seriously about your marriage. You will learn to become explicit about your expectations and beliefs. In fact, you may even discover dynamics that are unacknowledged or unnoticed that lead you to not marry at all. On that note, we found another study that showed that 5-15% of pre-marital coaching resulted in a breakup. That might scare you off, but think about it. Would you rather have the pain of breaking up with your fiancée now? Or would it be easier to dissolve a marriage seven years in? We therapists believe that both the breakups and stronger marriages resulting from pre-marital counseling are success stories. When you’re forced to deliberately clarify your expectations about marriage, you’re given the opportunity to discuss the most crucial (and possibly problematic) areas of your life together. Second, pre-marital coaching or counseling sends a two-fold message to you as a couple:

I know what you’re thinking. Why on earth would I want to support my spouse when we’re fighting? Well, because you want to stay married, that’s why. That’s the “brutally-loving” truth! But, there’s more. It makes fighting productive. Yes. That’s right. I mean it. It actually makes the conflict helpful for your marriage.   Now, I could go down a rabbit trail about why fighting is good for your marriage but I want you to think about your beliefs about fighting and disagreeing instead. We generally assume that as conflict increases in a marriage, the couple’s satisfaction with their marriage decreases. That’s a good assumption. It is usually correct. But focusing on stopping the conflict as a way to improve satisfaction just leads to avoidance. That’s not going to work. Research in a study presented by Cramer (2003) pointed out that if you focus on unconditional acceptance, understanding and openness, as those increase, marriage satisfaction increases regardless of the quantity of conflict. Pretty cool, hey? This underlines the importance of focusing on the positive, of affirming what you want more of, and overall, the importance of building a healthy, thriving marriage. When that is in place, it’s not about how much you fight any more. I want you to worry more about the quality of your marriage (infusing the good) rather than the quantity of your disagreements. In terms of positive things you can bring to your next disagreement, let’s look at three that are critical. These skills will improve the quality of your marriage. Listen We talk a lot about listening because it is important! Non-defensive listening is vital here. This is a skill that helps “partners to focus their attention on what the other person is saying and to attempt to really understand it. This skill reduces interruptions and the preoccupation with defending oneself and formulating retorts” (Gottman, 1994). That’s a critical definition, and a useful one. You might want to even write that down. Of course, to listen non-defensively is a challenge when we’re already ticked off at our spouse. But you’re doing this for your marriage, not just yourself, right? To listen in this manner is going to require self-restraint. As in, restraining your impulse to dispute your spouse’s perceptions. Don’t worry, the research confirms this is going to be a challenge: “Non-defensive listening requires significant self-control, particularly when there is an important disagreement and passions run high” Fowers, (2001). Think of this as a skill. Like learning to ride a bike, you won’t get it right the first time. There’ll be bumps and scrapes but eventually you will make this a habit. And when you do, you’ll have discovered that you can keep your partner speaking while you exercise self-restraint. This is a huge act of generosity! It is giving to your spouse the gift of attention and interest and it’s sending your spouse the signal that you believe he or she has something worthwhile to say. So we can be generous or miserly with each other. But generosity, remember, is a top five predictor of successful marriage and so I’m challenging you to be generous by choosing to listen well. Validate Of course, if you are doing a good job of listening you’ll be well positioned to validate your spouse. Validation can be as simple as what we therapists call “listener backchanne...

I read a comic strip once about pregnancy and childbirth that had the title “Help, my entertainment center is now a juice bar!” While it struck my funny bone, there is so much truth in that statement. We may think that adding our first born to the family will be all hunky-dory, fun and games, but the reality is it usually results in a DECREASE in marital quality. Navigating the relationship issues that transpire following the birth of a child can be tough!   If you’re a young parent reading this today, know that you guys are awesome! You may not feel awesome most days, but keep going. Props to you for navigating these tough times while bringing a new generation into the world. So, what really goes on in our relationships and with our sexuality following the birth of a child? Let’s talk about some realistic expectations, and how to create resiliency in your marriage to make this as positive an experience as possible. The ‘New’ Norm It is no surprise that a woman’s sexual desire and frequency of intercourse in the early postpartum period is reduced. What surprised me was that breastfeeding was the cause. Another thing that affects sexual intercourse during pregnancy and four months post partum is the woman’s view of her changing roles. If the woman views her shift from the work role being primary to the mother role being primary in a positive light, there will be greater frequency of sexual intercourse. If you’re in this stage of life, be sure to discuss, as a couple, how you’re feeling about moving from being in the workforce to becoming a mother. Talk about what is positive, what you’re going to miss, and what you expect to be challenging. Given that physical intimacy is reduced around the birth of a child, let us emphasize that having kids is NOT an ideal way to bring life or intimacy to your marriage. Rather than looking to baby to fulfill a need, bring your fullness to your baby. Use those first few years of marriage to focus on building a robust relationship, and from that healthy place, bring children into the family unit. Another normal complication, which may be quite unpleasant, is Dyspareunia – pain during intercourse for women. The research says that 3 months after delivery 58% of women experienced dyspareunia, 39% experienced vaginal dryness, and 44% suffered loss of sexual desire. Those are high numbers! 8-9 months later 26% still experienced dyspareunia, 22% had vaginal dryness, and 35% still suffered loss of sexual desire. The scary part is only 20% of women discussed postnatal sexual problems with a physician. You may think you are alone or unique, but you’re not! Talk to your doctor! You can’t have pleasurable sex if you’re in pain while your husband’s penis is in your vagina. It is such a common issue and nothing to be ashamed about. Again, make sure you talk to your doctor. I laughed at the results of the next study we looked at: they studied 768 first time parents and found that sexual desire is greater among fathers than mothers! Really… what a surprise! Unfortunately, though, the tension between the sexual desires of the couple can become a focus of attention rather than the baby. Add into the equation that men typically see sexuality as a way to intimacy, and women see intimacy as a way to sexuality, and it gets tricky. Husband can very quickly end up lonely and feeling emotional emptiness, but when Wife is experiencing pain and exhaustion, what are they to do? One idea is to place more of an emphasis on sensuality over sexuality – hugging, kissing and caressing. Couples that compensate with this are better able to stay connected because it confirms each other and the affection they have for one another. Another part for tired young moms to remember here is that you may have low desire because you are tired, but you can still be open to arousal.

Do you find yourself always taking the blame for everything? I mean, not so much in the sense that your spouse won’t accept any, but that you just find that YOU blame yourself for everything? Even your spouse thinks you take too much responsibility for things?   Last week we discussed differentiation. Remember, differentiation is the process of learning to simultaneously separate from and connect with a loved one. If you find yourself always taking the blame and never taking the risk of putting yourself out there and defending your position, you may be challenged with this idea of differentiation. Or, if you find yourself NEVER willing to take responsibility but you just state the facts, explain everything very rationally, and point out logically what is right or wrong, you’re also challenged with differentiation. Now, we don’t want to be creating a bunch of fights where spouses think they need to stand up for their own rights fully, 100% of the time, and never back down… No, this is for those of us who are always ready to take the blame (you know who you are) or who are NEVER willing to take any blame (you know who you are too!). There are two categories here, so let’s go through them. The Self-Blamer The Self-Blamer, in its extreme form, looks like an abused and battered woman who has experienced physical violence in an intimate relationship. These women report the highest levels of self-blame and lowest levels of perceived control, tending to say, “It’s all my fault, I’ll try to better next time.” (Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2000) Reich et all (2014) found that the higher our self-blame, the lower our self-esteem. If this is you, you’re probably blaming yourself for having low self-esteem – that’s what is so hard about this! Your recovery starts when you say “I deserve to be treated with respect! I am going to make a plan, and execute it, to take myself (and kids) to a safe place where we will be treated respectfully.” Listen to me. No one EVER deserves to be abused. You deserve love and respect! Don’t let anyone ever tell you differently! A more mild form of self-blamer looks like the spouse who is always apologizing and taking the responsibility for everything that goes wrong. This can happen in relatively happy marriages. What is NOT working here, however, is the differentiation piece. Self-blame actually lowers anxiety in the short term as it reduces risk – you can control all of the accommodating that needs doing by doing it all yourself. Instead, you should be saying, “Well, this is my part and I own that, but I need you to do this part differently.” State your needs and wants, and give your spouse the opportunity to adjust rather than just take the blame yourself because it feels safer. How can you do this? Try slicing it a little thinner! Look at the situation this way. When something currently happens, you’re taking the whole situation and putting it on your plate (basically saying, “This is my slab of meat, I am to blame”). What you need to do is slice it a little thinner and genuinely own what is your fault, but then put back on the other person what is theirs. (Take your slice of meat, but leave what is their fault/issue on the plate for them to deal with). If you’re in an abusive situation, this is going to create more abuse. So, your first step in slicing things a little thinner is realizing that your ‘part’ is accepting that you have accepted the role of an abused spouse and then choose to no longer be accepting of that. And get yourself to a safe place. Make a plan. Know what you’re going to do, and when, and how. Find out the resources available to you – there are a lot of them. Then execute the plan! For those that aren’t in this extreme situation,

In marriage, we need to strike a healthy balance between independence and dependence on each other. This is where we sort out the sticky stuff like needing you as my spouse versus just being needy – being an individual without taking away from a sense of ‘us’. Differentiation is a key paradox of healthy marriage and is one of those concepts that when the skills are embodied takes a marriage from ordinary to extraordinary. It pushes the constant growth of the relationship and the individuals within it. So, what is differentiation? It is the process of learning to simultaneously separate from and connect with a loved person. This is different from a merger where there is an urgent, even desperate desire for one’s spouse to meet one’s needs. When the needs are not met, this is taken as abandonment or rejection. Here’s an example of a merged relationship (Grau, Pastoral Psychology): A husband tells his wife that the house is dirty, that she never fixes dinner anymore, that she is uninterested in sex and has no libido. A wife tells her husband that he is a “slob,” that he drinks too much, that he is a dictator. The husband says that if she would change even a little, he would be happier and their marriage would be better. The wife wants the husband to change and when he doesn’t, she tries to convince him, perhaps employing emotional and physical coercion. They don’t realize that in requiring the other to change, they are giving their power away. This is a merger. It is a relationship that says “I need you to meet my needs”. Their happiness depends on the other’s behavior and it controls them. A merger doesn’t work because the requirement that the spouse change sets up a hostile environment and the pressured spouse will distance, resist and retaliate in order to survive. Going back to Grau’s story, let’s think about why they are doing this. * He is withdrawn, and looks like an authoritarian or a drunk. He is acting unappealing (slob). * She is disengaged too: no interest in sex, makes coming home and being at home unappealing. She attacks a lot which maintains the distance. * They are separating from each other but there are no words. When they talk, they are confrontational and not trying to connect. There’s a lot of blame and accusation. * They are both anxious about the relationship, but when they talk about it and how they act around it all serves to keep the distance. They keep the distance because they’re anxious. So they’re in a crazy cycle. Let’s go back to differentiation now. Remember, differentiation is the process of learning to simultaneously separate from and connect with a loved person. It may be easiest to use an example to explain what I’m talking about… Not long ago, Caleb and I had a conversation about lingerie. He revealed to me some thoughts, expressed what he wanted, and how he wanted to feel. That’s him asking me for something that relates to him. In doing so, he was separating himself from me: stating ‘this is my position’. In that same moment – simultaneously – he was connecting with me by giving me a picture of his inside world. That is differentiation: simultaneously separating from and connecting to his beloved. Caleb was putting himself out there – he felt anxiety. But he didn’t withdraw and mull over or ruminate over thoughts like, “I wish she would do this or that”. He put himself out there and made himself vulnerable. That’s the first step! This is not about getting away from anxiety, but about using it instead of letting it control you. Our typical response is to be like the husband or wife in the merger example that withdraws or retaliates. “I had to self-soothe and self-comfort,” Caleb says, “and take the risk and put myself out there.” This is the hardest thing to do but in the end, he stated a desire that he had and left the ball in my court.

We live in a quick-fix society. Everything is easy, cheap and disposable. Somehow we’re trained to think about what we get OUT of things, rather than what we can build into them to make them better.   Sometimes marriage can seem complicated. Daily rituals are the little things that can combat the rough areas and make a difference in the day-to-day-living of a couple. They are easy and are sure to really boost your marital happiness. We’re not talking about one off try-this-when-you-get-home-today ideas, but things that you can weave into the daily fabric of your marriage. Be intentional about building daily rituals into your marriage and families to make them bastions of love and security. Make your marriage a safe harbor to return to daily! First, let’s look at the “why”, and then we’ll give some suggestions for the “how”. Why are Rituals Even Necessary? Rituals in marriages and families have two parts: (1) a behavior and (2) its meaning or symbolism. There is a very practical component (the habit, or behavior) and a symbolic component (meaning) that make up part of your couple-identity. We all have routines, but rituals are different – they have meaning. The meaning may never be stated or agreed on, but the meaning is still there. Other times it might be something explicitly discussed and agreed to. A brief, personal example here: one of our daily rituals is that at night, we hold each other in bed. Almost always in the same position…It’s not sexual…We don’t sleep like this because we’d overheat…But it’s several minutes long and we pray together. That’s the behavior. The meaning of this is it’s one of our moments when we feel most together, it brings joy, and it’s a way that we ground ourselves after a crazy day because yes, even though we help other marriages, ours in not perfect! But this ritual just reassures us that no matter has happened, is going on, or is going to happen…we are together! Some of the benefits of marriage rituals were identified in an article from the Journal of Family Psychology as follows: * Identity – they help define who you are as a couple * Provides a sense of lovability * Increases cohesion * Provides stability during times of stress or transition * Provides a sense of belonging, closeness and group membership * Overall booster for psychological health and functioning. Another study showed that families who were more invested in rituals experienced more positive relationship quality and closeness. But sadly, in some marriages rituals are absent. Haugland & Storm (2005) found that there was a drastic increase in unpredictability when couples or families stopped practicing routines and rituals. The family cohesion was weakened (the sense of togetherness decreased) which led to the family not feeling as safe. Maybe it’s the word ritual that makes it sound airy-fairy, but these meaningful habits actually have a huge impact on the happiness and satisfaction of your marriage. How Can I Add Rituals to my Marriage? You probably have some of your own daily rituals of connection, and that is awesome! Acknowledge those and then take it up a notch – add a few more to the routine. Here are ten ideas of Rituals of Daily Connection: * Morning hug or cuddle – start the day off well! Even if you get up at different times, or one leaves for work super early, make sure you connect, even briefly before you go your separate ways for the day. * Touch Base around lunch – Whether it’s a text or a phone call, take the time to be in touch with your spouse and let them know you’re thinking about them. * 5 for 5 – Spend the first five minutes at home within 5 feet of your spouse. It just gives those few moments of reconnection and lets your spouse know they’re the most important thing to you in your day.

There is a lot of discussion 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 materisalism 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 77% more increase in net worth than single people * On average, their wealth increases 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 wealth – 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 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 elicit 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 o...

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 connection between the two spouses in a 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 ouremotional 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 is a couple 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 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 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 a cheap, instant gratification sex, what is more satisfying is the making love out of a relationship that has been love making 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.

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 look out 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 pron...

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 ...

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 a 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 1840’s 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 to 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!

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 1980’s and 90’s. 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,

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 relations 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...

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.