Tag Archives: help for marriage

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Top Three Reasons I Stay Married

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In the spring of 2010, urban playwright Tyler Perry, released his new movie Why did I get married too, the sequel to his tremendously successful 2007 comedy-drama, Why did I get married?. Perry’s movie challenges me to ask myself not just why I got married but also why I stay married.

For some of us Why did I get married? brought comic relief to serious marital stressors that are often at the center of our marital conflict – helping us to laugh at ourselves.

But, for others the film is a darker reminder of betrayal, loneliness, and other abuses that have left marital scars – often beyond repair.

This movie caused many of us to think personally about our own marriage. Why did I get married?

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Five Questions to Transform Your Home

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What is the secret to a great marriage or a happy home? These are the questions that I am often asked as I work with families. People want an easy answer. I believe it only takes five questions to transform your home.

When you ask these families in what areas they most struggle, you usually hear fairly predictable responses. The most common response you initially probably doesn’t surprise you. “We have a communication problem” is by far the culprit of home dysfunction. But, when you did deeper you begin to see that this “communication problem” is really about more pronounced cracks in the relational foundation of the home.

Sometimes you can see that financial pressures are placing enormous strain on the family.

In other homes, you discern how busy schedules and lack of quality time together is creating emotional distance.

Still other homes are stymied by a self-centeredness that makes intimacy feel disingenuous or maybe even unattainable.

Of course, many homes are battered by more than one of these pressures at the same time—often resulting in the communication failures between spouses, dating couples, parent-child interaction, and other important relationships.

So, what is the secret to overcoming these communication challenges and positively transforming the atmosphere in your home?

It can be summed up in a single phrase—“Listen More”.

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What Business School Didn’t Teach Me About Marriage

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Husbands and wives think that “understanding” is the key to success in marriage. Wives believe that if their beloved just understood how they feel about a situation that the tension and frustration that often exists would melt away. We husbands assume that if we could just get our wives to understand the details of the situation that they would inevitably see things our way. These beliefs lead spouses to undertake various measures to “market” their viewpoints to give the other understanding.

You might question my use of the word “market.” That sounds so manipulative doesn’t it? Marketing is what businesses do to sell a product, right? As I think back to my business school education, Marketing 101 instructed me about the marketing mix entailing product, price, and promotion. Selling a product depends on the elements of this mix.

Here’s what I’m wondering, how much of the tension in my cross-cultural marriage is about my approach to selling my point of view to Dalia? If I think about my perspective as the product in question, I am able to see all of the steps I go through to sell or “promote” it to Dalia. I can give her details of the situation in calculated details. I can explain the trade offs and the cost-benefits of seeing it my way. If all of these rational measures fail to make Dalia understand, I can insert or remove emotion as the situation dictates.
If and when I become desperate for the sell, I always know I can manipulate the stakes or the “price.” I might start off with a light reference to a past incident when I was right and she was wrong. If she still doesn’t get it, I can always rachet it up to a minor rebuke for being so irrational or so emotional that she can’t see the obvious. If I’m forced to raise the stakes even higher to get my point across, then I have to make it even more personal. And, I certainly know those hot buttons. After all, it is about selling understanding—at any cost. But it’s worth it if she gets it. She’ll see it my way. And, this will be better for our marriage, right?

I’m ashamed to admit that I have done all of these things. Don’t get me wrong. I never thought about it as selling my perspective at any cost. But, my actions prove otherwise. Here’s what I’ve learned. Marketing 101 is best left in the Business School rather than in my cross-cultural marriage. Marriage isn’t about making Dalia understand my perspective at any cost. Rather, it is about accepting that which I don’t understand.

Understanding between cross-cultural spouses can be difficult when each person has developed a perspective that comes from a very different set of assumptions. This is where grace enters the picture. Grace is learning to accept that which I may not understand. Why should I accept what doesn’t make sense to me?

The answer is profound yet simple. Integrating our viewpoints creates a co-constructed paradigm that is richer. Put simply, Dalia and I are better together than apart when we replace our natural push to sell with a sincere effort to accept that our differences have value.

What else can couples do to show grace in marriage?

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Your Marriage is What You Think

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As I contemplate what makes marriage work, it is no surprise to me that I come back to the way we think. What comes to your mind when you think about your marriage?

Are your thoughts about your marriage mostly focused on successes and accomplishing shared goals or repeated stumbles and failures? I’m not sure how Descartes would look at contemporary marriages. But, in his new book “Think and make it happen” author Dr. Augusto Cury offers a powerful suite of tools sure to impact any marriage.

Although Cury’s focus is not marriage specifically, he tackles its most vital marital issue—overcoming negative thoughts.

Cury offers twelve principles to control your thinking.  While many of his principles offer practical advice to take control of our thoughts, his admonitions to doubt, criticize, and determine (DCD) what goes through our minds is key.

We must be critical of our thoughts about our marriage. Marriage is filled with peaks and valleys.  A cacophony of negative thoughts experienced during the valleys can derail even the most solid marriages. We married couples must realize the power we have to steer the relationship, mostly by honoring our spouse’s needs.

I also strongly appreciate Cury’s suggestions on how to take charge of our emotions, which of course are triggered by our thoughts. Couples that are able to avoid the emotional meltdowns avoid the negative escalation of emotions during conflicts.

In the chapter titled “Learn to listen and dialogue”, Cury advises married couples to ask four important questions of their mates: (1) When have I disappointed you?, (2) Which of my behaviors annoys you?, (3) What could I do to make you happier?, and (4) How can I be a better friend?

Now,there is something for all of us to think about. The future of your marriage is what you think it to be.

What do you think about your marriage?

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Noticing your spouse

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Think back over the course of your marriage (or even before) or other meaningful relationships that you currently have. Who are the people that have made these relationships successful? Are they family members, friends, spiritual leaders, teachers, or others?  What things did they say or do that made a difference?

These are the questions that kept coming to my mind as I read the new fiction book, The Noticer, by Andy Andrews. Andrews uses the fictional journey of a narrator who goes from being a homeless young man bound by negative thoughts to being a successful businessman because of an encounter with an ageless sage who teaches him “perspective”.

As our main character comes to realize over time, there is something unusual about this sage (known by different names to people of different cultures such as “Jones”, “Garcia”, and “Lee”) who seems to always be in the right place with the right people at the right time with just the right message.

The lesson that our protagonist and other characters in the story learn from this sage is how changing our lives requires a change of perspective. How can you look at situations and people differently? It necessitates a more deliberate noticing of the things that others miss.

While I enjoyed the book for its simplistic message (sometimes it honestly felt a little too simplistic) and quick read, what I most enjoyed about it is its applicability to marriage—the topic that I tend to think and write about most often. Andrews’ thesis could not be any more appropriate. Whenever I talk to couples in the education or counseling context I talk about perspective. Individuals are usually excellent at seeing things one way. But, we often struggle to see it another way—especially when we feel somehow threatened by another perspective. Any therapist will tell you that helping couples always requires that each learns to see another perspective.

The other theme of the book that I was very interested in is the idea of taking notice of things that are often taken for granted. Married couples often get into a rut of doing the same things over and over again. We get into a habit where we stop noticing—like we did when we were dating. But, what would happen if couples started noticing each other again—I mean really giving attention to what may really be going on with each other. What things are happening with your spouse, fiancee, or partner that you don’t totally understand because you haven’t noticed?

The Noticer is a wonderful book to add to your collection—especially if you value the importance of perspective in relationships (and who doesn’t). Kudos to Andrews and Thomas Nelson Publishers for presenting something with a timeless message in an accessible format. In the end, the message to all of us is to pay more attention to invest ourselves in those around us.

I started this piece asking who has contributed to your own successful relationships. In the end, our thanks to those people is only truly shown when we in turn contribute to the development of others. Thank you Andy for giving us a tool to do just that.