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Where Are We Going in Our Marriage?

Where do you want to go?

Where do you want to go?

Post written by marriage columnist Susanne Alexander of Marriage Transformation.

Many couples barely hold onto their marriages to avoid disrupting their households through the holiday period. Once the new year begins, then they take steps to separate.

Re-kindling your marriage is a better alternative!

David L. Banks has a new book 2 Become 1: Creating Memorable Moments to Deepen Your Marriage Connection (with Susanne M. Alexander) that encourages couples to believe it is possible to stay connected throughout a marriage.

Creating a marital vision is one of the ways you can see a bigger picture for your marriage. Spend a few minutes alone writing down your ideas of what you really want to see in your marriage. Then come together and discuss what you want your marriage to become.

The next step is to find a memorable word that can sum up what you want; for example: great, oneness, joy, or harmony. Make each letter stand for something that deepens your marriage.

This will be your mission statement of how to go forward and engage in building the marriage you want.

Here is an example:

Word: EDEN (as in Paradise)

  • E - Enter into oneness. We agree to develop skills to achieve oneness.
  • D - Delightful atmosphere. On a daily basis, we are mindful of how we treat and talk to each other, being careful to show respect for each other.
  • E - Empowering others. We encourage and serve other couples.
  • N - New treasures found daily. We are intentional about finding and acknowledging thoughtful acts of service and gem-like qualities in each other.

Taking steps such as this can prompt you to see that there is still the possibility of a happy, loving, and unified marriage. There is hope for most couples.

Have a happy holiday season!

(photo source)
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Baby Makes Three?

Post written by marriage columnist Susanne Alexander of Marriage Transformation.

An earthshaking event for a marriage can be discussing whether to have your first baby. Not to mention actually adding a child to the mix.

Going from two in the family to three is one of those “forever” changes.

You as a couple will always be connected, no matter what happens to your relationship. So, beginning to discuss adding a baby to the mix can raise questions about the state of your marriage:

  • Is our marriage healthy enough, strong enough, and happy enough to support a baby?
  • How will we maintain our marriage during pregnancy and after a baby is born?
  • Do we have confidence in our ability to be cooperative parents?
  • Are we willing to sacrifice some of what gets our time and attention now, and give it to a baby instead?

Sometimes couples faced with these types of questions experience a crisis of confidence in their marriage. Couples can benefit from a marital strengthening process during this time.

Some actions that can help are:

Re-visiting positive memories from your courtship and early marriage. These memories will help to strengthen your feelings of love towards one another and help you be united.

Taking a weekend marriage workshop or a series of evening classes. Also consider getting a marriage check-up assessment done with coaching for areas that need strengthening. Every marriage has room to grow, and before adding children is a great time to deepen your knowledge and build your skills. You can learn to communicate better, express love more effectively, and manage differences. This time of education and learning will give you ideas to apply during pregnancy and the early years of your child’s life.

Going away for a romantic weekend. Sometimes it helps to be in a different environment for in-depth conversations. Time away can give you the perspectives that you need about your importance to one another.

Talking to another couple who has successfully negotiated this challenge.  Definitely look around to see what your support system is. You might be surprised to find out your friends or family members have gone through a similar situation and can encourage you or give you helpful advice.

Learning how you will parent together. If you are having doubts about your ability to parent together, it would be good to seek parenting education classes and books to discuss. Look after someone’s children together and assess the experience. The more harmonious you are in rearing your children, the happier your home will be.

Taking the time needed for family. If your time commitments feel overwhelming and very important now, you may question the choice to have a child. You may be thinking that it is just too much to take on. Do some visioning together of your future and what having and rearing a child will be like. Go to the future and imagine having grandchildren and companionship as you age. What can you do with the work and community service responsibilities you have now? Can you delegate some of them? Re-negotiate the time commitments? What can you do to put your marriage and family higher on the priority list?

Don’t panic if you start to feel uncertain about having a child together.

Take these positive steps forward to a happy marriage and family.

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Need help? Try out one of the Marriage Sparks courses today!

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10 Tips for Unifying Your Family

Post written by marriage columnist Susanne Alexander of Marriage Transformation.

Think of constructing a building and compare it to your family. Your unified marriage is the foundation for a strong and happy family.

The mortar of love holding the bricks of each of you as individuals together with one another is also a vital component.

The pace and content of your lives may often seem to loosen the connection between you instead of solidifying it. Here are some possibilities to consider that will strengthen the bonds of your marriage and family instead:

1. Say good morning in a cheerful tone of voice.

2. Warmly hug each other before parting for the day.

3. Text or email each other occasionally during your day with a few positive words that show you are thinking of each other. If there seems to be misunderstandings from brief communications, call each other on a lunch hour or break for clarification.

4. Greet each other lovingly when seeing each other again.

5. Spend a few minutes sharing with each other how your day went.

6. Have all-family meals a few times each week where you encourage conversation (leave the TV off!).

7. Share a spiritual connection, whether it is prayer, worship, or an uplifting quotation.

8. Confide what issues you are struggling with at home, school, or work, and ask for insights and ideas from each other on how to handle them.

9. Do spontaneous acts of thoughtful service for each other.

10. Look for and acknowledge the best you see in each other and the efforts you are making.

Healthy, connecting habits in your lives provide stability and dependability. You begin to count on the positive interactions you have together and protect them. You don’t take them for granted, because you recognize how happy and blessed you are with them as a vital part of your lives.

Character Coaching Note: Loyalty to your family means that you guard each other’s back and protect each other from harm of all types. The hurt to one of you, is hurt to all of you. Loyalty means that you honor, belong to, support, and remain devoted and faithful to your family.

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Remember This Resource: MARRIAGE SPARK eCOURSE, “Strengthening Your Marriage Bond” is available here: http://www.simplemarriage.net/products/spark

(photo source)
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The Gift of Chastity in Marriage

Post written by marriage columnist Susanne Alexander of Marriage Transformation.

Ah, does the idea of chastity applying to marriage surprise you?

Like me at one point, you may think that it has something to do with preventing teenagers from having sex.

Yes…but it’s a whole lot more!

We are so bombarded with sexual images and words in our daily lives that we can become confused and forget sexual intimacy works best when it is happening beautifully and privately within our marriages…with our own spouses.

This is one of the primary gifts of chastity: it has us reserve our sexual attraction, responses, and intimacy as a special aspect of our marriages. No one else gets that part of us.

We do our best to keep our sexual thoughts centered on our spouse instead of others. We don’t invite a sexual response from someone we aren’t married to. This is difficult in a world where flirting and dressing in sexually provocative ways are so common with both women and men.

Sometimes without chastity, we can also become confused about intimacy and think the only way to achieve it is through sex.

Chastity encourages us to build our intimacy with each other through sharing our inner lives, doing acts of service for others together, being thoughtful to each other, making decisions in partnership together, and more. This intimacy then enriches our sexual life together.

Chastity guides what we choose as entertainment and activities separately and together. Pause and really notice responses to magazines, movies, TV shows, or even the jokes our friends tell. Begin to notice how much our culture has deadened our awareness that our sexual energy is hugely dissipated outside of our marriages.

Where chastity is practiced between marriage partners and the sexual experiences we have, it spreads throughout our relationship the related qualities of respect, cleanliness, gentleness, and partnership. We don’t have to use sex as manipulation, conquest, a power-trip, or self-centered activity. We can trust each other with friendships we each have with other men and women. We can fill our lives with worthwhile purposes, including building a great marriage friendship, but without the dominating and ever-present focus on sex.

Chastity contributes more balance, with sex being one of many things we do together.

Where we include the gift of chastity in our marriage, it gives us the grace to accept the occasional times in our marriage when abstinence does apply. The rhythms of our bodies and hormones, parts of pregnancy and childbirth, and illness can affect when sex happens between us.

Chastity helps us put our marriage first and our sexual needs on the back burner when these times occur. It also encourages us to look at other ways of doing loving touch, such as hugs, kissing, or massage.

Sex is a vital and bonding part of marriage. It is often an act that builds our sense of oneness and connection.

When we practice chastity and reserve our sexual energy and apply it within our marriage, our opportunity for marital happiness grows.

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Note: If you want to enrich your marriage, one of the Simple Marriage Sparks eCourses, “Passionate and Spiritual Sex”, is available at this link: http://www.simplemarriage.net/products/spark

And each of the Marriage Sparks are now only $24.

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Powerful Partner Prayer

Post written by marriage columnist Susanne Alexander of Marriage Transformation.

Individuals have their own experience of prayer, that personal conversation we each have with God.

Of course this means that learning how, when, and why to pray together as a couple formed of two individuals can often be challenging.

A place to begin can be sharing with each other:

• Why you pray
• When prayer has been helpful
• What your prayers sound like (some use their own words, and some prefer prayers written by others or in scriptures)
• How prayer keeps you in communication and connection with God

You can then begin to identify what types of prayers make sense to stay private.

These might include ones confessing a wrongdoing and asking for forgiveness, or ones containing a yearning for an increase in personal spiritual strength or growth. Together, you can explore what types of prayers could be done together and how they might deepen your intimacy.

These might include prayers such as:

• Expressions of gratitude for blessings
• Requests for guidance as spouses or parents
• Pleas for forgiveness for conflict and a request for harmony
• Asking for help for each other during difficulties or challenging circumstances (Dear God, please be with my wife and give her courage as she asks for a raise in her salary today; Dear God, please help my husband interact with his new co-worker as he struggles with acceptance and respect)

It is wise to assess your motives for praying together. Prayer for and about each other must never be used as a form of manipulation, criticism, or control. These motives would work against one of the key intents of couple prayer: building a stronger sense of being “we” and “us”.

Timing for couple prayer can also be take practice for a couple to navigate. When to pray includes the time of day, what is happening at the moment, how frequently prayer occurs, and more. One partner may be only able to participate peacefully with couple prayer once a week; the other partner may prefer daily prayer. At times you may each have to shift one way or the other to accommodate each other’s preferences.

It may take practice to learn to pray together. However, it’s worth the effort.

Praying together can:

• Deepen your understanding of what is on each other’s mind and heart
• Increase your unity and harmony throughout activities together
• Lift your spirits with hope
• Provide inspiration for new words and actions
• Help you to see the best in each other
• Adjust your attitudes in a positive direction
• Express honest emotions that are difficult to say otherwise

Prayers together in your marriage can be a gift that helps you live in a state of gratitude and love with God. They can be a strong benefit for your marriage.

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Home Improvement Project

Post written by marriage columnist Susanne Alexander of Marriage Transformation.

Picture the words coming out of your mouth and sticking on a nearby wall.

How do they sound in-transit?

What do they look like once they are stuck there?

Most of us need to pause once in a while and dip the paintbrush of life into a can of gentleness and kindness and spread them over our choice of words, tone of voice, and attitude.

How easy it is when we live with someone for us to get snarky, grumpy, complainingy, whiny…or ungrateful, ornery, and critical. At least sometimes. THEY really should shape up and do better!

The truth is, marriage requires a large application of empathy, compassion, and acceptance. We can encourage each other with affirming and influencing words to make new or different choices. But the more negative and condemning our words are, the less likely our spouse is to want to change. Or to make changes that are color-bright and work long-term. If he or she slaps on a coat of shiny green in resentment and anger, we might like the color for a brief while, but it will be hard to live with over time.

And, have you ever tried to take down words said in haste or negativity? Sometimes a scraper, sandpaper, or dynamite don’t remove their substance or the resulting hurt. Sometimes attempts to fix the problem just leave a big hole in the wall.

Ever notice that you usually have a little voice inside your head (or heart) that says, “Don’t open your mouth and say anything”. You might hear your mother’s voice alongside it saying, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.” And still, out the words come. Maybe it will help if you picture the words floating around in the paint can in a swirl of love. By the time you stir them up and pick up your paintbrush, maybe then they’ll come out as kind and caring words instead of harsh ones.

One of the best ways to increase the loving feelings in your spouse’s heart is to catch them doing something good and let them know how much you appreciate it. When you can be specific, the affirmation works even better. When you also put in positive words about their character, your marriage just might look like a successful remodeling project (I call this using “Character Quality Language”).

  • “Honey, you did such an excellent job of hanging the new door. I really appreciate that we now have privacy when we need it.”
  • “It was very thoughtful and caring of you to drop lunch off at the office for me. I needed to eat well before my meeting, and just forgot it sitting on the counter.”
  • “You really rock! It is helping the whole vacation go better because you persevered through getting all these great deals.”
  • “I noticed how gentle you were with our son when he made a mistake yesterday. Thank you.”

Talking this way may feel a bit awkward at first…like when you move a piece of furniture to a new location and keep going to sit in the old place. But your home remodeling project will work if you roll on the paint smoothly. And, the walls will be a color you can easily live with instead.

(photo source)