Making a Marriage Great

A marriage is like a garden. Each partner brings many types of seeds to the marriage. The ones that bloom into beautiful flowers are to be nurtured. But there are inevitably weeds there, too. They need to be watched and dealt with – eradicated really -- so that the beauty of the garden can be enjoyed rather than eventually overwhelmed by aggressive weeds. GREAT marriages are like a lovingly tended garden. The attentive gardener sees and handles the weeds long before they take hold and choke out the garden’s beauty.

There are, at least, four flowers to nurture and cultivate in your marriage:

1. Equality
2. Transparency
3. Basic Needs
4. Receiving Love

Equality is where each spouse is as important as the other. It is the acceptance, enjoyment and enthusiasm by both parties for who the other person truly is. It means that neither partner wants to change the other. It is the absence or quick recognition and correction of controlling and manipulative behaviors. It is the absence or quick recognition and correction of judging, blaming and any other thoughts that separate one party from the other. We will see in later posts how to deal with the “weeds” that obscure equality. Please note that complete equality is probably never achieved since new weeds crop up all the time as some of the seeds sewn in earlier years are slow to germinate.

Transparency is the willingness to freely reveal to your partner what you are all about. Openness can be difficult since we have learned during our lifetimes to cover up some things and withhold parts of ourselves in order to protect ourselves from ridicule and criticism. In practice, transparency is the gradual and continuous opening up to our partners – an everlasting blooming, if you will. We, and everything around us, are changing in subtle ways. The challenge is to be open to change and to continue revealing who we are becoming. Consider your partner to be a stranger each day and give them room to reveal who they are becoming. Transparency is a key building block to intimacy. Transparency is a constantly evolving process of digging deeper into who we really are.

Understanding your partner’s basic need to feel loved was discussed in depth in the previous post as a key element of a great relationship. The genuine gift to your spouse of their need to feel loved in their special ways creates a GREAT marriage. While it is unreasonable to expect you to meet your spouse’s basic need for love 100% of the time, the point is to meet that need as often as possible. Sharing freely with one another what makes you each feel loved and giving that to the other as often as possible is a vital part of building intimacy in relationship. If you each feel secure in the fulfillment of your basic needs, you will be free to reveal things that make you feel unloved without blaming, judgment or resentment. The seed of divorce is sewn by withholding love and holding onto blame, judgment and the sense of self-righteousness. A great marriage is characterized by each partner’s ability to understand, communicate and give freely genuine expressions of dissatisfaction and for both the experience of joyful fulfillment of basic needs.

Receiving love that is freely given is the other building block to intimacy. It sounds simple – the act of receiving love – but it is not. You bring your own seeds to relationships that inhibit your ability to recognize and receive love from another person. These seeds look for a certain type of love that you didn’t get earlier in life. When you fall in love, you are sometimes fooled into believing that you can get what you missed out on earlier from your spouse. These are really weeds of expectation. You think these weeds are flowers. In effect, you unconsciously expect your partner to be something they are not and to give you something they cannot. Digging up and disposing of this seed of expectation allows you to plant and cultivate the flower of being curious about the true nature of your partner and not what you project them to be. This knowledge becomes food for thought. You clear the way for a deep, conscious relationship. It also means that you allow your partner to lovingly mirror who you are in those times (and they come often for most of us) when you are not being true to who you really are in your actions and deeds. If you can allow your spouse to influence your life without feeling hurt or seeing their comments as criticism or judgment, then you are receiving love kindly and your marriage can be GREAT!

As all four flowers of GREAT marriages grow, their roots intertwine to support the well-being of the entire garden. I offer courses on all these flower. See www.thecenterformarriage.com for more information.

How Do You Feel Loved?

Love is the common denominator in all marriages. Is love a fragile thing? I would say so after witnessing so many angry divorces among people who once loved each other deeply. It appears love is hard to sustain in the United States since the divorce rate has been near 50% for many years. Love is also harder to come by these days. Even as the divorce rate has stayed steady, the percentage of households headed by a married couple is in decline.

The good news is there is an active Marriage Education movement designed to help couples HAVE A GREAT MARRIAGE. A great deal of information on courses and training that are available can be found at http://www.smartmarriages.com/. Government funding of The Marriage Initiative supports some of these programs, even some faith-based initiatives. Yet, as I noted in the previous post, it is difficult to get couples to take advantage of all that is out there for them. In fact, individuals spend more in this country on match-making than on keeping married matches intact.

I don’t know why it is difficult for couples to choose to avail themselves of marriage support in a timely way, well before difficulties become large problems and love turns into resentment and anger. Groups and people offering courses and training for married couples spend a sizable portion of their funds on ad campaigns just to get people to come to meetings and see what is being offered. These courses do not have full enrollment.

I know that some of the couples I work with and teach have let things go too far. I find that I am often dealing with two intransigent egos rather than a couple interested in having a better relationship. As an educator and professional nudge, in any case I tend to go back to square one and ask, “How do you feel loved?” If there is one basic need in your relationship, it is to feel loved. I have found this is a hard question, so I let them know how I discovered my own answer.

It took me quite a while to realize that I feel loved in the company of someone who will stay with me while we talk, or watch a movie or play a game. By the word stay I mean they simply are not going anywhere and this fills me with love. I know I’m loved when there is this natural, easy, timelessness with my partner. I cannot tell you exactly when this recognizable love first happened during my life. I know it had to be in childhood and it was someone special to me, probably my mother. She was great at staying.

In a great marriage, I want someone to meet my need for love as often as possible. As an active partner in a great marriage, I can meet most, if not all, of my other needs. In past relationships, I did feel loved. What I failed to notice and ask for was the specific need I had to feel love – this staying activity. I got it, but only by accident. It was not an agreed upon aspect of any past relationship and I was not conscious of this need.

It is extremely helpful to learn how you feel love and to let your partner know. For sure, you had it with them at some point. A marriage will thrive if that basic need is being met. If your partner ever withholds it, then you know there is a problem to address and adjustments to be made. Withholding of affection comes way before resentment sets in. Making your need for love known to yourself and your partner will only make it easier to deal with any new hurdles that come your way.

So how do you feel loved? I offer a course on this subject. See www.thecenterformarriage.com for more information.

Are GREAT Marriages Even Possible?

Is it possible to have a GREAT marriage? I’ve had two 15-year marriages. When my marriages ended, I did some deep introspection into who I am to myself and in relationship to others. Since then, I have been helping couples with money and relationship issues, and my unequivocal answer is an emphatic YES you can HAVE A GREAT MARRIAGE! I am not a professionally trained counselor, but my work with couples is full of joy. I have found that I can listen and make suggestions based upon truly hearing what a person says. I call myself a “nudge” because I am able to prod the individual into seeing something they have already revealed. Often they just don’t see it clearly until I repeat it back to them. It’s like being a mirror for a friend. A full description of what I do can be found at www.thecenterformarriage.com.

What I’ve noticed, however, is that even the smallest steps in working on a relationship are an anathema to most couples. Whether it is fear, too little time, resentment, the desire for a quick fix or any other reason, couples generally prefer to let things slide. They are quick to resist. In many cases they neglect their relationship altogether. It’s like they go to sleep. This breeds disaster. All marriages get stuck in difficult territory at times and without support things can deteriorate. I’ve seen too many angry divorces among couples who once loved each other. I believe this result can be avoided. At the very least, if divorce is inevitable, it can be far more mutually agreeable without all that anger.

So what would draw individuals and couples into doing some work on their relationships in a timely way, before neglect has taken its toll? What can be done to ensure we are awake and aware of who we are for ourselves and in relationship? Where do we get support for this process and how can we build on it? It is my hope that anyone who finds their way to this blog will join me in a conversation about how to HAVE A GREAT MARRIAGE! Share your opinions, experiences, and questions, and together we will discover the answers within ourselves.