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Marriage Talk
(Summary) We practice doing the work of marriage, which repairs our brokenness, creates space in our hearts, rescripts underlying dynamics and builds us into a team. We personalize core marriage perspectives. We practice skills to stay connected while solving issues. We grow in Wisdom. We share our hearts and marvel as “heart pictures,” i.e., your and my perspectives of you, me, us, God and the way life works, are replaced. Then we see, hear and think more accurately. By practicing we learn what to say, how to say it and when. As our relationship and conversations begin to flow, we settle on the inside, work out OUR way through situations and enjoy being married.
Marriage Talk
Doing the Work of Marriage in Real Time In many, if not in all areas of life, there are exactly three ways to move forward. In marriage, for example, there is MY way, there is YOUR way and there is OUR way.
Some married couples are content to do things either MY way or YOUR way, or some combination. This is ok: couples are free to do marriage any way they want. Other couples believe this means settling for less. They want to experience closeness on every level and walk through life together as a team. Couples achieve this by doing the work of marriage to develop OUR way. Marriage work is relational. When we are talking together and we hit a bump – or even seriously derail – then first we do some work separately, and second we intentionally come back together to repair. Healthy marriages repeat this pattern over and over: Together - Apart - Together. Marriage is not about getting it right. It is about repair and the way we repair. Most of marriage work is about joining our lives together. There are three stages of marriage: leave our parents, join our individual lives together, and become one. The last stage, becoming one, is all about intimacy on every level. It's knowing my partner almost as well as I know myself, and knowing my partner knows me. Briefly, knowing and being known. For most of us, it takes several decades to reach stage three. Marriage work builds a team by repairing blunders, misunderstandings, personality traits, old wounds, lost dreams, disappointments and unhealthy patterns between us. As we do the work of repair, inaccurate pictures in our hearts become more accurate. My heart pictures are my perspectives and beliefs about you, me, God and the way things are supposed to work. In short, growing marriages repair brokenness: mine, yours and ours. Every time we repair we grow closer because we understand a little more clearly just how we work individually and together. We discover some ways that God shows up in our lives. And we figure out how life works for us. These things help us to feel more settled on the inside. Repair also means talking in helpful ways. We need some space in our relationship and conversations to do three things: to hear, to think and to share: • To hear your words and your heart behind your words. • To think about what’s going on inside of you and me, so that my memories recombine and form new heart pictures, more accurate ones, which usually deepen my understanding and appreciation of you. This generally humbles me and reminds me that we are very similar in significant ways. (Surprisingly, as we do marriage work, we usually find out that the pain each of us experiences is the same.) • To share something new with you, something I have discovered after hearing you and thinking about us, something I believe will help us mature and become more of a team. When we are a team, our relationship and conversations flow. We catch where our partner is coming from. We stay on the same page. When we lose this flow, that is, when we stumble a little, or have a major disruption, we get to repair the brokenness and continue building our team. We get to call on God for help to find our way back to each other. We rediscover the truth that we love and want each other. By sharing truth graciously, our friendship and faith deepen, we rejoin each other and our relationship flows again. Marriage Talk (mTalk) is doing the work of marriage in real time (as life is happening). As we walk alongside each other, we weaving together three strands – What to say, How we say it and When we bring it up. Specifically, we . . . • Personalize foundational marriage perspectives to understand what is going on • Use Real Talk skills to create space in our hearts, repair our brokenness and see one another more accurately • Gain Wisdom to catch those moments ripe for doing the work. By bringing these strands together, mTalk builds us into a team and repairs our underlying dynamics, that is, the things happening on the inside of us and between us. Some of these dynamics are identified during mTalk. Surprisingly, other dynamics, which we remain unaware of, also change during mTalk. Then we feel more settled internally and space opens up for old pictures in our hearts to get renewed or revised or replaced. A climate of acceptance and appreciation becomes the norm in our marriage. Our trust grows, conversations flow and faith deepens. We find OUR way to walk through life and resolve problems, as we stay connected. This is our reward for doing the work of marriage. This is a great way to celebrate and go through life together. |
