Nashville Marriage Studio

I don’t know that there is anything more hopeful than the January calendar page. So clean. So fresh. So full of possibilities.

During the last session of premarital counseling, the couple creates goals for their first year of marriage. Much like a new year, anniversaries in a relationship are wonderful times to reflect on the past and plan for what they want in the next year.

Therapist Note: In the past it was common for couples to work together towards a common goal, like running a farm or business. Modern couples often miss out on the team-building that common goals provide because we’re so busy leading our own lives. Common goals are great reminders that marriage is a team effort and that both of you are necessary.

Maybe you don’t want to wait until your next anniversary to start improving your life or relationship, though. Maybe you want to take advantage of that nice, clean page of the calendar. Maybe I can help.

For the month of January sign up below to receive free email coaching with me to help you achieve your New Year’s Couple Resolutions. You want to run the Country Music Marathon together? Save 10% of your income every month for a down payment on a house? Treat each other to special date nights once a month? Read the Bible together this year? Whatever goal you guys want to set for your relationship I want to help, so here’s how this is going to go down:

1. Sign up and provide your email address, your first name, your partner’s first name and a brief description of the goal you guys want to achieve together.
2. I’ll email you back with my suggestions on how to make it a S.M.A.R.T. goal.
3. We’ll finalize the plan for the New Year through email.
4. I’ll email you twice a month for the rest of the year to keep you kids accountable (seriously, that’s the hard part about goals – you forget you made them a month in!)
5. By this time next year you’ll be faster/thinner/richer/closer/smarter than you are today! And all for the hefty price of zero!

Sign up now!

Therapist Note: This coaching is not therapy. It’s help in defining and bi-monthly accountability regarding your goals. That’s it.

I know that some of you are in relationships that feel like this plant right now.

Your relationship is dry. Unhealthy. Malnourished. Frail. Dying.

You’re ready to give up. You want to quit.

I don’t know you or your situation so I can’t really give any advice. What I can tell you is that the plant’s dry, dead, brittle look isn’t always for forever. Sometimes this is just the season in the plant’s life. The season right before the plant turns green and its flowers bloom.

Maybe your relationship isn’t dead. Maybe it’s just in the season right before it blooms.

I’m 26 years-old, and I honestly can’t remember being in relationships that didn’t involve The Internet.

My first conversation with who would end up being my first boyfriend was on AOL Instant Messenger.

In college, arguments with the (same) boyfriend were aired for all to see through those wonderful Away Messages (“NumNum007 is away and crying herself to sleep because her boyfriend is a JERK!”… yeah, I was that girl.)

I Googled the man who I would end up marrying before we went on our first date. I told him about it on the third date (“You GOOGLED me!?!… Well, what did you find?”).

I’ve blogged most of my love life. I’ve given my significant other the top spot on my Myspace page and been in every possible relationship status there is (single, in a relationship, it’s complicated, engaged and married).

Not only that, but I’ve watched all of my 20-something friends do the same thing. I know that a relationship is blooming when profile pics go from one person to two. And that a marriage is in trouble when the relationship status disappears from their profile.

For Gen Y social media has always been a part of our love lives, and maybe that’s why I thought it was weird that anyone would need a guide on how to handle Facebook and your marriage.

Most of the advice is pretty standard. Let people know what your relationship status is. Don’t say mean things about your spouse. Use The Internet to say nice things about one another (even though I side more with Project M on this one and think that Internet PDA is kinda awkward).

There was some advice, however, that seemed odd in my opinion. Like, don’t ‘friend’ old flames or former crushes. And to keep your conversation with the opposite sex as public and as minimal as possible. Personally, my high school sweetheart, every guy I dated in college and the boy I had a crush on all through elementary school are all friends of mine on Facebook. I regularly see updates on them in my feed. And? I think it’s ok. I mean, I don’t privately message any of them to get their advice on fights I’m having with my husband, but it’s kinda fun to know how many kids they have or where their job took them.

The other piece of advice was to give each other access to all of your social media accounts. On some level, I respect the transparency. However, I and many of those I asked on Facebook and Twitter wondered where the trust was. This is definitely one of those questions without a right answer and that a couple needs to talk about and agree to. Dorie Morgan gave one of my favorite answers when she suggested, “[we] have each other’s passwords but treat it like having each other’s social security #… emergencies only”.

Has the issue of Facebook, Twitter or email been a problem in your relationship? Are young people just so used to the presence of The Internet in our lives that we don’t think that much of it? Are people who are less familiar with having all of their social interactions available online rightfully cautious? What are The Rules when it comes to The Internet?

Watching a celebrity deal with the ramifications of an affair excites pretty much everyone. We want to know when. We want to know with how many. We want to know why. And most of all we want to know how can we make sure something like this never happens to us.

It’s easy to assume that affairs happen because a person is a jerk that disrespects his wife and family. Or that she was lonely and just needed attention. Both can be true, however, Emily Bowen a therapist in Virgina, has specialized in understanding what is at the root of most infidelity. Below I’ve described the 5 different types of affairs. Maybe with a better understanding of what behaviors often lead to affairs we will be better prepared to avoid or recover from them.

Conflict avoidant
This couple is really nice.  So nice that they can’t say anything disagreeable.  Because what if she leaves me if I tell her her cooking stinks?  Will he quit loving me if I admit that I don’t like Star Trek?  All this hiding and lying creates loads of anxiety.  And one of the best ways to diffuse anxiety is to create a triangle, in this case a love triangle.  Hello, New Lover.  Goodbye, Anxiety.

Intimacy Avoidant
This couple fights.  All. the. time.  Partly because of repressed hostility towards their parents, but mostly because they are afraid of intimacy, or being vulnerable with another person.  Thoughts like, “I don’t want to be too close to you.  Closeness hurts.  I don’t want to hurt” happen here.  Having an affair is simply one more barrier to intimacy.

Sex Addiction
Yes, it’s real.  Ever heard that your brain is the greatest pharmacy in the world?  Every drug you could ever want exists in it.  Having sex is an easy way to release those natural feel good chemicals, and for some people a wonderfully secret way to numb the pain.  Because unlike alcohol or drugs, it’s a bit harder to tell when someone is “overdosing”.  Just like alcohol or drugs, you become tolerant to a certain level and require more and more to get a fix.  And sometimes that “fix” is in the form of some action on the side.

Split Self
You’re doing everything “right”.  You’re providing for the family or nurturing the kids.  Whatever your role, you’re getting things done.  In doing so, you’ve sacrificed some of your own needs.  Instead of admitting these needs to your partner and family, you seek to have them met elsewhere.  These affairs are typically very serious, and people in them struggle to give them up. 

Exit
Some people can’t just say what they want, and need justification from an external source.  This is the case with the exit affair.  Saying they just don’t want in anymore would be infinitely healthier, but having an external excuse (i.e. an affair) makes them feel justified.

 

Here’s a test to help you determine whether you are “marriage material”:

You are on the toilet. You are about to “finish up”. An empty roll of toilet paper is staring back at you. You (choose one):

• Cry. Why is this happening to me? Is there no God?
• Get mad. Why didn’t the last person fix this? When are people going to learn some freakin’ bathroom etiquette?
• Waddle. Waddle to wherever more toilet paper is and get on with life.

Waddlers, congratulations! You’re ready for marriage! One of the most important skills for a successful partnership, like marriage, is being solution-oriented rather than blame-oriented when life happens. You’re first response to conflict is “What can I do to make this situation better?” not “Who can I blame so that I don’t have to be responsible?“. This is awesome and you’re going to be an awesome spouse.

Too many people are in unhappy marriages and relationships and aren’t taking any responsibility for the unhappiness. They’re just sitting there on the proverbial toilet crying, angry and ‘soiled’. When unhappy couples finally come to counseling do you know what their goals are? For the therapist to change their partner. Because they didn’t contribute to any of their problems. Baloney.

Here are some steps you can take today to become personally accountable in your relationship:

1. Identify a problem in your relationship.
2. Identify how YOU contribute to the problem (other than abusive situations, there is some way that you’re contributing to this problem).
3. Do something to correct your portion of the problem.
4. Do something regardless of what your spouse is doing/not doing. 
5. Pick up a copy of John Miller’s QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability at Work and in Life a GREAT book on personal accountability. Read it together.

Start taking responsibility today.

If you help the poor, you are lending to the LORD–and he will repay you!
Proverbs 19:17

When I first read this verse I immediately thought, “Money. God wants me to give money to poor people.” After a little more ‘marinating’, if you will, I realized that people (especially Americans) are often poor in many things that have nothing to do with finances.

We’re poor in the area of love. Forgiveness. Community. Understanding. Fellowship. Communication. Affection.

The list really can go on forever.

So many times in relationships we hold back some part of ourselves because we’re afraid that the favor won’t be returned. He doesn’t take you on a date night because he doesn’t trust he’ll get that hug he desperately needs. She won’t forgive you for the affair because she doesn’t trust you won’t do it again.

No one wants to go first because we’re sure we’ll get screwed and left holding the bill. The thing is that God wants to see us bountiful in areas like love and compassion and forgiveness. When we’re able to extend a portion of who he is to others, especially our spouses, he is eager to repay you.

Go ahead and “go first”. It’ll be ok.

I can’t remember where I first saw this video, but I do remember crying. Because OMG is there anything sweeter than a dog so happy to see her daddy back from Afghanistan? I think not.

After I got done crying I started thinking about how happy this dog was to see her owner. How odd that really is. Someone that you trust and depend on steps out of your life for 6 months without nary an email and when he comes back you’re rolling over onto your back so he can scratch your belly? Preposterous.

But in a dog’s world it makes sense. It makes sense because dogs love in an extraordinary way. In a way that puts us humans to shame. Because dogs are able to give the people in their lives the benefit of the doubt. The soldier was gone for months and this dog could have assumed that he had found a new best friend or that he had forgotten about her or that he had run out on her. It would have been easy to make those assumptions and to have then punished her human master accordingly.

But she didn’t. Instead she gave him the benefit of the doubt and unleashed months of pent up love on his butt. And it was awesome in all its tear-inducing glory.

Who in your life do you need to give the benefit of the doubt to?

Inspiration boards. They’re like the most important part of the wedding planning process, particularly for social media savvy brides.

Inspiration boards allow a couple to create a visual focal point for their wedding day. And they’re pretty. Brides like pretty.

These boards can be much more than just pretty pictures. These inspiration boards can be the key to keeping your sanity.

There are two types of brides: Maximizers and Satisficers.

Maximizers are the perfectionist brides who find it extremely difficult to make a final decision. These brides are bogged down wondering if they’re getting the best value or getting the exact detail that they desire. Because they are constantly wondering if they’ve made the best decision they often feel unsure about the choices they’ve made.

Satisficers, on the other hand, have already decided what is important to them and what it will take to satisfy their wedding needs. When they see a bouquet that is the right size & price or a bridesmaid’s dress in the correct shade of lilac they have no problem making a decision or purchase because these brides are confident that their needs are being met.

The satisficer brides are often the happy ones. Confidence and knowing what you want will do that for you.

Inspiration boards (and a great wedding planner) help you clearly define what you want out and allow you to know it when you see it.