Nashville Marriage Studio

I’m so excited to announce that the Young Adult Community at Tusculum Cumberland Presbyterian Church is sponsoring a

FREE

Relationship Enrichment Weekend for the community on May 21-22.

We’ll spend the Friday evening (May 21; 7-9 pm) talking about how personality differences impact your relationship and learning to love one another better by identifying each other’s love languages.

Saturday morning (May 22; 9-11:30 am)we’ll get back together to learn skills that will lessen the destruction in future conflicts. We’ll end the morning with an important talk for all couples about the role that sex and intimacy plays in your marriage.

This is a great weekend for couples at all stages: married, engaged (counts as pre-marital education for your TN marriage license discount!), or thinking about getting married. The variety of topics will give you both a great starting point for talking about what areas of your relationship could use improvement.

Tusculum Cumberland Presbyterian Church
477 McMurray Dr
Nashville, TN 37211

To register: Contact Nathan Wheeler  – call (615) 833-0742 or email nathantyac@gmail.com

John Gottman is an amazing marriage therapist who has observed that we can’t stop fights from happening. We’re going to screw up, make each other mad, and hurt one another on occasion. That’s pretty much unavoidable. It’s what happens after the hurts that matter.

Because you know that proverb that says failure is not falling down, but refusing to get back up? Yeah, that proverb was made for marriage and relationships. The problem isn’t that you guys hurt each other, it’s that you hurt each other and don’t take the time to put band-aids on the wounds. More importantly, most of us don’t know what a band-aid for a relationship wound even means.

Let me introduce a few pieces we all  need in our emotional first aid kit:

Humor
Good-natured humor can go a long way in healing wounds in the middle of a fight. A goofy smile or laughing at yourself is an easy way to give your relationship a positivity boost in the middle of a stressful situation. Smiles and laughter will relax both of you and change your perspective from enemy to friendship.

Questions
A great networking tip is to ask people to tell you about themselves. It gets you guys talking, makes the other person feel cared about/interesting, and makes you look like a generous person. In a fight, a big problem is that you’re both talking about your own thoughts/feelings/perspectives and there simply isn’t a whole lot of interest in what your partner thinks or feels. Asking your partner a question about their experience or thoughts after a fight is a wonderful way to send the message that you care.

Touch
I’m not suggesting you go for something intimate here, like a boob grab. No, no. Rubbing her shoulders or stroking his knee while having a stressful conversation, however, can soothe both of you physiologically and mentally. It’s a wonderful reminder to both of you that, “Yes, disagreeing sucks, and I still love you.”

What are some tools in your relationship tool box? Are you guys good at reconnecting after a fight? What are some behaviors you can change that will help make the repair easier/better?

How to tell if your relationship is childish:

• You throw tantrums to make a point.
• The concept of sharing is as foreign to you as quantum physics.
• You’re incapable of saying sorry first.
• If something goes wrong the first words out of your mouth are “It’s not my fault!”, “I didn’t do it!” or “He/she started it!”.
• Remembering to say “please” and “thank you” is really, really difficult.
• Threatening to take your toys and go home seems like a truly reasonable solution.
• You have to wipe the slobber off of your face after kissing.

People, there’s a reason that you have to be 18* to get married in the state of Tennessee: Marriage requires grown ups.

*Technically, in Tennessee you can get married before the age of 18 if your parents are present. With a court order you can get married before the age of 16.

This is a guest post from Omari Whyte, a financial representative from Innovative Financial Group. He’ll be providing us with great, thought-provoking advice when it comes to premarital finances for the next month or so. Not only will he be showing up on the blog, but his expertise (and humor) will be on display at the Bound Together Workshops.

I usually ask people to close their eyes and imagine the following. But with our current media of communication that is difficult. So read the following question and imagine:

Your are 65 and retired.
What are you wearing?
How do you spend your days? Nights?
What are you spending your money on?
Where are you spending your time?
Who are you spending your time with?

Now that you have a good idea of what your retirement is going to look like, are you sure that it is the same vision your spouse has for retirement? So many times couples never take the time to talk about what their retirement goals are. Being on the same page makes all the difference.

A good question to start with when deciding on your retirement goals is:

Do we retire because of health or wealth?
Most people in America retire because they simply can not work anymore. However, if you start early enough and plan you can retire because of the latter.

What do we plan to do with your money?
Pass it on- J.P. Morgan
Donate it- Bill Gates
Not have any- Most Americans

Most people have pretty conservative goals when it comes to retirement, however, not having a plan is what makes it so hard to accomplish.

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This is a guest post from Omari Whyte, a financial representative from Innovative Financial Group. He’ll be providing us with great, thought-provoking advice when it comes to premarital finances for the next month or so. Not only will he be showing up on the blog, but his expertise (and humor) will be on display at the Bound Together Workshops.