Early on in my couple’s counseling career, I kept noticing a commonality across a wide variety of at-risk-marriages. More frequently, it was the “y” chromosomed partner to blame, but not always. A pesky “DIY” impulse would block a couple’s ability to call a marriage counselor until the initial problem had sprouted several generations of new problems. Again, and again, I’d sit across from a worn out couple. I’d imagine myself a kind of relationship plumber, wishing I’d been contacted when the leak was first noticed…before the flood…before the structural damage. Too often, from a couples’ tool-belt, hung Dollar Store specials they’d inherited from their own families of origin…tools that maybe didn’t even work that well back in the day…certainly not now! You know the old saying, “When all you own is a hammer….” Too often, spouses would nail each other with the same old solutions that would eventually become more intractable than the original problems themselves!
That’s what led to the construction of my marriage enrichment program (i.e. “Whole-hearted Marriages: At Home Retreats”). My original plan was to introduce spouses in “good enough marriages” to heaping helpings of strategic ounces of prevention. If I could offer couples research-based tools and techniques hot off the graduate school presses, I reasoned, I could nip decades of needless suffering in the bud! It didn’t take long in my early career to discover that quality tools are necessary, but not sufficient for a lifetime of friendship, romance, parenting, and six or seven other tasks requiring a couple to yoke together and pull the load in the same direction. Tools and techniques are useful when working with machines and other objects. But people aren’t machines, and tend to resent being treated that way. Let me give you an example of what I mean.
Solid research has determined that the first two percent of what you do in a marital conflict will determine the next ninety-eight percent of what happens next. For example, when you come out swinging, people usually swing back! That fact has led to the solid therapist-sanctioned advice of “softening the start-up” to conflicts. In other words, this technique involves offering your spouse the difficult feedback with a front edge on it that includes something kind or generous. When teaching this, the most common response I hear from a spouse is: “Oh, a feedback sandwich! I learned that at work! Say a compliment…then the hard thing…then a compliment!” That re-frame of my words has always made me cringe a little…like I’m Michael Scott from The Office pulling off the latest managerial manipulation. Marital skills alone remind me a little of an anatomy lab. You can have all the right parts, but without the animating spirit, it’s a dead thing.
So what re-animates a marriage? Carl Jung’s depth psychology hints at it. Viktor Frankl’s existential psychology comes very close to naming it. At the core of the human being, is something limitless and generous. The contemplative traditions name it as the life of God itself pulsing at the core of each of us. It expresses itself in our relationships…especially in our most intimate relationships. Whatever grows the connection with that Love, Beauty, Truth, and Goodness within us and between us can be mined on behalf of growing our relationship.
TWO SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TO RE-ANIMATE A MARRIAGE
A Weekly Cup of Coffee plus Dessert
This is my invariant prescription I write for every single couple! It’s based on the insight that deep marital communication is prayer. Full stop! If you deeply and vulnerably shared with one another, you have made contact with God! Try to pick an hour and a half per week that will be a ritual for you two. Spend time listening deeply to one another. The topic: “What’s been on your mind all week?” “What’s been in your feelings this week?” The goal isn’t to fix anything, solve anything, or administrate anything. The goal is simply to know and be known. If walking while you talk works better, then walk! At the end of getting emotionally and spiritually naked with each other, be sure to get physically naked with each other too. There is a reason you fell in love with each other. See if you can recognize your old friend again!
Prayer to Increase Love
“God, increase my love for (your spouse’s name).” Tailor this to your spiritual tastes.
Pray that prayer fifteen or twenty times a day. (Place it on your dashboard, your mirror. Pray it every time you take a drink, or use the restroom).
The least wrong thing you can say about God, is that “God is love.” What are the chances that the God who is Love wouldn’t answer that prayer? In some ways, your desire to pray it indicates that it’s being answered already!