This is part 4 of a 5 part series on Time Outs excerpted from our book, “The Secret to Lifetime Love”.
As soon as you have agreed to when the Time Out will be concluded, you should make sure to keep your end of the agreement and return to the conversation at the scheduled time and place. The next Time Out rule is to do just that.
Return to Conversation as Scheduled
This is part 3 of a 5 part series on Time Outs excerpted from our book, “The Secret to Lifetime Love”.
When either of you ask for a timeout, it is important that both of you work together to find out when the time out will be concluding. The next Time Out rule is to do just that.
State an Estimated Time to Continue the Discussion
This is part 2 of a 5 part series on Time Outs excerpted from our book, “The Secret to Lifetime Love”.
When you know that either your spouse or you have become emotionally triggered, it is important that you begin the process immediately of implementing a Time Out.
Communicate the Request for a Time Out
This is part 1 of a 5 part series on Time Outs excerpted from our book, “The Secret to Lifetime Love”.
What do you do when you are triggered but you need to solve the issue? We have found through our own experience and through the experience of working with thousands of couples that we need to find a way to separate and cool down. Cooling down helps us calm ourselves and allow the thinking part of our brain to catch up to the feeling part of our brain. We call it a Time Out.
Time Out Rules
Jillian and Randall called for a Marriage Intensive. He explained that early in their marriage he began to believe that he was unattractive, repulsive and unwanted as Jillian bristled at his requests for sexual activity. Jillian could not understand why her husband never approached her for sex anymore and suspected that he had another lover or a porn addiction.
Jillian and Randall are like so many other couples who are experiencing the pain of a sexless marriage. Over the course of a very hard day of work in the Marriage Intensive, they both found some healing personally and then in their relationship, and built a new future together.
We are pro marriage. We are focused on building a relationship that creates a lifetime love. We help couples do life together forever.
Working with couples on the brink of divorce in our Marriage Intensives, we have compiled a list of things that lead to divorce. The more items on the list you do, the greater the likelihood that you are destroying your marriage.
How to End Your Marriage
It’s that time of year again when our doorbell rings and children of all ages hold out a bag asking for “trick or treats”. Television sets are filled with “spooky” movies and “haunted” houses. Stores are packed with cases and cases of candy.
Over the years working with thousands of couples in our Life Together Forever Retreats and our Marriage Intensives, we have witness some of the most challenging spouses. So here is out list of the scariest spouses in marriages today.
The Five Scariest Spouses
“You always make me feel so mad.”
“It’s your fault because you cause me to be so crazy.”
“I wouldn’t treat you like that if you would just stop making me feel so frustrated.”
Dana and Mike had struggled for the last several years through a cycle of love and forgiveness, building tension, and explosive hurtful words and actions. And they are not alone. We have worked with many couples, like Dana and Mike, who live this crazy cycle of interacting.
You Make Me Feel This Way
Different versions of the same problem seem to focus on the idea that, somehow, it is our spouse’s fault that we are feeling the emotions that we are feeling. It is our spouse’s actions, or lack of action, that has caused me to feel these intense emotions. If we did not have this spouse, or if we did not experience our spouse’s actions (or lack of action) that way, then we would not feel the negative, intense emotions we are experiencing.
It makes for a perfect excuse to feel the way we do. When we blame our spouse for what we think about ourselves or how we feel, we have a great advantage of not having to accept responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, assumptions and actions. In our minds, we can experience a sort of “free pass” to blow up, act out, have a fit, etc.
Unless you are in a dangerous relationship, you need to double check your strategy of blaming how you feel all on your spouse.
What Causes Me To Feel So Bad?
We have witnessed horrible brokenness in marriage over the years. In our full day Marriage Intensive, we sit with a couple as they share their brokenness.
Most of the time, we are unable to deal with the brokenness that brings them into our office until we work through some of the brokenness from the past. The affair, financial mistrust, lack of passion and love, and hurtful language and actions are frequently the results of some wounding much earlier in life that has been carried into the marriage.
Wounded Places