Stan and Jackie are like so many couples we have worked with over the years in marriage intensives. Each spouse has difficulty fully hearing each other. Both struggle with understanding their spouse’s intentions.

Helping Your Husband

When your husband tells you a story about what is going on at work, or about some conflict with others in his life, you probably want to help. When he thinks out loud through a challenge or problem, you want to do your best to try to help him solve it. Your intentions are good.

More often than not- when a wife begins to help her husband by offering solutions or taking action to solve the issue for him, he does not receive it as help. Most husbands instead feel it as if their wives are bossing them around or being critical. Your “helping” is actually creating problems in the relationship.

Fixing Your Wife’s Problem

When your wife tells you a story about what is going on in her world, or about some conflict with others in her life, you want to help fix the problem. When she thinks out loud about an issue, you want to do your best as her husband to fix the problem. Your intentions are good.

More often than not- when a husband begins to help his wife by offering solutions or taking action to solve the issue for her, she does not receive it as help. Most spouses instead feel as if their husbands are bossing them around or being critical. Your “fixing” your wife’s problem is actually creating problems in the relationship.

How Best To Support Your Spouse

Your spouse does not want you to “fix it”. What your spouse wants most as they are expressing themselves is not help, but your support. Keep these things in mind the next time your spouse presents a problem in their world:

1. Be Physically Present – Hit pause, set down your phone, turn off the television or device and give your spouse full body attention. Have every cell in your body focused on them.
2. Listen Well – God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason. Use good listening skills by intentionally sharing some of what they are saying back to them. As they hear you say their own words back to them, it will help them begin to solve their own issue.
3. Give Support – Empathize with them over the issue in their life. Let them know that you are just as frustrated as they are about this. Tell them that you are sorry that they are going through that and that you love them. Use affection and affirmation in how you support your spouse.
4. Ask Permission First – Before taking any action to help or fix the problem, ask their permission first. Before offering advice about what they should do, ask them if they are open to hear some ideas that you have. Only give advice or take action if you have their permission.
5. Follow Up – Check back with them in the next day or so about how it is going for them. Show that what is important in their life is important to you. If they tried something to resolve the issue, let them know you are interested in how it worked out for them.

It was a tough day working through many relationship issues, but Stan and Jackie have been doing great for over a year, since their marriage intensive.

What do you have to say?

We love to hear from readers. What other suggestions you would add to this article? Do you know someone you need to forward this article to?

This article was written by Roy and Devra Wooten, authors of “The Secret to a Lifetime Love”. Learn more at www.LifeTogetherForever.com © Roy and Devra Wooten 2017. All Rights Reserved. You may replicate this article as long as it is provided free to recipients and includes appropriate attribution. Written permission for other use may be obtained at Secret@LifeTogetherForever.com.

Full body attention is how we tell our spouse they are the most important and highest priority in our world in that moment.

As an intelligent leader who had held her own in a corporate job before focusing on raising children, she knew she would have a better chance of telling him how she feels if she kept her emotions in check. So she asked him if they could talk and began telling him about her stressful day of caregiving. In the middle of her report she realized that his eyes were moving from the television to his phone and back to the television. He was facing the television and rarely turned his head toward her face. And she felt like she was not being heard.

What Lisa wanted more than anything else in that moment was to experience what we call “full body attention”.   She wanted him to show her in every way possible that she had his undivided attention. She wanted to know that there was nothing in the world more important or of a higher priority to him than what she had to say.

Full body attention is not a military salute or some new sexual description. It is the process of physical turning and fully facing our spouse. It includes turning off or pausing devices like cell phones and televisions, making direct eye contact, and moving close (within arm’s reach) to our spouse. Full body attention is the means by which we communicate unequivocally an unambiguously that what our spouse is telling us is the most important and highest priority in our world at that moment.

On our Life Together Forever couples weekends and in our Marriage Intensives, we actually have couples sit in chairs that are strategically placed in the formation we call the “Couples Communication Chairs.” It is a very specific chair placement that elicits full body attention. It also is an easy way for each spouse to know that the discussion and information is important.

©lizronk photography used with permission

Although they are not common today, chairs were manufactured for hundreds of years to help couples have intimate conversations. First reportedly called, “Tete-a-tete” chairs (French for “face-to-face”) antiques are sold today as “Conversation” or “Courting ” chairs. Whatever you call them, your marriage needs more full body attention!

In our experience working with thousands of couples, we have been amazed to see couples in struggle be able to sit in this configuration, show each other full body attention, and work toward a future together. They have shared how they were able to have the conversation they never thought was possible because each spouse gave the other full body attention. We have seen tears and angry facial expressions turn into affectionate touching, hugging and kissing.

If you run into these antique chairs, send us a picture of you two sitting in them. And next time your spouse begins telling you something, try giving them the full body attention you know that your relationship really deserves. Let us know how it goes!

What do you have to say?

We love to hear from readers. What other suggestions you would add to this article? Do you know someone you need to forward this article to?

This article was written by Roy and Devra Wooten, authors of “The Secret to a Lifetime Love”. Learn more at www.LifeTogetherForever.com © Roy and Devra Wooten 2017. All Rights Reserved. You may replicate this article as long as it is provided free to recipients and includes appropriate attribution. Written permission for other use may be obtained at Secret@LifeTogetherForever.com.

(this is part 1 in a 4 part series on Courageous Conversations)

The Power of Fear

Fear has so much power. When it is around, we usually get stuck. We become paralyzed and fail to act. We stop and hide. We run away from the issue as fast as we can. Fear debilitates us and moves us away from each other instead of toward each other.

Many times what couples fear is that if they bring up the issue, it will hurt or ruin their marriage. A spouse is afraid that if she brings up her lack of sexual satisfaction her spouse will call her names and think bad of her.  Another spouse is afraid that if he brings up the issue of their finances, she will see him as incapable of providing for his family. Yet another spouse is afraid to say anything about how the other is parenting because last time they said something, it ended in weeks of stonewalling and criticism.

We’ve shared this story about how lions hunt gazelles in over a hundred couples weekends and I hope you do not mind us sharing it here again.

How Lions Catch Gazelles

I’m told that gazelles are graceful and fast. As pack animals, they stay together in the heard and eat in meadows where they can keep track of any potential threats. Their speed and agility is admired and respected by their nemesis, the lions. Lions know that they are not as agile and fast. As pack animals, they usually hunt with all the females of the pride. The older female lions lie in the tall grass in the vicinity of the herd of gazelles. The younger, faster female lions work their way around to the other side of the herd.

When the signal is given, the younger lions take off toward the gazelle herd with the intention of separating out a few from the rest of the herd. As they get separated from the herd, the smaller number of gazelles are pushed by the younger lions toward the tall grass. As they enter the tall grass, the older female lions simultaneously let out their loudest roar. Fearing the sound of the old female lion’s roars, the gazelle jump back away from the tall grass into the waiting jaws of the younger female lions.

Are You Acting Like a Gazelle?

Unfortunately, most distressed marriages are like the gazelles. They do not have the hard conversations because the thing they fear the most- the destruction of their marriage, might happen. In not having the crucial conversation, the very thing they fear is actually happening. Not having the crucial conversation begins to destroy the person holding back and gets in the way of moving toward each other.

False

Evidence

Appearing

Real

Instead of letting fear win, we need to move forward with courage to have the crucial conversation we most dread. We often ask couples, “Is your marriage worth having a crucial conversation?” By not have the conversation, they may actual end up hurting and ending the marriage.

Check out next week’s blog for the rules for Courageous Conversations.

What do you have to say?

We love to hear from readers.  Do you agree that a lot of couples have fear about having a conversation bout the issues in their marriage? Have you ever heard the story about how lions hunt gazelles before?  In what other ways do we harm our relationship by not being courageous enough to have the hard conversations?

This article was written by Roy and Devra Wooten, authors of “The Secret to a Lifetime Love”. Learn more at www.LifeTogetherForever.com © Roy and Devra Wooten 2016. All Rights Reserved. You may replicate this article as long as it is provided free to recipients and includes appropriate attribution. Written permission for other use may be obtained at Secret@LifeTogetherForever.com.

]]> https://lifetogetherforever.com/2016/01/is-your-marriage-worth-having-a-courageous-conversation/feed/ 10 1034 https://lifetogetherforever.com/2015/03/how-unspoken-expectations-are-keeping-you-from-the-marriage-you-want/ https://lifetogetherforever.com/2015/03/how-unspoken-expectations-are-keeping-you-from-the-marriage-you-want/#comments Tue, 24 Mar 2015 11:00:31 +0000 roylovesdev https://lifetogetherforever.com/?p=404 It is amazing to us how many times husbands and wives are sitting in our offices and learn for the first time something about their spouse. Some have been married years and never knew that when she does this, he feels that… or that it always makes her feel the same negative way when he does that.

It makes sense to us that blown expectations is a huge part of the negative pattern of interactions that couples in struggle find themselves experiencing. One of the biggest “aha”s for us in our work with couples over the years is the huge number of times that the offended spouse has never communicated the expectation to the offending spouse. That is, when one spouse expects the other to do something that has never been communicated and is emotionally frustrated, hurt or sad when it does not happen.

When we make a commitment in marriage to each other, we bring with us expectations about how we will do life together. Our expectations are developed over a lifetime of watching how others do life… primarily our parents and our family of origin. We usually have expectations about who should do what and how it should be done in a number of areas of living including:

• Chores
• Budget
• Sex
• Parenting
• In-law Relationships
• Faith
• Friend Involvement
• Recreation
• Career

We bring these expectations into our marriage with us. But once we are married, we too frequently stop getting to know each other like we began in the early days of our relationship. Our communication about our thoughts on key issues about how we should engage each other and our world together is non-existent. Then when we begin to live life together and our spouse fails to live up to our expectation in one or more areas, instead of talking about it, we usually feel hurt, sad, and/or angry. And we think it is all our spouse’s fault.

Even if we are able to get it all figured out early in our relationship, we frequently find ourselves struggling again later in our marriage. We are not the exact same person that our spouse married. We are more mature. Life has taught us a few more lessons. Strongly held opinions and expectations we once fought for have been replaced with wiser expectations. And we sometimes fail to think about how our spouse has also changed. So we end up being frustrated at our spouse’s failure to meet our expectations.

Not communicating your expectations about how to do life together sets your spouse up in “no-win” situations.

We encourage couples at any stage of their relationship to do the following:

1. Have a courageous conversation about the issue. Use your communication skills to listen to your spouse’s expectations around the issue as well as share your own.
2. Seek to find a win-win solution. Where are you close? What can you agree on? Is there a way to meet each of your goals.
3. Compromise to find a temporary solution. Try our your compromised solution for a time period to which you both agree. We like 30, 60, 90 day commitments.
4. Meet again to review how the trial period went.

Your spouse will never be able to meet your expectations if you do not share them. We hope you will try it out and let us know how it went. We are always looking for great ideas to help couples. If you have a topic or set of advice you would like to share, please let us know about it.

This article was written by Roy and Devra Wooten, authors of “The Secret to a Lifetime Love”. Learn more at www.LifeTogetherForever.com © Roy and Devra Wooten 2015. All Rights Reserved. You may replicate this article as long as it is provided free to recipients and includes appropriate attribution. Written permission for other use may be obtained at Secret@LifeTogetherForever.com.

What is the difference between couples who make their marriage work and those who don’t. In this book, Roy and Devra share what they have learned working with thousands of families and couples. This book can be used be one person in the relationship, but is best used as a couple. It has been written for couples of all ages and stages. It has helped couples say what they need to say. The struggle in communication in which so many couples find themselves feels like a very stuck place. Applying the principles in this book and completing the exercises (alone or together) significantly impacts couples relationships positively.

Roy currently serves as Executive Director of Shield-Bearer Counseling Centers, a nonprofit serving Greater Houston.  Roy and Devra have presented over one hundred forty marriage seminars and retreats.  Devra also serves full time in the Math Department at Prairie View A&M University.  Prior, Devra supported him and the family as he served as Administrator for Texas’ largest children’s home. He received his BS and MS in Clinical and Counseling Psychology at Abilene Christian University and has held licenses from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and the State Board of Examiners of Psychologists.

Their passion for marriage begins at home (since 1988) where they strive to live out the truths taught in their weekend.  Roy and Devra are proud parents of Blake and Brooke, in-laws of Ema and Mitchell, and grandparents of three granddogs – Pam, Ruby, and Jingle. The Wooten family is very involved in their schools, church and community in Northwest Houston.

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