Barry packed a suitcase and announced at the garage door that he was moving out. “Go *&!@#$% yourself”, Stacie yelled back. He pulled out of the garage headed for the couch at the office with tears in his eyes as she sat balling on the living room couch.

It had all started over an argument about toothpaste. She wanted him to stop leaving toothpaste residue in the sink and to stop leaving his toothpaste tube on the counter. He shut down and stopped talking. With no response, she came at him louder and stronger to try to get confirmation from him. Less than minutes later, they were separated.

Stacie called to set up a Marriage Intensive. They had been to a marriage counselor before and had also been to their minister several times over their thirty years of marriage. Barry refused to try counseling again as it always ended up in them yelling at each other in the counselor’s office. Their minister helped them have more grace and forgiveness but the issues would just pop again in the next week. She wanted to try something different because she was scared this was finally the end.

It’s Not About The Toothpaste

Within the first couple of hours of the Marriage Intensive, we helped each person discover the real issue behind the toothpaste argument.

Marriage is an institution set up by God for how to live life.

God built us to do life best when we do it in a committed lifelong relationship.

According to author Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers: The Story of Success), whatever you practice for 10,000 hours will cause you to become an expert in it.

Most of us who are older understand this. When we first began our careers, we learned how to do a task. Over the years, as we performed the task over and over, we became one of the best.

In the break room, we sometimes hear someone say, “I could never do what you do.” We can do it quicker and better than anyone at our company. We get so good at it, we can do it when we are tired or sleepy. It is as if it happens naturally, by default. We know it is not true, because we have spent thousands and thousands of hours doing it.

How To Become An Expert

“The emerging picture from studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert- in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levetin.

The more we do something, the better we get at it. Take your hobby, for example. The more you do it, the better you become. If you enjoy golf, tennis, scrapbooking, pinteresting, photography, or anything else, the more of it you do, the better you become. And the theory says that if you do it long enough, you will get to expert status.

Becoming An Expert In Our Relationship