Wednesday's Wedded Bliss: Communication

Quick update before we get into the good stuff. I started my cardiology rotation on Monday, and unlike OB, I have to work. A lot. But it's good and I'm happy to be seeing patients again. However, I have less time to create original content. So I'm going to attempt to do all my writing on the weekends and then parse it out during the week. Also, next week, my wife is going to help me out. We have some good stuff planned on what a husband need from his wife, and what a wife needs from her husband. It will be excellent. Don't miss it.

Now for the good stuff. Communication is huge in marriage. When my wife and I are on the same page, when we both are talking and discussing what is going on with us, life is a whole lot smoother. But when we forget to talk things out, or forget to discuss events, things go bad quickly. Tension builds, tempers flare, people die. Well, not the last one, but it gets ugly around here. So we work hard on communication.

My wife doesn't know it yet, but we are going to be starting something new in our marriage. In my readings, I came across a blog that had 5 questions for a husband and wife to ask each other every week. Without telling her, I have been trying to incorporate these questions into our conversations over the past couple of weeks. And it has been good, but now it's time for a full blown experiment. I'll let you know how it goes. For now, here are the questions:

1. How did you feel loved this past week?
2. What does your upcoming week look like?
3. How would you feel most loved & encouraged in the days ahead?
4. How would you best feel pursued in sex / intimacy this week?
5. How can I pray for you this week?

Conflict and compromise in marriage

As I was putting together yesterday's list of reasons to not get married, I really wanted to talk more about compromise. So for today's Wednesday's Wedded Bliss post, we are going to talk about compromise.

As I mentioned before, compromise is a big part of marriage. Taking two people and joining them together is no easy task. It is especially difficult if neither is willing to do any give and take. What my wife and have found to be helpful is a simple way to figure out how important something is to us and then make compromises from there.

While I didn't come up with this compromise system, I am more than happy to take credit for it. Prepare to have your mind blown by how easy it is. First, both you and your spouse need to be able to count to ten. If you can't do that, you need to have ten fingers. If you don't have ten fingers, you may borrow some toes. If you still can't get to ten, find a different system. Next, you need a decision or conflict. There should be no shortage of decisions to make. Finally, you need a smidgen of honesty. Nobody likes a liar. With these pieces in play, you can compromise a little easier.

Let's take this made up conflict of where to hang a painting. I want to hang the painting in the living room because I think it's a neat piece of art and my wife hates the painting and wants to burn it in a fire. So we rationally talk it out. I rate on a scale of 1-10 how important it is to me to have the painting in the living room. A ten would mean that this is the most important thing in my life right now, and a 1 indicates that I'm so apathetic to this matter I'd almost rather watch paint dry while having my nose hairs plucked. In this case it's a four for me. My wife on the other hand says it's a niner. Yes, a niner. This is a big deal to her. This is almost as important as that time I tried to name our son Rufus. Almost.

Now here's where it gets tricky. Not really, I'm just kidding. I already told you this would be super easy. The next step is to just compare the two numbers: 9 is higher than 4. This is obviously very important to her. While to me, I want this to happen, but it's not a nine, not even close. My day won't be ruined if this doesn't happen. So we take the painting, dowse it in gasoline, and set it on fire.

What if we had both said 4? Then you flip a coin or something else easy. Neither one really cares a whole lot about the decision.

What if we had both said 9? Then it gets interesting. When that happens, you break out the dueling canes, first to draw blood gets their way. Seriously. This is the only way to resolve this type of high stakes issue. Make sure to wear goggles so you don't lose an eye.

The nice thing about the rating method is it allows both people to see where the other person is at. Sometimes I would push to get my way, even though it was a 4 for me, because I didn't realize how important the issue was to my wife. But when I know that this is something really important to her then I can better adjust my priorities. It's not a perfect system, but it has helped us out countless times.

Surgery first

Wednesday's Wedded Bliss article is coming soon. I have to go watch a hysterectomy. Updates soon.

Marriage Philosophy

Today I wanted to share our philosophy behind marriage. We have two sayings in our house, the first is "Marriage doesn't have to suck" and the second is, "It's you and me against the world."

We were married young. My wife had just turned 21 and I was much, much older at 22. We were both still in college. When we told our professors, friends, and parents, while most were generally supportive, there were still a number of detractors. The biggest reason for being against it was that we were too young - we hadn't "seen enough of the world yet." A lot of them mentioned that we should wait and "go travel Europe" or that we had "plenty of time to be married and should enjoy the single life."

If you view your spouse as a "ball and chain" or that marriage is a trap that sucks the life out of you, then what they said makes a lot of sense. But marriage doesn't have to suck. When you marry your best friend, and you remain committed to maintaining that friendship, marriage is awesome. I didn't want to go travel Europe by myself, I wanted to get married and bring my best friend along. It all comes down to perspective. Marriage can be a lot of things, but it doesn't have to suck.

The other saying, comes out a lot during our arguments. When you live in close quarters with another person, conflict is bound to arise, never mind the incredibly difficult process of uniting two different personalities. In the heat of things, it's easy to make the other person out to be the bad guy. But when we take a step back and remind each other that we are on the same team, that when everyone else is against us, we have committed to being partners and we are committed to supporting each other no matter what, when we remember that, our fights become resolvable differences, rather than battles to the death.

"You and me against the world" also comes into play when one of us is about to set off on something new. As a single person, you say, "I'm going to tackle this new thing." But as a married couple, we can say, "I'm right here with you, supporting you emotionally, physically, financially, or however else you need it. Even if everything else is going against you, I'm standing with you." You and me against the world reminds us that we are a team in every aspect of life.

Wednesday's Wedded Bliss

I did a little brain storming with my wife yesterday to come up with content for Wednesday's "Wedded Bliss" series. I think we've got some good stuff coming up for the next couple of weeks. The plan is to make it applicable to people who are dating too, but sometimes it just won't be. Sorry. The other good news is that my wife has agreed to throw in her two cents every now and then. So for those of you who are sick of me, there is hope.

To begin, I wanted to define marriage and how we approach it and will continue to approach it in this blog. Marriage, to us, is a commitment between a man and a woman, for life, in which both agree to leave their old lives behind and commit to becoming a new, unified creation. I am not addressing any gay/lesbian rights in this post, nor am I trying to make any judgement calls. This is simply our approach to marriage and where we will start from when we talk about marriage.

We use the term "leave and cleave" a lot in our house. It is used to indicate that we are leaving our old lives behind, we are leaving the care of our parents, we are leaving our "single" desires behind, and we are committing to being joined to each other. We are committing to developing a unified sense of purpose, creating a new family, and pursuing a life together. Whereas, before marriage, we were two people on parallel roads, we are now two people whose paths have merged and are now traveling the same road, hand in hand.

Life is better when you have someone to share it with.