REAL Marriage

We are back from cub scout camp. Everyone in my family thought it was a Friday through Sunday camp. Thanks to the cubmaster who called on Wednesday night we found out it was a Thursday through Saturday camp. He had also sent a letter with the correct dates which I did not read carefully since I already had the camp scheduled in my PDA. After his call Susan and I got the kiddos to bed and then did a quick packing of everything. Fortunately we were already pretty organized for the trip and only needed to pack and put the things in the car. It also meant that Susan had to ask for an additonal day off after going in 1.5 hours early. Her boss is a good sport and let her go.

This is the stuff REAL Marriages are made out of - mistakes and last minute changes. We were both planning on camp and yet we were both off by one day. Such a thing could have made for big arguments and short fuses. For us it meant adapting to the change, working as a team to meet the new deadline, and laughing at our mistake. It also meant being thankful for a helpful cubmaster and an understanding boss.

All of us have things happen like this and we can learn to be adaptable or we can let it become a big deal that causes trouble in our marriage. Early on I would have let this be a big deal and now I laugh about it and see it as a good blog entry. Feel free to send me your stories of being adaptable. Put them in the comments so we can all realize how normal we are and that it is okay.

Be adaptable and you will be able to enjoy your REAL Marriage.

Marriage investors. What a great concept. I first heard it from someone at Families Northwest and now I want to encourage you to be a marriage investor. Anyone can be a marriage investor and you don’t have to be married. Here are a few tips on how you can be a marriage investor.

Be Respectful of Marriage

When you think and speak about marriage be respectful. Marriage has plenty of humor in it and laughter is good. Make sure you laugh at the humor in marriage without laughting at marriage.

Enrich your Marriage

If you are married do things to continually enrich your marriage. Read marriage books, go to classes and seminars, and spend time with people who are also excited about marriage. Go on dates together and have fun together.

Enrich other’s Marriages

Pass along to your friends the name of the marriage book that you found helpful, tell them about the class or seminar that made a positive difference for you, and support their efforts to have a good marriage. Encourage your friends to have their date nights and offer to watch their children. For all of your friends, be a friend of their marriage.

Support Premarital Education

If you are wondering what to get that couple for their wedding try paying for their premarital education. Get a number of couples who are friends of the engaged couple and split the cost of their premarital education. If someone has alread done that then get a group together and give them the gift of a marriage cruise that will take place six months to a year after they are married. (This is a cruise combined with a marriage seminar or workshop.)

Vote

In a democratic country one of the most powerful ways to support anything is to vote for it. Vote for people and policies that are in line with supporting marriage. Marriage is a great benefit to the country and to the married so it deserves our support.

Become a Marriage Mentor

Many churches have mentoring programs and so do some agencies. Be willing to share your lessons learned in marriage with couples who are not as far along in the marriage journey.

If you have other ways of being a marriage investor be sure to add a comment to the blog. Become a marriage investor today and see how it improves your REAL Marriage.

Really, I think we should stay in love and keep the fire going. It may be a small fire even but that is the kind that keeps us warm, comfortable, and safe so that is good. The big fires are good for celebrating though you can’t get to close or you’ll get burned up. Enough about fires this is about maintaining your marriage and an event I have thought about.

I am working with the church I attend, Vancouver Church of Christ, to have a Fall in Love Again event on September 23, 2006. This is the first day of fall, hence the name. We will do a mixer, I will speak on Falling in Love Again, and we’ll play a “Newlywed Game” kind of thing. There will be finger foods and dessert and maybe even some door prizes. We will also have a one page survey looking at what kind of marriage and family events these couples think the congregation needs, which ones they would attend, and which ones they would be willing to teach/facilitate or be trained to teach/facilitate. This is of course if the leadership approves the event.

To fall in love again you need to be REAL, or Romantic, Encouraging, Adaptable, and Loving. Each couple gets to define how these things work in their marriage. Serenading may be romantic but not when I sing so I only sing when I’m trying to be humorous. You get the idea.

Any of you church folks reading this can use the idea at your church. All of you can use the first day of Fall, September 23, 2006, as an excuse to Fall in Love Again. Give it a try and see how it adds to your REAL Marriage.

When people are confused by something a common phrase used to describe this confusion is, “it’s all Greek to me.” I heard that phrase to many times as an undergraduate Bible major taking Greek. Some people find marriage just as confusing though it really isn’t and it is much easier to learn how to be married than to learn Greek - at least for me. Now I’m trying to navigate the idea of blogging and the blogosphere and getting recognized and all that stuff so I can get this marriage information out to as many people as possible.

http://technorati.com/claim/k49rsp8wnu” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile

So this is my way of getting on the Technorati website and hopefully increasing traffic.

For those of you looking for the marriage tip in all of this I say that sometimes you have to get outside of your comfort zone and learn some new skills or hone some old skills if you want your marriage to be a REAL Marriage.

It is summer and that means sunshine. Make a REAL Love Note for your loved one and hide it in the sun visor of his or her car. The next time your loved one drives in the sunshine and puts down the visor your REAL Love Note is delivered. For those of you who have loved ones that do not use the visor (like me) put the REAL Love Note in their sunglasses case or wherever they put their sunglasses.

Bonus tip: The message for such a note can be, “You brighten my day.”

Keep sending those REAL Love Notes to build your REAL Marriage.

Much about military marriages is the same as other marriages and yet some things are different. In a military marriage you can be separated for long periods of time or have frequent smaller separations for training or short missions. The military moves you around and there are rules to follow even for the families.

To have a strong military marriage you must work on it consistently. You need to do regular marriage maintenance, PMCS, for those of you in the Army. Start enriching and maintaining your marriage now. I am writing an article that I will post soon on my website in the resources section. For now, here are some areas to work and things to try.

• Be a Team
• Communicate
• Listen
• Resolve conflict with good skills
• Be proactive
• Hang in there
• Have friends and friends of your marriage
• Cross train (Learn to do the things your spouse does in the marriage)
• Find marriage mentors (See the chaplain, local church, or community center)
• Date your spouse regularly
• Have sex with your spouse regularly
• Give each other REAL Love Notes
• Parent together

Many military marriages are successful and yours can be too. Begin working on your military marriage today. Send questions in the comment section or suggestions based on how you have made your military marriage a REAL Marriage. Share your knowledge with others so that all military marriages can be REAL Marriages.

Use a marker designed for windows (Crayola makes 2 sizes and a bunch of colors) or use a dry erase marker and leave a note for your loved one on their windshield, rear view mirror, or bathroom mirror.

REAL Love notes enrich REAL Marriages.

You may have heard that marriage is 50-50. I happen to believe that marriage is 100-100. Each person has to give 100% all of the time. When couples see themselves as a team and work together that way there is not a 200 marriage though, there is a 300, 500, or 1000 marriage.

A team wins together or loses together. This is why we cannot have instances in our marriages when one of us wins and the other loses. Either we both win or we both lose. It may look like one wins and the other loses and the marriage is still good yet over time such win-lose times will add up and the marriage will lose.

When spouses see themselves as part of a team with each other there is a synergy created that makes the marriage better for both of them. If I want to have a great marriage the easiest way to do that is to work together with my wife for our marriage. If I can do something to make our marriage better for her then I know it will be better for me also.

See your marriage as a team effort where you win together or lose together and I suspect that your marriage will start winning more often. Be a team and watch what it does for your REAL Marriage.

Harold and the Purple Crayon is a children’s book. Last night my six year old son read it to all of us at the beginning of our family time. As he read the book and I looked at the pictures I was impressed with Harold’s go get ‘em proactive approach. Harold took action. He was proactive. If there was something he needed and didn’t have he just drew it with his purple crayon and took care of the matter. What a lesson for us in marriage!

We need to be proactive and take action in our marriages. If there is something we need we need to do something about it. So often we wait for our spouse or someone else to do something about difficulties we are experiencing and we need to be taking care of it ourself.

What do you need in your marriage, either to make a good one great, or a bad one better? Take out your purple crayon and make a list or draw some pictures and then take action. Get the book “Harold and the Purple Crayon” and read it together for fun and then talk about what I have written in this blog. Grab some paper and a purple crayon and make a plan together.

Remember, each REAL Marriage is different and ideas for making it REAL for you come in all kinds of ways and from all kinds of sources. Grab a purple crayon and draw up your REAL Marriage.

Is there really an ideal age for marriage? I think not. The average age that men marry is now 27 years old and for women it is 26 years old. Susan and I were both 26 when we married. Instead of waiting for a certain age to marry work on attaining certain skills before marrying. Skill attainment is related to age in that a 26 year old generally has had more opportunity to acquire skills than a 16 year old. Yet we all know those wiser than their years young people and those immature older people so don’t let age be a deciding factor.

It is common in the marriage and family therapy world to see a difference of 10 or more years as a red flag. This is especially true the younger the younger person in the relationship is when the couple marries. If she is 64 and he is 50 the age is probably not a big deal. Again, the important factor here is relationship skills. Those with 10 or more years difference, especially on the young end, have a greater disparity of skills and likely have some underlying generational differences that will come up over time. These are things to think about when thinking about marriage.

What are the skills you need before marriage? Here is a list of what I think is important in no particular order. Listening is important and so is assertive communication which means saying what you want clearly and directly without being mean. Honesty and integrity are important and yes these are a skill that takes constant practice. Conflict resolution and problem solving are important since all relationships have conflict of some sort. Knowing your own strengths and weaknesses is helpful. Being able to budget and pay your bills is a good skill.

These are not the only skills you need in marriage yet this list is a good starting point. Make sure you have these before thinking about getting married. Some of you may have noticed that I did not write anything about sex. Sex is the one area that not having skill before marriage is a plus. These skills are best learned in marriage with your spouse.

Work on the skills and any legal age can be a good age for your REAL Marriage.