Three Things We Learned in Marriage Therapy that Saved Our Marriage
3 Things We Learned in Marriage Counseling That Saved Our Marriage that Can Save Your Relationships:
I will never forget when Sara first told me she was sad. It was only a few months after my father died, and I was completely overwhelmed with my grief to see her pain. She was unhappy and sad with our marriage and felt unseen, unsupported, and not heard.
I felt so ashamed that I, a pastor who cares for so many couples struggling in their marriage, was clueless about how my wife felt about our marriage. This intrusive thought dominated my mind for a few days/weeks, "How could I be so oblivious to the sadness in my wife's heart?" I was shocked, hurt, confused, and felt hopeless.
Ever been there?
I was immediately determined to help her feel seen, supported, and heard. I was on a mission. My mission was to make God my number one and Sara my number two again.
The problem was I honestly had no idea how to do this without breaking, compromising my values, and making us both go insane trying. That's where counseling comes in. Sara agreed to go to marriage counseling with me, and my mission was off and running.
I learned quickly that I didn't know what I didn't know. While this seems obvious, this realization opened the door for me to see, hear, and support Sara in ways I never knew were necessary.
Our therapist shared that we struggled with the three pillar components of marriage: communication, common interest, and intimacy.
This article aims to quickly share the three things I learned from marriage counseling that continue to help me and Sara grow closer. These three things will help your relationships, too.
I will write a detailed post about each of the three elements soon, but here is a summary to help you improve your relationships as quickly as today.
Communication:
Clear communication is key to any relationship. Communication between you and your partner (or any friend) can lead to solving most of your problems calmly. At the beginning of any relationship, communication seems easy and natural. But as time passes and distractions add up, communication slowly dissolves.
After 9 months of daily working on improving our marriage, communication is the most critical aspect of any successful relationship. By freely communicating with your spouse (friend or coworker), you open the doors to nourishing and growing your relationship.
Here are three quick communication tips you can try today to improve any relationship:
Repeat it again and again. After 13 years of marriage and years of overseeing staff, I have learned that direction and clarity are two of the best gifts I can give people in any relationship. I've read before that advertising takes 27 "touches" for someone to take action and purchase the item. If this is true in marketing, how much more true is it likely in our most intimate relationships? If you have heard yourself say or have listened to your spouse say, "I told you this last week, why do you always forget," then start saying the thing multiple times. Repeat it again and again. There isn't a thing such as over-communication when working tirelessly to improve communication in your relationships.
Schedule a night together with the television off and keep your phone in "airplane mode." This single effort eliminates most distractions that hinder excellent communication. And while you are at it, make it a date night and do something fun together. Currently, Sara and I are slowly working on a puzzle together (not my definition of a fun night, but it definitely is for Sara). We put our phones away and just have an hour together! This hour is a new essential for our ongoing growth in communication.
Put a time limit on tense conversations. This may only be necessary for some, but this was a great tip I read a few months back that was helpful for us. I can be a marathoner, and Sara is a sprinter. She wants the conversation to be over as fast as possible, and I want to repeat what I feel 20 times. Creating a time minimum and a time maximum gave us both the permissions and boundaries we needed to better communicate while caring for the other person.
Common Interest:
Most couples I talk with during pre-marital counseling sessions share their dream of having a spouse who is their best friend. They want to share hobbies, goals, values, beliefs, and more. It begs the question, must your spouse be your best friend and share all of these things with you?
You've probably heard the phrase, "opposites attract." This was undoubtedly true for Sara and me. She was all things music, and I was all things sports. Having much in common with your spouse is an excellent foundation for building a healthy, sustainable relationship. Still, you must always continue creating common interests together.
Here are three quick reasons you must invest in your spouse's interests:
Investing in their "thing" is the building block to building a friendship in a marriage. When you partner with your spouse on their things, you create a space where you partner with them in accomplishing their dreams, which is you supporting each other through thick and thin.
Investing in their "thing" ensures you share common goals. Your communication improves when you are on the same page regarding "why" you do what you do. Shared goals help you better understand each other's personalities, thoughts, and ticks. These shared goals also ensure you are working together productively on shared goals and projects that produce shared pride.
Investing in their "thing" creates a mutual support system. What is marriage if it doesn't work to support one another? this can be beneficial in both personal and professional settings.
Intimacy:
Intimacy in marriage is a taboo subject and one we are far too quick to dismiss. We need to talk about it. We need to get this one right. But before I go into what intimacy is and isn't, let me say that if you struggle with communication and/or shared interests, work on those before attempting to improve intimacy.
What is intimacy? What is intimacy not? Thesauras.com shared these synonyms: affection, confidence, familiarity, communion, understanding, and experience. A few antonyms it shared were: disagreement, ignorance, enmity, and incompatibility. As you can see from this list of antonyms, working first on communication and shared interests is the most crucial step to improving intimacy in your relationship.
Intimacy in marriage is all of the shared synonyms. The concept of intimacy, however, involves a mutually consensual relationship where two individuals reciprocate intimate moments, feelings of trust, and emotional and physical closeness.
Specifically, I split intimacy into intellectual intimacy, emotional intimacy (closeness), and physical intimacy.
Intellectual intimacy is a bond with people with similar values, goals, attitudes, and desires.
Emotional intimacy (closeness) is when a couple's intimacy develops as a solid liking or love for each other. Lately, Sara has started to use the term "I like you" when speaking about emotional intimacy with me. She usually says then when we cuddle on the couch watching a movie or watching an Instagram Reel she sent me. This communicates a feeling of security, safety, trust, and love. Emotional intimacy is when you let your guard down and feel safe doing so (vulnerability).
Physical intimacy has to do with sexual expression. However, it is more than just sex. It can be appropriate in a non-sexual relationship - such as sharing a hug when your best friend is grieving or holding your child's hand when crying. In a marriage, however, this sexual expression is about sharing the most unique part of yourself and vice versa.
Keep these three things in mind for any relationship, as they will be gifts that keep on giving. Practice them and be committed to them. They will only help you to reconnect with your spouse physically and emotionally.
-Jeremy Lefler