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April 2011

The Royal Wedding: Yours and Theirs
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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Were you up early?  Quite a few people on this side of the Atlantic were up long before the sun decided to get up, ready to watch with the world the nuptials of a future king and queen.  I have to be honest, I was not among them.  But as I rolled out of bed to help the kids off to school, my wife turned on the TV, and I saw a few bits of the royal fanfare.The Royal Couple

And indeed, it was beautiful!  Add a not-so-small amount of pomp, throw in a good looking couple, and stir with our romantic notions, and it was quite the event.  But what does it have to do with a blog about how to save your marriage?

Richard Charters, the Bishop of London, said it best, “in a sense, every wedding is a royal wedding.”

Whenever I see a wedding, it always makes me think of my own wedding, but also weddings in general.

Our wedding was on a blazing hot day in the North Carolina mountains.  My dear mother-in-law had matched those brides-maids dresses to the stainglass windows, so they were certainly staying closed!  And who needs air conditioning in the mountains?

OK, so I remember the heat and the sweat, but I also remember my beautiful bride coming toward me.  I remember the vows I made.  And I remember, as we walked out hand-in-hand, that it all had seemed too easy!  I went into that building single, and emerged less than an hour later, promising to spend my life with someone.  Wow!  We sometimes forget the power of that.

My real pain of watching people marry is knowing just that:  it is easy.  Probably too easy.  My daughter recently got her driver’s license.  She had to drive, under guidance of an adult (mostly me) for 60 hours, by state law, before they would let her have her license.  She had to complete a written test. Then she had to prove it to an officer, that she could, indeed, drive that car.

Marriage?  Just walk right up, maybe with a blood test in your hands, pay a few bucks, and get your “marriage license.”  You are then licensed to marry.  Pretty simple, no?  Maybe too simple.

“Yeah but,” you argue, “a car can be a deadly weapon.”  Correct.  “And so can relationships,” I argue, “given the pain of broken relationships.”  Then you might respond, “but there are just some marriages that were wrong from the start.”

And I would respond that I truly believe this is only a small percentage.  Most marriages go awry, not because the wrong people were together, but because they didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

In many instances, the wedding happens, and everyone congratulates the couple, and off they go to figure it all out on their own.  No mentoring, no “how to” guides, no guidance at all.  Oh, sure, some churches offer premarital counseling.  I should know.  I do that very thing for several churches.

But let’s be real honest here:  couples, before they get married, have no idea what they are getting into.  Think about trying to tell an expectant couple that is dreaming of their beautiful baby, about the sleepless nights, yucky diapers, icky throw-up, or many of the other parenting pieces that fall into your lap.  Would they even hear it?

The best I hope for is that the couple have some sense that they are in for some unforeseen changes, and give them some markers to move toward.  And I hope they know that they can return when they have a tough time.

Why is it that we have this notion that marriage should be easy, and if it isn’t, it was a mistake?  Why don’t we adopt a growth mindset that tells us that everything we do can be improved, as long as we work on improving it?

So what about YOUR royal wedding?  Did it start with hopes and expectations?  It can still happen.  But that does mean giving up on the myth that right marriages just click.  It means looking at successful marriages as continued, daily effort to be a better person and spouse.  THAT is why the royal marriage is in a blog about how to save your marriage!

Strong Marriages Are Grown. They Don’t Just Happen!
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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I opened an email this morning and read a line I see several times a week: “if my marriage is meant to be, then why is it so tough?”

Sometimes, this question is tossed at the person trying to figure out how to save his or her marriage. They write and ask me “how do I save my marriage when my spouse keeps saying it is just to hard, so it must not be right?”

To both, I have the same answer. And it is a very short answer: who told you it should be easy?

Seriously, why do we have such an aversion to the possibility of struggle and growth?

Avoid one, you avoid the other.

Is love supposed to be easy? I certainly don’t think so.

Now don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think anyone should cause more problems, just so you can struggle! But that is different than avoiding struggling.

Just yesterday, I was sitting with a couple. They were treating each other so civilly. They poured good manners toward each other. . . almost too much so!

Finally, I asked about their “emotional constipation.” Everything, good and bad, was all stuck inside. So nothing was making it into the marriage. They were as stuck as their emotions.

But just yesterday morning, I had another couple that suffered from “emotional diarrhea.” No matter what the matter, both dumped their emotions on the other. That isn’t it, either.

But what if we assumed that growth happens from struggle? If you want to build a muscle, what do you do? Don’t you stress it and force it to work? Then it compensates by growing.

The same with a relationship. If we avoid the struggle, we avoid the chance at growth. If we avoid the chance at growth, we become stagnant.

There is NO perfect marriage at “I do.” There is only potential. It is like getting a driver’s license. That doesn’t mean you are a great driver. Only that you can begin the process of becoming a good driver.

So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, it to grow into your marriage. Take the potential and develop your marriage into a marriage you can treasure and love.

Saving A Marriage Requires Reaching Outside of Yourself
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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At its best, marriage calls us to reach beyond ourselves, to love and show love to another. Two people doing that is magic! Both people are meeting the other person’s needs, and getting their own needs met. But what happens when that process begins to fail? The process is like a whirlpool, sucking the relationship down.

John and Susan were caught in that process.  In day-to-day life, a wonderful marriage slowly decays when energy isn’t added in.  That was true for these two.  John was running after a successful career.  Susan was working, but had eyes on a family.  While both felt the stress, they decided “now or never,” and launched into parenthood.

Time was eaten up by children’s events and work demands. . . or at least that is what Susan and John kept telling themselves.  But in reality, every day, they chose to NOT spend time connecting, NOT spend time together, NOT nurturing their relationship.  And like any neglected muscle, their love began to atrophy.

For a while, life can pull you through this.  But eventually, the relationship finally rises to consciousness.  Unfortunately, neither John nor Susan thought “Wow, I am really not putting into this relationship.”  Instead, both began to ask themselves, “what am I getting out of this?  Where is the love coming toward me?”  Unfortunately, right after asking themselves that question, each answered with “if I am not being loved, I am going to stop reaching out with love.”

The relationship further deteriorated.  But now, instead of benign neglect, it was fueled by anger and resentment.  John finally announced, “I have had enough.  You don’t love me, I don’t love you.  I am leaving.”

Susan was devastated.  She told folks “I knew we had problems, but I thought we had made a commitment.”  But in her own head, she was thinking, “How dare he say I wasn’t loving him.  HE wasn’t loving me!  This is HIS fault.”  And John was equally convinced that Susan was at fault.

The moments of doubt, about how each might have played a role, was justified in each of their minds, pushed away by blame.

Was there a way out?  Yes.  Would it be easy?  No.

If either had set aside blame, and decided to release their hurt, anger, and resentment, there was a possibility.  Either could have reached out toward the other, providing love and support.  That might have saved their relationship, and restored the flow of love between them.

A seemingly easy thing to do, but hard in practice.  Why?  Because we humans are so good at self justification.  We continue to use our own thoughts to prove our reality.  And we all have one well-established tape playing in our minds:  “It’s NOT my fault!”

It really isn’t either person’s fault, but that message keeps either from asking “what can I do to change this?” and then acting on it.

Marriage is about reaching out, over and over, toward the other, until it is a habit.  Sometimes, it is made for difficult by anger and resentment.  Sometimes, it is flexing atrophied muscles.  But sustained effort in the direction of the other can save your marriage.

Don’t be sucked down the whirlpool!  Reach our toward the other.  Ignore that voice saying “it isn’t my fault,” or “why should I reach out?” or “I will if he/she will.”  To quote one company, “Just do it!”  Reach out in love, and see what happens!

Video From Survivor of Hudson Plane Crash: How Crisis Reorients
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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Ric Elias survived the plane landing on the Hudson River.  And it completely reoriented his life.

In the video from TED (one of my new favorite sites), Ric discusses, in just a few minutes, how the event transformed his life, including his marriage.

Having been through a health crisis, I can tell you:  looking at your mortality turns your world upside down.  It makes you very clear on what is important and what is not.

Relationships, they are important.  Everything else becomes trivial.  The argument of the day?  Trivial.  Busy work?  Trivial.  Invest in what is important — and marriage is THE relationship upon which I suggest you focus.

Why Marriages Get Into Trouble — All Marriages!
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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If you are wanting to know how to save your marriage, you want to start by understanding why marriages get into trouble.  And when I say marriages, yes I mean all marriages!  It is just that some marriages work through the issues, or resolve them.

So, for just a second, while considering saving a marriage, let me reflect from a distance on the two primary reasons marriages get into trouble, and what ultimately leads to broken marriages.  And they are interlinked.

Reason 1:  Marriages get into trouble because couples fail to forgive.

Reason 2:  Marriages get into trouble because couples fail to grow.

From there, everything else spins out.  Now don’t get me wrong, I do not think you should be a door mat, always ready to forgive anything without any change.  But how often do we continue to drag the accumulated small stuff around — for years, if not decades?  All without forgiveness.

The problem is, when we don’t forgive, we disconnect, just a little bit.  We keep parts of ourselves out, withhold emotions, affections, thoughts, etc.  We begin to strangle the relationship.  Over time, the unforgiveness takes root and becomes resentment.  Resentment is the poison of any relationship.

Think of it as carbon monoxide.  It slowly keeps the life-giving oxygen from getting to the body.  And you don’t even notice, save the headache!  And once it is in, it takes time to get it out.

Then, there is the growth/change bit.  I truly believe we have only two options:  growing or rotting.  Ray Kroc said, “you are either green and growing or ripe and rotting.”  Stop growing and changing, and you are dying.

In a relationship, even more so.  I don’t know how many people I have seen that have stopped growing relationally when they married.  They start acting like they have the relationship, so there really is no reason to keep moving forward.  Over time, couples get into ruts, stuck in routines, and mostly stuck keeping each other a bit apart.

What if you decided today, without any change on your spouse’s part, to forgive your spouse for all those things that have piled up, and decided to grow?  Would that save your marriage?

First, listen to that voice saying “what about my spouse?  What do they have to do?”  Unfortunately, it is just you and me, so you can only change you.  So start with what you CAN change, and don’t focus on what you can’t.

Second, realize that forgiveness is really for YOU!  So that YOU do not have to keep dragging that pile of crap around any longer!

Third, look for areas in which you know you need to grow.  We all have them.  Make it your path to GROW the rest of your life, in your relationship and elsewhere.

Finally, if you are ready for a little growth, take a look at my material on how to save a marriage.