Think about a time when you have been hurt by your spouse. You instantly felt closed, shut down or disconnected. But have you noticed how quickly your heart reopened when the offender took responsibility for hurting you and sought forgiveness? You went from feeling completely closed to wide open in little more than a heartbeat. This is because openness is the default setting of our hearts. They were designed to be open. It’s all the junk—lies, negative messages, and hurtful behavior—that forces our hearts to shut down. But that isn’t how God created us.

Emotional safety is the bedrock of a close, open, intimate marital relationship. In this kind of secure environment, the couple wants to stay in love and harmony and feel very protected, rather than vulnerable, with each other. Emotional safety will help you create a climate in which you can build an open relationship that will grow and flourish. It will help you and your spouse feel cherished, honored, and fully alive.

Attend a marriage conference, join a couples’ group, make time for daily devotions, or take up a new hobby or activity together. Invest time in doing something constructive as a couple, and your hearts will feel safer.

In your quest to have a satisfying remarriage, we want to encourage you to make emotional safety a top priority—it must be the foundation for your family to survive.

What Does Emotional Safety Mean?

Most marriage books coach you on how to use a new therapy technique, unpack some latest bit of research, or apply the five trendy steps or seven popular principles. What you really need is simply the know-how to create an emotionally safe environment.

We asked more than one thousand couples who attended a recent marriage seminar to define “emotional safety.” Listen to some of their responses:

• Feeling completely secure
• Knowing that you are loved
• Being accepted for who you are
• Feeling relaxed and less tense
• Being cared for above anyone else
• Feeling free to express who you really are
• Being loved unconditionally
• Feeling confident and less insecure
• Feeling respected
• Being with someone who is trustworthy
• Feeling comfortable around that person
• Being there for me
• Being fully understood
• Feeling valued and honored
• Loving reassurance
• Feeling a deep sense that the relationship is solid
• Allowing ourselves to open fully to give and receive love
• Not being judged
• Seeing me for who I am
• Accepting my flaws as part of the whole package
• Maintaining an atmosphere of open communication

That’s a pretty amazing list, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it feel wonderful to have all of these things as the foundation of your marital relationship? We define emotional safety as feeling free to open up and reveal who you really are, knowing that the other person will still love, understand, accept, and value you—no matter what. Wow! I want that in marriage. Don’t you?

Try to come up with five personal questions to ask your spouse that you do not know the answers to, such as her most embarrassing moment or his most memorable meal. Other suggestions? Find out what celebrities your mate has met, how many (and what kind) of pets your partner had growing up, and what your spouse has always secretly wanted to do.

You feel emotionally safe with someone when you believe that person will handle your heart—your deepest feelings and desires—with genuine interest, curiosity, and tender, loving care. In other words, you hold your heart out to the person and say, “Here is who I am—emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and mentally. I want you to know my heart and soul. I want you to get to know who I am and appreciate who I am and value who I am. I am a very fascinating person who will take you more than one lifetime to understand!”

But you will never offer your heart or reveal who you really are if you don’t feel that it is safe to do so.

ANSWER
Can you name the devil’s greatest ploy to cause trouble in relationships? I’d like to suggest two words: power struggle. And why do power struggles cause us such trouble? It’s simple. In every power struggle, participants become adversaries; they take up opposing positions. And as soon as a husband and a wife set themselves up as antagonists, Satan can just fold his arms and walk away, because he knows they will destroy each other. He’s already accomplished his dirty work.

Many couples set themselves up for failure because, from the outset, the individuals face off as adversaries. This can be as subtle as insisting on “making a point.” Even if one member of the pair “wins” the point, it means an automatic loss for the relationship. If one person in the marriage “loses,” then both persons in the marriage lose. There is no other option.

Why is this so? It’s true because people in a marriage are on the same team. If one team member loses, every member of that team loses. If Jimmy and Bobby both play for the Lobos baseball team in a game against the Desperados, it is impossible for Jimmy to win and Bobby to lose. Either both win or both lose.

I encourage you to make a commitment to a new way of doing things and determined to abandon the failed, old model. This begins by establishing what our colleague Bob Paul calls a “No Losers Policy.” In a No Losers Policy, couples agree that it will never be acceptable, from this point on, for either of them to walk away from any interaction, feeling as if they had lost. Each spouse has to feel good about the solution.

Creating a No Losers Policy goes a long way toward creating the kind of relationships that yield joy and satisfaction rather than grief and frustration. It’s worked for my wife, Erin, and I, and it can work equally well for you, regardless of the type of relationship in which you apply it.

They entered the pastor’s office, where the men shook hands and clapped each other lightly on the back, and Mandy gave the pastor a light hug. Then the couple sat down in chairs across from this man they respected—and waited.

Suddenly, the atmosphere turned slightly awkward. The pastor cleared his throat, obviously trying to find the right words. Matt and Mandy looked at each other anxiously. You see, Matt and Mandy were each getting married for the second time. She wasn’t the young, first-time bride but a divorcee with an ex-husband two states away and two small children. Matt had a former wife who now attended church across town and three kids who went back and forth between mom and dad. The comfortable, wood-paneled church office suddenly began to feel stifling.

This scenario, or something like it, happens in churches every day. Well-meaning couples who have experienced the pain of leaving a marriage or losing a spouse through death or divorce want to get married for the second (or more) time, and well-meaning, caring pastors and ministers feel uneasy or don’t have the right tools to counsel them on how to do it. Couples on the brink of remarriage desperately need wisdom, and their damaged hearts long for a blessing. They’ve heard the warnings of family and friends. They already know the odds against a second marriage making it. They live daily with the pain of “friends” who gossip, judge or just no longer invite them over since their marriage ended.
Still, Christian couples who believe that God has offered them a new chance at love for a lifetime make joyful plans for remarriage. They want to build a family that will honor God, and they desire to be used by Him as a living picture of redemption. They need acceptance and solid advice, and they turn to their churches to receive it.

Often, the pastor isn’t sure how to give it—the advice or the blessing. After all, praising the two for remaining sexually pure before the union doesn’t exactly fit, and talking about how the marriage will change when children enter the picture usually doesn’t apply. (Been there, done that.) Finances are muddied with child support coming and going, and simple suggestions for better communication hardly cover the sticky circumstances remarried couples will face, with former spouses who create chaos and children who may hate their stepparent. Plus, most loving pastors have counseled hundreds of marriages in trouble and watched remarriages fall apart right and left. They feel torn between hoping this union will last for the sake of all the kids involved and wanting to say, “Are you sure you want to do this?” (the polite version of shouting, “Run for the hills!”). They want to provide wisdom but aren’t sure what the right words are to say.

When premarital sessions are over, couples smile and shake hands with their pastor again, but the smiles are now strained, and all feel relieved to be parting. The three may engage in a few more of these stilted conversations before the wedding, most likely never getting past the past and on to issues of the heart that could heal. Instead of getting a good start for a healthy remarriage, couples often feel guilty or frustrated at the lack of empathy and understanding. And pastors and lay pastors who care about these couples and want to marry them with a blessing may feel like they have failed to give hope, wisdom and solid resources to give remarriages a great start.

That’s why we wrote The Heart of Remarriage. This book has a multi-fold purpose: to teach loving couples how to heal their own hearts from trauma associated with the death or divorce from a spouse, to give already remarried couples practical tools for keeping their hearts open to each other along this complicated journey, and to provide heart insight for loving pastors, lay pastors, counselors and even small group leaders who want to give advice filled with God’s wisdom that will help remarrying couples make it not only to the altar, but also through a fulfilling marriage that lasts the rest of their lives.

So thus begins a four part series on how men can better love their wives.  I want to encourage everyone reading this that the series is not going to be a male bashing experience.  Frankly, I’m tired of men continually getting picked on because we love differently than woman do.  It feels at times that the socially acceptable way to love someone is how a woman loves.  Men want to love and be loved just as much as women, we just tend to do it differently.

But the reality is that men marry women, so we need to learn how to love a woman better.  My dad, brother, and I wrote a book titled “The Men’s Relational Toolbox“.  We addressed this in the book, that men need to add certain skills to their relational toolbox in order to love their wives and daughters better.  This series is teaching four fundamentally important things that men can do to better love their wives!

The first week we learned how to truly “fix it” with our wives by learning how to better listen.  Men often get accused of trying to “fix it” too often by their wives.  The good news is that men care enough about their wives to want to fix it, but the bad news is that most men go about fixing it in an ineffective manner.  Usually the best course of action is to simply shut our mouths and listen.

James 1:19-21 teaches us, ”Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human angers does not produce the righteousness God desires.So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.”

Listening is important because it’s important to our wives and it reflects a godly character (because we’re being obedient to James 1:19-21). But listening also helps increase our emotional and physical intimacy with our wife. When our wife feels loved and listened to, she will also feel more excited about the physical part of our relationship. Now let me be very clear, we do not listen because we want more sex, we listen because it’s the right way to love our wives better (more sex is just an awesome natural result of a close relationship).

Often times we read verses like the ones in James, and we thing, “That sounds great, but how do I do that practically?” Here’s the answer: you need to LUV your wife if you are going to be a better listener. LUV stands for Listen, Understand, and Validate. LUV is the main tenant to our communication method we teach couples at our Marriage Restoration Intensive program.

Listening is all about body language, eye contact, and intention…yes…whether or not we really want to listen.

Understanding comes when we ask questions of our wives when we feel confused or need further clarification. You want your wife to melt at your words, then just say something like, “Honey, I hear that you want to spend more time together, could you let me know what spending time together would look like to you?”  Proverbs 15:23; 28 23 “Everyone enjoys a fitting reply; it is wonderful to say the right thing at the right time! The heart of the godly thinks carefully before speaking; the mouth of the wicked overflows with evil words.”

Validating is saying things like, “Yes, I totally hear what you’re saying. Is there anything you need from me?” Validation is the art of allowing your wife the freedom of her own feelings and needs. Proverbs 13:3, “Those who control their tongue will have a long life; opening your mouth can ruin everything.”

This first week is about LUV, which is one of the most powerful ways you can “fix” anything for your wife.  Most wives just want to be heard and validated.  All you’ve been missing is how to accomplish this, and now you have some simply ways to listen effectively so you can have the kind of marriage you dreamt about during your engagement!

Couples miss out on true happiness when they give up during the tough times.

Make your marriage a covenant, not just a contract. God intended marriage to be much more than the contractual relationship it typically is in our society. Viewed as a contract, marriage is simply about what and your spouse agree to do for each other (and if either of you fail, the relationship can be canceled). But God designed marriage to be a covenant, a permanent relationship that’s built on unconditional love. The first step in effectively communicating with your spouse is for both of you to view your marriage as a covenant. Be willing to love your spouse with a steadfast love. Decide to focus on what you can do for your spouse, instead of on what you want your spouse to do for you.

Speak Your Spouse’s Language

A: (Part 3 of 4)

We are taking an entire month to answer the above question. The goal of this time is for you to discover your spouse’s personality type and learn many ways to understand and appreciate him or her. I want to encourage you to go back and review Parts 1 and 2 if you have not already done so.

This week we are looking at THE PARTY PERSONALITY (also called the Otter)

Ah, the best personality. Just kidding. This is my personality. The party personality is all about fun. We are going to have a ball. The Party Personality will cheer you on. If you think something is not such a good idea, just call a Party Personality. They’ll tell you, “That’s the most brilliant thing I have ever heard in my life!”

The Party Personality is always on the go. They’re ready to try a new sport, jump out of a plane, or catch a concert—last minute. Along the way, they’ll make sure the laughter is loud and everyone gets to hear some of their best stories.

PARTY PERSONALITY

Relational Strengths:
Optimistic.?Energetic.?Motivators.?Future oriented.

Strengths Out of Balance:
Unrealistic or day- dreamer.?Impatient or over bearing.?Manipulator or pushy.?Avoids details or lacks follow-through.

Communication Style:
Can inspire others.?Optimistic or enthusiastic.?One-way.?Weakness: High energy can manipulate others.

Relational Needs:
Approval.?Opportunity to verbalize.?Visibility.?Social recognition.

Relational Balance:
Be attentive to mates needs.?There is such a thing as too much optimism.

Those with the Party Personality are often daydreamers. They’re constantly imagining what could be as well as how much fun it could all be! They tend to come up with great ideas, and love to be spontaneous.

PARTY PERSONALITY EXPECTATIONS:

• Let’s have fun with whatever we are doing
• Let’s not to be too serious
• We must learn to laugh at ourselves

Unfortunately, as enjoyable as the Party Personality is to be around, they also have their blind spots—like doing the work needed to throw the party. Though they may love to be the center of attention at the party that doesn’t mean they should be the ones to throw the party! Their organizational skills leave much to be desired. All their excitement can lead to an overbearing presence. While they have a lot to say when it comes to making a decision, they may be too busy having fun to actually be a part of following through on that decision.

The Precise Personality wants to get things done right. The Pleaser Personality wants to get things done together. The Party Personality wants to make sure that everyone is having fun.

Tips to Getting Along with the Party Personality: We could all stand to lighten up just a bit. The party personality reminds us to do just that. Avoid belittling this personality with constant words like, “Come on get serious!” or “Why don’t you ever take things seriously?” If your spouse is a Party Personality then celebrate their motivation and visionary talents. Those are powerful factors of a great home. Don’t stifle their creativity. Give them room to explore new ideas and projects.

Tips to Getting Along if you’re the Party Personality: Learn to follow through on your ideas and especially your commitments. If you go to Lowe’s and buy tools to do a project around the house —do the project. If you don’t you’ll drive the Precise Personality nuts and frustrate the Powerful Personality. Remember that just because the fun leaves the project, doesn’t mean the project is over.

Next week we will look at THE POWERFUL PERSONALITY (also known as the Lion)

A: (Part 2 of 4)

We are taking an entire month to answer the above question. The goal of this time is for you to discover your spouse’s personality type and learn many ways to understand and appreciate him or her. I want to encourage you to go back and review Part 1 if you have not already done so.

This week we are looking at THE PLEASER PERSONALITY (also called the Golden Retriever)

The Pleaser Personality is warm and relational. They tend to be extremely loyal. They maintain a sense of calmness in the most stressful of situations and they have a knack for being natural peacemakers. The Pleaser Personality is often concerned with group dynamics and the atmosphere of the room. More than anything they want to make sure that everyone and everything is good.

The world is a better place because of Pleaser Personalities. They tend to be the ones who are the glue that hold people and organizations together. They are quick to welcome, serve, and embrace others. Without Pleaser Personalities, it would be hard to build a strong community.

My pastor’s wife, Amy, exhibits many traits of the Pleaser Personality. She is a natural servant and loves people. She’s warm, relational and impressively loyal. In addition, she is extremely sensitive to make sure everyone feels like they’re a part of whatever we’re doing.

Holidays and family are synonymous around the Cunningham home. Year after year, Amy rises to the occasion and overwhelms her family with her ability to make every person feel extra special. She knows how to throw great parties. Whether she entertains two or 20 people at a party, she always ends the night by asking this simple question: “Do you think everyone had a good time?” She wants to make sure bonding took place and everyone felt connected and special.

PLEASER PERSONALITY
Relational Strengths:
Warm and relational.?Loyal.?Enjoys routine.?Peace-Maker.?Sensitive to others feelings.

Strengths Out of Balance:
Attract the hurting.?Missed opportunities.?Stays in a rut.?Sacrifices own feelings for harmony.?Easily hurt or holds a grudge.

Communication Style:
Indirect.?Two-way.?Great listener.?Weakness: Uses too many words or provides too many details.

Relational Needs:
Emotional security.?Agreeable Environment.

Relational Balance:
Learn to say “NO”…establish emotional boundaries.?Learn to confront when your feelings are hurt.

The theme of Amy’s life is “let’s do this together!” When it comes to a task, the Precise Personality will make sure the job gets done right and on time. The Pleaser Personality will not focus on the job as much as the relational aspect and making sure everyone is a part of the task. The Pleaser Personality wants everyone to feel part of the team.

PLEASER PERSONALITY EXPECTATIONS:

• Let’s do everything together
• Let’s meet each other’s needs
• Let’s have plenty of conversations
• Let’s stay in harmony

One of the struggles of the Pleaser Personality is that they can inadvertently wear their heart on their sleeve. Because they care so much about relationships, they can get emotionally involved. They usually need time to go home and mull things over and then will return asking, “What exactly did you mean by that?” The Pleaser Personality is so concerned with others, that they tend to second-guess their responses as well as others.

Tips to Getting Along with the Pleaser Personality: Be cautious of their feelings. They can be taken advantage of easily, so work at valuing their loyalty. If your spouse does not embrace all of your friends, it’s not because they are bad people. They prefer to go deep with fewer people. Don’t expect them to be a party mixer. Invite them to join you for dinner dates with associates rather than always going to the large group gatherings.

Tips to Getting Along if you’re the Pleaser Personality: You must be careful not to wear your heart on your sleeve. People, including your mate, may take advantage of that. Release past hurt. Let your spouse off the hook for past mistakes. Learn to make decisions in the midst of uncertainty about what is best for everyone. Branch out and meet new people.

Next week we will look at THE PARTY PERSONALITY (also known as the Otter)

A: (Part 1 of 4)
There’s a lot of truth to the old adage that opposites attract. Because your personality is different from your spouse’s you approach and respond to situations and people differently. That’s why it’s so important to understand personalities—not just your own, but also your spouse’s. When you understand the way you’re both wired, then you’re less likely to cross wires and cause hurtful issues in your marriage!
Odds are that if you’ve been experiencing conflict or frustration in your marriage, it’s a direct result of not understanding and appreciating how God made your spouse.

Since I do not know you’re the personality types of you and your wife, I want to take the next several weeks to walk through each of the four main personality types and give you some tips for dealing with each personality. Make it your goal to discover your wife’s personality, or personality blend, and find ways to appreciate the way she approaches life.

Let’s start with THE PRECISE PERSONALITY (also called the Beaver Personality)

The Precise Personality loves analyzing. They pay attention to statistics. They enjoy keeping a budget and balancing the check book. They love measuring and comparing things. For the precise personality, most issues are clearly black or white. The precise personality is constantly evaluating. They’ll happily tell you what you’ve done wrong and how you can do it better.

The world is a better place because of Precise Personalities. They make sure that there’s order in life. They make sure the guardrails are in place so people don’t hurt each other. And precise personalities make sure organizations run effectively and efficiently.

My wife, Norma, has a precise personality. She naturally expects that we will always do things the right way at the right time. I love this about her—except for those moments when I go to the ATM and forget to grab the receipt. Or those moments when she schedules dinner with friends and I decide to replace the brakes on the car at the last minute—making us late! Or those moments when she carefully organizes the closet and I haphazardly throw my things in.

Years ago we were audited by the IRS for the first time and Norma got all excited. You know why? She was convinced that after all the scrutiny was done, they would award her a blue ribbon. I love that about her! Precise personalities tend to love order, structure and timeliness.

Norma doesn’t like to admit this, but she is energized and excited after a two-hour phone call with American Airlines organizing our next trip. I really couldn’t do ministry without her! Since I am the dreamer and Norma is the dream maker, we do function as a well oiled machine. Together we can accomplish so much more than we could do apart. But, it’s important to add that it can take a few hours or days to start the machine with each new project we do together. We accept and honor each other’s differences, but it can certainly become too slow for me getting started up. She wants to wait until all of the “ducks” are lined up. And who decides how many ducks are necessary in the first place…. Norma.

PRECISE PERSONALITY
Relational Strengths:
Accurate and precise.?Quality control.?Discerning.?Analytical.

Strengths Out of Balance:
Too critical or too strict.?Too controlling.?Too negative of new opportunities.?Lose overview.

Communication Style:
Factual.?Two-way.?Great listener (tasks).?Weakness: Desire for detail and precision can frustrate others.

Relational Needs:
Quality.?Exact expectations.

Relational Balance:
Total support is not always possible.?Thorough explanation isn’t everything.

The Precise Personality has many strengths. They tend to be detailed, accurate, analytical, and sensitive. They are generally great with numbers; they are great with keeping your company, your organization, your church, your family on task.

PRECISE PERSONALITY EXPECTATIONS:

• Let’s do everything right and in order
• Let’s be on time to appointments and family events
• Give me ALL the details in the conversation
• Don’t lie about the facts (I just say I’m leaving out some details so that the story is more interesting.)

Now there are areas where you can get out of balance with this personality. You can become a perfectionist. Or become driven by doing everything so well that you never move forward on decisions creating “paralysis by analysis”.

Tips to Getting Along with the Precise Personality: Recognize that they just want you to honor all of their questions. They want you to answer them in the most detail that you can. Honoring detail builds intimacy in a marriage with the precise personality. Going the extra mile to complete a project the “right” way says “I value you” to your mate.

Tips to Getting Along if you’re the Precise Personality: Remember that you may have to move forward without having everything figured out perfectly. You may need to complete the project or household chore even though it’s not perfect. Even when it feels uncomfortable, you need to risk or embrace adventure. Do not expect your spouse to share every detail of the day. And by all means, he or she is not lying when details get left unsaid. Stretch yourself by not taking yourself or life too seriously.

Next week we will look at THE PLEASER PERSONALITY (also known as the Golden Retriever)

I would like this question answered if possible…My wife thinks sex is a want, and I say sex is a need! I have heard and read conflicting answers and would like to know what you think.

Answer:

This is not as complicated as it might feel to the two of you. The most important thing that needs to be accomplished here is validation. It sounds to me, that sex is a need to you. I don’t have a problem with this. There’s nothing wrong with sex being a need for someone. If sex is a need for you to gain intimacy with your wife, to feel loved, to feel desired, to feel wanted, to feel connected, then sex is a need. End of story.

For your wife, it sounds like sex is a want. No problem, then sex for your wife is a want. I can live with that as well. She needs to be validated for her viewpoint as well.

But here is where I get on my soapbox. I’m tired of women (and I’m not saying your wife is doing this, because I don’t know, but I’m taking an opportunity to make a point.) being irritated with men needing sex. Sex is a way for men to connect with their wives emotionally. Most women like to connect with their husbands through communication, which seems to be the “accepted” means of connecting emotionally. Most men connect to women emotionally through physical intimacy, or sex, and that should not be “wrong”!

There…I said it and I feel better.

As we were exploring the river, I (Greg) discovered that moss had formed over the rocks, creating a very slick river bottom. What was even more amazing was that the water had carved out a natural slide. However, there was one minor problem. As you slid down, unless you landed in a small pool, you were in danger of going over a waterfall.

After several practice runs we determined that you could slide about ten yards and still make it into the landing pool. We were having a relaxing time until Dad showed up. Watching us slide down the river, he felt this would make a great picture. Having never met a camera I didn’t like, I enthusiastically volunteered to go first. However, somehow Dad talked me into starting at the very top. Looking down at the steep slide, I realized that it would be difficult to stop in the landing pool. As he attempted to persuade me, Dad said something that would eventually cause me much pain. “Trust me. You’ll do fine. If you don’t hit the pool, I’ll stop you!”

As he got into position, I pushed off and went racing down the slide. Suddenly, I hit a bump and flew off course. Instantly I passed my father (who was still trying to take the picture) and headed straight for the waterfall.

As I went over the falls, I tried to push off to keep my balance. Unfortunately, I kicked too hard and landed flat on my back. Slapppp! The sound of my back flop echoed throughout the canyon. As I struggled toward the riverbank, my father’s words, “Trust me, I’ll stop you!” haunted me. When he appeared at the top of the falls, I started to scream at him but quickly stopped. Watching my mother race down the trail was like watching a mother bear rear up to attack the person who had wounded her cub. It was awesome! I didn’t know my mom could move that fast. Through this experience, it was my sensitive mom who was shaken up the most. In fact, this was one time in her life when if she could have reached Dad, there’s no telling what she would have done to him!

After the disaster at the waterfall, my dad and I (Greg) could have used LUV Talk to discuss the situation. If I had been the customer, first I could have started by saying something like, “I feel frustrated when you try to talk me into things that you aren’t sure about.” He then would have repeated back what I said. “I hear you saying that it’s frustrating when I talk you into doing things when I have no idea how it’s going to turn out.” Yes!

I might have continued with, “I feel hurt because it seemed like you were more interested in taking a ‘fun’ picture than making sure I was safe.” He might have said in response, “It sounds like I hurt your feelings because I was more focused on taking a picture than on your safety.” Yes!

Once I shared all my feeling and-or needs, then we could switch places, with Dad becoming the customer. Dad might have said, “I truly believed that taking a picture of you sliding down the river was completely safe.” I’d respond, “I hear you saying that you thought I’d be safe.” Yes!

“I felt that if there was any danger, I’d be able to stop you.”

“So you’re saying that you believed you could stop me if there was a problem.” Yes!

“I felt extremely scared when I realized you were going over the edge.” And so on …

Do you get the point? The process is simply one person sharing his feelings or need sand the other person repeating back what he heard. If the person repeats it back wrong, you don’t panic. You simply restate what you said. Then when one person finishes expressing his feelings and needs, you trade places. This process goes on until both feel listened to, understood, and validated. It’s that simple.

© Copyright 2003 Smalley Relationship Center

Recommended Resources: The DNA of Parent-Teen Relationships

If love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, then money may be the carriage’s driver. Finances play a huge role in relationships and sometimes can serve as a catalyst for a breakup.

If love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, then money may be the carriage’s driver. Finances play a huge role in relationships and sometimes can serve as a catalyst for a breakup.

If love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, then money may be the carriage’s driver. Finances play a huge role in relationships and sometimes can serve as a catalyst for a breakup.

via Save Your Marriage: Learn Better Financial Communication – ABC News.