Marriage Therapy--Try This at Home!
by Kim A. Nelson

Because we’re the ones in our marriage, we’re the only ones who can manage it. Our marriage is ours. It belongs to us. Are we qualified? Yes; in fact, we’re the only ones truly qualified to manage our own lives.

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Whether you see a therapist or find help here or elsewhere, the ongoing healing and development of your marriage belongs to you and your spouse. That’s the essence of marriage therapy. The content and application of that therapy is yours.

You may ask, “How can we do marital therapy on ourselves? We’re not trained professionals.” The sage advice of daredevils and carnival performers, “Do not try this at home,” rings in our ears. Good question.

The truth is, all successfully married couples do just that: they try their own therapy at home. When they run into obstacles in their marriage, they do “therapy.” That is, they look for actions, strategies, and information that can eliminate or at least minimize the difficulty.

If, somewhere along the way, this process is not working effectively, they might seek help. Help in doing what? In doing marriage therapy, of course. But the healing and development of their marriage still belongs to them.

Because we’re the ones in our marriage, we’re the only ones who can manage it. Our marriage is ours. It belongs to us. Are we qualified? Yes; in fact, we’re the only ones truly qualified to manage our own lives.

What About Credentials?

Dr. May delivers a remarkable insight on the subject of credentials: “Of all the questions I’ve been asked as a psychiatrist, the most common and disturbing ones have been about how to raise children. It has always seemed rather strange that people can expect psychiatric training to create an authority on child raising. It would make much more sense to search out a grandmother whose offspring are living full and beautifully and ask her about it all.”

What Dr. May recognizes is that we too often see worldly credentials and forget common sense. Common sense would teach that successful living is itself a credential. Common sense would point out that schooling and education—though valuable in preparing us to live successfully—are not necessarily the same thing. How we live is up to us.

Similarly, how we handle our marriages is up to us as well. What we do to improve, develop, or ruin them is up to us. We’re entitled to pick the tools and equipment we use to do repairs. We evaluate a problem or challenge and put together the plan to deal with it. The problem could be serious enough to require another point of view or some insight provided by a caring and competent counselor. Or maybe what’s needed is the information and motivation to implement the changes ourselves. The focus is on getting on track, paying attention, and putting in the effort required to heal and grow.

Becoming Strong Together

That effort to heal, if you make it together, strengthens you and prepares you for the next challenge to come. This is the labor of love, which provides proof that you two together are capable of great things. The motivation for this work is love, commitment, and the faith that your union is valuable beyond earthly measure. The strength and courage required for this endeavor is to be found in the marriage, as it grows.

Ongoing effective marital therapy is a lot like any kind of maintenance, in these ways:

· It requires that we be responsive to real needs in real time.

· It must be ongoing, timely, and appropriate in scope.

· It can’t be too cumbersome or slow, or it won’t be effective.

· It must focus on specific (or at least limited) issues or it will be too broad and won’t accomplish anything.

· It needs to provide a way for the process to be ongoing in order to respond to our changing needs.

In other words, it needs to be brief, specific, and intermittent, as required.

This is the model that builds a marriage over time. Two properly motivated individuals will use the necessary resources to improve their marriage. They’ll combine their skills, talents, and energies to overcome obstacles in their path. This is the purpose of all you’ve read and discussed so far.

The challenges of life that you have overcome in the living of it have prepared you for this great opportunity called marriage. The process that is marriage is all about the daily victories and challenges that teach us to build, learn, enjoy, and struggle together.

The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back

We’re all familiar with the saying “That’s the last straw,” or “That’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Many couples come into counseling with the last straw as the thing they want to talk about. The problem is how she squeezes the toothpaste or how he chews. It is the last little thing that has made the load too heavy to bear.

But there is a flaw in this last-straw thinking. What we forget is that the weight of every part of the load comes to bear. We focus on the last but not necessarily the heaviest thing. We look at the final straw but not the forty pounds of bricks it is resting on.

What we need to do is come up with a plan to reduce the whole load, not just remove the last straw. This should begin with what we need to carry least. Many concentrate on the most visible, not the heaviest or least useful part of the load. If we see a bridge sign that says the safe limit is five tons, we should not try ten and hope for the best; we should stop and take the load down to the safe limit before going on.

We all have limits to what we can carry. We need to consider those limits when we are planning how to live. We need to consider the safe load for ourselves and for our spouse before we just keep piling up more and hope for the best. This means discussing the load and being willing to look at what is necessary and what is not. It also means planning.

I have a friend who is a city planner; his job is to make sure the city doesn’t spend more than it can afford. To do this, he matches projected revenue streams with the city’s projected expenditures, planning a budget that is well below expected revenues. In the process, he will allow for unidentified but expected challenges. They are common because experience has taught him that, as the common folk wisdom states, “Stuff happens.”

The same is true of marriage. We must look at what has been done and apply our resources, our carrying power if you will, to the tasks. We must recognize that we can’t carry everything safely. Nobody can do everything. We must plan our loads carefully, making allowances for those extra challenges that experience teaches us will come. This is the way to keep that little straw in our relationship from getting so much attention it causes us to overlook the real load.

Start to Plan

The basic cornerstone of improving marital communication may be a weekly planning meeting. It starts couples talking, and the benefit in time and energy is easy to see. Consider the benefits of a brief weekly meeting to combine your calendars for the coming week. This puts you in an unemotional environment to discuss the simplest kind of life improvement, better use of your time. Effective time and resource management begins with scheduling. A simple, thirty- minute meeting can save hours of phone and driving time for a family each week. (We hold ours on Sunday night.) Such a meeting also allows you to start some mutually beneficial problem solving. It gets you talking. It requires time together and opens the door for more and better cooperation. Consider the following components for a scheduling meeting:

· Hold the meeting weekly.

· Keep it short—approximately thirty minutes.

· Review day-by-day family activities and requirements—ball games, lessons, church activities, school activities, trips to the airport, company dinners, and so on.

· Schedule time to spend together.

· Discuss and schedule projects or activities you would like to do.

· Discuss how the children are doing, or mention something positive about each other.

Such a meeting will not only save hours but also set the stage for removing fear about talking about change.

Creating an Effective Discussion Environment

If you decide to improve your marriage, you’ll need to talk to each other about your marriage. As obvious as this sounds, not making time for communication has kept many marriages from improving. What can we do to create the best possible environment for effective communication about our marriage? We need to have a meeting of the minds and hearts that follows some simple guidelines:

· Schedule a time to talk. As busy as our lives are, we need to make time for the things that matter most. Talking about our lives together is one of those things.

· Schedule a starting and ending time. As with the other meeting, an “open-ended” time frame can be interpreted as “endless.” The thought of such an undefined meeting may make you or your spouse uncomfortable.

· Don’t meet when emotions are running high regarding the topic of discussion. For example, when you’ve just discovered the checking account is overdrawn is not the time to discuss improving financial communications in your marriage. Solve the current problem as best you can and then come back to the big picture later, after emotions have stabilized.

· Decide on a topic. The list of possible discussions is endless. That can be frightening, too, if you see this time together as an endless series of what is wrong with us—or you. It’s essential to see this as your planning time, your growing time, a time for the two of you. You can talk about vacation plans, scheduling, and the needs of your family and friends. And you’ll still have time to learn, improve, and heal, if necessary.

Why is being married a high priority for you both? One of the first times you meet, that could be a topic of great value. What is your motivation to improve? How does developing a wonderful marriage pay off for each of you?

Meet consistently. Even brief, specific, constructive conversations held consistently over time can yield benefits. Think of these discussions as preventive maintenance. Ongoing care and attention can prevent the need for a major overhaul or even replacement.

Meeting together doesn’t take the place of a date. The time you spend together courting and doing fun things is essential to mental and marital health. We’re talking about finding time to learn about and plan how to be married effectively; a time to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones; a time to grow, to learn, and to heal; a time to be self-directed. This is the time to choose and chart your path together to the eternal city, our eternal home.

I’m encouraged by the words of a great teacher. Gandhi said, “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.”

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