Love and Respect: Marriage Class 4

I won't try to sum up the contents of this weeks class. Instead of Emerson Eggerichs speaking, his wife (a psychologist I think) spoke about what men and women could practically do to apply some of the love and respect ideas that we've been learning.
(Sorry, I didn't link this to their blog...just thought I'd show their pictures.)

There are three things that I am going to work on. Now on two of these, mind you, my mind is already throwing a little revolt. My heart wants to do what's right, but my mind is full of the "yeah, but what if's". For example, the first item that I am really going to work on is supporting Scott's parenting efforts with the kids even if I don't agree with his current tactic. This is a hard one for me, perhaps for all moms, because mother bear instinct comes out to protect our cubs from anything we perceive to be unfair. "But what if hubby is getting after a kid about something that I usually allow them to do"? Well...what if that happens? It probably will. I could choose to come to my child's defense at the expense of my husband's efforts, or I could let my husband (who loves his children and wants the best for them)give the child a rule they aren't used to and negotiate with him about the fairness. "But what if I think he is speaking too harshly to the kids?" Well, this will probably happen too. My dad spoke more harshly than my mom did and I have no ill feelings about that. I know there are times when hubby thinks I speaks too harshly to the kids too. Teaching myself that there is more value in respecting hubby's heart with regard to parenting his children than whatever value I can add by inserting myself into those parenting moments may be tough, but I think it will be worth the effort.

Okay, #2 thing that I am going to improve upon is my respect toward him and our finances. I think I've set myself up as the gatekeeper and head warden with our money. Any big idea that hubby might have to better our family is first judged against the "Does Lisa think we can afford it" test. What if I let hubby dream through some of his ideas for awhile and let him determine if we can afford it or not? He and I are both a bit unsure of this one...perhaps the way we have it is a good checks and balance system with regard to the family coffers. But, I think only good can come from me stepping back a little and not being the first person to bring up the financials. If hubby wants that checks and balance system, he can ask me what I think about the practicality of the finances. Then I'll tell him. =) Besides, it will be a good thing if I willingly place my security in God and my hubby more than my control over the checkbook.

#3 is the one that I feel the most convicted about. Any resistance that my mind can come up with has no leg to stand on. I am going to be a friendlier force in my house. I think that I have the greatest ability in our household to set the tone. I think this one is a little harder to tie directly into the "respect your husband" mantra, but they brought it in through the husband's need to be liked by his wife. I think I often communicate frustration to hubby, like "Oh look, there is your motorcycle helmet AGAIN on my kitchen counter" or "Hey, someone AGAIN was eating string cheese and stuffed the wrapper into the sofa cushion" or "Looks like someone is drinking from the milk carton AGAIN". The trick, I think, is still finding away to request that he not do those things without being a source of negativity. Sarah Eggerichs pointed out that this will be a daily battle, but learning to view your negative comments as wrong instead of seeing yourself through a "look what I have to deal with" mentality is the key. Every day you will find negativity and unfriendliness creeping into your speech and every day you have to decide to be a friendlier person. I want this for my kids as much as for my hubby.

There is one last class. Stay tuned for my final installment of the Love and Respect marriage class next week. I'll post the info about their books and marriage confrence in that post in case anyone is interested. It's been great.

Love and Respect marriage class #3

I have to say that I was dragging my feet a little bit about attending class #3. The first class was an introduction and the 2nd class focused on teaching the men how to meet their wives needs (especially the needs that are most foreign to them). The third class was the ladies turn to hear about meeting their husband's needs. Why was I dragging my feet? I don't know. I enjoyed the first two classes. I think I just didn't want to be lectured about what I should be doing better (espectially on our 14th wedding anniversary). But I already had a sitter organized, so away we went...and it turns out that I enjoyed the class.

I suppose I vainly thought that I already knew what hubby needed from me. I was suprised at how many things that they brought up that I didn't realize were true. The class focused on 6 male needs:
1 -- Hubby needs to be appreciated for his desire to work hard and achieve
2 -- Hubby needs to be appreciated for his desire to protect us and provide for us
3 -- Hubby needs to be appreciated for his desire to be strong and lead his family and make good decisions
4 -- Hubby needs to be appreciated for his desire to analze situations and have wise counsel
5 -- Hubby needs shoulder-to-shoulder friendship from me
6 -- Hubby needs sexual intimacy

It took me awhile (I can be slow) to really focus on two important things. First, he actually needs to be praised for having a heart that wants to do all those things, regardless of whether he does them well or not. I'm supposed to appreciate that my husband is willing to die for me, regardless of whether he is ever put into a position of having to. I'm supposed to appreciate his desire to want to help me find solutions to problems, even if I didn't really ask for his help with something.

The second thing is that he needs to hear more about my appreciation than my love. In how many cards have I expressed my infinite love when he would have gotten more out of a "thanks for working so hard to bring home the bacon" sentiment? Has anyone told the Hallmark company about this?

Here's one thing that I thought was funny about the class. All throughout the hour and a half class, I'm furiously taking notes. I'm underlining important things and even created a special "star" notation for questions I wanted to ask him on the way home. We get nearly to the end of the class and the instructor lets us know that sometimes what the men really need is to not have to discuss everything. Huh? Than why have I been taking copious notes full of questions to ask hubby? Lucky for me, hubby noticed that I was strangely quiet on the way home and invited me to ask him one or two questions.

I think we have 1 or 2 class sessions left. Stay tuned for next week's installment of "Love & Respect...Could you have a better marriage?"

Love and Respect marriage class #2

So, if week one's class was about "without love she'll act disrespecfully and without respect he'll act unloving", then week two's class topic is "with love she'll act respectfully and with respect he'll act loving". Dr. Eggerich spent most of the class talking about how different our needs are and how different our instincts are based on gender. That's just how God made us.

He gave a lot of examples of how men behave when they hang out with other men. It was enlightening to see that the same behavior that fails so spectacularly (like walking out of an argument) with women is actually quite successful in a man to man relationship. His point was that the behavior is not in itself offensive or wrong, it is just different than what women need.

Then he talked about how women behave with their girlfriends. The endlessly tangential and detailed conversations may be mind-numbing to men, but we women thrive on them. There were 3 aspects to our conversing needs, according to Eggerichs:

1 -- We (women) converse to release our emotions (by sharing our thoughts with others, it releases our burdens)
2 -- We converse to understand (by talking through how we think and feel, we can often figure out how we think and feel)
3 -- We converse to build connections (sharing our thoughts & stories with others builds a repore with others)

One of the things the class stressed to the men is that women do have a need to resolve conflict. We aren't good with just moving past a fight without trying to understand what caused it and how we can do better next time. While the men legitimately don't have that same need, they can "live with their wives in an understand way" by facilitating our need to talk through things.

I thought the class had a lot to say to the men this time...offering detailed ways that they could meet their wives needs for conversation & intimacy.

I'll leave you with 2 thoughts from the class that I liked:
* Just because you feel offended doesn't mean that your spouse was being offensive
* Choose to appreciate the good 80% and let the other 20% go. You'll be happier if you see your spouse the way they behave during the 80% instead of the 20%.

As promised, my thoughts on the Love and Respect marraige seminar

Hubby and I attended the first of 4 classes in a marriage seminar called Love and Respect. The main gist of the material is that women primarily need unconditional love and men primarily need unconditional respect. That doesn’t mean that women don’t need respect and men don’t need love, but what we need the most from each other is different. They’ve done studies at the University of Washington that have shown that to be true, but I don’t really need a university study to tell me that. The Bible, the highest authority in my life, says it too:

Eph 5:33 So each husband should love his wife as much as he loves himself, and each wife should respect her husband.

Of course, just because I’ve read that verse a few thousand times doesn’t mean that I’m doing it well. The speaker’s name for this series is Emerson Eggerichs and he was talking about how accepted it is in our society that people need unconditional love. You don’t see many Oprah talk shows where people argue whether love should be conditional or unconditional. However, you start talking about men needing unconditional respect and you’ll get some backlash. “Respect is earned” is the primary thought. The idea that men need respect for who they are, not what they do, is an idea that needs some attention.

Eggerichs also commented that our society more negatively views male behavior in comparison to female behavior. Women tend to cry when they experience negative emotions, men tend to get angry. So, when a man and a woman have an argument and the woman starts to cry and the man walks away angry…who do we think the “bad” person is? Obviously the man with the “anger issue”.

Here is the main image they wanted to leave each person with after class 1:


Each person was asked to consider their spouses whenever they experience negative emotions in a discussion. We are supposed to say something like “Are you feeling dis-respected by me? because I’m feeling unloved by you and I’m wondering why.” Of course, hubby and I are turning this into a joke. Every time he farts, I ask “are you feeling disrespected by me? because I’m feeling unloved by you”…at which point he tries to show me his love in some vulgar fashion. It makes us laugh. Not that we aren’t taking the class seriously. We are and I can already see things that I need to work on and do differently, but the comic relief is helpful.