Embracing the Various Seasons of Marriage (Part 2 of 2)

When you focus on the negative, and you say negative things in critical things your spouse. There's something inside of him and want to run from his head away from you so this whole thing of looking for the positive in choosing to think about the positive in itself has a way of moving you back toward spring and summer.

That's Dr. Gary Chapman and he's describing one way that you can positively impact your marriage and you'll hear more from him on today's Focus on the Family with your host focus president and author Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller, John. Last time we had a great discussion about the cyclical nature of marriage and how are marriage transitions from winter, spring, summer and fall, and we find ourselves in any one of those four seasons at any time in our marriage, and Gary Chapman. Our guest has done a beautiful job like he always does just capturing complex human relationship ideas and then putting them into more bite-size formats and we are going to continue that discussion with Gary today to talk about what season your marriage is an and how to get to a good place and let me just say here at the start. If you were struggling in your relationship. We do have counselors here on staff caring Christians who can have an initial discussion with you about where you're at.

It may be that you're doing pretty well. You just want a resource and Dr. Chapman's book the four seasons of marriage is a great tool we've got our counseling team and resources like this book available to you when you call 880 family 800 the letter a in the word family yet so often people will say in on praying for Focus on the Family were supporting you. What else can we do that to engage the ministry focus. I'll tell you one of the great things you can do is right here in this area of marriage be in tune with your neighbors be in tune with your friends at church. What may be on the outside may not be the whole story. So keep your ear to the ground and if you're in that good place join us in ministry, turn people toward Focus on the Family to help them in their marriage.

Let them know you know of great resources were people can plug in and you know what I don't believe will disappoint your good advice to your friends.

I think if they come through the doorway. Here we will do everything we can to help them in their marriage journey so have that confidence and it's a great way to help people in their life and that with that.

Gary, let me say welcome back to Focus on the Family. Thank you. Good to be back again. You must experience that where friends are saying Gary, I've got a buddy. You need to meet and straighten out.

Oh yes, and sometimes it really is a buddy and sometimes it smelled so I've got a friend of got a friend yes and all of us have friends and sometimes it's easier to try to get an answer for a friend than it is to reveal that this is where I am in my relationship that's okay wherever people start out release. It's a step you know in last time and if you didn't hear it. You gotta get the download or go to the website and listen. We talked about three of the seasons, winter, spring and summer and what I like to do if you could just give us that recap on those three and then rent talk about fall and move into some strategies to help couples get to a good place well winter is cold and bitter and harsh okay is not a good place to be in your marriage and then spraying of course, is an exciting time you're anticipating things she almost always start off in spring and like is going to be wonderful. You got great plans and things are going to do together. You have visions of really a happy marriage and then summer is you really do have a happy marriage.

I mean, things are really going while you're solving conflicts. You accepted some things that used to be irritated about your enjoying discussing life with each other you reading books together, you're growing spiritually together some is a good place and then the fall which is the one that will focus on here. Things look good on the outside but really inside. There's a lot of apprehension, some fearfulness, maybe even sadness, things that just don't feel quite right in the relationship.

No one else sees them yet, but we may feel unappreciated in a fall marriage not verbalizing it.

We were uncertain about where things are going and we also can attend start blaming our spouse.

They're not doing what they should be doing.

In fact you you talk about the number one cause of fall marriages is neglect described that neglect can be so many different things. How do we neglect each other in the marriage. I think it's failing to connect on a regular basis.

We're involved in so many other things. You may maybe work it may be children and maybe church it may be good things in the community were involved in good things, but we're not connecting with each other were not sharing those things with each other when neglecting the primary relationship in a family and that's the relationship between the husband and wife gear you cancel thousands of couples and I'm sure this is probably coming from 999 of them that Dr. Chapman mean life is busy due notice and I'm busy and the wife is saying I'm quite busy till we got three kids in their teens so that EE isn't an excuse, or is it a legitimate issue of life that I'm so busy it's number four, five, or 12 on my list to connect with my spouse. That's like the last thing I can get to. And if that's our attitude were too busy, you know, God would not have ordained marriage ended marriages produce children and thus families. If there wasn't time to do it all. There has to be time to raise children and have a healthy marriage and have a job because God also ordained work there has to be time to do it anyway don't have time to keep the marriage relationship growing, then we need to look at our lives and there's some things we maybe are doing that we don't need to be doing. We're neglecting the most important to do something that seems important that you can take a very drastic change in your life to correct that. What you suggesting if my vocation is really consuming the it's 80 hours a week and yeah I don't really have time to spend on my marriage and she knows I love her. As I told her that when we got married but she's not gonna get a lot more out of me what you say to that guy. I think there is a time to essayists. In fact there should be many times in a marriage to assess where we are and if we continue on the path we are now all where we going to be in five years or 10 years and I think there are times to make drastic changes and many couples have made those changes.

You and I know couples where one of them. For example, a father has decided to be a stay at home caretaker for the children because the mothers got a job.

She's making three times what he's making right so they just together agree this will work and we can have a family and maybe the other way around. His mother might decide I'm gonna be a stay-at-home mom and for season of my life. Maybe you have a vocation that you really really love what you don't used to stay at home for a season and then later on you can pick back up your vocation so some of those big decisions can be made, but many times it's more the smaller decisions it's looking for time and making time to stay connected. That's is your pathway.

Yes, I was can ask you with those couples when you see them to three years down the road. Are they in a majority of them maybe 80, 90% are they in a better place and they were grateful for making the tough choices they make, they are because they have their enjoying life together made time to enjoy life together and if you don't make time to enjoy life and you spent all the time making money and going doing this that the other thing it's gone before you know it you know the kids are gone and now we don't have a life together. One of the strategies you encouraging your book to get to a better season in your marriage is to identify past failures that can be hard every we don't like looking in the closet thing that was wrong know what's important so that we don't like looking back, we would hope that time would just erase the effects of our failures, but time does not erase the effects of the Scriptures are very clear.

If we confess our sins, God is ready to forgive our sins. Same principle applies in human marriages human relationships. If we are willing to acknowledge that I failed you and this and this and this most the time our spouse is willing to forgive us, but the very fact that we bring it up and say have been thinking about sub and reflecting on our lives and I realize that I failed you in some some really significant ways you can spell them out and asked for forgiveness and even if it's deep heard and been there a long time. Your spouse may not immediately forgive you, but they walk away thinking in their mind, well never thought I'd hear this, and three days later they may well come back and Sabin think about what you said the other night and I realized I haven't been the perfect spouse either.

And maybe they share some things any forgive each other.

It's a huge step in moving forward to recognize and deal with past failures. I don't think I would be speaking out of turn wood when we came up to this part of the conversation I immediately thought of a past failure in our relationship and I'm going to details, but I said something very very hurtful to Dena. This was many, many years ago and I think we've resolved that, but I'm not sure. Maybe we haven't. So when that one pops into my mind. Should I let that maybe be a little prompt from God to go back to her to say the member that time because I don't want to go there. That was I caused such pain I like to keep the door closed on that one. Is there value to going back just to make sure. I think if you have a question.

It would be worth your while to say to her were discussing this today and this spot back in my mind as will make sure that that's all clear and that she may well say honey, it's clearly why even thought about it or she must let you know it does bother me once in a while to hear you talk about a three step process for working through those past failures that were alluding to give us an example of how you walked a couple through the process in your counseling if you can. One is to ask God just take an hour away and sit down alone with God and ask God to bring back to your mind all the places where you failed your spouse in the past and just write them down is write them them, and God will do that because God wants us to deal with our failures. Then you go to your spouse and you tell them you know I said I was gone the other day and I asked him to tell me where I failed you in the past and he gave me a pretty good list and you got a few minutes.

I like to share this with you either now or later and see if you could forgive me. While your spouse is listening and chances are they'll make time to let you read the list.

That right there is probably worth the two days of listening to this program. I mean, I think that could make a dramatic difference in your marriage, man. Try that and then let us know the difference it made in your marriage a week or the next day. I would love to hear from you if that piece of advice right there made a difference for you while Gary that's powerful and if your spouse happens to say once you read the list. I'd like to forgive you but I don't know if I can give them time to assess this. I am not gonna want to pressure you for forgiveness, but I hope that you can eventually find in your heart to forgive me because you deserve more and I want to be what you deserve and let it ride. I can tell you is a good chance now you start being kind and changing your behavior that they're going to forgive you and may come back and confess their own failures. Here is you describe that the word that jumps into my mind like a neon sign is humility and vulnerability and again, what is it in us as human beings that that so hard a place to get to that vulnerability did to be able to do that which I mean I think a lot of people are exhaling going if we could only do that it would be different.

Why can we not get there, what is it in the ass that we don't want to be that vulnerable read rather sit in the mock of our marriage, then do that. I think it's the work of the enemy in our hearts and in our minds. He doesn't want us to confess our failures. He doesn't want us to experience forgiveness in anything he can do to keep us from getting there. He will I think also we are self-centered we are prideful and yes, it's hard to acknowledge your failures, especially in the close relationship like marriage, but when we do, were freed. Even if I don't forgive you. You feel better because you you laid on the table and it's so biblical coming.

God doesn't just forgive everybody he forgives people who confess their sins and that principle is true here. We don't just expect our spouses to forget all this stuff week but if we confess it, then they can forgive and now we can get the wall torn down. Now we can begin building our marriage are rebuilding your marriage. Let me ask you, in that context so that Scripture were the disciples and the Lord are talking and Jesus is saying forgive 70×7. You can interpret that in a lot of different ways in a marriage conflict and the husband who, for the umpteenth time is coming back saying please forgive me for that. What's the healthy approach and that I mean if you're thinking, forgiveness, anytime cheap forgiveness. It may not mean enough in a marriage, what should it look like well I think Jesus was saying most of all we should always be willing to forgive and have no limits on forgiveness. Having said that, I think what you describe when they come back with the same failure over and over and over and over again that there is a place for us to confront and so you know honey I think your sincere.

I believe your sincere but what would talk about how we can change the behavior and let's come up with a plan or you won't do this again, and most the time the spouse will be open to thinking about a plan. One lady said to me she said Dr. Evan, husband just kept doing the same thing over and over and finally we challenged him let's think about this, you lose his temper with the kids in with me and so we got a plan that was very simple that if he felt like he was about to lose his temper with me are one of the children he would say honey I'm hot. Go take a walk and I knew what was all about, and he would like a walk, cooldown, and then come back and say okay honey I'm back. What can I do to help you plug back in. She said Dr. Evan.

He seldom loses his temper and and she's a sex, what if you walks but he's not lose his temper.

So I think that's the way you handle that gear you've touched on those three key components of identifying your failures and confessing those to your spouse and then seeking forgiveness. Those are all biblical approaches to human relationship, particularly of marriage. Let me ask you about another part of the strategy that caught my attention. That is to have a winning attitude toward your spouse and I read so many wives and husbands going yeah but you don't know how to have a winning attitude and where does that come from well it's the opposite of having a negative attitude negative attitude is you know it's never going to be any better it's gone on too long. Too much as happened, nothing can ever be better if you keep that attitude.

Nothing will be better.

You will stay in a winter marriage but if you begin to think in terms of there's gotta be something good here in our relationship, and you start focusing on the positive.

In this what Paul encouraged us to do in Philippians chapter 4 when he said if there's anything good and holy and right and he listed all things nice and think on these things, think on the positive things you start looking for positive things in your spouse and then you start verbalizing those things for them.

Look at them the way God looks at them. Your spouse is somebody made in the image of God there gifted by God.

They have the ability to do things and you start walking down that road and you begin to see some good things in your spouse and then you verbalize it may be simple things may be little things but you begin to verbalize the positive things in the relationship and when you verbalize the positive your spouse. There's something inside of them that wants to be better every time you commend them for something or point out something about them that you really like they want to be better. I remember when my kids were little, my wife would tell the children what a good father was and I knew sometimes she was going way beyond reality, but every time she told him how good I was. It made me want to be as good to see Santa Claus you know and conversely when you focus on the negative, and you say negative things in critical things to your spouse. There's something inside of you and they want to run from you just get away from you, so this whole thing of looking for the positive in choosing to think about the positive it in itself has a way of moving you back toward spring and summer and in the power of these positive words and that the positive attitude is not necessarily going to create instant change in relationship is coming not necessarily years of negative things, not necessarily quickly, but they do move you in the right direction. They begin to fall the ice and they begin to move you back toward spring gear you talk about Dead Sea people and the babbling brook finally let no earlier get that they're talking about our personality when it comes to talking some of us are densities of the Sea of Galilee flow south by way of the Jordan River into the density and the Dead Sea goes nowhere. That's why we call it the density.

Some of us have that kind of personality we can receive thoughts, feelings, experiences throughout the day. We have a large reservoir where we store all of that and were perfectly happy not to talk if you say to a Dead Sea what's wrong why aren't you talking the night I did single site. Nothing drunk only to think something's wrong. It's just that they can be content, not to talk now.

The other personality type is what I call the babbling brook and that's the personality that whatever comes in the Highgate or the ear gate comes out the mouth gate and normally there's not 60 seconds between the two.

In fact, if no one is at home. These people will call someone with telephone you know what I just saw you know what I just heard they have no reservoir and usually these two people marry each other, usually in the babbling brook will complain that her spouse doesn't talk and often that spouse is a husband just won't talk. I just have to keep asking questions. He can sit down for wholemeal and not say a word about what happened today well but in the difficulty is you don't bring a bulldozer and to make the Dead Sea a babbling brook. What do you do though the find some compromise. You're never going to change the basic tendency but you can both learn to grow toward the middle, the Dead Sea can learn to speak more than he would nor RC would normally speak the babbling brook can learn to slow the flow asked more questions and become a better listener, and I say to the babbling brook. Don't ever expect the other person to talk as much as you talk. But if you will ask questions. I may give short answers so you ask another question just to follow up and don't get annoyed just keep asking questions and I will respond to questions, it's easy for a Dead Sea is easier if you asked me questions because otherwise you to say I wish we talk more and I'm thinking about what and why yeah what what what what you mean talk more but give me a question I can respond to the question in developing that empathetic ear to listen. I mean, I think. Unfortunately, in marriages that's were we lose our ability to do it so quickly. Maybe after your two or maybe month to we tend to not stay in touch with that ear to listen to each other how we maintain that is a good healthy part of our relationship and I never heard the word empathy when I was growing up.

Yes a psychological word but really it's simple, it means putting yourself in the shoes of the other person and trying to look at the world through their eyes.

So when they're talking what you're trying to do is look from their perspective, what are they saying one of the thinking, what are they feeling and you ask questions to clarify it.

Make sure you understand what the honeys this what you're saying. Sounds to me like you're saying this, give him a chance to clarify that's empathetic listening is front really trying to look at their perspective make you do this, then a little ways into the listening you can honestly say honey I think I hear what you're saying and you tell them and they so yeah that's what I'm say you find that one gender I mean we laugh about that.

That sounds exhausting and remains guys up right that's right, Janet, Gnostic and even laughed like that.

Do women do they tend to be better listeners than men. Yeah, I don't put me in the category, but I do think that at least the men I've encountered have more difficulty doing this than do their wives and how do we get beyond the joke of that that it's costing. How do we say okay it's exhausting but I'm in a do it. What kind of triggers do you still get Tom down. Jim listen to what Jean is saying if you have to set time limits set time limits for some guys let me talk to him. I don't want to get in the conversation with her at night because goby three hours and I'm exhausted and I'm exhausted already and and the wife is just crying for more conversation and I say to both of okay let's back off and let's not try to cram it all into a three hour.

Let's give her 15 minutes each night and if she knows it will be another 15 minute conversation tomorrow night. She can learn to accept that because she knows it startled build up and become a three hour conversation so I think finding out what works for you as a couple, but we have to listen to each other. If we don't listen we will never understand each other, but if you listen long and you can say honey I think I hear what you're saying and here's the other line and it makes a lot of sense and it makes a lot of sense and it does from their perspective always makes sense and when you say that you are no longer an enemy.

You are a friend and then you can say let me share my side honey, dear. This is been fantastic advice, both today and last time and probably the last question I need to ask is the final word from you. Okay, you've identified the four seasons and I am living in winter.

I don't know where my spouse is living but I'm living in winter people that feel stuck in that place.

What can they do when they get home today. What can they do to begin to change it to this fine spring or summer at least fall do something different from what you did last night. Don't do the same thing on your be at the same place tomorrow night and maybe that means simply say honey I haven't told you this a long time but I appreciate the fact that you work so hard to provide for us are something else that's positive say something positive tonight.

Something you haven't said in a while to your spouse.

That's a good place to start.

Dr. Gary Chapman authored the book before seasons of marriage secrets to a lasting marriage. It has been great to have you with this thing is always good. What will conversation had with Dr. Gary Chapman today on Focus on the Family. Well I hope you been encouraged to work on your marriage, regardless of the season your end and you know this is why Focus on the Family exists. We want to help you have the best marriage possible and of course challenges arise, we get that those are the winter seasons. But we can help. We have caring Christian counselors on staff that will listen to you.

Pray with you and offer some insight on how you can move forward and beyond that, our hope restored marriage intensive's are really outstanding. A couple of years ago Dean and I had the opportunity to attend one.

It really changed our relationship for the better.

Well, lots of couples who have gone through those intensive say the same thing John.

I love hearing about the marriages that have been saved through hope restored God is doing some amazing things in that program. I'm so proud of it.

Couples on the brink of divorce come back stronger and better-than-average and when we do our two-year follow-up survey, 80% of those couples report that they are still together still married and have a higher level of marriage satisfaction. That's excellent. That's the goal. So if you need help in your marriage should I get in touch with us today. Today may be the day that everything changes for you. And we also have Dr. Chapman's great book the four seasons of marriage secrets to a lasting marriage.

You can order that directly from us and the proceeds all go back in the ministry here Focus on the Family we don't pay shareholders when you sign up for a monthly pledge of any amount today will send you a copy of that as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry and if that monthly commitment is too much. We get that we can still send it out for one time gift of any amount, no amount is too small when it comes to saving marriages and helping families to thrive. We hope your hearing how much we appreciate you and were thankful that you chose to do your ministry through focus. Donate today. As you can learn more about hope restored and get your copy of the book the four seasons of marriage.

All the details are in the show notes plan to join us again tomorrow will have an amazing story of how baseball brought three generations together. 12 he joined us in our journey we had a shared goal. We had a shared dream shared vision together are dad actually got down into our world and he helped birth. This dream but then he helped massage it for us.

On behalf of Jim Daly, and the entire team. Thanks for listening today to Focus on the Family I'm John Fuller inviting you back.

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