Last night, the speaker said "Chemistry wont make a marraige work."

We laughed.

DUH.

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Have there been any themes so far that you think would be worthy to share on here?

-Steve

Now is the time!

We don’t fight over the really common things married people fight over... like money, chores, not spending enough time together... stuff like that.

The guy really didn't talk about things that we didn't already know, but i guess he touched on things that people need to be reminded of.

He talked about how compromise is SO important. He gave up golf for his wife for five years, because it was such a huge issue (he golfed instead of spending time with his wife - something like 5 nights a week!)

He did say something that i found rather odd, though. He said that (this is statistically speaking), "the best time in your marriage is the first two or three years. Once children come, it all goes down hill. The time when they get to junior high school is the lowest point of most marriages.. If you make it past that, you have a 50/50 chance of making it past high school. If you pass high school and you're still married, you have a 50% chance of staying married until the end."

I found that rather odd. You would think that when your children are very young (newborn to age 6 or 7) that your marriage is hardest. In middle school they finally start to leave you alone!

He also said that you can’t be afraid of being wrong, but you have to be careful not to be the one who always gives in because you don’t want to fight with your mate. I know that I have to be really careful when we fight and not win all the time. He talked about fighting fair and walking away from it until you can talk calmly… which we do (a lot, actually). So it was reassuring in that sense

He touched a little on communication, mainly the importance of it. And he's right, it's the cause of 70% of our arguments (usually we're talking about two totally different things and end up laughing about it later).

I did like hearing other people share issues they have with marriage. Although I don’t really relate to most of them on a personal level, it was good to know that other people have problems, too. Not big issues that make people think about divorce, but those little, day to day type things.

Most of our friends aren't married, so its nice when we find other couples who are going through the same things or same types of things This was literally the first time since we've been married that we've been able to attend a marriage bible study thing. We're definetly going back!


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... Especially from the married people who might have some wisdom to dispense.

Thanks for sharing, Sarah!

-Steve

Now is the time!

Now that we have a kid in 8th grade, it's weird to me that someone would think that is harder than when the kids are young. The newborn/toddler stage is very, very hard and I don't think Jay and I ever even had a real fight until after we had Garrett.

It is probably good to hear other couples talk about their day to day problems. That can be some form of therapy for you, too, and help you think, "Gosh I never want to fight about ________." Jay and I have also found that we aren't like other couples when we hear about their problems. We've also seen a ton of pain and suffering in our friends' marriages over the years and have been very blessed not to go through any of that.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~
Lisa in Telly




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I think that the infant/toddler age is worst. Now, not having children that age, i can't know for sure... but it sure seems like it. We dont have 'fights' very often (i can think of two, and one wasnt even a 'fight'), so its good to know that we're not the only couple like that.

So far, the hardest part has been living in Wyoming and with my parents... so that makes like, two months out of our marriage 'easy' haha.



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with parenting style and how much disciplining and training, etc... you do when the kids are young?

I have known a few families (and am thinking of one in particular) who did very little of the tougher discipling and training when the kids were young, saying things like "but they are just a sweet little kid" to excuse making no action toward setting boundaries. Even when their children were acting outrageously and dangerously to themselves and others. Those kid(s) are late elementary/middle school now, and tough time doesn't even begin to describe the phase the parents and kids are going through now.

Is it a weekly biblestudy? Thats cool your going/continuing to go. The church I visited today talked about relationships. I don't know if its helpful but will post the notes, sorry probably breaking some smoking rules by doing this, What do you think about these notes????
RELATIONSHIP VIRTURES ARE 1. humility (low esteem), 2. gentleness (not easily offended), 3 patience (slow to impassioned response), 4. tolerance (remaining faithful to the relationship repeatedly).
COMPLICATIONS IN RELATIONSHIPS ARE 1.failure to respect (self interest & narcissistic justification of bad behavior), 2. failure to submit (lack of time investment, not surrendering needs, not meeting needs), 3 failure to listen (hearing with a filter, hearing what you want or don't want)
ACTIONS OF RELATIONSHIPS ARE 1 communicating, 2. rejoicing, 3. thanking, 4 submitting.
ULTIMATE RELATIONSHIP is with Jesus and the verse they went over in hebrews 13:5 in greek..I will no not you, no not never leave.
I think the most interesting thing he said... theres no such thing as quality time, you just have to spend time, because there is always hype about spending quality time.

For me marriage got harder as the kids got older and less dependent. It seems that we focused so much of our time on being parents, that as the kids got older, and began to develop their own lives, we found that we had both become very different people, grown in very different directions, and found that we really didn't know each other any more.

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He said that it's important to keep your spouse #1 and kids #2... always.

Hopefully things are getting better

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