Executive Marriage Coach – Online with Andrea

Had a great time talking with Andrea Garrison on her radio show today. Listen to the recording to understand the journey to deeper intimacy in your marriage and the path to your own recovery:

Executive Marriage Coach – I Thought My Marriage Was OK

“I thought my marriage was OK”. This was the lament of a young man who came in with his wife to see me for coaching. A couple of months ago his wife informed him that she has been unhappy in their marriage for about five years and now is thinking about leaving. How could they have such drastically different perspectives on their marriage?

The simple answer is really bad communication. In reality, things are never quite so simple. The problems in this relationship stem from multiple issues, including how they have dealt with past experiences, differences in how they think, how they are motivated, and how they deal with emotions. They also have not learned how to understand and meet one another’s basic needs.

I remember feeling lost and confused in my marriage at different points in time. It is not easy to work through tough times. However, the rewards of pushing through and hanging in there can be great. For example, my wife and I recently had a great visit with our daughter and her husband and our wonderful granddaughter. Seeing the next generation living healthy and happy lives is sweet indeed. These are the good times.

For the young couple in my office there is hope. They have finally started to confront their problems and really talk to each other. Even though telling the truth hurts, it is a necessary part of recovery. If you are in a hard place in your marriage right now please don’t give up before you do everything you can to work it out. Imagine yourself happily married for 40 years and reaping the rewards of enduring love. Hold unto that thought and make it happen.

Here are a few tips:
1. Decide to be happy and make marriage your priority
2. Share your honest thoughts and feelings with your partner. Not “you make my life miserable”, but “this is what is going on with me right now”.
3. Find out what is most important to your partner today. If you listen to the feedback openly you will hear the themes. What is the underlying need, fear, or pain that is being communicated?
4. Once you know what is most important, sincerely try to respect and meet the need or concern with love as consistently as possible.

Give not in order to receive but to become capable of giving more. Love generates love.

p.s. I have been working hard on ways to help you “re-imagine marriage”. Stay tuned.

Intimacy in Marriage – See Your Own Beauty

Intimacy is created through sharing all of yourself with one you love.  There are many expressions of intimacy and we all have different levels of awareness and willingness to share who we are.   Some, maybe most of us have lost sight of the light and the beauty within and it feels as if we never really knew ourselves at all.  How can we reveal what we do not know?

I do not think, as one often hears, that we cannot love someone until we fully love ourselves or that we cannot create intimacy without fully knowing ourselves.  It is in honestly coming together with another admitting we don’t fully know and love ourselves that helps to reveal our essence.  Saying “I don’t know” is a position of honesty, humility, and vulnerability that allows learning and connection to take place.  Evolutionary growth is an interactive process between an organism and its environment.  We can help one another grow and mature. We shape and influence one another for better or worse.

Yet we still must take full responsibility for our own development.  I have observed that women learn to hide their light and beauty from others and from themselves in particular ways.  Beauty is hidden because of fears, beliefs, and assumptions.  You are taught to believe that it is not OK to shine too brightly for fear of what others might think of you.  You have come to believe that you need to compete with others and so you compare and judge and often find yourself lacking.  So you hide your beauty in various ways; through negative emotions, through behaviors that keep you too busy, through excess focus on appearance, or through neglect of your bodies, minds, and souls.  Men, of course have the same struggles but it plays out in somewhat different ways, such as the quest for power, and accumulation of possessions that you hope will earn you respect and admiration.

Please spend some time reflecting on the following poem by Derek Walcott.  When you cultivate ways to feast on your life you will become full and find you have much greater depth to share with the one you love.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes;
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

Executive Marriage Coach – The Eyes of an Angel

The Eyes of an Angel

I asked a couple that I have been coaching for a while to look deeply into the eyes of one another and tell me what they saw.  The husband looked at his wife for a moment and said “I see the eyes of an angel”.  What is remarkable is this is a couple who has worked through infidelity and some other tough issues and are now emotionally healthier and more connected than ever.  They are learning what it feels like to be in quadrant 4 of the Dynamic Marriage Map.

I have previously written about the Dynamic Marriage Map I created to help articulate the stages and dynamics of marriage and other intimate relationships.  Quadrant four of the Dynamic Marriage Map speaks to the possibilities and fulfillment of a marriage in which two people have worked through enough of their developmental issues to reach a higher level of maturity and have also nurtured a high level of connection.  This stage is characterized by interdependence, co-commitment to the wholeness of each other, high intimacy, and spiritual connection.  It is hard to consistently live at this level and it requires ongoing learning and growth.  Making the commitment of a lifetime journey opens up new depths of possibilities.

There are things you can do to strengthen your relationship muscles and move to quadrant four.  Some are individual work on your own growth, such as developing your understanding of your strengths, talents and needs, as well as your limitations.  You can also focus directly on building good feelings and intimacy between the two of you.

One practice my wife and I have done over the years to strengthen our relationship is to schedule get away weekends at least a couple of times a year.  These are weekends with no commitments other than to be with each other, typically at a nice hotel or bed and breakfast.  Our only agenda is quiet time and connection.

Some crucial elements for deeper connections are:
•    Take time strictly for each other.  Talk about your hopes and dreams for your lives together.  Leave the computer and smart phone off.
•     Look deeply into one another’s eyes.  That may sound corny but when is the last time you really looked at each other?  Seeing love and acceptance in the eyes of someone who knows you intimately is deeply healing and affirming.
•    Speak the words of affection that you feel.  Take the risk of being honest and transparent.
•    Listen intently to one another.  Also listen to the voice from within that softly affirms “this is where I belong”.

As always, for more information on the Dynamic Marriage Map or coaching, please contact me.  I’d love to guide you on your journey.

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