Tag / Marriage

by Michael

Jeff Johnson Writing For the Children

I know that many of you heard the story yesterday about the custody battle between Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry for their  four-year-old daughter. Media reports state: “a custody evaluator — a psychologist — wrote the report after extensive interviews with the family and others. The report raised issues not about Gabriel’s ability to love but to care for Nahla, in part because of personal issues.  A judge will decide the custody arrangement later this month, and whether Halle gets to move to Paris with Nahla — something Gabriel opposes.”

Now, before we begin to take sides, which countless numbers of people have via social media, we need to look at the bigger picture. It is the very process of taking sides that is a reflection of the challenge that many of us who are trying to co-parent face daily. The challenge where one question is lifted over that of the very welfare of the children we claim to want to love and develop. That question is who is more right.

As the country faces increased divorce rates and more children, especially in our community, are being raised in single parent homes, the notion of co-parenting becomes more and more important. Co-parenting; or separated/divorced parents finding ways to collectively and cooperatively raise children they have brought into the world, is for many more difficult than trekking Mt. Kilimanjaro backwards with a blindfold. We carry as men and women so much pain, anger, shame and regret (did I say anger?) as a result of failed relationships that we can often never see beyond it in the name of providing a healthy space for our children.

Children are like beautiful flowers. They need ideal conditions in order to properly grow, bloom, and mature. What I see so often is parents attempting to fight for the position of greatest provider of light and water. “I can provide for them better than you” or “you can’t love them or address their emotional needs the way I can”. And what we fail to realize is that no matter how true either or any of the statements you can come up with to describe how great you are at parenting, it is secondary to the environment in with the parenting is done. By that I mean you could provide the greatest light since the sun to your babies, and provide care like spring rain, but if the soil that your babies are in is contaminated, all that great light and water still can’t stop the flowers from being infected.

And my beloved family, so many of us are further contaminating the soil even in our well doing.

To finish Jeff’s article, visit Black America Web by clicking here.

by Michael

Memorable Moments

After seeing and hearing a spectacular performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, me and Dawn spent dinner last weekend, in part, going over memorable moments from the previous year.  There were several we discussed; others went without our mentioning.

The space to do so, the room to remember, was an authentic tool for our marriage.  It has been a way that we’ve made sense of things over the years, particularly when celebrating our anniversary.

Talking about things that happened and people who happened has been for us a way of putting and holding together this grace-filled experience called marriage.  There are surely other times when we do what we did, remembering.  We recall what’s happened during the turn from one year to another.  I usually fall into a similar mental exercise around my birthday.

But anchoring memory and marriage have been helpful to me as a husband.  It trains me to see and attend to Dawn, to things which impact her, and to people and events that relate to us.  And it was wonderful rehearsing such times and figures from our story after having seen what must be described as musical movements by this country’s talented artists.

by Michael

For Future Generations

Have you seen this letter?  It’s rich with words that, I imagine, you will agree and disagree with given our increasingly divisive political discourse around marriage.  It is, in part, a completely pastoral letter, written by Catholic bishops for their flock in England and Wales, where pastoral has to do with the recognized church leadership giving sound, biblical, and/or theological guidance to those members in their care, particularly, and in this case, when it comes to the issue of marriage in the UK.

These letters are worn and read into the fabric of Christians, and people familiar with Christianity, no matter whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant.  A portion of the Christian Scriptures are essentially pastoral letters which address timely concerns.  Of course, the “damaging pages” of our Scriptures make a broader impact since they are canonized within the Bible.

Take a look at the letter.  It’s a touch longer than you may be accustomed.  I found it originally here.

Do you learn anything from it?  Does it widen or shrink your own views about marriage?  Does it help you see what this church in the UK is passing on to future generations?

This week the Coalition Government is expected to present its consultation paper on the proposed change in the legal definition of marriage so as to open the institution of marriage to same-sex partnerships.

Today we want to put before you the Catholic vision of marriage and the light it casts on the importance of marriage for our society.

The roots of the institution of marriage lie in our nature. Male and female we have been created, and written into our nature is this pattern of complementarity and fertility. This pattern is, of course, affirmed by many other religious traditions. Christian teaching fills out this pattern and reveals its deepest meaning, but neither the Church nor the State has the power to change this fundamental understanding of marriage itself. Nor is this simply a matter of public opinion.

Understood as a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman, and for the creation and upbringing of children, marriage is an expression of our fundamental humanity. Its status in law is the prudent fruit of experience, for the good of the spouses and the good of the family. In this way society esteems the married couple as the source and guardians of the next generation. As an institution marriage is at the foundation of our society.

There are many reasons why people get married. For most couples, there is an instinctive understanding that the stability of a marriage provides the best context for the flourishing of their relationship and for bringing up their children. Society recognises marriage as an important institution for these same reasons: to enhance stability in society and to respect and support parents in the crucial task of having children and bringing them up as well as possible.

The Church starts from this appreciation that marriage is a natural institution, and indeed the Church recognises civil marriage. The Catholic understanding of marriage, however, raises this to a new level. As the Catechism says: ‘The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, by its nature is ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptised persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.’ (para.1601)

These rather abstract words are reflected however imperfectly in the experience of married couples. We know that at the heart of a good marriage is a relationship of astonishing power and richness, for the couple, their children, their wider circle of friends and relations and society. As a Sacrament, this is a place where divine grace flows. Indeed, marriage is a sharing in the mystery of God’s own life: the unending and perfect flow of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We know, too, that just as God’s love is creative, so too the love of husband and wife is creative of new life. It is open, in its essence, to welcoming new life, ready to love and nurture that life to its fullness, not only here on earth but also into eternity.

This is a high and noble vision, for marriage is a high and noble vocation. It is not easily followed. But we are sure that Christ is at the heart of marriage, for his presence is a sure gift of the God who is Love, who wants nothing more than for the love of husband and wife to find its fulfilment. So the daily effort that marriage requires, the many ways in which family living breaks and reshapes us, is a sharing in the mission of Christ, that of making visible in the world the creative and forgiving love of God.

In these ways we understand marriage to be a call to holiness for a husband and wife, with children recognised and loved as the gift of God, with fidelity and permanence as the boundaries which create its sacred space. Marriage is also a crucial witness in our society, contributing to its stability, its capacity for compassion and forgiveness and its future, in a way that no other institution can.

In putting before you these thoughts about why marriage is so important, we also want to recognise the experience of those who have suffered the pain of bereavement or relationship breakdown and their contribution to the Church and society. Many provide a remarkable example of courage and fidelity. Many strive to make the best out of difficult and complex situations. We hope that they are always welcomed and helped to feel valued members of our parish communities.

The reasons given by our government for wanting to change the definition of marriage are those of equality and discrimination. But our present law does not discriminate unjustly when it requires both a man and a woman for marriage. It simply recognises and protects the distinctive nature of marriage.

Changing the legal definition of marriage would be a profoundly radical step. Its consequences should be taken seriously now. The law helps to shape and form social and cultural values. A change in the law would gradually and inevitably transform society’s understanding of the purpose of marriage. It would reduce it just to the commitment of the two people involved. There would be no recognition of the complementarity of male and female or that marriage is intended for the procreation and education of children.

We have a duty to married people today, and to those who come after us, to do all we can to ensure that the true meaning of marriage is not lost for future generations.

With every blessing

Most Reverend V. Nichols, Most Reverend P. Smith

by Michael

Fighting Fair

I’ve written a few posts about marriage.  I believe in marriage, in supporting people who are married and who want to be married.  One abiding question is: How do you not ruin a marriage?  Here is some helpful material from Victoria Costello over at Psychology Today.  She offers ten rules for fair fighting:

If you wish to avoid conflicts in your life, you should stay single, or find a very submissive partner. To deal with disagreements in a constructive way, you need to establish rules for fair fighting. Any rules you decide on should be tailored to your unique relationship. Someone who can’t tolerate a voice raised in anger (many people) is going need a rule that both partners use a normal tone of voice when fighting. Once you’ve agreed upon your rules, it’s a good idea to write them down.  Then both sign and date this document as you would any binding agreement.

However, before you begin to review these rules, there’s one principle you should understand and think about how it applies to you and your marriage. That is, the difference between emotions and reason in marital disagreements. In most human beings, emotions affect decision-makingmore than logic does. When a woman says “You don’t love me anymore,” she is offering an extreme emotional reaction, also called a “You message,” when someone attempts to put total responsibility for a problem on her partner. Most likely, the woman’s response is provoked by something to which she incorrectly attaches an extreme reaction. For example, she may be bitterly disappointed on February 14th when her husband fails to come home with a Valentine gift. What else might she say that would be more appropriate to the situation? How about, “I’m hurt that you didn’t acknowledge Valentine’s Day by giving me a token of your love.” This “I message” would be both reasonable and appropriate. Especially if, by expressing this feeling, it opens up the subject of gift giving for this couple to discuss, including what holidays they jointly choose to celebrate, and what compromises they settle on if they don’t see eye to eye. Finding harmony within a relationship requires that each partner deal first with his emotions and then for both to explore reasonable accommodations or compromises in the marriage – without making either right or wrong, or making the relationship subject to the emotional swings of either partner.

The following ten rules for fair fighting are designed to help you create the boundaries needed to help you make room for openly acknowledging important emotions that may be lurking behind your behaviors (sometimes feelings you are unconscious of), but then invite in reason and compromise. Boundaries – another word for ground rules – are a safety net. If you cannot provide this safety net on your own, you will need an outside mediator to facilitate those disagreements that tend to generate deep emotional responses and destabilize your marriage.

Rule 1: Keep it private

Fighting by a married couple in front of other people is embarrassing to those around you and undermines your relationship. A sharp criticism or negative outburst made in front of other people is often a power play by the more verbally skilled spouse, or whichever one does not mind theembarrassment. By fighting in front of in-laws or friends, you risk giving them the impression that your relationship is in perpetual strife. This can then become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You also may get uninvited opinions on the issue under discussion. This will only roil the situation and make agreement more difficult. Resist the impulse to ask others’ opinions on your marital disagreements; certainly never call for a vote from whoever happens to be nearby. It may sound silly, but this is unfortunately not unusual in a dysfunctional relationship.

If a fight erupts in front of other adults and especially children make an immediate agreement to handle it privately at another time.

To finish reading click here.  I wonder if you’d add anything.

by Michael

Making Marriage Work

I’ve quoted and recommended John Gottman for married couples and for folks interested in marriage.  Over my years as a newlywed, I’ve enjoyed learning about marriage from the scholar and marriage researcher.  He and his wife have built a more than thirty-year career answering the question, how do you make marriages work?

Margarita Tartakovsky wrote a piece summing up one of my favorite Gottman books, The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work.  I imagine there is much that you’ll agree with in Gottman, even if you aren’t married.  If you’re interested in seeing Margarita’s article, click here.  From her summary:

1. “Enhance your love maps.” Love is in the details.

2. “Nurture your fondness and admiration.” Happy couples respect each other and have a general positive view of each other.

3. “Turn toward each other instead of away.” According to Gottman, “[Real-life romance] is kept alive each time you let your spouse know he or she is valued during the grind of everyday life.”

4. “Let your partner influence you.” Happy couples are a team that considers each other’s perspective and feelings.

5. “Solve your solvable problems.” Gottman says that there are two types of marital problems: conflicts that can be resolved and perpetual problems that can’t. It’s important for couples to determine which ones are which.

6. “Overcome gridlock.” Gottman says that the goal with perpetual problems is for couples to “move from gridlock to dialogue.” What usually underlies gridlock is unfulfilled dreams.

7. “Create shared meaning.” “Marriage isn’t just about raising kids, splitting chores, and making love. It can also have a spiritual dimension that has to do with creating an inner life together…

by Michael

Child-proofing Relationships

Several of my friends are looking forward to bringing babies into the world.  More babies.  These folks have at least one child and they’re looking forward to the one coming.  I don’t think there are twins coming… But getting news of someone’s pregnancy always leaves me with a scratching question: How will that kid change things for you?  In the case of marriage, how will that kid change things for your marriage?

Children definitely impact your other relationships too.  I can list a dozen people I haven’t seen or spoken to outside the occasional text and email.  Those people either avoid me because they think I’m busy (and I AM), or we can’t find the time to do more than periodic phone-tagging.  It took me two days to call Winfield back the other week.  And I was trying to find the right slice of time for us to talk unrushed, and when the third part of our conversation came around (the call got dropped twice), we still didn’t finish.  We haven’t been able to finish.  And we were talking about being fathers!

I read this article the other day.  It talks about how important it is to know what to expect when children are on the way.  Kelly Alfieri offers some helpful prompts that make good sense.  Then, I saw this article in Psychology Today, and I think Vivian Diller heard me in my study screaming my agreements.  The Psychology Today post was about marriage in midlife.  She offered marriage myths in it.  When she got to the myth about kids solidifying marriage, she said, “Even if creating families may have been the motive behind why some couples marry, the truth is that placing your focus on children over your marital relationship invites major problems over the long term.”

A lot people talk about divorce-proofing marriages.  There are books written about it.  Some of them are good.  Along with all those words and along with the words in the posts I’ve linked above, I think marriages need to be child-proofed.  My friends have lived through baby-bringing days, and more of them are bringing infants into the picture.  They’ll push little plastic plugs into wall outlets.  They’ll open gates across doorways.  They will stick foam things over the corners of tables and attach weird locks on their cabinets that will take a seminar to figure out how to work.  They’ll hide poison from themselves and see how all the little things in their lives have become safety hazards.  And I hope they won’t miss their marriages.

So, here’s my attempt to start a “Child-proofing your relationship list”.  It’s unfinished so that you can comment, add to it, and, together, we’ll finish it.

1)  Build a life and bring your kid into that life.  This comes from one of my mentors.  He says, that children are meant to be integrated into the life you already have.  They aren’t meant to have lives built around them.  Of course this is difficult in practice because children (and I have a toddler) expect to eat when they’re hungry, be cleaned when they’re dirty—although Bryce can be dirty for a long time before it occurs to him that he should complain—and generally believe the world revolves around them.

2)  Establish a routine for your important relationships.  This may look like a weekly conversation with a spouse about your marriage.  It could be an appointment with your buddies after work twice a week, a date night, a girls’ night, a visit to the gym with a workout partner, whatever.  It will be a routine, something you do regularly.  Establish it.

3)  Keep that routine religiously before a baby comes.  The routine will be stretched.  The relationships will change and necessarily so.  You’ll never run completely away from the relationship you’re developing with that non-rent-paying-person called baby.  But you can consciously run in the opposite direction.  You can seek to strengthen your friendships in the face of parenting as opposed to letting them lapse because you have a kid.  This will keep you from using your kid and from ending important relationships.

4)  Learn to listen to the needs of your significant other.  Again, this can apply to marriage or some other relationship.  Sometimes the error in a relationship, especially when children show up, isn’t talking but listening.  The careful and hard work of paying attention is more important than speaking actually.  Listening is inherently generous.  Listening is humbling because you keep all that important stuff in your mouth.  It’s an unselfish behavior, which is why it’s so hard and why it means so much when you’ve actually been “heard” by someone.

5)  Look for a trusted baby-sitter and map out intentional times to be away.  Preferably you’ll begin the search when you find out that an infant is coming.  It will take time.  But here’s the thing: you need to leave that kid.  I know, I know.  I don’t mean all the time or everyday or, even, on some regular schedule.  But you already know that you don’t like to be around anybody all the time.  Is that just me?  No, you need a break from that child.  Choose who you’ll be with when you leave, whether it’ll be your own time alone.  But leave.  Go away.  It’ll replenish you for the next contact.

Okay.  Your turn.  What’s next on this list?

by Michael

Secret To Marital Success

I get google alerts, and I’ve noticed several articles lately on the decline of marriage, the irrelevancy of marriage, and the increasing amounts of trouble for married folk.  Most of the observations are old ones.  Financial hardship challenges marriages.  Correlations between educational background and marital satisfaction remain solid.  Marriage is hard.  The usual stuff.

And marriage has always been hard.  And people have always had a host of reasons to marry.  Regardless of their reasoning, marriage takes work.  In one of my mentor’s words, “Marriage is not for children.”  It takes work for those with and without jobs.  It requires commitment and a host of other skills and gifts from husbands and wives.

Despite the many sobering words this week about marriage, I came across this story, celebrating a Florida couple’s 70th wedding anniversary.  The wife, Mildred, says that the secret to a successful marriage is to forgive and be forgiven.  I think words are worth meditating on.

by Michael

Living With a Writer

I was browsing freshly pressed WordPress blogs about writing and saw Amy Nichols’ recent post.  It’s an interview with her husband and it gives his perspective on what it’s like to live with a writer.  I thought about a few similar experiences that me and the wife have had as I read it.

Because I wouldn’t ask Dawn these questions at this point–who has the time?–I’m forwarding a few of Amy’s questions and her husband’s responses.  You can see the entire Q&A by clicking here.

Me: Am I a writer?

Him: Yes, but I think you spend more time being a writer than writing.

Me: Interesting. What is the difference between being a writer and writing?

Him: Doing all of the things that are trappings of the profession than the actual profession.

Me: Like what? What are those trappings?

Him: I would say mostly being online, doing things like blogs and facebooking and networking with people. That seems to happen far more of the time than actual writing.

Me: (gulp) Right. So how do you think that impacts a writer?

Him: What impacts a writer?

Me: Not writing.

Me: And what is your advice to a writer who isn’t writing?

Him: Write.

Me: Have you ever tried writing?

Him: Sure.

Me: And what did you think of it?

Him: It’s not a whole lot of fun. It’s fun to be done with it.

Me: What is it like living with a writer who is writing?

Him: Well, when you see them (laughs), it’s good because they’re excited, they’re energized by it. Mostly it’s they’re somewhere else, writing. Mostly it’s not seeing them. But when you do see them, they’re fired up and energetic and energized by it, so it’s good.

Me: Do you think it takes a special kind of person to be married to a writer?

Him: You know, I think it takes a special kind of person to be married to any other person. Everyone’s got their quirks, and a writer is just one way to be quirky.

Me: Would you prefer that I not be a writer?

Him: No, that would be worse. (laughs) I love the artistic part of you, and I would love to have the artistic part of you doing art all of the time and being happy about doing the art all of the time. The part I don’t like is the everything else that goes with it.

Me: The business side of it?

Him: Yeah.

Me: Do you think most writers would agree with that statement as well?

Him: I don’t know.

Me: What advice do you have for people who live with writers?

Him: I think the trick is to find balance. Say, this is your writing space, and when you’re not in that space, then you have to come out of that space. You can’t keep one foot in both worlds and try to be happy at all times. You need a sequestered time to work on it, and then you need a time when you’re going to interact with the planet.

by Michael

Celebrating Divorce

The Root posted an article by Angela Bonner Helm the other day about divorce parties.  The parties are described as ways for women to get through the difficult transition that is divorce.

If you’ve read some of my archived posts about marriage, you know that I celebrate marriage, that I’m a pastor whose most popular activity after prayer some years is leading marriage services, and that I’m concerned to ensure that people get married, stay married, and that they build strong marriages.  But the article made me think about a few things in relation to marriage and divorce:

  • We need to ritualize divorce.  I’m not talking from a position of strength when I make this point, so that should be clear.  But I think communities that love people, communities like churches for example, need to find ways to acknowledge when a marriage ends.  In the article, Angela Helm talks about how society’s understanding of divorce has moved from a hardly talked about decision to be more accepted and even public.  Even with that social movement, I think my professor’s words ring true in Promising Again that “The end of a marriage is often a secret sadness.”  I imagine a church, like mine and others, will be concerned that ritualizing divorce will erode matrimony, that nodding and walking through transitions like separations and divorces, will somehow take away from marriage.  However, if people (i.e., families, communities, and churches primarily) cannot develop rituals to name and understand and accept divorces, we will miss opportunities to continually love people.
  • We need to support couples who make the hard choices to leave their marriages.  I think people who often talk about divorce hardly ground their words.  They speak about it as a concept and not as a personal (series of) decision(s) that has difficult consequences.  Moreover, people divorce.  And people who choose to end their marriages, whatever their reasons for ending them, need help.  The men and women who end those relationships are at a most critical time in their lives.  Quoting Christine Gallagher, an author, Helm writes,
“Friends can throw a party to show their divorcing pal that they are supported, loved and not alone, [and] the party can be a great way the newly divorced person can thank all the people who stood by them through the ordeal of separation,” Gallagher writes.
  • We need to provide all kinds of support.  Support may look like these parties, events which push people to mark the endings of their marriages and continually look forward to what’s next.  Support may resemble counseling sessions with therapists who specialize in counseling with people who divorce.  It may look like listening on the phone to an ex-husband while he laments the end of his relationship or sitting at a table where a wife brightens up after being “freed” or “relieved” or finally let go by a deadening marriage.  It may certainly look like awkward moments where you don’t know how to introduce someone who was always a part of a couple.  It may mean having some clarifying conversations so everybody feels ready to go forward.  But with more than 50% of our couples divorcing, we do well to prepare for being more supportive.
  • We need to ensure that churches are equipped to serve people who have divorced.  Churches are places where the good news about God’s alternative to things as usual is proclaimed.  That good news is a message for everyone.  It is about a person and is personal.  And we have to work hard not to exclude people with particular histories (do we not all carry our stories?) from our churches.  No one was excluded during the early church and no one should be excluded these days.  I believe with some hard thinking and careful praying and a lot of listening, churches are best suited to bring people who have divorced to the great message about Jesus.  Earlier I quoted Promising Again, a pastoral resource about renewing, remembering, and revisiting the promise a couple makes when it marries.  I’ll end with another quote from it.
The sad truth is that for some couples, promising again will not occur.  Some couples keep the initial promise unchanged for the sake of the children.  These couples survive in hollow shells of marriages, occasionally managing to maintain appearances of family tranquility.  For others, even the best help may not be enough.  With some marriages ending in these painful circumstances, the church’s presence becomes crucial, though difficult.

If you want, tell me what you think.  And if you’d like to read the entire article at the Root, click here.