More2Life Hack: 3 Tips for Staying Close Through Conflict

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Today on More2Life radio, we looked at ways husbands and wives can grow closer not just in spite of conflict.  Here are three things happy couples know about managing conflict…gracefully.

 

  • Avoid catastrophizing conflict–couples in happy marriages argue as often as couples in unhappy marriages.  The difference between happy and unhappy couples is not how often they argue, but how they manage their conflict.
  • Keep Calm in Conflict–The most important thing in conflict is self-regulation.  Use the 60-40 rule. Pay 60% attention to how you’re reacting and 40% to what they are saying.  If you feel your emotional temperature rising to the point that you are showing outward signs of disgust (eye-rolling, disgusted sighing, refusing to look at them, speaking over each other) get control of yourself or take a break until you are calm.  If you can’t have the conversation respectfully, don’t have it at all.  Or, if this is a long term problem get help from a trained marriage therapist who can teach you how to have respectful disagreements
  • Be Caretakers Through Conflict–Smart couples know that even in conflict, taking care of your partner is job #1.  Find little ways to reassure each other, to reassure your spouse that their concerns are important to you, that you are grateful for them working through this with you, and that even though you don’t see eye to eye, you still love each other. 

For more tips on staying close through marital conflict, check out When Divorce is Not An Option:  How To Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Lasting Love and For Better Forever: A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage.  And don’t forget to tune in to More2Life radio each weekday at 10am E/9am C on a Catholic radio station near you or SiriusXM Channel 130.

Imagining the Future Helps Couples Resolve Present Arguments More Easily

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A new study published in the journal  Social Psychological and Personality Science found that thinking about the future helps couples focus on their feelings and reasoning strategies.

 “When romantic partners argue over things like finances, jealousy, or other interpersonal issues, they tend to employ their current feelings as fuel for a heated argument. By envisioning their relationship in the future, people can shift the focus away from their current feelings and mitigate conflicts,” said researcher Alex Huynh.

Previous research has shown that taking a step back, and adopting a distanced fly-on-the-wall-type of perspective can be a positive strategy for reconciliation of interpersonal struggles. Huynh and his collaborators investigated whether similar benefits in reasoning and relationship well-being can be induced by simply stepping back and thinking about the future.

Study participants were instructed to reflect on a recent conflict with a romantic partner or a close friend. One group of participants were then asked to describe how they would feel about the conflict one year in the future, while another group was asked to describe how they feel in the present.

 

The researchers found that thinking about the future affected both participants’ focus on their feelings, and their reasoning strategies. As a result, participants reported more positivity about their relationship altogether.

In particular, when study participants extended their thinking about the relationship a year into the future, they were able to show more forgiveness and reinterpret the event in a more reasoned and positive light.

Responding to conflict is a critical skill for relationship maintenance.

“Our study demonstrates that adopting a future-oriented perspective in the context of a relationship conflict — reflecting on how one might feel a year from now — may be a valuable coping tool for one’s psychological happiness and relationship well-being,” said Huynh.

The research also has potential implications for understanding how prospection, or future-thinking, can be a beneficial strategy for a variety of conflicts people experience in their everyday lives.

For more great ideas for dealing more effectively with marital conflict check out For Better…FOREVER!  and When Divorce is NOT An Option:  How to Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Lasting Love or contact the Pastoral Solutions Institute (740-266-6461) to learn how our telephone counseling practice can help you have a more peaceful, loving marriage.

Just THINKING About Marriage Inspires More Responsibility in Young Adults

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Sociologically, we know that marriage, itself, socializes people.  For instance, very few violent crimes are  committed by married men as opposed to single or cohabiting men.  

It turns out, however, that new research shows that even the thought that “I want to be married in the next five years” inspires greater responsibility and maturing in young adults.

“This is a reminder that marriage still matters,” said Claire Kamp Dush, co-author and professor of human sciences at Ohio State. “Just the expectation of marriage may be enough to change some people’s behavior.”

The study appears online in the Journal of Marriage and Family and will be published in a future print edition.

The researchers used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. This study included 7,057 people who were 15 to 20 years old when the data for this study was collected in 2000 and 2001.

The participants were asked in 2000 and 2001 to estimate the percent chance that they would be married in five years. They were also asked whether they had committed certain delinquent acts – including property theft, personal assault, drug dealing and property destruction – since the last time they were interviewed for the study.

On average, participants in 2000 thought there was a 43 percent chance they would be married within five years, increasing to 48 percent in 2001.

In 2000, there were 1,492 young people in the study who reported any delinquent acts and they averaged 1.74 such acts in total. In 2001, participants reported slightly fewer delinquent acts, with 1,273 reporting an average of 1.62 incidents of misconduct.

The key finding was that young people with higher marital expectations in 2000 had lower levels of delinquent activity in 2001.

There are good reasons why people who expect to marry may be avoiding a life of delinquency, Arocho said.

They probably feel they have to watch their behavior to gain social acceptance and be seen as “marriage material,” she said. Plus, people with a job, good income and education all have a better opportunity to get married – and delinquency stands in the way of achieving these goals.

“If you’re thinking of getting married soon, you may do things differently and you act more like an adult,” Arocho said.  READ MORE

What’s Up With All Those Catholic “Rules” About Marriage?

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I recently received the following question about the Church’s requirements for weddings and marriages:

“My girlfriend is a Protestant, and her mother recently asked her a question that I haven’t been able to find much information on. She asked, ‘Why can’t a Protestant and a Catholic have a Protestant marriage recognized by the Catholic Church?’ My understanding is with the proper dispensation, it is possible. I couldn’t really explain, though, why a dispensation is required or what that entails. Can you enlighten me on how to explain what the rule is and why it is that way?”

The most common way to answer this is in terms of the canonical rules or sacramental requirements, but I think these sorts of answers, while being technically correct, miss the point. What does it really mean to say to a person that a “dispensation from form” is required for a Catholic to get married in a non-Catholic church? That often ends up sounding like this: “Catholics have a bunch of rules that have to be followed by everyone regardless of whether or not they’re Catholic … so there!” It doesn’t really move the conversation forward in any personally meaningful way.

I would like to suggest a more pastoral and practical answer. READ MORE

Twice As Much Sex Makes Relationships About Half As Good.

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Sorry, guys.

CARNEGIE MELLON RESEARCHERS FIND MORE SEX DOESN’T LEAD TO INCREASED HAPPINESS

By Shilo Rea

Countless research and self-help books claim that having more sex will lead to increased happiness, based on the common finding that those having more sex are also happier. However, there are many reasons why one might observe this positive relationship between sex and happiness. Being happy in the first place, for example, might lead someone to have more sex (what researchers call ‘reverse causality’), or being healthy might result in being both happier and having more sex.

In the first study to examine the causal connection between sexual frequency and happiness, Carnegie Mellon University researchers experimentally assigned some couples to have more sex than others, and observed both group’s happiness over a three month period. In a paper published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, they report that simply having more sex did not make couples happier, in part because the increased frequency led to a decline in wanting for and enjoyment of sex.

One hundred and twenty eight healthy individuals between the ages of 35–65 who were in married male-female couples participated in the research. The researchers randomly assigned the couples to one of two groups. The first group received no instructions on sexual frequency. The second group was asked to double their weekly sexual intercourse frequency.

Each member of the participating couples completed three different types of surveys. At the beginning of the study, they answered questions to establish baselines. Daily during the experimental period, the participants answered questions online to measure health behaviors, happiness levels and the occurrence, type and enjoyableness of sex. The exit survey analyzed whether baseline levels changed over the three-month period.

The couples instructed to increase sexual frequency did have more sex. However, it did not lead to increased, but instead to a small decrease, in happiness. Looking further, the researchers found that couples instructed to have more sex reported lower sexual desire and a decrease in sexual enjoyment.

To learn more about what it REALLY takes to have a more joyful, passionate, and fulfilling sexual and marital life, check out Holy Sex! The Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving

 

Antidepressants for a Bad Marriage Yield Depressing Results.

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New research shows that doctors regularly diagnose patients as “depressed” when they complain about marital and relationship problems.  The problem is, being sad about a bad marriage isn’t depression, and anti-depressants can’t treat marital woes.

From PsychCentral

New research finds that psychiatrists nearly always respond with prescriptions for antidepressants when clients complain of bad marriages.

The medical definition of depression does not support the assumption that people struggling with their marriage or other domestic issues are depressed and require antidepressants, said Dr. Jonathan M. Metzl, professor of sociology and medicine, health, and society at Vanderbilt University and the study’s lead author. 

The study, conducted using a Midwestern medical center’s records from 1980 to 2000, appears in the current issue of the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. READ THE REST

If you are struggling with marriage and family problems, be sure to get the right kind of help.  Medication can’t cure relationships problems. Marital Counseling can. But remember, not every therapist or psychiatrist is trained as a marriage or family therapist even if they say they do marriage and family therapy!  The success rate for therapists who “do marriage and family therapy” is about 30% while the success rate for therapists who have trained as marriage and family therapists (which includes completing internships in marriage and family therapy and receiving professional supervision) exceeds 90%!  To learn more about getting the help you need, check out When Divorce is NOT An Option: How to Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Lasting Love or contact the Pastoral Solutions Institute (740-266-6461) to learn how our Catholic Tele-Counseling Practice can give you the tools you need to live a more joyful, grace-filled, passionate marriage and family life.

Q&A: WHY DO CATHOLICS HAVE SO MANY STUPID RULES ABOUT MARRIAGE & WEDDINGS?

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It’s wedding season and the following  question popped up on a Facebook thread I participated in. There were a lot of solid responses offered, but the questioner mentioned that he felt my response made the most sense to him, so I thought I would share the interaction.

QUESTION:  My girlfriend is a Protestant and her mother recently asked her a question that I haven’t been able to find much information on. She asked, “Why can’t a Protestant and a Catholic have a Protestant marriage recognized by the Catholic Church?” My understanding is with the proper dispensation, it is possible. I couldn’t really explain though why a dispensation is required or what that entails. Can you enlighten me on how to explain what the rule is and why it is that way?

ANSWER:   Of course, the most obvious way to answer this is in terms of the canonical “rules” or sacramental “requirements” but I think these sorts of answers, while being technically correct, miss the point.  What does it really mean to say to a person that “dispensation from form” is required for a Catholic to get married in a non-Catholic church.  That just ends up sounding like “Catholics have a bunch of rules that have to be followed by everyone regardless of whether they’re Catholic because we say so dammit…so there!”  and doesn’t really move the conversation forward in any personally meaningful way.

I would like to suggest a more pastoral/practical answer.

The entire Christian walk, from baptism forward, is intended to be a process of discipleship in which we learn to answer the question, “How does God wish us to love him and each other?” Catholic marriage, which is all about living out this baptismal call–makes some specific claims about what it means to be loving: namely,  that it requires a couple to be willing to commit their lives to apprenticing in the Catholic vision of love.

For all intents and purposes–because we are all broken and fallen people who really don’t know how to love each other–from a Catholic perspective, whatever THE COUPLE thinks marriage ought to be is irrelevant.   Instead, when a couple agrees to get married in the Church, they are agreeing to let the Church define their marriage for them as an intimate partnership dedicated to an ever deepening experience of love as a free, total, faithful, and fruitful, mutual self-gift. The couple that marries in the Church is, in effect, saying, “We recognize that we don’t naturally know how to love each other as God wants us to, but we promise to spend our life learning how to love each other in the free, total, faithful, and fruitful way,  and to bear witness to the world that this is the vision of love intended by God for all couples, everywhere, because it is the vision of love that best reveals Christ’s relationship with his bride the Church.

A couple who have radically different ideas about what married love should look like–in theory or practice– simply cannot share the vision that the Church asks the couple to share in order to have a valid marriage (that is, to do what the Church says marriage ought to do for the Kingdom of God). Likewise, if a couple wants to get married in a way that is somehow different from the normal way Catholics usually make this promise to live lives of loving discipleship (i.e., a ceremony in a Catholic Church), they need to demonstrate to a competent authority in the Church (usually the bishop) that they really do mean to do what the Church asks of them in marriage.

Although it is rarely stated this way, the truth is that all of the sacramental requirements and canonical rules that are in place regarding what constitutes a valid or invalid marriage have to do with protecting this unique Catholic vision of love as a witness to the kind of love Christ has for the Church. I wish that ministers of the Church would do a more effective job communicating these underlying truths about the Catholic vision of love and how it relates to marriage instead of focusing so much on how and why couples need to color inside the canonical lines.

The rules don’t exist for the sake of the rules. They exist to protect and preserve the integrity of the sacramental mystery represented by the godly love shared between a man and a woman.  For more information on what, specifically, makes Catholic marriage unique and different from other types of marriages and how to fully live out the Catholic vision of love check out the brand new, revised and expanded edition of For Better…FOREVER! A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage

Why Isn’t Married Sex “Hot”? And Should It Be?

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At PsychCentral, Dr. Linda Hatch has a thought provoking article that gets at the heart of the difference I draw in my book,  Holy Sex! , between eroticism, which is sex that is hyper-focused on pleasure to the exclusion of intimacy, and what I call “Holy Sex“, which sees pleasure as the fruit of the emotionally and spiritually intimacy that a couple cultivates in a marriage.  She says,

Hot sex is the sugar high of sexuality. It is sex that is amped up to a heightened level by some form of fear or other strong emotion. This is not the same as passionate sex. The sexual intensity of a new romantic relationship, the rapture of falling in love, is described in scientific circles as “limerence.” This is a biochemically altered state. It resembles but is not the same as illicit sex or any sex in which the intensity is heightened by an arousal escalator such as risk, danger, or secrecy.  The state of limerence is time-limited. Heightened sexual arousal which relies on intense feelings such as danger, chaos, threat, even anger, can be rekindled repeatedly. And in some high-drama relationships it is.

…The preoccupation with hot sex tends to devalue traditional, tame, heterosexual sex as “plain vanilla” sex. Married sex is then seen as needing to dig its way out of old puritanical hang-ups using porn, experimentation, equipment or whatever it takes to make it “hot.”

…This quest for the holy grail of hot relationship sex puts pressure on [people] to find ways to make the sex in their relationship equal the hyper-arousal of addictive sexual acting out. If they can’t, then they may be left feeling that there is something wrong with them.

She goes on to note that the more a person buys into the pornified culture (and, in particular, those with sexual addictions) the more that person will have a hard time understanding how emotional and spiritual intimacy drives authentically passionate sex (what I refer to as “Holy Sex”).  Instead, they will rely more and more on outlandish fantasies and kinky behavior to make up for the lack of emotional and spiritual depth in the relationship.

Dr. Hatch’s article isn’t perfect from a Catholic perspective. In her effort to be tolerant and even-handed she finds it difficult to come right out and say that sex rooted too deeply in kink and eroticism is simply unhealthy–which of course, even from a purely secular standpoint, it is.  But her larger point, that there is a distinction between married sex and eroticism that people in our pornified cultured have a hard time understanding is solid and supports the Catholic view of sexuality.  Namely, that what we might call Holy Sex (e.g., passionate sex rooted in the emotional and spiritual intimacy cultivated in a lifelong committed marital partnership) is an entirely different (and superior) animal than eroticism (“hot sex”). Not only should these two experiences NOT be judged by the same standards, it’s unhealthy to do so.

To learn more about creating  a truly joyful, passionate, intimate, and profoundly spiritual sexuality in your marriage, I hope you’ll check out Holy Sex!  I promise it will change your life.

Think Fast!–What Marriage Can Teach Us About Lent (and it’s not what you think!)

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Check out this great post by Jacob Popcak of JHP Ministry

What pictures come to mind when you hear the word, “fasting”? What about, “penance”? Perhaps you envision the grumpy monk, self-flagellating in some medieval chamber. Or perhaps you see the pious holier-than-thou, starving herself out of some sense of personal loathing. As citizens of the 21st Century, it’s very likely that you envision something at least similar to what I’m describing.

Because of these associations, I always had a really difficult time rationalizing penance, even the menial kinds. Of course, I never gave up anything great than a favorite snack or a less-than-savory habit (in freshman year of college, I gave up swearing). And yet, I had a deep and uncomfortable question that I had to wrestle with: why should I have to be made uncomfortable in my relationship with God? If God really loved me, I thought, and I really loved him, why should the kind of discomfort that came with penance be something I had to take on? Don’t get me wrong: I understood the importance of being able tosuffer for God, if necessary. After all, almost anyone raised Catholic has at least a basic familiarity with the various saints and martyrs who’ve stood up for their faith even in the face of suffering. But there’s something heroic, even dramatic, about suffering. Discomfort, on the other hand, just seemed so meaningless.

I ended up finding the answer to my question, though, in a little document known as The Theology of the Body. A collection of public talks by Pope Saint John Paul II, the document explains – among other things – the sacred beauty of the body, what it means to love others, and God’s plan for human relationship.

Beyond all that, though, one of the central messages of TOB is that our relationship with God is (and should be) like a marriage. If this is a new concept for you, it shouldn’t be an overly difficult one to take in. Where else but the best marriages do we see two people giving themselves completely to their other? Where else but in the best marriages do we a love so great it has the power to change people? Where else but the best marriages do we see a love that is free, total, faithful, and fruitful? The answer to all of these questions is, mysteriously and simply, “the cross”; we see this love – this radical kind of self gift – in the way that God loves us and in the way He asks us to love Him.

​​But as the best of married couples will tell you, nuptial love isn’t always flowers and chocolates and sweet nothings. Oftentimes, the most sincere communications of love lie in the daily messiness of life. “I knew you were tired” says the bridegroom to his bride, “so I gave the baby his bath tonight”; “I know you’re suffering”, says the bride to her bridegroom, “so I took care of the dishwasher”. The lovers don’t do these things for each other because one is angry at the other, nor because one is at fault and seeks to appease the other, nor because their relationship is suffering. After all, no amount of chores or duties would be enough to even the scale against, for instance, an unkind word, a particularly nasty argument, or – God forbid it – a painful infidelity. Instead, the lovers do these things for one another when their relationship is solid to make it even more solid. They do it because amidst the Saturday chores and the leaky faucets and the could you just make sure the door is locked one more time’s – amidst, as Mother Teresa put it, the “small things” – great love flourishes. This doesn’t mean that the roses and the chocolates are any less real, less sincere, or less necessary ; it simply means that the thorns and the poopy diapers are real, sincere, and necessary as well.

In a similar way, our relationships with God can’t (and shouldn’t) always be sweet. A love as profound as that which is shared between Creator and creation, between bridegroom and bride, cannot be made up simply of inspirational sermons, grateful praise, and merry Christmases; there must also be somber hymns, times of silence, and Good Fridays. Put another way, the marital proclamations of, “It feels so good loving you!” mean nothing if they are not balanced with a “…but I love you when it doesn’t feel so good, too.”

This is the true spirit of fasting, of penance, and of mortification.  READ THE REST…

Do YOU Have What It Takes? 4 Promises That Lead to a Happier Marriage

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Celebrate National Marriage Week with FaithontheCouch as we explore what it takes to live a more loving, joyful, grace-filled marriage!

Do You Have What it Takes to Get to “Happily Ever After?”

Almost every newly married couple has two things in common.  First, they are deeply in love with each other and rightly excited about the lives they are building together.  They are passionate about each other, and hopeful about a bright future filled with blessings.  But second, underneath that mutual love, joy, and hope, almost every newly-married couple is also a little terrified.  They wonder if they have what it takes to make it “until death do they part.”  Almost every couple we talk to in our years of marriage ministry ask us one basic question; “How can we know if we have what it takes to make it to ‘Happily Ever After?'”

I can give you the answer to that question right now.  Do you have what it takes? YES!  Absolutely, you have what it takes to have a great Catholic marriage.  Contrary to what you might have heard elsewhere, it doesn’t matter where you’ve come from, what your background is, or what your family of origin did or did not give you.  We know from years of marriage research that what separates so-called “marriage masters” from “marriage disasters” is not magic or history, it’s a set of teachable skills that happy couples have either picked up along the way or are willing to learn.

4 Promises…

While there are many good habits you can cultivate to lay the foundation for a great, Catholic marriage, ultimately, it is your willingness to make four promises that will help you and your spouse become “marriage masters.”

1.  A promise to commit to personal and couple prayer.

2.  A promise to nurture your love.

3.  A promise to commit to your vows even more than each other.

4.  A promise to learn new skills when new challenges come instead of  blaming your marriage or spouse for being “broken.”

Each of these is rooted in solid research that examines what separates marriage success stories from marriage nightmares and each of these is borne out in our experience–which we will share a bit of with you in this chapter.  Let’s look at each of these four commitments.

1. A promise to commit to personal and couple prayer   

Making and keeping marriage great over the course of a lifetime requires us to be willing to sit at the feet of the Author of Love himself and ask him to teach us how to love.  We need to do this every day both individually and together.  There is a reason that research consistently  shows that couples who pray together are up to 30% happier across every dimension of married life than couples who don’t.   When a couple prays both individually and together they are admitting they have a lot to learn about love and they open their hearts to be taught by the best teacher in the universe.

2.  A promise to nurture your love.

Love is like a fire. You can keep it burning forever, but you have to tend it consciously and constantly.  Leave it alone for too long and it simple burns out.  There is no great mystery to it.  Fires without fuel, die.  Smart couples understand that to keep the fires of their love burning strong, they need to tend the flame by doing those little, extraordinary things for each other.  Every. Single. Day.  Little surprises like love notes in a lunch bag, calls to say, “I was thinking of you,” bringing home your spouse’s favorite ice cream instead of yours, doing that chore your spouse hates so that you can say, “I want to make your life easier and more pleasant”, wearing that new lingerie on a night when you might rather just pass out because you want to say, “I still want you”,  and many other little, thoughtful gestures go a long way to stirring the coals and keeping the embers of your love burning hot.  Want your love to last a lifetime?  Tend the fire every day.

3.  A promise to commit to your vows even more than each other

In the early years of marriage, especially if you’ve been arguing more than you expected–and many couples do–it can be very tempting to begin wondering if you didn’t make a mistake.

The key to making it through these days–both now and throughout the rest of your married life–is making a commitment, not just to each other, but also to the marriage itself.  This means making a commitment to your vows.   Research by the Relationship Institute at UCLA shows that while almost every couple is committed to each other, those couples who make an additional commitment to the relationship itself–vowing to work on the marriage even when it isn’t fun and they don’t feel that great about their spouse–have much greater chances to have marriages that are happy and last a lifetime (Wolpert, 2012).

Making a commitment to your vows means that even on the days where your spouse is driving you crazy and you don’t really feel like being a loving person, you are committed to  fighting through all of that to find your best selves again.  Not because you necessarily feel like it.  Not because your spouse necessarily deserves it. But because your commitment to your marriage demands it.  If you make a commitment to sticking it out and working it out, you will find your way back to the joy, love and passion you seek.

4.  A promise to learn new skills when new challenges come instead of blaming your marriage or spouse for being “broken.”

No newly-married couple knows what they are doing when it comes to marriage.   No one.  Not even the people who came from the best families-of-origin on the planet.  When you hit hard times and begin feeling the urge to turn against each other you must remember that it is not because your marriage is flawed.  It is simply because you don’t know what you are doing and you need new skills. We want you to remember four little words that will help you get through these times.  Ready?

NEVER. BLAME. YOUR. MARRIAGE.

Write it down.  Memorize it.  Say it until you can dance to it.  Marriages do not have lives of their own.  A marriage only has the life a husband and wife give it. If your marriage is struggling, it is simply that you don’t currently  have the skills to nurture it under the pressures you are currently facing.   Get those skills.  Read good self-help books; go on a marriage retreat; join a support group; get therapy. The good news is that research consistently shows that couples who have the “don’t blame the marriage” attitude and, instead, commit to acquiring skills when they hit hard times, have much higher levels of marital satisfaction and longevity.  No marriage ever failed because a couple lacked skills.  Rather, marriages fail because couples are too prideful to admit that they need to acquire new skills.    As it says in Proverbs 11:2 “When pride comes, disgrace follows.  But with humility comes wisdom.”

You CAN do it!

If you and your beloved can make these four commitments, you will discover everything you need to make your marriage everything God wants it to be–a great love story that will both satisfy the deepest longings of your heart and be a witness to the world of what God can do when two, imperfect people are willing to learn the steps that lead them to a more perfect love.

Dr. Greg Popcak is the author of many books including Just Married: The Catholic Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the First Five Years of Marriage from which this article is adapted.  Learn more about Dr. Popcak’s books, radio program, and tele-counseling practice at www.ExceptionalMarriages.com