how to be crazy about your marriage - uvu.edu to be crazy about your marriage and your kids …...
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How to be Crazy
about your marriage
and your kids …
without going crazy
in the process!
David & Elizabeth Fawcett, Ph. D, LMFT
Message
Send
Interpret
Effective Communication• The process of sending a message in such a
way that the message received is as close as possible to the message intended.
• Effective communicators pay as much attention to How they’re sending their message as to the words they are using.
• If you believe that people generally have a positive intent, how can you find it in what your partner is saying?
Feedback
• Psychological Safety must be modeled
• When there isn’t safety, people move toward silence or violence.
• Silence fails (85%)
• The limiting factor of all communication is not the riskiness of the message, but how to create conditions of safety to address the content. We can be right, but relationally wrong.
Crucial Conversations
Stop the “4 horsemen” Replace with these Antidotes
Criticism
Defensiveness
Contempt
Stonewalling
Gentle
Start-up
Take
Responsibility
Build a Culture of
Appreciation
Do physiological
self-soothing
Commitment in Healthy Relationships
1. The first key to cultivating commitment is making the relationship primary. With
many demands on our time, sometimes our marriages only get small
fragments of leftover time and energy. … Some couples work in the yard
together. Some cook together.
2. A second key to cultivating commitment is setting limits on intrusions. For
commitment to thrive, a couple must be willing to set some boundaries.
3. A third key to commitment is building rituals of connection. Each couple can
design rituals of connection that will sustain relationship commitment. Some
couples worship together or take classes together and share their discoveries
with each other. Some couples take time for hugging, walking, running, or
other exercising. Any activity that helps a couple to feel close can strengthen
and support commitment.
Commitment & Communication
Brent & Susan Barlow
“Everybody used to think it was love. If you just love each other. But you can be in love with someone you aren’t committed to. So, I say Commitment is the number one thing. And you have to commit some time to your marriage to build it.”
“If we have a disagreement or a bad day, we just say, ‘Let’s just start over. Let’s just start over tomorrow… Let’s not try to figure out who caused it or what it is. Let’s just start over and give each other the benefit of the doubt.”
Married June 5, 1965
Routines & Rituals
• Management strategies
• Structure
• Demarks time
• Supported by others
• Planning
• Belonging to the group
• Emotional containment
• Commitment to the future
• Emotional lineage
• Consecration of the past
• Would be missed and noted
by family members if absent
Routines & Rituals – Early Marriage• Challenge: creating a set of daily routines that fit the
rhythms of the individuals and determining which rituals
will be carried forward from which side of the family.
• Couple Time Rituals: sports, hobbies, games, movies
• Togetherness Rituals – setting aside time to be together
• Escape episodes – provide an escape/leave home
• Private Codes: tied to couple identity
• Conflicts primarily concerned leisure and household expenditures
Daily Living Routines
Negatively related to parents’
reports of problem behaviors.
• Household responsibilities
• Discipline routines
• Homework routines
“Children who have experienced
regular routines and have been part
of creating meaningful rituals may
be better prepared to meet the
challenges of school.
Family routines at four years of age
predicted academic achievement
at nine years of age.
Families who maintained a high
degree of commitment to their
rituals and valued the emotional
connections they experienced
during their family gatherings over
the five year period had children
who scored the highest on tests
of academic achievement.”
- Barbara Fiese
• In a study of 4,746 adolescents, frequency of family meals
was associated with better grades and less cigarette,
alcohol and marijuana use.
(Eisenberg et al., 2004)
Family Meal Time
• In a study of 2,818 children
between birth and age twelve, time
spent in family activities, including
mealtime, was associated with fewer
problem behaviors.
(Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001)
…the most important rituals for a family will be the ones that evolved
spontaneously and often with a sense of humor.
It is the ordinary routines of family life that make this important group so
extraordinary.” (Barbara Fiese, 2006)
“Reading a bedtime story, weekly pizza
night, or calling out the same greeting
when returning home are the moments
that come to define what it means to
belong to a family.
These routine times are rarely elaborate
events nor are they even cause for
comment. Yet, they form the memories
and scrapbooks of family life.
cr-A-zy: Attachment & Affection
“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh," he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw, "I just wanted to be sure of you."”
ARE you there for me?
• A = Accessible
• R = Responsive
• E = Emotionally engaged
We know from all the hundreds of studies on love that
have emerged during the past decade that emotional
responsiveness is what makes or breaks love relationships.
Happy stable couples can quarrel and fight, but they also
know how to tune into each other and restore emotional
connection after a clash. – Sue Johnson
Turning Toward
Do you receive bids for connection?
Do you laugh at jokes?
Do you recognize support?
Marriage Masters: 86% of the time they receive it,
much of the times it’s with enthusiasm
Marriage Disasters: 33% of the time they receive it,
but it’s frequently with irritation.
Attachment across Generations
• Secure parent-child relationships lead us to be more self-confident and socially confident, more likely to view others as trustworthy and dependable, and more comfortable with and within relationships. (Topham, Larson, Holman, 2005).
• Secure adults are more satisfied in their relationships and use conflict strategies that focus on maintaining the relationship instead of “winning.” (Strong, DeVault, Cohen, 2011, p. 247)
• compromise, cooperation, assertiveness
“The spirit of celebration can turn us from burdened pilgrims to
purposeful travelers.
It can transform us from task-oriented wardens of our children to
happy playmates.
It can renovate relationships that are hollow by renewing the spirit
of appreciation.”
Celebrate the little things
Self-Care & Self-Advocacy
• We are never so vulnerable as when we love – Freud
• We must figure out how to balance our need for
autonomy and our need for togetherness, how to
manage effective inter-dependence.
Luciano L’Abate
Love of
Other
Love of Self
High Low
High 1 2
Low 3 4Selfish No-Self
High Low
Low
High Self-lessSelf-full
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