Watching the film

In football, teams will watch films of their previous games to see what they did and did not do well. They take that information to make adjustments to hopefully play better the next week. What do you think would happen though, if they never watched film and lost game after game, year after year? They would have a lot of bad habits to break that they had created over the years.

In marriage, we tend to never look at film and then we act surprised when our marriages fail or hit a major season slump.

What if we looked at our "films" on a regular basis? It could be a weekly thing if you are in a slump or a monthly thing if you think things are going great. Or it could be whatever works best for your marriage. I can see times in my own marriage where if we had only been watching film on a regular basis we never would have gone through a slump because we would have caught our mistakes before they became a habit. Around the time the girls came along I (Bethany) made the mistake of putting the girls before Ace. I thought Ace was a grown man who could take care of himself, but the girls being just babies and toddlers needed me to take care of them all the time. We got away from dates, we never talked and he was working WAY too much. If we had been watching out for those mistakes they might not have become bad habits that were hard to break and unlearn.

So what does looking at film in your marriage look like. My suggestion is a date where you just honestly take the time to talk and listen to each other. Knowing what your film session is, you can come prepared to bring things up that you would like to work on or reinforce something you think you did well on. Let me caution you not to make this a gripe session, but to come with only one or two things that you really would like to work on and two or three things that are good habits that you would like to continue. Even the Detroit Lions do something good once in awhile and need to be encouraged to keep that up.

When you first start watching your films there may be a lot of bad habits you need to break and it can be tempting to try to correct all of them at once. That's really not a good idea though. It can be overwhelming and you will be trying so hard to fix everything that you won't work hard on any one of them. Pick the most important ones first or pick the ones you know you can fix quickly so you can move onto the next one. Before you know it your team will be winning and it will get easier to find those good habits to reinforce and harder to find the bad habits to fix. Now that does not mean you can stop watching film, it just means it will be a little more fun when you do.

Now go watch those films!

The Twilight myth

I finally broke down and read the Twilight series. I wasn't planning on reading them, but I got sick and a friend loaned them all to me and over the coarse of about a week, I read all four books. I have to say the books are addicting. I finally understood what all the talk was about.

When talking to Ace about them he made a comment about something he does not like about the movies. He has seen both movies, but has not read the books. He said that they give girls a false idea of what love is like. After thinking about that for a day I began to see what he meant. The love that Bella and Edward have for each other is extremely intense. They fall in love over a short period of time and their love is is impossibly resilient. Their love survives, rouge vampire attacks, werewolves and the fact that he finds her blood and smell like a drug. That kind of love just is not real.

Early on in a relationship we all have been known to be on that adrenaline high. It feels great, but we can't function on that kind of high for extended periods of time. Eventually our bodies build a tolerance to the adrenaline and that new ooey gooey love feeling fades into a more manageable love. It can still be intense, but the way the love between Edward and Bella is what little and big girls dream about. The thought of a guy willing to do anything for you, the guy that will vow to protect you and wants to spend forever with you is every girls dream. Throw in the forbidden part that makes it all dangerous and these girls are setting themselves up to fail when it comes to love.

I'll admit, I love the story and the movies now, but I also know that I can't hold onto the dream of a man that would rather die than live his life without me. Its no wonder so many marriages and relationships fail when Hollywood and novels put such unreal expectations into our minds. Things become comfortable and mundane and we long for that rush of love that we either once new early in our relationship or that we have seen and read. We think if we leave and or cheat that we can find that kind of love and maybe this time it will last. We are all adrenaline junkies, hoping for that high again, rarely realizing that it is only temporary. But it is when that high fades that real love can really shine. Being strong enough to get past that desire for the temporary high and live for the comfortable feeling of lasting love is what true love is all about. Sure there will be times where you want there to be more or things won't be great, but we can't doubt our love. Doubt will only make us crazy and doubt will only cause pain for us and the one we love.

As my husband has been known to say, the grass is greener where you water it. Where are you watering?

Who am I?

I have been married for 13 years and I will admit it has not been
easy. I love my husband and I love our two girls, but for years I let
them be my world and I was just there to serve them. I had no identity
other than Ace's wife or Lennon and McCartney's mother. My husband is
in radio and I would go help him at events before we had the girls and
I actually had a name tag made that read "Ace's Wife" I didn't bother to
ask for one that said Bethany because no one knew who that was, not
even me.

I'm a Christian and early in our marriage as we moved around a lot and
found churches, I would see the other Christian women and think I was
supposed to look, talk and dress like them. I rarely bought myself new
clothes, but when I did, I didn't know what I liked so I had to take
someone with me to help pick out the "right" clothes. Sweater sets and
capri pants if I was with friends and big t-shirt and jeans with I was
with my husband. I was hiding who I was behind all the supposed to's
and should be's.

It took a big hit to my marriage for me to even see that this was
happening. My husband and I nearly divorced about three years ago. I
had been a stay home mom for 6 years. We had moved so much with my
husbands job and I had been home so long that my teaching license had
expired. As I thought about my life as a divorced woman, I was
terrified, first because I didn't want to be a divorced woman and
second because I didn't know how to be anyone besides Ace's wife and
Lennon and McCartney's mom. What could I do besides take care of the
house and children? I ended up getting a job at a Day care because it
was all I knew, no one else would hire me because I didn't have
experience as anything else.

We ended up reconciling, but I still didn't know who I was. I knew
that I enjoyed photography, but all I did was take pictures of my
kids. I knew I liked to write, but all I did was blog about my family.
It is three years later and I still ask myself who Bethany is. I have
changed to dressing like I want to instead of how I think everyone
thinks I should, but I have not picked up my camera except to
photograph my kids. My husband and I wrote a workbook on marriage. Can
you guess what I wrote about? It was about being a wife :)

I do want to have an identity and I will admit that I am closer to
being Bethany than I was three years ago, but I still wonder what
people see when they look at me. Do they see Bethany or do they see
Ace's wife and Lennon and McCartney's mom? And if they do see Bethany,
who do they think she is? Who do I think she is?

Your box of snakes

When you have been hurt by your spouse, how do you you get past the feelings of hurt? It is easy to sulk and become withdrawn if you are the one who has been hurt, but is that best for your marriage? I think Not! And yet thats what some many of us do. We sit around and play the poor me role and by doing so we are not making things better, we are actually making things worse.

If this is what we are doing then it is time to STOP! Yeah it stinks when you have been hurt, but holding onto a grudge or withdrawing from your spouse is hurting you both. I have said it before and I will say it again, FORGIVENESS IS NOT JUST FOR THE PERSON WHO DID THE HURT, IT IS FOR THE PERSON HURT TOO!

Physical and emotional intimacy with your spouse is a must, but when you are holding something between you, it is like you have a box between you filled with snakes so you can't even reach over the box without feeling like you will get bitten. Have you been there? I know I have. I've been hurt many times. Sometimes getting over it is no problem, but other times I start filling that box with snakes. The longer I do that the bigger the box gets and the harder is is going to be to get them out of there.

It has taken me a long time and yeah I will admit it I am still known to do it, to learn how to get past the hurt. I've even been known to be hurt by my husband's hurt. That really doesn't help, it is like having two boxes of snakes between us, it is possible to get them out of there, but sooner or later one of us is going to get hurt more. That hurt is really just going to hurt us more. It is literally a venom to our marriage. It can be sucked out, but there will always be a scar there because we never should have put the box there in the first place.

So what's the first step of getting past it? Well, first you have to acknowledge that you are hurt by what was done. Sometimes it is obvious, but sometimes not only does our spouse not know we are hurting, but we don't even realize it ourselves. We have put that box of snakes there without even knowing it. So we have to acknowledge to ourselves and our spouses that we are hurt.

Next we have to ask ourselves if we have a legitimate reason for being hurt. Did our spouse do something that they knew would hurt you or did they accidentally do it? These two scenarios have different action points. If they did something they knew would hurt you then you have to talk to them about why they did it. Open communication between the both of you is a must if you ever expect to have a good marriage. Sometimes their answer may hurt more than what they did, but it needs to be out there. Hopefully, they won't try to put it all on you and what you have done, but sometimes that does happen. If that does happen then you need to acknowledge your role in what happened, but they need to take responsibility for what they did as well.

If they accidentally hurt you or they didn't even know they did, then that takes more of a look at yourself. Why are you hurt? Is it an ego thing? Is it a selfish thing? Is it some childhood trauma that it reminded of? Why are you hurt? Getting to the root of why it hurt you will help you work through the process and you can work on yourself here and hopefully fix improve whatever brought you to that point. Depending on the reason you are hurt, you may need counselling to get through it or you may just need to grow up and get over yourself.

After you get to the why of the hurt, the best thing to do is to pray about it. You should actually pray about it as you go through each step, but here specifically you need to pray to ask God to help you through the hurt. God is great at taking that box of snakes and getting rid of them if you will only ask. He can throw it far away from you and make it easier to get close to each other again. The important thing here though is we can go back looking for that box to pick it up again. During an especially hard point in my marriage I would pray daily for God to get me past the hurt and each day he would say "Let me take it from you Bethany.", but by each evening I had gone back in search of my box of snakes. It was like I enjoyed having that pain there. I wanted my husband, but I had rather reach toward him over that box of snakes rather than getting rid of it all together and getting as close to him as possible.

Finally, we need to strive for that intimacy with our spouse again. Intimacy is not just about sex, although that is an important part of it. It is about the closeness between you and your spouse. Do you ever touch your spouse and not feel like they are there? I know I do. We can talk or hold hands and it is like he is not really there. Now I can ignore it and do my best to get past it or I can acknowledge it and do something about it. Maybe we have not had quality time in awhile. Maybe we need a date that is not just watching a movie where all we do is sit in a theater and focus on something else besides each other. Or maybe one or both of us is trying to put that box of snakes back between us.

If you can't keep the box of snakes from between you, eventually one or both of you is going to get filled with so much venom that there is nothing that can get it out. Don't let that happen. Trust me there is much more pain there than you will ever feel from a hurt in your marriage.

Forgive them, get rid of the box and don't pick it back up.

Life after an affair

My husband had an affair. There I said it. That is not the easiest thing to say, but the thing is, it is true. Something even more hard to say is that it happened more than once and that he and I are still married. Many people can't believe that I would even consider staying married to him after an affair and before we went through it I would have been right there with them. Then it happened and while we did originally intend to divorce, (we even drew up the papers), things changed and we worked it out. So how did the affair happen and how did we manage to make our marriage work? The long in short of it is we got lazy and then we stopped being lazy.

When we first started dating our worlds pretty much revolved around each other. We were students with part time jobs, but our free time was pretty much spent with each other. Even after we got married and had jobs with opposite schedules we valued our time together so much that we would squeeze it in whenever we could. Even if we were watching football my feet were in his lap. Then kids came along and we were so busy with them that our free time was spent resting or just vegging on the the couch. He was working way too many hours and neither of us thought about the importance of making that time for each other. Eventually he found someone who would give him the attention he needed and I fell into a pit of depression due partly from the lack of attention I was getting and partly because we lived in a brand new city and I had two kids under 4. This pattern continued for a few years until we realized that we were in fact our own worst enemies when it came to our marriage.

Everyone thinks affairs are never going to happen to them, or they think that who ever has the affair is the only one in the wrong. After going through my husbands affairs, we both realized that neither of us had invested into our marriage like we should have. We also realized that boundaries had to be set. The boundaries were not because my husband was likely to have another affair, but because all marriages need them. These boundaries include never being alone with someone of the opposite sex. This goes for both of us. It is not ok for me to be alone with a man who is not my husband and it is not ok for him to be alone with a woman who is not his wife. It protects not only us, but the others as well. Another boundary we had to have was counseling someone of the opposite sex. Because we have a marriage resource and have been through our own junk, there are quite a few couples that have come to us for advice. We truly believe that because we have been through our junk we can help others with theirs, but we also have a rule though that the women need to talk to me and the men need to talk to my husband. By that same token we agreed not to share personal information or problems in our marriage with someone of the opposite sex. Basically these boundaries keep us from being in any situation with someone of the opposite sex that could ever lead to something it shouldn't or that even looks like it could. I know that there are people who think it is crazy to have those kinds of boundaries, but if you look at the people who have had affairs most did not have these boundaries in place. The thing about affairs is usually people don't set out to have them, they just fall into them by crossing lines and slowly fading away from their spouse and toward the other person.

So once we figured that out we lived happily ever after right?...Wrong, we are still learning even to this day how to have a happy marriage. We found we need to fight. Both of us have the bad habit of avoiding conflict, but after not being honest with each other to protect feelings we recently learned that we have to be honest even if it leads to a conflict. Overall, we are still learning how to have a good marriage. Really thats good though because if you think you can't still learn new things to make your marriage better, then your marriage will never be as good as it can and should be.

ssssshhhhhhh someone said S - E - X!

Let's go back to the book of Genesis for a moment. When God created Adam and Eve they were naked and they were not ashamed. Then of course sin came along and they realized they were naked and there has been a stigma about nakedness and sex ever since, but lets stop and think about that. Why should we be ashamed in front of our spouse? If we truly are two becoming one as the Bible says then there should be nothing to hide and yet everyday couples are embarrassed to talk about sex with the one person they are supposed to talk about everything with.

I will be the first to admit that has happened in my marriage. Both of us were afraid to talk about certain things for fear of what the other may think of us. And of course if we can't talk about it with our spouse because we are too embarrassed then there is no way we can talk about it with our friends.

So here's my question, what if we did talk about it? What if we threw it all out there, shared it all and just got real? Would the world end? Would our marriage end? Would we be struck with a bolt of lightening from heaven? Chances are the answer to all of those questions is no. Personally I have found the more things I keep secret from my husband the more trouble there is in my marriage. I didn't say something because I was scared of what would he would say and vice versa. The thing is though, we found out once we finally talked that we both were thinking the same thing.

Now I am sure most of you are thinking "oooooeeeewww wonder what she is talking about." Honestly it was not anything torrid, we both just felt that we needed it more, but it could have been anything and we should have felt the freedom to discuss it openly without fear or embarrassment.

A lot of Christians seem to look at sex as a taboo and therefore never talk about it, but God created it so why shouldn't we talk about it? Ever looked for a book about sex in a Christian bookstore? Sure there are one or two in there, but they either make them sound too technical or it is all about nice sweet making love, lights out in your bedroom after the kids go to sleep. There is never one out there that tells you to mix things up and sneak away during the day. I have yet to see one suggesting other rooms or even role playing. For that kind of thing you have to go to a regular bookstore, but of course Christians can't be seen in that part of the bookstore. What if your small group leader were to walk by on his way to pick up the new Joel Olsteen book and happen to glance down the aisle and see you with that kind of book in your hand. Why he might actually think that you and your spouse, dare I say it, want to have great sex. We can't have that now can we?

Come on people, sex is ok and you do not have to have missionary position sex in your bedroom with the lights off with the intent of making a baby in order for it to be cool with God. I'm no sex expert so I don't feel qualified to write a book about it, but I really would like to find a Christian author who would write about sex and be real about it. I feel like it is almost impossible for Christians to admit they have and enjoy sex. I was once unfriended by a Christian friend on facebook because I dared to take one of those facebook quizzes that mentioned sex. She felt the need to email me and tell me why she was unfriending me and to tell me that sex is something that should not be talked about. Oh my goodness really?! Sorry but not talking about it causes more problems than talking about it ever will.

Tell each other what you like, tell each other what you don't like. Can you imagine doing something to your spouse for years only to find out years later that they didn't like it, but they never told you because they were scared to hurt your feelings? Talk about hurting someone's feelings, they would break my heart. If you don't know what you like then explore it together, maybe you will learn something new and like it even more. As a Christian I don't believe in watching porn so I am not suggesting getting ideas from there, but if you have to go to the sexuality section of a real bookstore and look for a book that will give you more ideas then do it. Don't be afraid to be "naked" about what you want or try something knew.

Also, it is ok to talk about sex with your friends of the same sex. I personally learned a few things by just talking with a friend of mine. Your spouse can't always tell you certain things about sex or your body simply because their parts are different so it can be good to have someone of the same sex that you can just hang with that feels free to talk about sex. I've actually talked with some friends about sex and we managed to help a friend who was having pain during sex. If she had not felt comfortable talking about it with us, then what? Sure you can ask your doctor, but again everything is so technical.

So all I'm saying is get real about sex. Its ok to have it, its ok to enjoy it and for goodness sake it is certainly ok to talk about it.

Its hard being a shoulder to cry on

In our lives we have all come into contact with people who we feel like we can just talk to in times of trouble. They are great listeners, they give great advice and they are always there for us when we need them and when others need them as well. But have you ever stopped to wonder whose these people turn to?

One thing we talk about in The Marriage Playbook is having a 12th man. A 12th man is the person who is a fan of your marriage. They are there when you need to talk and they encourage you when times are tough and give you great advice. You can tell them anything and they listen without judging and they can even tell you when you need a good slap on the head.

We all need a 12th man. So the question is are you being a 12th man or are you only taking from your 12th man. Sure we all need to lean on someone from time to time, but just like you have to deposit money in a bank in order for you to withdraw cash, you have to deposit your time as a 12th man.

You don't have to be a 12th man to your 12th man, you can pay it forward and be there for someone else. Spending all of your time withdrawing from your 12th man will not only deplete your account, but it will also deplete them. I have seen from both sides the effects of taking and never giving and it is emotionally draining for the 12th man. Think about it, if the only time someone ever talked to you it was about their problems would you want to talk to them.

With that being said I ask that you give back and also just say thank you or do something nice for the people who have been there for you. Sometimes a 12th man just wants to go hang out and not talk about problems. Take them out for dinner. Go do something fun and make a rule you won't talk about your problems for the night. You would be amazed how much better you both will feel when the night is over.

I also ask that you be there for someone. We all need a 12th man. Be there for them, don't judge them and listen to what they have to say. It won't only help them, it will also help you get your mind off of your problems too.