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Education Week

I have been neglecting my blog!  The children started school more than a week ago and my littlest one is now gone all day to first grade, but I still feel extremely busy.

Part of the reason is that I attended BYU Education Week last week.  I was able to go for three days and I really enjoyed it.  Education Week is a week between semesters when BYU opens their campus to the rest of the world and schedules classes that anyone can take.  I attended lots of classes on parenting, communication, and marriage.  Lots of other kinds of classes are offered but those were the topics I found interesting.

For this post I want to talk about a class I attended on marriage.  It was called "Healing the Time-Starved Marriage" and the session I went to was called "Using Marriage Rituals to Reconnect Your Marriage".  The teacher was Mark D. Ogletree.  He was a pretty funny guy and he works as a marriage counselor; I thought his advice was sound.  At a different time, he taught a class on "Teaching Boys to Work" which sure sounded promising but wasn't quite as helpful.

First, he defined what rituals are.  He said they are "repeated coordinated and significant social interactions."  They have to be meaningful to both of you.  For example, watching a football game together every weekend might be meaningful to you but if it's not meaningful to your spouse, then it's not a ritual.

Rituals help couples connect and strengthen their bonds.  For this class, he assigned us to come up with a "greeting ritual" and a "talk ritual". 

The greeting ritual is something you do every time you see each other after being apart.  He counseled us to establish a "strong, noticeable greeting ritual."  This is something my husband and I have done reasonably well.  For as long as I can remember, when my husband comes home from work, he comes over and gives me a kiss.  Sometimes he is hot and sweaty from his bike ride home, but he always does it.  I have to admit, I am not always that cheerful when he comes home, depending on how my day has gone.  When I had many small children challenging me and he came home late, I could be pretty grumpy.  I'm better now but I could still use improvement.  Since attending that class,  I have paid more attention to this ritual and tried to connect a little better with him at that moment.

The talk ritual can be challenging for couples, especially with children.  Ogletree said that a main task of every marriage is for each partner to nurture each other.  One of the main ways we do that is by our communication.  He said there are three levels of communication:

1.  Superficial (this can include coordinating schedules)
2.  Personal (this is where you fell in love when you shared feelings, values, and ideas)
3.  Validation (this is always positive and complimentary)

He said if we are spending most of our time at the superficial level then our marriage can get into trouble.  We need to establish a talk ritual every day where we move past the superficial level and get into the personal and validation levels.  Especially validation.

He showed us a pretty funny Youtube video called "Validation".  Find it here.  I'm not sure how helpful it was but it got his point across.  He had a couple come up to the front of the room and "validate" each other.  He said to pick something specific that your spouse does and then to say how it impacts you.  For example, I love when you go to the store for me because it really helps me out when I'm feeling stressed.

He said a hot tub can be a great talk ritual for some couples.  It's highly recommended by an author named Bill Doherty in his book called Take Back Your Marriage.  Ogletree and his wife started taking walks together every evening.  I know my husband would love it if we did that but in the evening, I am usually way too tired.  I like it when we just sit down together and talk.  We usually do that as we're getting ready for bed.

So that was the class.  I found it helpful and these rituals are something I'm going to pay more attention to.

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