Strengthening Marriage, Part 4

 This week's class was about Team Huddles and avoiding Whoosh! 

I didn't understand the huddle idea completely but maybe you'll figure it out. The first thing Jeff talked about was love languages.

Then he cited his survey results (below) which are always interesting. Clearly women prefer quality time together while men prefer physical touch. Gifts were surprisingly unpopular. Jeff talked about how he liked to give poems to his girlfriends when he was a young man and he thought they were fairly well received until he gave a poem to his first wife (now deceased) who wasn't really into poetry. Then he tried other kinds of gifts like flowers which also weren't that well received. Finally she told him that if he really wanted to do something she appreciated, he would offer to put the kids to bed or he would give her a day to herself while he took care of the kids. He said it was a big turning point in their relationship when he started giving her the acts of service which was her love language.

This was also interesting:

I took the survey and Scott didn't. I said that I talked more and when I asked Scott later, he agreed that was true.

This is also very interesting to me:

You're probably wondering what Whoosh is. Whoosh is when we are at our worst. I don't know why he picked this name or who came up with it. To illustrate Whoosh, he told us a personal story. 

Jeff was trying to get out the door to go to a golf game with friends. Just as he was almost ready, the mailman came with three packages that had been mailed incorrectly which they had to pay for to get back. His wife sells books that she has written and he is the one who handles the shipping. When you use media mail, if you mail it incorrectly then they get returned and you have to pay $3 per book to get them back. His wife said something like, I wish you wouldn't rush to do these packages and just get it right the first time. He felt very angry when she said that--apparently it triggered something from trauma in his past. He struck out at a nearby bottle of raspberry jam and it went flying onto the floor and shattered. Raspberry jam went everywhere and it took him an hour and a half to clean up and he completely missed his golf game. That was a vivid example of Whoosh. 

We all experience anger and frustration at times in our relationships but the trick is to manage it so we don't hurt the relationship beyond repair.

Jeff says that one way they deal with disagreements is to take a walk while they discuss it. He talked about how he and his first wife took a very long 8-mile walk when they had a big disagreement they couldn't resolve. Their oldest child was turning 13. Up until that time, they had put all their children to bed at 8pm without fail. Jeff thought that their oldest should be able to decide on her own bedtime now that she was 13. His wife felt that she personally needed the alone time in the evening after the children were in bed and didn't want to give that up. They finally resolved the problem by deciding that their daughter could stay up as long as she didn't bother the parents. The good thing about walking while you resolve these problems is that they tend not to get as heated--you have this physical outlet for your frustration as you talk.

The important point is not to say something hurtful that you will regret. It can be hard for your spouse to forgive and forget those hurtful comments.

Instead of saying something you regret, how do you deal with anger and frustration with your spouse (or children)? And the survey says...

The one thing NOT to do is to avoid the conflict in the first place. Conflicts need to be resolved. Suppressing them doesn't help.

But you can take a break to gain perspective and calm down.

Next, Jeff talked about ATTUNEMENT. He recommended this book which talks about that.

ATTUNE is an acronym for successful marital communication. A stands for Attend. And you can read the rest:

For these next two suggestions, he reminded us about that YouTube video: It's Not about the Nail which was big on social media a few years ago. Scott had never seen it so we watched it. It's pretty funny.

It occurs to me that I need to do this not just with my spouse but with people in general:

Here was an example he gave of a bad conversation:

And the good conversation...

Next, Tammy talked about bids and repairs. A bid is any attempt to connect with your partner.

I'm a little fuzzier on what repairs are. I think repairs are when you try to reconcile after some interaction that was less than positive.

She talked about how when she and Jeff were first married, they had a large number of children at home and there were invariably many negative interactions as they were learning to all live together. So something she tried to do at night was visit each child in their room and talk to them before they went to sleep. She would ask them to give her a grade on how she did and then ask them what it would take to get a better grade. That seems like a good way to give the child some power and input.

The point is that we all make mistakes in our interactions with others, especially our loved ones, but we have to keep trying and hopefully avoid the catastrophic mistakes.