Loving your woman [or man] better and/or the art of marriage

so i know my latest blog series on Taboo Topics has been difficult for a number of people to read, both those having gone through it and also those who are on the way to having their first child… i do think they are extremely valuable for those people the are meant for though and so will continue to post them but in the meantime for everyone else [and also those people] i thort it might be helpful to post links to two of my most successful and popular blog series from the past:

the first one was titled ‘how to love your woman better’ but it was really about how to be in a good relationship and so it works for women as well to read cos generally the principles work both ways – it is a series of posts with each one having a link to the following one and so you can read as many or as few as you please [and as always, if you think any of them will be helpful to anyone you know, feel free to pass on]:

http://brettfish.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/how-to-love-your-woman-better-part-arguing-well-part-i-of-iii

followed by the ones written specifically to the women:

http://brettfish.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/how-to-love-your-man-better-by-not-me

and secondly i presented an 18 part series where i got a bunch of friends i know who i think are married well to share a secret or key to having a good marriage and so there are a variety of comments here which are valuable to those married and to anyone one day hoping to be:

http://brettfish.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/how-to-save-a-marriage-before-you-need-to-part-i

hope those inspire and refresh and bring joy…

why marriage is like dancing

my good friend Mel [or Melissa Jayne Donaldson of you listen to Facebook] sent me a link to this article on marriage which covers a few steps [harr] that the recent marriage series didn’t and is a very light and easy read:

7 Marriage Lessons Learned on the Dance Floor by Jen Smidt

for all the daters out there

so i have just posted the last [for now at least] post in the marriage series which ended up being a great 18 blog posts written by a whole bunch of my friends who are married well and passed along some really great marriage-enhancing advice and tips and wisdom. the beautiful Valerie ad myself might add some thorts of our own later but we’re about to head for Texas to visit my sister and her family…

anyways, looking at blog stats, this has been the second hugest blog visitation i have had with the largest being the series i did on dating and so i thort it would be good to repost links to some of those that were really popular in case you missed them and want to check out some insights on that area of life:

i think this was the intro blog to the series and links to future blogs…

followed by ‘i kissed dating, part Step up! [Both of you!] – for the Ladies!’ which was muchly visited and discussed and forwarded

a two parter written by the beautiful Val which is a must read as with most of what she writes…

and of course for the men – ‘i kissed dating, part Step up! [Both of you!] – for the Men?’

and then if you find any of those really helpful, there was a whole series of them that you could discover on my blogsite but just thort these would touch a different group than those who the marriage ones have been for… hope you find them helpful and if so please pass on…

How to Save a Marriage… before you need to. [part 18]

and the series rages on, and my friends continue to write some incredible marriage-growing things and so i continue to post them… this post from someone who has been a dear friend of mine from long, long ago and is now happily married to one of my old youth okes who is not called PG any more cos he got all grown up… so let’s hear it from Bev Le Roux Brodrick:

Hi Brett

The marriage series is great. Thanks. Copied a few comments for Pete and I to keep on our minds. Simple things like saying thank you and living graciously and in consideration of those you live with. Such great tips.

What makes a strong marriage…

I really think that is more a question for those who have endured so much more than us. Those who have been married for 30-40 years. So, I do not feel ‘qualified’ in any way to give advice. I think we are still in the easy stage…

I do believe that all good things are found in the shelter of the most high God. I do believe that when we are submitted to our Heavenly Father that he brings unity, that he shepherds us to streams of living water, to a place much more beautiful that what we can imagine or what the media portrays.

I believe that as I trust in God and change my life in obedience to Him that He pulls the pieces together.

I think that the world has created expectations in us that need to be smashed. Where do our expectations come from? and why are we imposing them on our spouse? As we meditate on the Word of God that brings life – He breathes life into all that we are and brings a pleasure and contentment into our lives and marriage like nothing else can.

In my short marriage of about 6 yrs now and with my ever growing relationship with God I feel the Lord has been pressing me to love even when it doesn’t suit me. To love even when it is inconvenient. To love over and above my natural ability – through the power of the Holy Spirit. To love, without condition. It is easy to love when it is comfortable and when things are in the ‘right’ place. Not so easy when you feel betrayed or hurt. It is great to want to love others in community and our brothers and sisters in Christ, but if it doesn’t start at home it is unlikely going to happen anywhere else. A life that is totally poured out to God, to your spouse, your family, your community, not wanting in return, but individuals who are content to live a life of giving.

I believe that as we grow in the Lord as individuals and as we deepen our relationship with Him and really start to rely on Him for all our needs we release our spouse from having to fulfil that impossible task. He/she is not there to make us feel secure, he/she is not there to give us value, or to fulfill the deepest longings in our lives. That is God’s role. Don’t expect your husband or wife to fulfill you. He/she is a gift from God to journey along side you, in partnership for His Glory! Even nights when I go so sleep alone and Pete is working… it is God who wraps his arms around me. It is God who pulls my soul towards heaven and I rest in the ultimate lover of my soul – under His wing.

When the circumstances of life hit we often blame those closest to us. Sometimes a root of bitterness takes shape in our heart, as we find out that life is hard. Life is hard work. Life is maybe not quite what we thought it would be. When kids come it sinks into a whole new reality… not only is it hard work, you are now sleep deprived on top of it, and have children dependant on you 24/7, draining your energy, draining your life and impacting your marriage. You sorta start to switch into a role of ‘survival’. You start to play tag and spend less time with each other and bad habits kick in. You start to treat your loved one less special than a friend. Sad but true.

We can do NOTHING in our own strength. We have NOTHING to give. We ARE nothing. God sustains me. He brought me and Pete together and He has sustained us through our trials and temptations. If I had to single out one practical thing that has helped me so far, it would have to be prayer. Prayer in deepening my own relationship with God. Prayer for my husband, prayer for our relationship, prayer for our intimacy, prayer for our greater purpose together, prayer for things yet to come… prayer for unity, prayer for truth to be revealed. Prayer for the courage to change. Prayer to make me less selfish and prayer to grow me on to spiritual maturity. Prayer to change ME. Prayer against all evil, the power of darkness that seeks to destroy. I love nothing more than praying with my husband. God and Pete. My two BESTS!

Sending much love to you and your beautiful Val. I enjoy seeing where God has lead you and what you are involved in and totally LOVE having brothers and sisters in Christ, all over the world.

[married for 6 years]

to be directed to the beginning of this marriage-enhancing series click here…

How to Save a Marriage… before you need to. [part xvii]

this great marriage-enhancing advice is from a friend of mine, Clint Botha, whose friendship has grown a lot since we both ended up in different countries and went virtual…

By no means do I consider myself and Karin some kind of pro married couple (although that would be an awesome competition and/or reality tv show). We have only been at this thing for 6 years and a bit, but these are the things we have found have worked for us.

- It’s a given for us, but Jesus is the centre of our marriage. He is our shared mission, goal, lord, saviour, love! That has made a huge difference in our marriage… I can not state that enough.

-We laugh. A LOT! We laugh at each other (not in a mean way… in other words… only if your partner also sees the funny side). We laugh at ourselves. I can not remember a day in our marriage (even the really difficult days) that we have not laughed about something.

-We save our energy for big stresses. We don’t sweat the little things. We are both of the attitude that life happens. On this journey there are things big and small completely out of our control and those things are not worth stressing over.

-We have a united front with money. Firstly we chose to have a shared bank account. There is no money allocated to Karin or me each month. For us marriage was all or nothing and this included earnings. We are also in agreement with what we do with that money (and Who it ultimately belongs to). We both try to not be reckless or bad stewards (sometimes better than others) and we also try not to hold onto money too tightly. What we found worked for us is that we set an agreed on amount that neither of us would spend more than without the others consent. That way you avoid being tied to never being able to spend… but you also never end up spending more than what was agreed on without the other persons knowledge.

-We give grace and forgiveness very freely and quickly. It’s a huge cliche’, but so important. We do not go to bed angry. Or to put it biblically: Ephesians 4:26 “26 And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.”[a] Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry”.

-We accept that we are both broken people. Karin needs me to love her in spite of her brokeness as much as I need her to love me in spite of mine.

-We let go of passed stuff. It’s tempting to bring up previous mistakes. We’ve made it a priority to never do that.

- During our engagement when we were discussing married life and how to deal with stuff we decided to ban certain language. We banned the “d-word”. We don’t mention divorce. Not in anger… not as a joke. It is a no go word. We never have used that word in a conflict situation.

- We fight clean. We try as far as humanly possible (don’t always get this as right as we’d like to)…. but we try to never go for the jugular or take dirty shots at each other. We don’t do name calling, character assassination and that sort of thing. Stick to the issue.

-We talk. A LOT.

-And finally: “Quality not quantity” is an outright lie of the enemy. We signed up to live this life together and that means making an intentional effort to spend time together. Whether that’s going for a walk or just watching a movie together. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time with one other person for the rest of your life don’t get married.

[married for 6 years]

to continue on to the next post click here…

How to Save a Marriage… before you need to. [part xv]

the series continues to breathe and i hope no-one is getting tired cos there is still a lot of great stuff to come – this bit of advice on how to grow a strong marriage comes from my older sister Susan Minne:

We have been married for just over 20 years. I don’t think we have ever stopped dating (still on honeymoon).

I suppose if I have to choose one key thing (hard to choose only one) I would have to say that we don’t play the blame game – ever! Everything is about the team (us). If one of us succeeds, then we both celebrate. If one of us messes up, then we both figure out how to fix it. No time for blaming each other. We also don’t raise our voices at each other. In fact, we have never raised our voices at each other in the 23 years since we met.

Hope that helps.

[married for 20 years]

to head to part 16, a slightly longer one but so so good, click here…

How to Save a Marriage… before you need to. [part xiv]

i met this guy when he was part of a not-so-famous band when they came and played at the teacher’s college i was studying at. then i met him later when he was part of a famous band in south africa and over the years kept bumping into him and he always recognised me and treated me as if we were mates even though we didn’t really know each other so well – then i interviewed his band when i was a dj on a christian radio station but he wasn’t there and so two of the other band members [2 friends of mine now] got to receive the brunt of the mooning phase i was going through [or the butt of it] – and then he became part of an even more famous international band and i finally got to have a decent coffee and chat with him in Los Angeles when i wa visiting my sister… and it continues to be like we’re old mates – he has a great crazy naughty sense of humour and he is an excellent family man – so here are the thoughts of my friend, Daniel Ornellas:

When you first fall in love, couples are willing to sacrifice everything for the new love they have found and it leads up to the vows where we lay down our lives for our spouses. After a few months or years pass there is a tendency to try take back some of the me stuff and selfishness tends to creep in. It becomes a case of a “I’m going for a surf” and “ok then, “then I’m going shopping when you get back” vibe.

Soon there can be a pattern of disappointment because each person is looking out for their own interests and themselves first. It means that whenever we do something for ourselves we know that it’s taking from our marriage and quotes like “my wife says if I go fishing one more time she’s going to leave me… Gosh I’ll miss her”.

The key I believe to really making this stage of marriage turn around is to turn it on its head and do the following. You know by now what your spouse loves and is interested in. So forget about your own interests and your own desires and make your partners interests your own mission.

So an example would be. “hey babe I know you love shopping so why don’t you go out for a couple of hours ” then while she is out shopping she knows she has gone with your blessing and will come home refreshed and ready to send you for a surf. Same outcome, different emotion and you have added to your marriage bank account instead of taking from it. You will both be stoked and not end up in an ‘overdrawn’ situation when you really put each other first.

[married for 12 years]

to read the next part of the series keep clicking…

How to Save a Marriage… before you need to. [part xiii]

another day, some more challenging and insightful advice on how to build a strong marriage relationship by my friend Lauren McGill:

I think the thing that makes my marriage more special than any other relationship in my life is the vulnerability.

I remember in our first few years of marriage, sharing something that had been eating away at me with j. I was so broken and ashamed, really believing after he had seen this ugliness he would walk away. When eventually I managed to look up at him, he was crying too. He was crying for my hurt.

Over the years time and again j has shown me he loves me in spite of all my (many!) flaws and he is always, always on my side. He never uses my vulnerability against me and always sticks up for me- even when I’m wrong (in private he will tell me off hehe). As a result I feel fully loved, fully known, fully supported. I’m accepted for just being plain old…me. I guess that, and, he makes me laugh- a lot

[married for 6 years]

to continue to the next part of this series click here…

How to Save a Marriage… before you need to. [part xii]

…and the series continues, and will continue to [i still have a bunch of posts to come and some very long ones] because i think this is becoming an incredible resource and because you don’t necessarily have to read and ingest it all now – bookmark it, print it out, come back to it later, read it with your spouseperson and speak about what things you can add to or subtract from your marriage to make it stronger, more joyful etc…

this is a double comment but an absolute pleasure of a couple in val and my lives because this was the bride at the third wedding i ever preached at and one of our favourite couples of people in the whole world: Michelle and Frans:

Michelle van Eeden

Hey Brett. Sorry I forgot to reply to your question earlier. I married my best friend. For me, one piece of advise that I keep having to tell myself is “DON’T compare your marriage/relationship to others or to standards that society has created. This could lead to disappointment and confusion within the relationship.

Frans van Eeden

yo B-boy!

communication is a master key for opening the doors to successful
navigation through the amazing journey (around the sun) that is
marriage. Mish and I have only been married one year but we are
learning such a lot from each other ! We are both blessed with a large
amount of understanding and patience that balance out our lack of
descriptive language abilities…which is the premise of my short
story:

This weekend we got a bit lost looking for a specific place in a
strange area just because we assumed too much. We got directions from
someone (and their directions were spot on). But the problem was that
we assumed the person giving them knew from which way we approached
and they assumed we approached the place from the same direction they
did. But we didn’t and they assumed wrong. We eventually found it
after 30min.

Thus 2 things:

1) Don’t just assume you think you know what the other person is
feeling / thinking. Ask questions in love and try to understand with a
gentle heart and kind questions. Sometimes it takes a while to
understand each other but that ‘while’ is time well spent.

2) Understand that you both are going to make mistakes and it is OK to
do so. In a relationship most mistakes are out-of-control best
intentions.

love

frans and mish

for the next post, you can click here…

How to Save a Marriage… before you need to. [part xi]

I still have about a week’s worth of marriage-enhancing tips/advice to share as it is such an important topic it needs great attention and also because people are so different, every marriage will be different and so different advice or thoughts or ideas will relate to different people – so trust you will find something that impacts you and your marriage [or future marriage] strongly. This collection of thoughts really struck me as powerful and effective from an old friend and playing-cards-into-the-early-hours-of-the-morning buddy, Carolyn Hugo Misdorp:

Hi Brett,

I have a couple as 1 thing is too hard.

1. Make sure that you spend time on your own relationship with God – if you’re not continually receiving God’s unconditional love and seeing things from His perspective it is really hard to love your spouse unconditionally.

2. Keep short accounts and resolve things properly. We pray together every night before we go to bed, which forces us not to let issues last for long without being resolved, as it is impossible to pray together if we’re angry with each other or hurt.

3. Be grateful for the big and little things – a simple thank you communicates a huge amount to your spouse and shows them that you are aware of the effort they are making for you and your family.

4. Pray for each other often.

I think that’s all

(Married 11 years)

to continue with this series click here…