Marriage is like one, big “vulnerability hangover”, especially for guys. “I do” is saying in part, “I do want you to be the one to reveal my true self to. The one I’ll share my dreams and desires and needs with.”
And the revealing and unraveling doesn’t happen all at once. The love and safety doesn’t come in the act of being vulnerable – that’s just being brave – it comes in the response.
Pretty scary but worth it.
It helps to learn how to listen, how to hold space, to accept without the knee jerk reaction to fix or change your spouse.
You don’t have to be an extrovert to be successful. You don’t have to have a degree to minister to others. You don’t have to be a preacher to be a pastor. You don’t have to be smarter, or younger, or prettier.
You do have to be hopeful. You do have to be passionate. You do have to work hard. You do have to be brave.
Facebook reminded me, I wrote this four years ago today. Little did I know I’d need to follow my own advice.
When you write for others, you write for yourself. When I write for dads, I write for my kids and myself.
One bit of advice for young dads:learn how to dance!
Maybe you’re like me and some times daydream of times you’ll have to step up and come through for your daughters in some way One thing I almost guarantee she’ll do when she’s older is ask you to dance. Not the spastic punch dancing to Raffi or kids songs that you might do at playtime or in the kitchen but the kind of dancing where you hold out your arms and she reaches up and put hers on yours. You put one on her waist and you have to look into her eyes while not stepping on her toes. This is far more likely than needing to arm yourself to track down bad guys and rescue her from them or even answering a call to come fix a flat tire. But those seem doable, not dancing. If your gut reaction to this suggestion is “Anything but that! I’d rather get dipped in acid and crawl through broken glass!”, then you are exactly the dude who needs this because the more you feel uncomfortable with that, the more likely it is doing this will be meaningful to your girl.
My baby recently wanted to dance with somebody, I sent her brother out to do the job (because he’s a pretty good dancer). For whatever reason, he wasn’t feeling it. Those brief moments watching her alone, just waiting, seemed like forever. I’m glad he didn’t dance with her because I eventually did. It was my job and my privilege. My joy. I felt self-conscious and awkward until I focused on her. It was great. Really great. It was also too short because the song ended too soon, before I could really figure out what we were doing with our feet. I just wish I had been ready sooner, I wish she hadn’t had a moment of doubt or waiting. So, I hope when you say “I’d do anything for her”‘ as uncomfortable as it might make you, that you’ll include dancing. It’ll be worth it.
I hope you had a great Valentine’s Day! I had a full day in the counseling office then enjoyed some dessert with my family and the start of a movie.
Valentine’s Day can be a lot of fun but after the chocolate and flowers and the reminder to focus on romance and your significant other, what’s next?
Here’s a few blogs I’ve done on marriage that I wrote for my church. I think they can be helpful even if you’re single too, they’re on being loved and the twists and turns of life.
I hope they’ll encourage you to continue to grow closer, improve your communication and problem-solving in your relationships.
Below I’ve also including a month of short videos on marriage that I did for my friends on Facebook.
One of the challenges with fighting is it’s both the most natural and unnatural thing to do in the world. It’s natural to want to hit somebody when you’re angry. It’s not natural to throw an effective punch. It’s natural to want to want to defend yourself when someone is trying to punch you. But it’s not natural to defend yourself the way a mixed martial artist or a boxer defense against punches.
At a high-level, martial artists don’t try to defend punches by blocking. They defend by getting closer and keeping their eyes open. It’s natural to turn away. It’s natural to stay out of harm’s way. It’s normal to withdraw. So whether it’s defense or doing a proper armbar, martial arts is about training responses, training habits that are unnatural until they become natural. You do this be repetition, hundreds even thousands of them over hours and hours, years and years of training to develop muscle memory. You develop movement without thought. It makes you faster, more effective. You train reflexes, that don’t involve your higher conscious part of your brain.
One problem that can arise is sometimes you have to unlearn muscle memory. You have to unlearn habits that aren’t effective, that don’t work or aren’t as effective. In family and in relationships you can develop mental, emotional and behavioral habits in response to certain situations. And a vital task in healthy relationships, marriage and parenting is identifying negative communication, behaviors and relational habits that you learned from your family of origin or other experiences and relationships. And then develop new habits and patterns and form new emotional muscle memory.
It takes hard work, lots of it. It takes repetition and consistency. It takes humility and lots of problem-solving and experimenting, It also takes determination and support to stick with it because under stress we revert to our old habits.
A “christian perfectionist” is an oxymoron.
Buying into perfectionism is an excuse to hold on to the idolatry of self and the works of your hands.
In a sense, Perfectionism is a religion fueled by fear, comparison and self-preservation; it’s living as if your worth and security is at stake.
Jesus > than religion. (Some smart guy said this a bit ago)
Your worth is established, your future is secure.
Faith eliminates fear and compassion replaces comparison.
They sit on the same couch
(always a good sign)
But the smiles don’t reach to their eyes
because pain lives there now
“The sex is still great!” they tell me eagerly
as I notice their hips or hands aren’t touching
It comes out more like a fact they are trying to convince themselves of
Instead of a shared secret between two lovers, a joy
And that vestige of a smile they started with
is gone
It’s almost like they’ve gotten two dogs
Anger & Hurt
that they feed daily with sarcasm and silence
Kindness and Warmth, in the form of soft words and gentle touches,
haven’t been seen in a while
Perhaps they can be found wherever Love and Patience have run off to
Hope is fighting for its life
As Shame reminds them:
the wedding was less than 6 months ago
One thing they do still agree on:
They both desperately want their friend back
One tension in the art of grace-based parenting is teaching kids that while grace and love are unconditional, skill, excellence, responsibility, success and trust aren’t.
Those take work, effort, initiative, character, and intention.
Encouragement without challenge is boring and enabling and can lead to entitlement.
Challenge without encouragement is discouraging and exhausting and can lead to a performance-based life.
Encouragement and challenge are inspiring and empowering.
But it’s so hard to provide just the right balance; it’s the balance of grace and truth.
How have you encouraged or challenged your child (young or adult) to grow, tryout for something, stick with something, be more responsible, get a job, stretch outside their comfort zone towards their potential without causing them to think they aren’t “good enough” or what they do is never enough?
Midway through February and you may still feel stuck, that the year still really hasn’t started for you. If you’re on the fence about trying counseling to work through what you’re struggling with, I hope this post encourages you.
Reality is hard and exhausting but not telling the truth about it, to yourself and others, makes it harder and more exhausting.
Worrying about being found out, about people seeing you for who you really are and being disappointed is exhausting.
Truth is, that may hurt, to be rejected, to be a disappointment but from what I’ve seen it hurts more to be alone and unloved.
For people to just know and love you for your mask.
It’s like in the movies when someone turns the wrong way and they just miss out on bumping into their soul mate.
So close but so far, and the farness may as well be the world away.
Sometimes when you begin the work of counseling it is like digging a path down into your heart.
And one of its benefits is it opens you up for others to follow you down and meet you there.
(sometimes pain, trauma or grief serve the same purpose, by abruptly tearing into your life)
When a spouse does this work, there can be a real confusing shift in the relationship, a disconnect or lack of emotional intimacy.
Or it can point out an inequity of how much depth there is in the other.
To be fair to them, be patient and don’t lose hope.
They may not have realized that this is what they were committing to at the start.
Maybe you didn’t either.
It’s a skill we can all learn. A journey we can all begin.
