Communication

I know my posts about marriage a few and far between. I really would like post them on a more consistent basis; however I want to make sure that I'm practicing what I'm preaching. It would be so easy for me to just tell you what Brian I learned at the marriage conference but I want you to know from my experience, not just what we were told to do. So in order to do that I need to make sure I'm sharing what's really going on in our lives and how we are managing it and experiencing it.

I post when we are putting something we learned into practice. This takes time and commitment!

Lately Brian and I have been focusing on communication, really talking to one another with stuff that is more than just normal day to day stuff.

Did you know that 86% of divorced couples say it was due to defective communication? {quote from The Marriage You've Always Wanted Seminar with Gary Chapman}

Communication is absolutely necessary for any relationship to continue. When we were at the conference Dr. Chapman gave us several tools to use for more effective communication. The most important being is that YOU must choose to communicate with your spouse...You must choose to reveal what is going on inside of you. YOU must choose to listen...REALLY listen to your spouse. This one is a big thing for me. I often find myself hoping that Brian can read my mind. I want him to know how I am feeling with me having to tell him, but seriously how realistic is that? I think we all know that is not humanly possible. I need to open up to him and tell him how things make me feel. What has caused me to react a certain way or why I am upset at any particular time.

One of the biggest things that Dr. Chapman suggested doing is the daily 3 rule. Talk about three things that happened to you throughout your day and how you FEEL about those 3 things. At first this seemed almost like a chore to Brian and me. We would lie in bed and I would say okay tell me your three things and he would groan but we kept at it and now it just flows freely between us and we really don’t even have to throw the “three things” out there. We try to discuss our day at the dinner table and we even are practicing this with Lauren. It is fun and it gets her talking. We have discovered that she has a very vivid imagination and a knack for story telling!! I know that some of the things she comes up with are so farfetched they simply cannot be true but I still listen, ask questions and play along.

I find that by discussing our “three things” it has opened up all the lines of communication and we find ourselves talking about more than just the three things and the dialog that has come out of these conversations has been great and is helping to bring us closer!