There’s a great deal of advice floating around our there – “ten tips for lovers;” “what to buy so you don’t look like you’re buying her off;” “create a dreamy evening just for him” – all good, all doable. But we had to ask (it’s our job) this: “what does Valentine’s Day really have to do with our marriage?”

Here’s a couple of thoughts to add to your kitchen drawer clippings:

♥ Recognizing that you actually do love someone is a gift in itself (if you tell them).

♥ Claiming your love for them is an action verb.

♥ Listening to the one you love without interruption or analyses for 10 minutes is better than chocolate (but of course, chocolate is good)

♥ If you want to buy something for the one you love, buy (and give them) time.

♥ If you want them to feel cherished, spend 10 minutes telling them every thing you cherish about them.

♥ Make them oatmeal with raisins and honey.

♥ Sit close and hum a song they like.

♥ Read a poem by Rumi.

♥ Take a nice long early morning walk.

♥ Gently touch their face and tell them how beautiful they are.

If you want to know more, come to the next “How To Build a Better Marriage Workshop”

Couples’ Gathering/ Workshop/ Experience – SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27th 8 a.m.

REGISTER: www.marriageconversation.com

Hugs all around,

Stephen

Stephen W. Frueh PhD

805 338 4286

www.marriageconversation.com

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Love’s Day is Every Day

Marriage is an intentional act and the need for intention never eases. Marriage is an opportunity for self growth, a Petri dish of unending discovery.

Marriage can take you beyond self absorption, narcissism and past wounds. You can do it by focusing on loving rather than being loved.

Marriage creates community – good or not so good. It’s in your hands. And the community you create has real impact on the larger community you live in.

Marriage unfolds. It is never the same. If offers new discoveries, real challenges, options for creating your life – every day.

Marriage is a partnership in disguise. Like any partnership it calls for sobriety of thought and emotion, calls for decisive action, calls for empathy, calls for openness to new ideas and calls for accountability. Whether or not you’re up to it will determine the quality of your partnership and therefore, your life.

Celebrate the cosmic offer of gratitude for the birth of children everywhere. May you and your family discover this year a joy filled holiday.

Stephen and Lynn

Our next Couples Workshop is scheduled for January 23, 2010

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

What Marriage Is

We’re heading down the holiday home stretch. Some of us are anxious, some not so much. Some of us believe that the ‘happiness equation’ – that measure we unconsciously apply to the quality of our own holiday experience – depends on the number of parties we attend, the size of gifts we buy or the electronic vs paper cards we send out.

That may be so but I offer you a few other measures by which you can ‘reality check’ your own experience of this delicious time of year. Here are some home grown observations that help my wife and I stay grounded as the world around us spins.

a. Remember (be mindful) that this particular season resonates with the memory of the birth of a child. A most unusual child, born under the most primitive conditions and destined to remind people of a most unusual gift. That gift stripped of its religious language is this: that every person has access to the gift of legitimacy. Every person loves. Every person is human/ flawed/ ordinary yet – every person has within them something so extraordinary so profound that we may spend our entire lives discovering the depth of it.

b. Within your marriage are two legitimate and loving persons. Remember that diagnosing and analyzing each other is a losing game. To learn more about what I mean in talking of ‘legitimacy’ go to “From Marginal to Magnificent: How to Make your Marriage Sing” – www.marginaltomagnificent.com Honoring each others legitimacy is a pathway to reducing stress. It means that you take full responsibility for the love you experience and for the goodness you create.

c. Truly less is more at this time of year. When in doubt simplify. Simplify gift giving. Simplify parties. Simplify family times (example: less tv, more sharing; less entertainment, more co creating activities that your whole family can share). Simplify eating and drinking – less is more healthful.

d. This time of year provokes in many of us a deep need to connect to our spiritual center or roots. Take time to explore your deepest held beliefs and values. Take time to celebrate your ‘why’ – why do you work so hard, why do you want what you want, why do you hold back your loving… I prefer daily times of meditation and prayer to help me get there. Once I’m there I
e. Celebrate the amazing gifts in my life. Celebrate your choice of partner. If you can stop analyzing and diagnosing the next step is to celebrate them – their willingness to love you, their presence, their flaws. Celebrate it all because in celebrating you take the attention off ‘what’s missing’ and begin to attend to ‘what’s present.’

f. Connect, connect, connect. The very essence of this holiday season is a call to reconnect to the foundations of loving. You’ll need courage here because the inner critic will seduce and deceive you. Few of us are good at truly and humbly connecting to not only those we love but to those who we don’t find so attractive. It’s well known that reaching out to someone who doesn’t necessarily ‘deserve’ your love is healing in itself. Mary Oliver in her poem, Wild Geese, reminds us that we are all part of the “family of things.” To move into that awareness is itself a blessing.

So these few reminders will greatly increase your own happiness equation and at the same time increase the happiness of those around you. It’s a time of great opportunity. Seize it. Claim it. Celebrate it.

Hugs all around.

Stephen

www.marginaltomagnificent.com

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Help Your Self: Holiday Care and Feeding Your Marriage

Here are five solid tips for transforming Holiday Stress into Holiday Happiness

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Holiday Stress

Help Yourself and Your Marriage During Holiday Stress

How does a person take what’s given to them and transform it into something that makes them proud of their living skills?

Here’s what I mean by this overly wordy question: The holidays bring with them once a year demands on time and money that are unusual and often lead to increased stress. By now most of us know the usual suspects – gift buying, holiday parties, extended family, cards, trees and on and on.

On top of all of that there are expectations others have for us – that we’ll come through (‘you’re coming to our Christmas party aren’t you?’) and the expectations we lay on ourselves.

The expectations often trigger questions around our self esteem – ‘am I doing enough?’ ‘did I buy the right gift?’ ‘is my wardrobe ready for all this?’ We all, of course also ingest expectations from family and friends. They are perhaps well meaning but that doesn’t stop us from questioning whether we are ‘good enough,’ generous enough, or caring enough. The natural consequence of self doubt is increased stress levels.

Here are a few coaching tips I learned as a youth while working on a 500 acre dairy farm in Pennsylvania.

• The cows (in our case Holsteins – the black and white cows for you city dwellers) need to be milked and fed daily. How does that show up during the holidays? This way: we each have certain daily commitments that cannot and should not be given less attention. Pay attention as you go into the holidays to your own ‘bottom line’ commitments: exercise/ meditation/ healthy eating/ family time/ rest. Pencil these in your December calendar (see below). They are an important part of keeping your ‘center’ peaceful.
• Preparation for spring planting starts in the winter. Preparation for social events means planning. Grab a calendar page of the month of December. Write down every gathering you have been invited to. Then prioritize them with a number 1 – 10, 10 being ‘I’ll only go to this one if I have absolutely nothing better to do.’ One of course is the essentials – the gatherings that unless you’re in the hospital, you’re going. My suggestion is that you keep this calendar page in the kitchen where you can ‘tweak’ it daily. Next create a list of all the things you have to do and pencil that in your calendar as well. By naming the activity and giving it an appointed time you honor not only your commitments but your limitations as well. Remember: highly stressed people are frequently not good at setting boundaries.
• Always clean up after yourself. At this time of year things change quickly. If you need to back out of an engagement do it now. Don’t postpone it. Call or email and gracefully decline. That way the person hosting the gathering feels respected and you will not be carrying a ‘should’ as stress. This too reflects your willingness to establish boundaries for yourself as well as honor your true limitations.
• Too much summer silage sickens the cows (silage is stored grasses from summer that cows love. It is their winter ‘treat’) For us it’s sweets, booze, pastries – all delicious. Too much of this equals lower energy levels, higher anxiety levels and lower self esteem. Enjoy the goodies but train yourself to be conservative in their presence. Leave half the piece of pie on your plate, sip the drink but don’t ask for a second.
• Harvest time is a time for celebration. This time of year we celebrate families coming together, we celebrate a time for recognizing the importance of loving who we love, we open our hearts to the needy, we think of ways to express all this (gifts, letters, cards) that will convey our gratitude. Don’t be stingy with your loving, be careful with your spending. We all know the size of a gift is not its most important communicator of value. Careful attentiveness to who you’re giving to and to how you appreciate them will far outweigh a careless financial indulgence. Less is often more.

So we can all learn from the farm. We can all learn to walk within the rhythms life offers. We can all accept that we’re good enough just the way we are. We all belong in the family of things. Hugs all around.
Stephen

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Help Yourself and Your Marriage During Holiday Stress

The most difficult challenge I have in coaching couples into song is this: belief. One word, belief. We all seem hard wired to exaggerate what’s missing in our relationships and to minimize what’s good.

So what do I want couples to believe? What is it that healthy couples carry around with them that struggling couples lack? How is it that some couples go through amazing challenges and grow closer, more vital and experience more intimate connecting while other couples drift apart with lesser challenges and often give up?

Couples don’t really believe something. Individuals do. And the beliefs they bring create something we call vision and they find a way to make that vision into a shared vision. What successful individuals believe is this: it’s possible. They believe that life itself offers all kinds of hope, unthought of solutions, unexpected assistance – the minute you say to yourself ‘it’s possible.’

Shared vision around the possible is a paradigm shift. There are many voices carrying the message of ‘it’s over,’ ‘forget it,’ and ‘why waste your time.’ But alongside the many messages of defeat learned over a lifetime, there is a deeper human force percolating in all of us. Did you know that the root of the word enthusiasm was en theos, god within?

Enthusiasm is a gift given at conception. Watch a baby’s face when their mom or dad is adoring them. Watch them when they take their first difficult steps, watch them show you their first finger painting. Enthusiasm runneth over.

What happens to this positive life force that basically contains the ‘anything is possible’ gene? I’ll share one or two things people have shared with me: “well everytime I cut the lawn it was never good enough for my father.” “my grade school teachers told me I’d never be an artist.” “My mother criticized my choice of clothes because I was always wanting to try something unusual” (a woman who is today a fashion designer).

There are many messages that undermine a child’s essential curiosity and enthusiasm for living. We all experienced them. The trouble is that in listening to them, we slowly formed a belief about life. We began to doubt that who we really were, or what we really wanted to bring to the world – was possible. We were told to focus on getting a good job instead.

Couples who come for coaching who are still stuck in the old beliefs created as survival strategies in a negative environment, have a great deal of trouble believing that their loving can make a difference in their marriage. Instead they’ll focus on diagnostics as if being able to make a really clear case regarding what’s wrong with their partner will somehow get them to intimacy. That path always leads to disaster.

How can someone change their focus from ‘what’s wrong with him/ her? to what’s possible here?’ I’ll tell you but first I’ll warn you. Do not think that this transition is simple or easy. Insight changes little. Action is what counts.

So here are my bullet points:

• Make a list of the negative things you say to yourself about your partner. Don’t be afraid to list them and don’t show them to anyone.
• Next, take each negative observation and rephrase it in the first person singular. Like this: “my wife is cold.” Rephrase: “I don’t know how to find my own warmth and I don’t know how to give my warmth to my wife.” Or, “my husband is a slob.” Rephrase: “I don’t know how to create order in my home and invite him to participate in my vision.”
• Create a ‘what’s possible’ vision for your marriage. Like this: “Bob and I love each other but we rarely talk about sensitive matters. I wonder what it would be like if I invited him to spend a small amount of time – say Sunday morning, for 15 minutes – talking about how much I like to touch him.
• Invite your partner into an agreement to exclude all negative observations about each other for one week. Be accountable to each other. Admit when you break the deal.
• Spend five minutes each day sharing a ‘possibility’ for your marriage. Example: listening to your partner’s fears; telling your partner one thing you cherish about them; fantasize an ‘ideal’ overnight ‘vacation.’

Possibilities are really endless and bringing them into your marriage is a source of food for intimate connecting. Begin it.

For more go to: www.marginaltomagnificent.com

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Marriage Challenge Number One

It’s no mystery to any of us married for more than a little while that marriage is both opportunity and challenge. Challenge because you signed on for a personal growth course when you said ‘I do’ and are just now realizing it.

Challenge because the one you chose isn’t at all who you thought they were when the hormones were coursing through your veins like the spring runoff of a mountain stream. You thought you knew exactly who they were and what they were. But you didn’t. None of us really know who we are marrying until after the train has left the station.

That challenge has abundant opportunities within it. The opportunities for discovery are many but here’s some of the most important as I see them.

We get to discover the many dimensions of a person that we are so attracted to that we want to partner for life with them. Are they stubborn? My partner is. Do they surprise you with attitudes you didn’t know they had? Do they like movies that make you wince? Are they sensitive to issues you never realized were important to them? Do they have trouble communicating deep and vulnerable feelings?

These “discoveries” of course can tempt you into an analytical or diagnostic attitude towards your partner. “What’s wrong with them?” You can be tempted to focus on their shortcomings because discoveries often are laced with fear. “Did I make a mistake?” “Should I end it now?”

The truth is this; it’s perfectly natural to experience the slow unfolding of your partner’s wonderfully complex individuality as something to be frightened of. We humans think, erroneously, that we’re in control. We live much of our lives deluding ourselves with that thought. The old joke is correct – ‘if you want to make God laugh, make plans.’

Couples who cling to control miss out on discovery. Listen. For the most part there’s little to be afraid of, much to anticipate with joy. Want sustainable intimate connecting? Discovery is your path. Want days filled with the anticipation of seeing each other again? Embrace the unknown.

The opportunities for learning are practically endless. But here’s the biggest one I’ve found so far. Life long partnership offers the opportunity to grow up with someone who cares about you. You have the opportunity to work out your own loving.

Does that surprise you? I have come to believe that discovering whether I love or can love is bigger by far than whether I am loved. Maybe the drive to partner is founded upon our need to build the muscle of our loving. When you focus on your own loving you have little time or interest in ‘licking your wounds,’ little interest in being right, little attraction toward pulling the mask off your partner’s blind spots.

Instead, focusing on your own loving drives honest introspection, expands your own vision for your life, brings new ‘juice’ to everyday tasks.

I’m no saint in this. I far more easily focus on what’s wrong than I do on ‘what can I do to help?’ But when I do focus on my loving I begin to see the potential impact that loving brings to my partner’s life. When my partner experiences my loving, feels its integrity, senses that my loving is a risk for me and that I’m forging ahead anyway – she literally lives in a different world. That’s good for her, and good for me. Try it.

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Marriage can Help your Self Discovery

Interesting ABC news story on conflict and health

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Conflict and Health

Become familiar with the three journeys within marriage and then begin to focus on your own ability to transition from one focus to another.

Not paying attention to ‘where’ you are and ‘where’ your partner is can lead to clumsy and unconscious transitions that are often the cause of meaningless arguments.

Show Length: 4.56

If you have any comments or questions about this podcast I’d love to hear from you. Post your comments below.

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Marriage Podcast 029 – Transitions

Subject: Three Foundations of a Healthy Marriage
When: Saturday Dec 5th 2009 8am – 11am
Venue: United Church of Christ, 370 Royal Avenue, Simi Valley, CA
Cost: $45 per couple

Join us for the latest of our popular workshop series on “How to Build a Better Marriage.”

Here’s what you’ll get:

• Learn to use the ‘three foundations’ as pathways to intimate connecting.
• Discover pathways to intimate conversation that you already have but aren’t using.
• Explore chronic conflict with a new point of view – learn what it means to ‘embrace conflict’.
• Begin to create a new vision for your marriage.
• Register online and you’ll receive a free copy of From Marginal to Magnificent: How to Make Your Marriage Sing.
• Invite a couple you would like to see get more out of their marriage and we’ll give them a free book as well.

Coffee, donuts and laughter are guaranteed at our friendly and supportive workshops.

Your hosts for this event are:

• Lynn Comley, PsyD, MFT (#30361) “Marriage from a Woman’s Point of View”
• Stephen W. Frueh PhD, Coach, Consultant, Author

We would like no one to be excluded due to money challenges. Partial scholarships are available.

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Saturday Dec 5th 2009 – How to Build a Better Marriage Couples Workshop

Divorce isn’t only a personal choice. It has a history. You’d be wise to learn about that history and its impact on marriage.

Read more about the Evolution of Divorce.

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Divorce isn’t only a personal choice

I’m a rich man. Of course I’m broke.

“You’ll have to learn to be better with your money,” my brother Wes told me when I was a boy.

I spent everything I earned – paper boy, bottle collector, lip balm salesman, 8, 9, 10, 11… then I left.

On the farm at 13 years old I earned fifteen bucks a month – spent all of that too.

By the time I returned to the city at sixteen to once again live with my family I was a high school dropout. I worked bowling alleys evenings for the beer drinking bowling league guys – truck drivers, butchers, construction workers, after duty cops. Tips were good if you were fast. Blew through maybe twenty bucks a week.

Today I’m in Northern California on a chilled foggy morning overlooking the Pacific Ocean. My eleven year old daughter and I – sleeping in the back of my Honda Element, eating like royalty, spending everything we have.

When I was seventeen I worked the textile factories of north Jersey. Good money for a boy. Cars and dates took all of it even though I neither drank, nor smoked, nor partied really.

By nineteen I had been warmly persuaded to ‘go back to school’ which I did my purpose being to replicate the kind pastor who touched my shoulder one warm June night and softly said “you’re better that this. Go back to school.”

So I did.

I had no money when I earned money and had no money now. No money for school. I borrowed, worked, married, lived broke. Graduate school followed as did more loans and more work and of course children came. I became what I worked so hard for – a professional. Good money. Spent it all happily, foolishly, mindlessly, joyfully.

Here now today with my daughter, breakfast on credit cards. Who cares?

There’s always a voice of reason of course. We have a house payment, car payment, school for my daughter payment and payments for lessons, trips and other necessary luxuries.

My wife, by any account a good woman, is also a school junkie and her post, post graduate studies cost a lot.

Our richness doesn’t seem to be related to crafty investments or frugal living.

This morning as the fog lays low on the mountains of Big Sur and we sip hot chocolate from steaming mugs gazing meditatively out over the blue black Pacific Ocean, my daughter on the very cusp of womanhood – fully there, fully not – I feel wiser, even, miracle of miracles, loving. My life is overflowing, a basket bulging with promises, new projects, family delights – rich.

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Rich – The Value Factor in Self Helping your Marriage

Subject: Three Foundations of a Healthy Marriage
When: Saturday Oct 24th 2009 8am – 11am
Venue: United Church of Christ, 370 Royal Avenue, Simi Valley, CA
Cost: $45 per couple

Join us for the latest of our popular workshop series on “How to Build a Better Marriage.”

Here’s what you’ll get:

• Learn to use the ‘three foundations’ as pathways to intimate connecting.
• Discover pathways to intimate conversation that you already have but aren’t using.
• Explore chronic conflict with a new point of view – learn what it means to ‘embrace conflict’.
• Begin to create a new vision for your marriage.
• Register online and you’ll receive a free copy of From Marginal to Magnificent: How to Make Your Marriage Sing.
• Invite a couple you would like to see get more out of their marriage and we’ll give them a free book as well.

Coffee, donuts and laughter are guaranteed at our friendly and supportive workshops.

Your hosts for this event are:

• Lynn Comley, PsyD, MFT (#30361) “Marriage from a Woman’s Point of View”
• Stephen W. Frueh PhD, Coach, Consultant, Author

We would like no one to be excluded due to money challenges. Partial scholarships are available.

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Saturday Oct 24th 2009 – How to Build a Better Marriage Couples Workshop

Freud said that ‘dreams are the royal road to consciousness.’ In a heavily dunned entertainment culture where we live too often on sound bites, dreams are mostly ignored, shoved to the periphery of our attentiveness, seen as not really relevant to our lives. We do that at our own expense, losing the rich images that guide, the stories that awaken.

Show Length: 4.22

If you have any comments or questions about this podcast I’d love to hear from you. Post your comments below.

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Marriage Podcast 028 – Dreams

No doubt about it. Letterman helped himself. He created the illusion of sincere, hip and funny all at once. It wasn’t funny. It really wasn’t hip, unless of course, you’re a Peter Pan man.

He gave us a line or two about ‘Lutheran guilt’ and said he was loaded with it – but showed no evidence of remorse. This may be as close as we’ll get to sociopathic behavior by a popular adult entertainer. Why the applause?

He did a great job of leveling the poor unfortunate and inept blackmailer, though he seems an easy target. What he didn’t or couldn’t do was show any feeling for a) his wife, b) his children, or, c) the women he used. Is it funny that a powerful man uses nameless women for his own ends? Is it commendable that he doesn’t apologize to them and instead feigns a kind of care for them by ‘protecting’ their identity?

His ‘confession’ wasn’t confession at all. It was a CYA. His position demands that. But the rest of us would do well to ask “why the applause?” “Why the laughter?”

Marriage at the level of entertainment is not marriage at all but a series of elicited images. We use our history and our foibles to earn a few bucks. In that world marriage is an afterthought, a convenience but no longer a commitment.

We want to say “hello Mrs. Letterman. Sorry for the blip in your husband’s career. We’d like to invite you to talk about your marriage. We’d like to know whether you could applaud or laugh at your husband’s performance. We’d like to know if this very public event will open new conversations between you. We sure hope that neither of you are shamed by this. Our wish is that as complex as this whole thing may become for you that, additionally, it opens new and profound conversations for you both. We hope that through this experience, your marriage can be reborn.”

Post from: The Marriage Conversation

Lettermans Self Help and The Marriage That Was