50 Ways NOT to Leave Your Lover (Part Three)
I am pleased to present the third installment of Rev. Dr. Trey Kuhne's excellent series, 50 Ways NOT to Leave Your Lover. You can follow this link to read Part One or Part Two, and here is Part Three:
You may remember the song from the 1970’s called “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” Some of the words of the song are “Slip out the back, Jack… make a new plan, Stan….you don’t have to be coy, Roy….” This is a five part series that plays on this song as “50 ways NOT to leave your lover.”
In our culture and society, there are more ideas that interfere with healthy marriages than help them. We are a selfish and individualistic culture. In business, we sacrifice our families, time with our children, even time for our own selves in pursuit of the sacred dollar. The divorce rate today is nearly one out of every two marriages.
When we look for healthy models for strong marriages and functional family systems, those models aren’t typically found in our families, in our friendships, and perhaps not even in our faith communities. Why do some relationships last forever and others fall apart? This is a question that deserves some attention in a world that is looking for successes.
For the longest time, those who were religious represented with healthier and more stable marriages. Now that is no longer the case. The growing divorce rate in America has crossed just about every ethnic, cultural, religious and even racial divide.
Pathways Pastoral Counseling would like to offer an attempt towards helping marriages last longer and to help build on a platform of sustainability through the difficulties and trials. As a marriage and family therapist, I am presented with husbands and wives who have grown apart and found it difficult to stay connected because of loss of trust, loss of intimacy, loss of love, and no knowledge or skill ability of how to recover that which has been lost.
Here is part three of this five part series in offering practical, helpful, and creative ideas to help foster a lasting and healthy relationship in keeping your marriage from being a casualty. Ultimately, a successful marriage and relationship is about how each respects, values, and honors the other in everyday life.
Here are some ways you can make your partner feel appreciated again and prevent your relationship from becoming a casualty. The following are ten more ways that can be helpful:
21. Ask open-ended questions to encourage your partner to open up and talk. Open-ended questions begin like this: (a) Tell me about..., (b) What do you think of..., (c) What was it like when....
22. Have you become passive with your partner because that’s the easiest way to avoid conflict? Over time, this is not a good idea. You will inevitably begin to build up feelings of resentment because you are stifling your feelings, thoughts, and opinions. If you think you are choosing passive behavior too often, think about discussing it with your partner and asking him/her to help you be more assertive.
23. Researchers have found that people whose marriages last the longest have learned to separate from their families of origin (their own parents and siblings) and have appropriate, healthy boundaries. They value and honor their own privacy and separateness as a couple. This means they have regular, appropriate contact with their extended family, but that it is not excessive or stifling. How do you compare?
24. Check your communication with your partner and beware of using “You” messages. These are statements that begin with you. For example: You need to come home by 6:00 tonight. You shouldn’t do that. You should call me from the office and tell me when you’ll be home. Here is what you ought to do. “You” messages are damaging because they make the other person feel bad or disrespected. It feels like you are talking down to him or her.
25. If you want to demonstrate to your partner that you respect and esteem him or her, try speaking with “I” messages instead. When you start your statement with “I,” you are taking responsibility for the statement. It is less blameful and less negative than the “you” message. You can use this formula: Your feelings + Describe the behavior + Effect on you. This is how an “I” message sounds: When I heard that you’d planned a weekend up north, I was confused about why you hadn’t asked me first, so I could be sure to get the time off. It takes some practice and you have to stop and think about what you are going to say, but your marriage deserves to be handled with care.
26. Make a list of your partner’s positive qualities. Share them with him/ her and tell him/her why you think each is true.
27. Ask your partner to do the same for you.
28. Respect each other’s private space. Over time, many couples let this slide.
29. As the years pass, many couples begin to feel like they are living in the same house, but have parallel lives. Their paths cross in fewer places. What is the trend in your relationship and what do you want to do about it?
Dr. Trey Kuhne is a pastoral counselor and licensed marriage and family therapist with Pathways Pastoral Counseling located at St Christopher’s Episcopal Church, 400 Dupre Dr, Spartanburg, SC 29307. He specializes in working with individuals, couples and families.
Source: "50 Ways Not To Leave Your Lover" by Rev. Dr. Trey Kuhne, Published in the June 2006 edition of Prime Years.
