Chapter 3: Foundational Processes for an Enduring, Healthy Marriage

 Chapter 3 Foundational Processes for an Enduring, Healthy, and Happy Marriage by Stephen F. Duncan and Sara S. McCarty Zasukha
        
6 Foundations to practice to make your marriage healthy, happy, and enduring:

  Foundation 1: Personal commitment to marriage covenant
  • Bruce C. Hafen discusses the difference between a covenant marriage and contractual marriage.  In a contractual marriage, each party gives 50% effort. In a covenant marriage, each party gives 100% effort. I noticed that most secular marriages lean towards being a contractual marriage. This is the link for the talk.  It really has a lot of great information on building a covenant marriage and the power it can have in your life:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1996/10/covenant-marriage?lang=eng

  • There are two kinds of commitment. Constraint or a sense of obligation and personal dedication which leads to sacrifice.
  •  Processes that nuture covenant commitment in marriage: intentional personal dedication, exclusive cleaving and unity, and the practice of spiritual patterns.

Foundation 2: Love and friendship 
  • Deep unity begins with friendship.
  • To nurture love and friendship: get in sync with your partner’s preferences, talk as friends, respond to bids for connection, set goals for couple interaction.

Foundation 3: Positive interaction
  • Need to show or have 5 times more positive interactions than negative.  So, you need to have 5 positive interactions for every negative interaction.

Foundation 4: Accepting influence from one’s spouse

  •  Council with and listen to each other.
  • One way to accept influence: turn to spouse for advice.

Foundation 5: Respectfully handle differences and solve problems

  • ·         To prevent problems: have charity, let go of trivial things, and hold regular councils.
  • ·         Eliminate destructive patterns known as the four horsemen(Gottman, 1994): 1. Criticism (which is an attack on their personality) 2. Contempt (examples are criticism mixed with sarcasm, eye rolling, name calling) 3. Defensiveness (which is not taking responsibility for change) 4. Stonewalling (unwillingness to discuss or withdrawal from issue; this is different from taking a cooling off period and returning to discuss after). Other major patterns include: escalation, invalidation, and negative interpretations.
  • ·         Calm yourself first.
  • ·         Bring up concerns softly, gently, and privately. Proverbs 1:5 A soft answer turneth away wrath.
  • ·         Learn to make and receive repair attempts. Put the brakes on before it becomes contentious.
  • ·         Soothe yourself and each other. Take breaks. Breath.
  • ·         Reach a consensus about a solution.

Foundation 6: Continuing courtship through the years

  • ·         Avoid entropy of your relationship.
  • ·         Attend to the little things (connection, love, celebration)
  • ·         Spend at least 5 hours weekly strengthening relationship.  Ways to do that: 1. Learn one thing that happened in spouse’s life each day. 2. Have stress reducing conversation at the end of each day. 3. Do something special to show affection and appreciation each day. 4. Have a weekly date.


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