Adult Formation, Imago Relationship Exercises, Part III, 5/26/2019

Well, good morning.

Here's the last one of these we're going to do because we want to be really conscientious about summer reading.

So as you know.

I'm sorry.

As you know, colleges and high schools now have summer reading lists, and so we've got a summer reading list.

Um the first book we're going to read is Daring Greatly by Brene Brown.

So we will not next week, the week after that.

Next week, what's going to happen is uh a gentle introduction to Brene Brown that I think will make the book more helpful.

We're going to frame that out using some of her, she's got a ton of video resources.

And then, you know, the chapters are in your uh service uh announcements.

Each week we'll be reading about three chapters.

And I and I will tell you as way of introduction that um if it weren't for that book, I wouldn't be here.

Now you may say, well, that's then I'm definitely not reading it.

But this book was actually what I needed to be able to leave where I was.

Also because I had to leave.

But this is a book that I needed.

Um and uh it has been so helpful in most of my relationships, quite honestly.

Um piggybacking on this, um, maritally, but also as a parent and a friend.

It's I mean, it's really been a helpful, helpful book.

So Darien Greatly will be the first one we read.

In July, there'll be another, we'll we'll we'll put that out soon.

And if you're looking ahead, the book we'll read in August is um it's called Speaking Christian.

It's a book by Marcus Borge, who died about three years ago.

And the book is really about paying attention to the words we use in church, reclaiming words and maybe letting some slide.

So uh uh it's sort of a primer on theological speak that uh I I found to be really, really helpful in inviting what do we mean when we say?

Because a lot of times we use words like churchy wise and don't really plumb the depths of what the words invite us to consider.

So I hope you enjoy summer reading.

Again, the July book I don't know because Jenny's doing that one, and but it'll be out next week.

Where do we get the book?

Oh, the best place to buy any book.

I'm sorry, I love local booksellers.

If you want to support them, do that.

It's Amazon.

You you can't find a better price on a book.

It's$10.20.

Yeah.

Daring Greatly is$10.20.

If you buy it at Barnes and Nobles, it's gonna be$19.

Well, I deal with Amazon.

Yeah.

We all deal with Amazon.

Love it or hate it, it uh is hard not to.

I do have that book on audio CD.

So if you are not a reader but a listener, or if you've got a long commute, um, when I had a long commute, now my commute is about a minute and a half, so I, you know, the CD barely starts.

But if you're going on a trip, I love listening to books on CD.

Um, just let me know.

Okay, um, that's what's next.

Um, but now here we are, and I wanted to start off by seeing if any of you tried any of the things we've talked about, or if you had any questions or comments from the last couple of weeks.

Maybe not.

As much as Greg and I know how we should do it, we ended up having a clash, you know, and like that.

And then after it's like, wait a minute, we should have like stepped back and done this, but the clash still happened, you know.

But at least you become a little more aware that you weren't behaving nicely in your conversation, you know, kind of thing.

So we came up with a third alternative.

You know, one of the things that they say that we uh we often say, like, again, this is like church speak, oh, yeah, it's a great idea, but many of us would groan inwardly, is that whenever friction develops and you find yourself in a power struggle, it really is an opportunity to grow.

Uh I did have a singer-songwriter friend who wrote this thing that said, you know, everything that uh doesn't kill me only makes me stronger.

God don't make me any stronger today.

But really, remember that when we grow, when we have a couple of uh a power struggle and grow through it, really what that means is we're experiencing healing within ourselves and as a couple.

So conflict is an opportunity not to get somewhere new or to get over it, it's to heal who we've been.

That's that's the the thinking.

And I think it's right.

Yes, ma'am.

One of the things that uh I have observed is that six years ago I've been back to the house.

But I think the issue we know who we are, do we really have confidence in ourselves?

And uh if we do, then we can stand and be who we are and not have to get into the furry.

I think that's really, really helpful.

And I do want to also say that one of the things that the the the sort of the research says is that we often can't even see our own stumbling blocks.

And this is the unique thing that coupling offers us is that our partner can see things we can't see in ourselves.

And so again, conflict is an opportunity for us to grow in areas we didn't even know we were deficient in.

Most of the things we know we need to be.

Listen, we already learned in kindergarten, we're all but we're often uh we're often blind to some of our own ways of being.

And again, remember whether you agree with it or not, what the relationship research tends to say is that uh those grading edges are frankly because we've been we're triggering trauma by intimacy so that we can heal it.

Not go back to where we were, but so we have an opportunity to heal it.

Now, this is not true of people I work in the office with.

There are certain relationships where walking away is the best thing I can do.

Okay?

But what I want to hand down to you now is uh one of the key things in a couple relationship, whether that's marital or this is your most best friend who is committed to you, one of the things that they try really hard to get couples to work on is eliminating exits.

There are some folks, I need to exit, because it's just gonna be toxic.

But my spouse is not one of those people.

This is really important.

Not one.

Did we run out short?

No.

Oh, okay.

We have oh, you because you took one for Lewis, kidding.

So listen, there's four catastrophic exits in a couple's relationship.

Those are the dark black ones.

So one of the first things, if you were to go through the Amago relationship process with a with an Amago certified therapist, would be hey, we promise we're not going to.

They left one out here.

We're not, we're not, divorce is off the table.

We're gonna work the relationship, and divorce is not an option because if it is, you don't have to work as hard.

Do you all hear what I'm saying?

If if that's an exit we can walk through, then we can.

So if you don't do it my way, I'm out the door.

That is not a way you're going to heal together.

Obviously, murder has to be off the table.

It sounds like I'm joking, but I'm not.

Suicide also has to be off the table.

Those are the three catastrophic exits.

You'll see the red ones are of a secondary level, but equally damaging.

Affairs and abuse.

So that has to be off the table.

Could be an affair has already happened, but now it's off the table.

Otherwise, we're not gonna be able to work.

Insanity has got to be off the table, and so does alcohol and drug abuse.

Okay?

Insanity is an option.

Insanity is always an option whether we realize it or not.

But it's gotta be actually, yeah, it's an option sometimes.

And we've got to put that, we've got to close that exit.

Now, I do want you to know this, and I'm not talking to y'all, this is not a workshop.

But in my job, I grew up as a Southern Baptist, I want you to know.

So I had a preconceived way of how couples work.

In my preconceived way, here's how it worked.

Once you get married, everything's great.

So essentially, my church gave me zero life skills and zero marital skills.

And what I heard, right, is good couples never have affairs.

And I will tell you, affairs are so much more common than you think.

And affairs rarely have to do with I'm out of the relationship.

Affairs usually are when people are they need they feel for some reason they need an exit.

But that doesn't mean they intend to leave forever.

Uh affairs are not okay.

I want you to hear that.

They're not okay, but you would be maybe surprised at how many couples have come back together after an affair and been stronger than they ever were before.

I'm not saying that excuses it.

I just want you to know reality-wise, they're a lot more common than you may think, certainly more than I thought.

And really, what affairs represent are just a ratcheted up version of exiting.

So I want you to look at the smaller ones now and see the most common ways that couples look to exit a relationship.

TV movie sports.

Sports, like I will tell you, I've got folks I know who are dedicated athletes and they do things like marathons and triathlons.

I don't know how anybody does an Iron Man.

I can tell you, I don't know.

Because you're gonna train seven hours a day for several months.

And how you have time to do anything else, I have no idea.

The couples I know that make that work, they covenant with each other for three months.

This is what you're gonna do.

After three months, you are not doing that.

Now, I worked out with my wife when I did stuff that I did it before anybody was awake.

That had a toll because my wife likes to stay up late, and boy, I was exhausted.

For the first time in my life, I could eat an entire pizza and immediately run 15 miles, and I felt better doing that than now I'd have to wait three hours after eating to do anything.

We worked that out.

So I didn't mean you can't do sports.

What I mean is these are some ways in which people escape being together.

Just like, well, we don't always have a choice over depression.

We don't, but it can be a way of life we live into.

Workshops and illness are ways that we do this.

So are things like working and reading and sleeping and going to church, sorry, and so can hobbies and children in civic meetings.

They can be really good things, they can be descriptive things, and they can all get in the way of us spending time with each other because we feel awkward or we feel uncomfortable, so we look for exits.

I've told you in sermons that I sometimes really enjoy looking for exits in family gatherings.

And I look for productive ones.

What a sweet man.

He got up and washed the dishes.

Let me tell you, I would way rather wash the dishes than have certain conversations with my family.

That's just fine if I'm taking care of myself with strangers.

But if I do chores to exit being with my spouse, Imago says you've got to work hard to close that as an exit strategy to so y'all can be together and heal what you need to heal.

Does that make sense?

When you exit, you are not going to heal what you need to heal.

Where's the line between?

I thought everybody needed alone time.

Oh, of course you need alone time.

Of course you do.

What's the line between the alone time you need and this escape?

I I think the line is: am I doing this to avoid being with my spouse, or am I doing this because I've got to replenish my batteries so I can be with my spouse?

And that's a blurry line.

Sometimes we think, I'm just doing this for myself, when really we just are trying to avoid a particular situation.

Does the spouse have an awareness of your choice making that easier?

Usually they do.

Usually they do.

I mean, I can kind of tell when Greg just watches.

I watch his program to kind of come to this thing.

I watch what I watch what he watches what he watches.

And at first it was sort of like it seemed like avoidance, but now this is just the way it needs to be for that number of hours of whatever.

I don't think it's avoiding me, you say it's just the way that we make our commonality work.

And to be really fair, about three years ago, we stumbled on the concept of taking separate vacations because, quite honestly, I get a lot more vacation time than my spouse does.

And what my spouse likes to do, I think I mentioned this, is have long weekends.

She needs more recharge.

To me, a long weekend does me no good.

I need to be gone for a couple of weeks.

And what do you know?

I get six weeks of vacation.

So I went, and she didn't want to go to Iran, and I did.

So off I went.

And I came back really stimulated and rested and was ready to bring that into the relationship.

So that was not me exiting the relationship.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

But again, I I'll tell you, my issue is I often do things like working around the house and chores as an exit.

Well, we could sit down and talk, but I'm gonna I'm gonna do this thing.

Because I've done something, I feel like I'm productive, and I don't always feel the productivity value to sitting and having a dialogue with my spouse, and that's something I need to heal in myself.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

It's it's not that any of these things are necessarily wrong.

They're not even always controllable, some of the things on the sheet.

But what Imago asks you to do is try to get to where you increasingly close the exits to your relationship.

Okay.

I grew up with perfectionist workaholic parents.

I'm positive, positive that at least one of my parents used work to escape being with the other person.

I will also tell you it's because they didn't believe that there was healing possible.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

Um again, I just think that's a an invitation.

Remember what goes hand in hand with this.

So not only do we not want to exit through activities, um another thing that they mention, and there's a formal way you can do this, is to make a covenant about zero negativity.

Zero negativity.

So what that means is I never say, Polly, I want you to quit that thing you're doing.

I never ask for a quit.

I ask for a I'd like you to blank positive.

I'd like you to do.

I never say that is so stupid of you.

Now I grew up where that's how we talked about each other.

I don't mean all the time, but my parents did not have a zero negativity covenant.

And you realize any negativity creates a place where it's unsafe.

What we need to connect is safety.

We have to have safety or we cannot connect.

Our brain is hardwired always to look for safety risks.

So remember, if somebody criticizes you, your brain receives it like a lion in front of you.

It's not safe.

And especially from your partner.

Now, this is really hard because I almost guarantee you, all of us grew up in homes where there was not such a covenant in place.

And it's not because the people were bad, but that's the model they were given.

And that's usually, therefore, the model we live into.

I think I mentioned this to you.

Uh, I grew up in a home that really appreciated sarcastic humor more than any other kind, and it is dreadfully unsafe.

Dreadfully.

When I went to teacher training, they told me there's no room for sarcasm in the classroom, and I said, Well, I disagree because it's just about how you do it, and it is not.

If you use sarcasm in a classroom, no student is safe.

None.

If you gossip about somebody, no one in your life is safe.

Because who will be next?

I usually, you know, this is the way gossip works.

We're going to share this information about those people, but we'd never do that to each other.

Of course you will.

Of course you will.

Because when you're armed with a sword, you've got a sword.

And I didn't say.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

Now, listen, it takes a lot of time to work in to know negativity.

And you may say, well, then, Mike, what are we supposed to do when we've got a rub?

And that's why the next handout I've given you, the next couple of pages, are how you do it.

Instead of a criticism or a, I'm so tired of you not doing the laundry, did you hear the negative?

Not doing the laundry, what we do is we make a behavior change request.

Do you notice it's a request?

It's not an ultimatum.

It's not an ultimatum.

Does anybody in the room like receiving an ultimatum from anybody?

What an ultimatum does is puts you in the place of adrenaline and cortisol.

We don't want to be there.

Not with our spouse.

We want to be in the place of dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin.

That's where we want to be.

That's why zero negativity keeps us there, and so do the other skills we've talked about.

So remember, the first thing you do is you make an appointment.

And it's okay to use the language, and that's why I've given you some down.

I'd like to make an appointment for a behavior change request dialogue about a frustration I'm feeling.

Are you available?

Listen, if you're not, you say no, 7 o'clock tonight I will be.

And whatever you say, be ready then.

And don't say, nah now's not a good time unless you give a follow-up appointment.

It's critical.

At work, if your supervisor said, we need to talk about something, you said, nah, now's not a good time.

It wouldn't fly unless you said, I'm finishing this project, can we do it in an hour?

Very professional thing to do, right?

Very professional.

That's what we want to do.

Okay, I'm available now.

As I mentioned to you, we don't do the next part to butter us up.

We do it to get into our mammalian brain and out of our reptilian brain.

So as always, breaths, facing each other, making eye contact.

Not glaring.

You can make eye contact in a threatening way.

That's not the goal.

The goal is you love your spouse.

There's a frustration, and you want to heal the source of the frustration and grow closer as a couple.

So that's where you're going to be.

That's your cue.

And you're not acting, you're going to live into that part of yourself.

So the first thing you do are those tactical breaths.

Remember, in your nose for three, hold it for three, ounce your mouth for three, keep the breath out for three, do it together.

And I will tell you, there's something amazing about doing it in tandem.

So if your spouse is inhaling while you're exhaling, sync up.

If you need to, make a visual cue.

Do it three times.

And as I told you, if you can do this while holding hands, and give it 40 seconds before you talk, because it takes 40 seconds for oxytocin to be released in contact.

This is the better handhold.

The lacing fingers releases more oxytocin than the knot.

Then here you go.

Express an appreciation.

Not a behavior change yet, an appreciation.

Remember how that goes?

I really appreciate how you blank.

Mirror back.

Always the mirror back.

Oh, you really appreciate how I let the chickens out every single morning without being asked.

It touches my heart when you do that because it shows you're doing small tasks so I don't have to.

When I do that, it touches my heart because it shows I'm committed to small tasks so that you don't have to do them.

Did I get that right?

You did.

Is there anything else?

No, you got it.

One thing that reminds me of from my childhood is, and then you complete that, like we've been saying, right?

Remember, all that bit is not about doing some weird Freudian psychology.

It's about taking an appreciation and showing how deeply it goes.

Really important.

That's the difference between a compliment washing, just washing right over you and filling your well, is drilling down and spending more time with it.

Okay, we did an appreciation, and now here we go.

I want you to look at this language.

Again, there's no questions, there's just sentence stems.

And I've given you all of them.

I get frustrated when you make plans for the weekend without checking my calendar first.

Let me see if I've got that.

If I did, your frustration is when I make plans for the weekend without checking your calendar first.

Am I getting you?

Yes.

And now here's the thing.

Then the person gets to say, I'm ready to hear your frustration fully.

Now, there was a behavior mentioned, but not a feeling.

Do you hear it?

This is where we're gonna drill down together.

And this is where it's really important.

I told you there's this really nice skill about making a permission slip.

I give myself permission to be curious about my partner's frustration without becoming defensive.

Maybe you need to write that.

When you do that, I feel blank.

How do you feel?

I feel unimportant.

And here's the story I make up.

The story in my head is that I'm boring to you, and that I'm your plan B.

This is a contrived situation, although I'm suspicious it happens to every couple I've ever met.

And then you get to mirror.

So you're frustrated when I make plans without checking your calendar first, and that makes you feel unimportant.

And the story that it makes you believe is that I find you boring and need to schedule some excitement past you.

Did I get you right?

Now, if you ever get overloaded, remember I told you the best answers to these are two or three sentences.

If you try to do this and you find yourself talking for more than a minute or two, that's a cue.

You need to take some deep breaths and drill it down.

It's meant to be a dialogue, not a monologue.

And if the the monologue's happening to you as the receiver, you're trying to hear how you're frustrating your partner, and it starts to become a uh a polemic and a tirade and a rant, you can say, okay, I need to time out for a second.

I'm on overload.

I'm on overload.

I really want to catch what you're saying.

Let me let me stop and mirror back to make sure I'm hearing everything.

But a reminder: if you do this, you're you're picking one thing, not 50.

And if you start giving two and three things, that's a cue for you.

You need to do more of these than just one.

Right?

Nobody in the world can handle an arsenal in one sitting.

Does that make sense?

You can't.

You know that about yourself.

If you don't, I know that about you.

One thing at a time.

Okay?

Then you get to take a moment and think about a moment from childhood.

Again, when I was a when I was a child, my caretakers blank never came to my sporting events.

When I was a child, um, I remember when I was in the in the third grade, I was in the spelling bee, and I invited my dad, and he didn't come because he had golf tickets.

Whatever it is.

If you can't remember something, you can't.

But actually, I think you probably can.

You're not selling your parents out.

You're not doing that.

You're not saying I had bad parents.

You're saying the frustration I'm experiencing isn't just about one thing.

It's actually really deep in me.

It's a deep hurt.

I may not have even realized it, but now that I'm thinking about it, there was a time where this happened and it hurt.

Doesn't mean your parents are bad parents.

Again, what you're reflecting is this behavior is touching you more deeply than it seems.

Then you get to give this whole summary.

You've listened to what the frustration is, how it feels, the story somebody makes up, and part of where that story comes from.

I mean, you're really saying, here's why I make up the story that I'm making up in my head.

I hope it makes sense, but I'm saying a lot of times something happens and we make up a story in our head.

Well, I said hello and you didn't even answer, it means you hate me.

What the person may not have even realized you said hello.

So you make up the story in your head.

Do you hear what I'm saying?

A lot of times we see actions and we don't, we can never know motives.

All we can see is actions.

And when we give a motive to somebody, that's called projection.

But it's okay to say, listen, here's what I'm projecting.

When that happens, here's the story I make up.

Okay, the next thing that's really, really important.

Remember, you don't have to agree with the facts of the case, but you can agree that the person experiences you this way.

That doesn't mean they're right.

It means you've listened to their experience and you say, if that really is what I'm doing and how you feel, there's no sorry.

Did you hear that?

You're not saying sorry, you're saying that's really valid.

Okay, your dad didn't show up when you were in the third grade, and that made you feel like you weren't as important as golf.

So when I make plans without you, that makes you feel like the way your dad treated you, unimportant.

Like you have to be entertaining for me to be there.

Totally valid that you've said that.

Don't you think that's valid?

It may not be right, but it's valid.

That's the difference.

Sometimes we get so caught up in right wrong instead of given your experience, I understand that makes sense you would feel that way.

So if you need the different languages, it makes a lot of sense that you feel that way.

And then there's one other step, this is going to empathy.

Given what you've told me, I imagine you might be feeling like a second-class citizen in your own home.

Or whatever it is you say.

Given the frustration, it makes sense you'd feel that way, and I wonder if you aren't also feeling blank.

You can say, I wonder if you aren't also feeling like you'll never be good enough for me.

No, that's not how I'm feeling.

Would you tell me more how you're feeling?

You take an educated guess and then let them correct you.

Remember, the goal is to really understand each other.

You're different people.

The biggest problem is we think we all experience the world the same way.

So when my spouse doesn't do what I want, it's because they hate me.

Because they know what I'm supposed to do.

They know how I want it.

Or they know how I think.

And when they don't do that, it's intentional slight.

So this is an opportunity to say, no, we're different people.

You have different childhood experiences and adult experiences.

So what are you thinking when that thing happens that frustrates me?

Here's the really the biggest thing.

So we go to understanding, to valuating and empathizing, and then this is the critical thing.

I want you to tell me three behaviors I could do that would satisfy that desire and remove that frustration.

I want you to give me three behaviors.

Well, I want to feel like you love me.

No.

I want you to give me three behaviors.

Well, there's nothing you can do that'll fix it.

I want you to give me three behaviors.

Do you hear this?

You cannot tell somebody at this point, well, I just want you to be somebody else.

You may want that, but I love you, and I don't know if I can do that.

Please tell me three behaviors I could do that would fix that frustration, that would satisfy your desire.

Listen, this is the truth.

Before we do this, you're not going to do all three of those behaviors.

They're going to tell you three things that they that would work, and you get to pick which one you want to do.

Which one you want to do.

Now, this is really important when you're doing this.

I told you last week, this is where you give a SMART goal.

It has to be very specific, it has to be measurable, you gotta be able to attain it, and it's got to be relevant and time-limited.

Last week I told you you could also do this using the PMS model.

It has to be positive, measurable, and specific.

Well, I want you to check with me before you make plans.

Is that specific and measurable?

It's not.

It's not.

It's so general.

Before you make any appointment for the weekend, I want you to call me or text me.

That's a little more, right?

You get to say how.

That might be one thing you say.

I may say, I want to create a Google Calendar.

And I want you to check it twice a day, every day, for the next two weeks before we make any plans.

Specific?

Measurable?

Could you check that?

Would that help with the frustration?

These are always the questions, right?

The more specific it is, the better chance of success it has.

I want you to think about me first.

Not specific, not measurable.

There's no way you can show you've done that.

Does that make sense?

If it's a dish issue.

I was doing this with somebody else, and they said, Well, I want my husband to help me clean up after dinner.

That could mean a million different things.

So, an example.

For the next two weeks, after every meal, I want you to help me bus all the dishes to the counter, put away the leftovers, wash and dry all the dishes or load the dish over the or load the dishwasher until we agree that we're done.

Specific time frame, two weeks.

Right?

You can measure it because we're going to agree that we're done.

Does that make sense?

Our biggest change failures is because we're not specific.

And we say things like, I want to feel blank.

No, no, give me a behavior, not a feeling.

We've already done the feeling bit, that's important.

But now we want to talk about behaviors.

Okay.

And then you get to say, well, my gift to you, because I love you, I'm going to stretch to do the second thing of the list of three.

Stretch.

Like I'm going to grow to be a bigger person for myself and because I love you by doing number two or number one.

Never say I'll do all three of those.

You may do all three.

But only pick one.

And reminder, when you do something to honor somebody you care about, it is a gift.

It is not an obligation, it's a gift.

And just that little turn actually makes a huge difference in whether you succeed in this or not.

If you think, oh my God, you know, my spouse is going to be unhappy with me until I do this, your success rate is less than half than if you say, because I love you, I'm going to give you this.

The truth is, no matter how frustrated you are, you love your spouse.

So why wouldn't you want to give them something small and specific that will make this work?

Remember, you don't say things like, I want you to stop embarrassing me in front of my friends for the next 10 years.

That's not measurable and specific.

Do you get what I'm saying?

This is so, so important as a skill.

I want you to think about how this works in the employment world.

That project you did is terrible.

I want you to fix it.

Do you know what to do?

Well, something different.

Which part?

The grammar, the composition, the fact pattern?

Anyone had a bad supervisor before?

Bad teacher in school?

I hate this assignment.

Thanks.

Again, these are critical communication skills that we often don't experience that would make our lives way, way better.

I want you to redo this paper because listen, you only use three sources, and the rubric says you needed to consult ten.

So I'd like you to consult seven other sources, and then I want to see how that informs your work.

Specific enough.

That's the kind of feedback we really want.

Because someone's setting us up to succeed.

Whether, again, it's in work or as parents.

You don't fold the towels right.

Anybody not fold clothes right when they were a kid?

Let me tell you how this worked.

I wanted to help and I didn't fold it right, so my mom refolded it.

And what I learned is let mom fold the clothes.

She didn't make a specific request that said, When you fold the towels, I want the towel to go like this and like this, and then like this and like that.

Would you do that for me because you love me?

What I learned is I do chores wrong.

And think about what that means.

It means you're either not going to do the chores or you're going to believe you can't do them right.

How many of you grew up not folding things right, and then you were around children, and they fold it and you said, no, that's not right.

Well, I have to.

I let me tell you, when Emory folds the towel, it's dreadful.

I almost a little joke on my own vomit because it's like worse than if I hadn't folded it at all.

But but because I've been thinking about this, thanks for folding that towel.

Or, honey, I I love that you're doing this, and as a gift to me, could I ask you to do it this one different way?

On the other hand, is it that important that the towel be folded a certain way?

Why not be happy with the towel the way it's folded?

You clearly weren't raised by a perfectionist workaholic dream.

Let me tell you how many years I folded my wife's shirts incorrectly.

About five.

And then I went through a couple of years where it folds your own clothes.

But then I realized I watched her one day, see how she did it, and I and I've done it since then and I'm allowed to fold the clothes.

And what would have been really nice is if she'd said, here's how I'd like you to fold it as a gift to me.

Now listen, I worked at the gap and I know how to fold shirts at the gap.

So I'm not a bad folder, but I didn't do it the way she wanted.

And and my wife's a good person.

And I love her.

So why would we not have this opportunity to show our love by doing a job the way we want it done?

That sounds silly.

It's actually not about being silly.

It's about letting somebody love you and tell them how to do it.

Here's how I want to be loved.

If you knew how your partner wanted to be loved, if you knew exactly how to do it, wouldn't you do it?

If you don't know, how can you do it?

This is one of the things in the book, too, where you sort of say, for my birthday, I'd like to be surprised with a chocolate cake.

If you show up with a cake, I guarantee you they'll be surprised.

Oh no, well, they already told me.

They told you so you could do it.

I mean, that's that's the thing.

And we need to tell people how they can do it.

Oh, parties aren't a big deal, you know, just whatever you do will be fine.

Let your partner love you by telling them how.

Well, I don't even know how I'd like to be loved.

Then think about it.

And if you don't know, give them away.

And if they did it, they'd prove that they'd love you by doing what you said.

Now, if you say I'd like a chocolate cake and then show up with a banana one, well, that's unfortunate.

That means they weren't paying attention.

And then you can have a behavioral request.

I love that you gave me a cake, but I'm actually frustrated you didn't listen to the type.

So here's what I'd like.

For the next um three weeks, I'd like to be able to tell you a dessert I'd like once a week, and I'd like it to show up at six o'clock, the kind that I asked for.

Oh, that's an order.

No, it's telling somebody how to succeed.

Does it make sense what I'm saying?

Can I interject a little bit now?

Please.

No, I'm uh this is also from a different book, but something that I learned too.

And when you're asking, ladies, how many times have you gone up to him and said, Can you take out the garbage?

And then he sat there and waited and watched his program, and you're like, why didn't he get up and go get the garbage out?

You know, there's a difference, and this has made a huge difference in me, the way I ask things.

Can you mean to a man, and it's for men or for Mars?

Are you capable of doing it?

And they're going, yeah, sure can.

But see, the reason he waited is because he wanted to establish control.

He's gonna do it, but you're gonna do it when you want to, and you're ready.

But the other way of saying it is, in a man's mind, again, back to your be direct thing, would you take out the garbage?

Is the correct way to ask it.

And I might say back, honey, do you mind if I wait until after you're gonna do it?

That's fine, because the second part to that is great, you would, but when can I expect that?

Yeah.

That's the the caveat to it.

Because if you say can you, they're going, Well, hell yeah.

And so and this is going to sound really silly, but this could be one of your frustrations.

You could say a behavior, I get really frustrated when I ask you to take the garbage and you don't do it right when you say you can.

So for the next three weeks, I would like you, when I ask you to take out the garbage, you agree, to do it right then.

To stop what you're doing and get up and do it then.

Or to say back to me a time frame in which I can expect you to do it.

You see, these are different options people can pick, and then they pick the one they want to do.

You do one at a time.

Don't do this more than once every couple of weeks.

I promise you, it makes all the difference.

A lot of times we say, well, I just shouldn't be frustrated by that.

Or that's nitpicking.

No, no.

That's a way that you can heal each other and grow closer together.

So it's not a conflict that's going to drive you apart.

It's a chance to heal and grow closer together.

So the Brene Brown thing is, right, to pick the discomfort of setting a boundary over the resentment that will happen if you don't.

It's always uncomfortable to say, here's a potential conflict.

If you don't, resentment will happen.

I think that's right.

I think it's right.

You can in dialogue even say, you know, there's this funny thing I want to tell you.

We haven't talked about this, but I've been trying to stretch to give you the love you want by taking the trash outright when you say it.

That's alright.

Even if the person never asked, we all know things we can tell without having to go through a dialogue, little things we can do.

It's okay to claim those.

It's all right.

I don't mean to lord it over the person, but to say, sweetie, I've been trying to stretch and grow by doing this, and you know, I want to know, am I doing the right thing?

You don't always have to do it formally.

The reason that they're so formally listed is because a lot of couples wait until things are really bad before they go looking for help.

If you can agree to honor the spirit of this, and you can do it, you don't need help.

You only go for a thick to a therapist to do something you can't do on your own.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

And what a therapist does really is creates a safe place in their environment and makes you follow rules.

And if you could go home and do that, then you don't need to go back.

The goal of a therapist is to work themselves out of that job, you know.

Um, but if you can agree to do these things, you do them.

Now, I'm gonna tell you, I don't do all these formal things with my spouse because she'd kill me if I did.

I mean, this is just not gonna work.

For her, it's too wooden, right?

But the spirit of the thing has been very, very, very helpful.

Being specific and measurable.

And listen, she doesn't always ask me, tell me how that touched your childhood.

It's nice if I've thought about that, though.

And sometimes I choose to share it.

So all of these are adaptable.

The reason they're a little bit woodenly given to you is because the research says this is the surest way it works, especially when you're having a communication issue.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

Okay, I wanted to give you one yes, sir.

Can I ask a kind of a go-back question?

Please.

Um you mentioned that you grew up in a household that was very sarcastic.

I did.

I did.

How did you train yourself to not be sarcastic?

Well, it's I'm not done.

It's really hard.

Part of what I have to realize is uh I have to go back and say, you know, that really hurt me when that happened, and we accepted that as okay, but you know, I don't want to hurt my daughter, and I don't want to hurt my son, and I don't want to hurt my spouse, and I know this is hurtful, so I'm going to say, how can I do it at the risk of my own entertainment?

How can I make sure what happened to me didn't happen to them?

Yeah.

Yeah, I I just um I I guess I'm not a very sarcastic person, but uh I do like a Jennifer as as uh like a confidant, right?

And so you mentioned like gossip, right?

Um I think that's kind of a fine line sometimes.

You know, am I upset with a friend and I need to share that disappointment of that person with Jennifer, you know.

Um so it's kind of difficult to find that line.

I I I think if I can help with the line, and I do think it's really difficult, I think part of it is are you sharing a story to destroy somebody else, or are you are you trying to express yourself and your experience?

Okay, yeah.

And particularly when your spouse knows these people, the truth is you you're asking them to take sides, which I think is fair enough, but that's going to color the way they interact with these people, right?

So often identity can be left out, even though they probably can figure out who it is.

But the goal is not to say so-and-so is such a bad person, is to say, I I was really hurt by this thing that happened today, or hey, I'm looking for guidance and how to respond.

Right.

Because a lot of times, at least for me, I don't know, I guess saying all this stuff out loud, I kind of feel like I'm I I for me, it's it's like, yeah, it's I'm looking for guidance.

Like I'm like, you know, was I wrong and be upset about that?

You know, when my friend said such and such, like am I just taking that the wrong way?

Or, you know, I'm looking for like feedback.

Yeah.

But I also realize that when I say things like that, you know, Jennifer's gonna see this person the next time she's gonna see them, she's gonna be like, oh, that I remember Larry telling me that that person was really mean to him.

So now I'm I'm already, you know, loaded up with this uh opinion.

I'll tell you, the church I grew up in, uh, that's how we use prayer requests.

We use prayer requests to gossip about people.

Um, everyone, I want you to pray for my brother because he's having sex out of wedlock, and I don't want him to get AIDS because he's sleeping with some trashy girls.

That was the kind of prayer request we'd hear.

By the way, that happened maybe more than you realize.

If you didn't grow up in those kind of churches, God bless you.

But that's sort of a way that we can sanitize that.

Now, I will say this uh one of the things that they say about zero negativity, and this is the same thing with sarcasm, is actually to go over what we want to do as if we're already doing it.

So remember in the relationship vision, we have jokes at no one's expense.

And I tell you, I may have said this in the morning here.

One of the people who I think embodies the Holy Spirit for me is a funny guy, and I have never heard him say a joke at someone else's expense.

And he's funny.

And the way I learned to be funny was at somebody's cost.

So I can tell myself, don't do it, but really I want to have in mind where I want to be.

I want to be somebody who tells jokes that are funny that don't cost any person.

I know I really do.

I want to be that way.

Um, so it's a process, Larry, because the truth is that expense bit of that was how my dad's family just related to each other, was to mock each other.

And that's how they grew up.

It's not my dad's fault.

That's the way of life that they grew up in, and they told themselves it was innocuous, but of course every single one of them was hurt from it.

You know.

And what they were really saying is it hurts, and you're supposed to grow a callous to it.

But you're not supposed to grow a callous.

You're supposed to not hurt each other.

I mean, that's that's really it.

So the thing we want to tell ourselves, and I told you there's a little movie.

I this sounds really nuts, but you can pay some money to make a movie about three minutes long, and it's custom, and you can chalk it full of inspirational quotes and the values, the people you want to be.

And then you just watch it every day.

And you may say, that's brainwashing.

Well, sure it is.

Yeah, yeah.

And don't you want it to work?

And the research says it will.

It'll work.

Like an affirmation.

It's an affirmation of your values.

And I'll tell you the Daring Greatly thing that Brene Brown does is she sort of says, listen, let your values light your way.

So figure out what are the three values you really want to live into and rehearse them.

Because if you go over it enough and enough and enough, then you find yourself saying, you know, I really want to be honest.

And to me, that means you decide what that means, whether that means not telling a lie or telling the truth.

Because those are different things, right?

But when you rehearse that, then you, okay, I will, I really, I'm in this situation and I want to live into my values.

I I tell you, I found myself doing something not because I felt like it, because that was who I wanted to be.

Especially in places of generosity and sharing.

I want to be a generous person.

And somebody asked, and I really wanted to say no, and I said, Well, listen, you want to be generous.

And I'm really glad I lived in to my value, even though I had to tell myself it wasn't because of the person, it was because of me.

I'm really glad of that.

And you can do that as a couple too.

I listen, I haven't made this video with my spouse.

I think she laugh at me, but I may make it for myself.

The truth is, I don't know if you remember this, when we were uh, this was a late 90s thing, there were these things called successories, and there were these posters, like somebody rock climbing way over a ledge, and they would say like perseverance.

And those actually were very successful.

They were in offices all over the place for about five or six years.

And and we can say you don't need that.

Yeah, you absolutely do need that.

You need to remember who you want to be so you can be who you want to be.

And as a couple, that's why you make that relationship vision and you return to it over and over and over again.

Well, right is here.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

Appreciate you worshiping with us today and staying.

Okay, um, any other questions or comments?

I've got one more if you want to do it, and you may not want to do it.

Um, this is uh a way that you can uh this is called a lost function dialogue.

I already ran the copy, so I wouldn't give it to you, but but it's all right.

It's alright.

And this is a way that you can go back and um you can really help somebody go to a place of hurt from their childhood and and be there for them and actually help them heal from that.

And I put a little note on here that's really helpful.

Anytime you're a receiver in general, you want to pretend you've had a temporary lobotomy and you can only listen.

If you find if you evaluate things your partner gives you, it's not gonna go well.

You want to listen, right?

So uh you can walk through here, and remember I've told you um they do these couples' weekends up in town.

I don't care how long you've been married, if you don't want more joy in your relationship, there's something wrong with you.

So if you'd like to have more joy in your relationship, I want to raise these opportunities are recurring in Houston.

There's also a book that has all the exercises I've given you, plus all the research.

That's called Getting the Love You Want.

Um, if you do any of these things, formally or in spirit, I'd love to hear from you.

That was the biggest waste of my time.

Or my partner laughed at me, or we just thought that was the silliest thing, or hey, there was something to that.

You know, you don't have to be specific, but I really appreciated doing that exercise.

Uh I found I'm looking at my partner differently.

I'd be grateful to hear any feedback you have.

Um, but thanks for doing this a couple of weeks, and I hope it does guide you to more joy in your relationships.

And I mean all of them, because when you heal as a couple, that allows you to really be more present with everybody in the world.

Okay, thanks.

See you soon.