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SWM 131 – Tips to fight more effectively

Last week, I shared a list of ideas our Couple’s Night group had that helped build a resilient marriage. At the end of the call, we still had some time and started discussing fighting more effectively. Again, the group came up with some excellent ideas I want to share today.

Because fights will happen, I might even say they should happen.  When I come across a couple that doesn’t fight in any way – that’s a red flag.  It means one or both don’t feel safe in the marriage.  They aren’t able to express their views and opinions. 

Because if you put two people together for long enough, they will eventually find something to disagree about.

Ideally, a fight won’t involve yelling, screaming, hitting, throwing, or anything else like that, but it’s okay to quarrel.

So, today, we will discuss how to fight more effectively in your marriage so that your arguments can be a source of growth instead of damage.

SWM 130 – Building resiliency in marriage

On the first Tuesday of every month, Chris from TheLionWithin.us and I co-host “Couple’s Night.”  Couples from our communities get together to talk about marriage. We discuss struggles, share ideas, tips, and a lot of funny stories. It’s an absolute blast. 

This Tuesday, we got together and talked about resiliency in marriage. There were about six couples in the Zoom call, and I thought they all had a lot of wisdom to share, so I tried to quickly take some notes and thought I’d relay them to you.

Because marriages need resiliency, we’re going to face struggles. They might be external, like events happening with your job, your family, your friends, and more. They might be internal, such as the type of struggles two individuals face when you put them together for long periods of time for years on end.

Challenges are normal, but we need to learn how to face them and not only survive them but, ideally, thrive and grow through them.

So, here are the six things our small group came up with.

SWM 128 – Relationships require recalibration

There’s an old quip about how men get married expecting their wives to stay the same, and women get married expecting to be able to change their men, and neither gets what they want. It’s funny because often, there’s an element of truth to this, which frustrates both spouses.

Of course, it doesn’t apply to every marriage, and sometimes the dynamic is reversed, but what is expected of every marriage is that something in the marriage will change.  It may be the wife, it may be the husband, it’s likely going to be both in some ways, and it’s also going to be your surroundings and context.  You’ll get pets, you’ll have kids, you’ll move, you’ll change jobs, change churches, experience illness or injury, suffer losses or experience big wins – whatever it is, things will change.

Those changes require a recalibration of the marriage, communication, and a discussion about what it means, what needs to change, and what should stay the same.  

So, today, we’re going to talk about how to deal with the inevitable changes that come and how and when to talk about them so that you can keep your marriage calibrated rather than running on old habits and patterns that no longer suit your life.

SWM 126 – Unspoken Nuances of Understanding

Marriage is a cosmic tapestry, a constellation of souls woven into the fabric of time, where vows echo in the heart’s language, shaping a journey of shared whispers and laughter. It’s a dance of compromise and compassion, a symphony where individual melodies blend into a shared harmony, with time sculpting the narrative of a joint odyssey. Amidst life’s tempests, love’s resilience is tested, forging a bond that transcends the ephemeral, painting a portrait of unity where intimacy bridges solitude, and shared dreams color the canvas of existence.

SWM 125 – Rethinking “Duty Sex”

I’ve had a lot of conversations with couples as well as husbands and wives individually lately about what often gets called “duty sex” or “pity sex.” For those who don’t know, duty/pity sex is when one spouse gives in to sex, not because they desire it themselves, but because their spouse does. They might have sex for many reasons, including feeling obligated, pressured, guilty, to keep the peace or to “get them off their back.”

The problem is that these negative reasons are often the only ones considered, and so any situation in which one spouse wants sex and the other agrees to it without having an internal desire of their own is seen as unfavourable.

But there are some excellent reasons to have what’s commonly considered “duty sex” or “pity sex,” and often, the conflicts I see in marriages are not that it’s because of those reasons I mentioned above but instead about something positive and loving.

So, in this podcast episode, we’re going to talk about reframing duty sex in those situations.

SWM 124 – My daughter’s speech – A vaccine against the epidemic of transgenderism

Today I’ve got something a bit different than the usual fare. Last year, for our 100th episode, I had my eldest daughter present her 4H speech as I felt it fit the scope of this blog. This year, she wrote a part 2. She won at her local club, and placed second at districts. So, we thought we’d record a version for the podcast again. Rather than give away any of the speech, I’ll just let you read it. If you do want to go back you can read the first speech here.

SWM 122 – How to make your spouse more attractive to you

If you look online, you can find tons of videos, articles, podcasts, products and more about how to make yourself more attractive to your spouse or potential partners. I mean, it’s everywhere. You can also find resources to help you make your spouse more attractive by changing them. What you don’t see much of, though, are resources to help you change your mindset to make them seem more attractive to you without changing them.
We all know the phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but rarely, if ever, is it used to recognize that you, as the beholder, can change what you’re attracted to.

SWM 121 – Why marriage should be hard work

I made a post on social media some time ago saying, “Marriage is hard, divorce is hard, choose your hard,” and someone asked me if I then disagreed with some other bloggers and podcasters who say that marriage is and should be easy.  This post expands on what I wrote in response to that question.