Asking of married CAFers

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Greenfields

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For those that are married CAFers,who are or were your greatest role models (apart from the Holy Family 🙂) Who helps to influence you now?
 
I don’t have any. I know people who are happily married and people who aren’t.
 
My parents and grandparents. My maternal grandparents were married for 56 years. My paternal grandparents for 53 years. My parents have currently been married for 47 years.
 
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What is it about their relationship that you see and might imitate?
 
I think it’s the give and take. Self sacrifice. Affection. They were/are teams, not individuals. After being together for so long, they fill expected roles for each other and provide support.

I’ve been married myself for over 20 years. Marriage can be very difficult but also very rewarding. I won’t lie, there have been times even recently when I’ve wondered if my life would be easier if I weren’t married, but I know that it wouldn’t. My husband is a good and kind man. I have to choose to see the good and accept some of the bad. He has to do the same for me.
 
When we got married, we did not know any better. It was just like groping in the dark. It was no big deal for us. What was there to learn and to know about marriage? We naturally just flowed along in the new life. The early years of our marriage were explosive, china plates were quite often thrown about and there were certainly lots of screaming and shouting in the house. When the kids came, I would simply recall what my father did to me and that was how I brought them up.

We did not realize anything wrong with our marriage life, why would we?

Until one day we were exposed to the Renewal. We went for a Marriage Renewal Seminar, where we discovered for the first time, that there were such things as marriage life, Christian marriage, putting God as the center of our marriage, being Christian husband and Christian wife, Communication in marriage, order of the family, Christian sexuality and Christian parenting.

Our marriage life was change after that. There was markedly less shouting and the children got less beating as well.
 
So all it really took was each of you to be willing and open to getting some advice and councelling ,and wanting to make some changes for the better.That takes some Good humility I’m sure.
Some people can be so stubbornly unwilling to take that step for the greater good, one spouse may want to and the other not…what would you reccomend in instances like those ?
 
We’ve been to marriage counseling 2X. In all the instances, I instigated it. My husband didn’t want to go but agreed to once I made a real appointment and he was assured it was with an in-network provider for insurance. After that first time, he was more willing to go the second time. It helped when he realized the counselor was a neutral party and not taking sides. The second time we went, we had moved to a new state and tried a counselor that neither of us liked. We shopped around till we found one that we both agreed to.

We both learned some tools to deal with each other’s dysfunctions. It was also helpful making dedicated time to talk about our issues, outside of our home, away from interruptions and distractions.

For us, communication break downs lead to trouble. Our second counselor made us set aside time to talk, just the two of us, each day. We had to shut the bedroom door and go through each other’s lists. We also had to acknowledge blessings we had received from each other. We have never been violent with each other so this worked for us. So far :).
 
Oh I like that idea very much :slightly_smiling_face:Without that communication …
It would come so naturally after a little while,and I would imagine be looked forward to each day .Really in it together.

Having a councellor that you both liked and were comfortable with ,it’s good to realise you Can shop around.
 
Definitely find someone you both like. If one spouse feels like they are getting ganged up on, it won’t work.

When our verbal communication dissolved into yelling and not listening, we went to written communication of issues and blessings. We had to report back to the counselor each week to recap what we had done.
 
My parents were, and my wife and I (when we were newly weds) had friend-couple who were almost my parents’ age, who really helped us ALOT in our first years of Marriage (by being an example).
 
humbleseeker said:
In Marriage? That would be my parents.
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^^This.
And in-laws, and all the other happily married couples in both our families (some of the aunts and uncles), or that we heard about (like my late grands on my mom’s side, who died before I was born/ before I was old enough to know them, but I heard lots of stories about how they got along).

Family was pretty much everything as far as role models went. We didn’t look to anyone else. We didn’t ever have to or want to.
 
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