Archives For Marriage

The Most Important Thing to Look for in a Life Partner

May 1, 2013 — 24 Comments

We may fall in love with any kind of person, but the person we choose to marry ourselves to must embody one particular quality: they must be committed to constant change and transformation.

We should not choose someone who is perfect.

We should choose someone who is perfectly aware they aren’t perfect, and who wants to get better with every rising sun…

choosing a partner

Photo Credit: GORE-TEX® Products via Compfight cc

For most couples, my psychotherapy office is a last resort. It takes the deepest courage to make that first phone call to a therapist, and couples often wait until they feel almost hopeless. And I am truly blessed to walk through the valleys with such courageous people.

Yet, I must admit, I take a special delight in couples who call earlier. On a rare occasion, I will get a call from a young couple who is planning to marry and would like premarital counseling.

They come into the office and they usually sit next to each other and hold hands and gaze into each other’s eyes and sometimes I feel a little awkward—like I’ve stumbled into their date and should give them some privacy. And quite often, they will say things like “There’s nothing wrong with him; he’s amazing.” Or, “She’s absolutely perfect.” Or, “We get along all the time—we never fight.”

And my alarm bells go off.

Because when I’m looking for the building blocks of a lifelong partnership, I’m not looking for two perfect people. (Mainly because two perfect people don’t exist—we’re all a glorious mess of one kind or another.)

No, I’m looking for two people who know their brokenness, who know they fall short of the best ways to love, and who want to get better at it—one day at a time, year after year, decade upon decade.

When Everyone Got Divorced

In 1970, everyone got divorced.

Okay, not everyone got divorced, but the divorce rate skyrocketed in a startling way. In response, psychologists developed Behavioral Marital Therapy, which included a “caring activities contract.”

It was a bit of a disaster.

Essentially, spouses listed the ways they wanted their partner to change, signed a contract committing the other to doing so, and then each spouse kept a running tally of how often they were holding up their end of the bargain.

The caring activities contract often led to greater conflict, and therapists no longer use it. Because the truth is, as spouses, we are ultimately and utterly powerless over our partners. If our partner truly does not want to change, there is fundamentally nothing we can do to make them change. In fact, our very efforts to coerce change will further entrench our loved ones in their existing behaviors.

In marriage—and in life—you control you. No one else.

Which means the person you choose to spend the rest of your life with had better be eternally interested in taking a look at their own issues, increasingly willing to be vulnerable about their own brokenness, and absolutely determined to figure out what it means to love more deeply and purely.

How I Got Lucky

I remember the night my wife told me her story.

We had known each other for only three weeks, and through the quiet hours of the night she told me about her journey—it was marked by resilience and tenacity and determination. She had plenty of reasons to be angry, but instead she was investing her energy into learning how to love.

And by the time the sun rose, something new had risen in me—I didn’t know what it was then, but I did know I wasn’t going to let this woman go. Only recently have I realized what rose up in me that night:

I’m attracted to people who like to fight—not with other people, but with themselves.

I’ve admitted here on the blog I can be a bit of a mess at times. So, I’ve often wondered how I didn’t screw up my choice of a lifelong companion.

And I’m thinking the answer is this: for all my mess, somehow I must have one thing going right within me—I want people in my life who know they are broken and have decided every day is another opportunity to redeem it. People who fight with themselves first—not in a shaming, self-destructive way, but in a resilient, grace-filled effort to be transformed into a more loving person.

And I guess I lucked out when my wife had the courage to let me see her brokenness and her love.

Choosing Broken, Resilient Hearts

I think the most important question we must ask ourselves—both when contemplating the decision to marry ourselves to one person, and when deciding how much of ourselves to invest in healing a relationship that has gone awry—is, “Do I trust the heart of the person I love?”

“Are they aware of their brokenness? Can they give grace to themselves and to others in the middle of their mess? Are they able acknowledge their mistakes and apologize when necessary? And do they have a deep desire to redeem it all?”

Or is the heart of the person I love organized around ego and self-preservation and power and competition and self-righteousness?

Every relationship hinges upon the answers to these questions.

May we all be asking the right questions.

May each of us be patient, as we wait for that one quiet night when that one person reveals to us a heart of brokenness, and a heart of grace and sacrifice and love.

———

Comments: You can share your thoughts or reactions at the bottom of this post

Audio: To listen to an audio version of this post, click on this post title: The Most Important Thing to Look for in a Life Partner [If you would like to save it to your device for later listening, right click the link and choose the option to save.].                

Free eBook: My eBook, The Marriage Manifesto: Turning Your World Upside Down, is available free to new blog subscribers. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can click here to subscribe, and your confirmation e-mail will include a link to download the eBook. Or, the book is also now available for Kindle and Nook. 

Preview: Next Wednesday’s post is tentatively entitled, “Belief is Fragile (Hold It Gently).”

Disclaimer: This post is not professional advice. It should be read as you would read a “self-help” book. For professional and customized advice, you should seek the services of a counselor, who can become more intimately familiar with your specific situation. Counselors can be located through your insurance network or through your state psychological association.

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Why Couples Shouldn’t Do Couples Therapy (Says the Couples Therapist)

March 22, 2013 — 8 Comments

The number one cause of escalating conflict in marriage is one we rarely talk about. As marital therapists, we focus all of our energies on the conflict between spouses, but we ignore the battle within each partner. And as a writer, I segregate my posts about marriage and my posts about shame. Until now…

A Saturday night with the person you love can go south in a heartbeat, can’t it?

Several weeks ago, my wife and I had just finished another night of one-more-cup-of-water requests, my-legs-hurt laments, and can-I-have-another-kiss rituals, and the rustling from the kids’ bedrooms had quieted.

And a couple of open hours sprawled out before us like an oasis in the desert of living.

Until my wife began to discuss the recent seminars she’d conducted in Guatemala. She looked at me like I had heard the story before, and the truth began to slowly dawn on both of us: I had never asked about her teachings in Guatemala.

I felt a moment of sheepishness. And then I went on the attack—a mixture of defensiveness (“I watched the kids for ten days so you could do the trip!”) and offense (“It’s your fault for not telling me sooner!”).

Listen. I’m a shrink. And I still get surprised all the time by my your-not-good-enough voice of shame.

It can sink a Saturday night in just one quick beat of a shame-shadowed heart.

Marriage Enemy Number One

Our hearts are like a sponge for shame, and most of us are pretty saturated with it by the time we meet our lifelong companion. So when our partner criticizes us, or asks for change, or asks for more, or simply gets a little too close for comfort, our heart gets squeezed and we leak shame all over the place.

Except shame is a lie so it never comes out all honest and confessing. It comes out like barbed wire. Usually, we try to make our partner feel even less worthy than we feel ourselves—with verbal attacks, emotional slander, and sometimes simply with silence.

And in most marriages, shame begets shame. So, when we shame our spouses and squeeze their hearts, their shame oozes out, and they go on the attack.

Usually, when the friendly fire is over, it’s impossible to tell who really fired the first shot. We assume our spouse is at fault and we completely ignore marriage enemy number one: shame.

Why Sometimes Marital Therapy Isn’t the Answer

For many couples, the cycle of shame-escalation in the relationship is so intense the marital therapy hour looks like a weekly battlefield reenactment. The script is written and the players have little interest in changing their own lines. Oftentimes, both spouses are secretly looking for an audience who will cast the deciding vote in their favor.

So, the viability of any couples therapy is dependent upon each spouse’s answer to two questions: are you willing to focus on yourself and face your shame? And are you prepared to do so for an hour a week in the presence of your partner?

If the answer to either question is “no,” the couple should not be in marital therapy. Instead, each spouse should be attending individual therapy. But partners resist individual therapy for at least two reasons. First, the mere suggestion of individual therapy feels like more shame—more you’re-not-good-enough.

Second, the individual therapy room can feel like a prison cell—no distractions, no one to blame, no place to direct the shame spilling out of our hearts. Which is why many people go to individual therapy and use the hour to complain about a spouse.

It is far more painful to look in the mirror.

Fighting for Your Saturday Night

As my wife and I began to go toe-to-toe that Saturday night, she had the wherewithal to step back and say, “You know, right before you got angry you looked embarrassed.”

I stopped mid-fury, and suddenly, the battle wasn’t between her and I, the battle began to rage within me.

Frankly, I think every marriage hinges upon this kind of moment: Do I deny the shame she saw peak out before my defenses were up and go back to shaming her, or do I own it?

“Crap,” I thought, “This is going to hurt.”

The shame began oozing up from the cracks in my heart, and I began to share with her the multitude of ways I had felt not-enough in the past week.

It hurt to feel it. It hurt to admit it. But it felt so good to share it.

And with no shame to defend, I felt free to apologize for all the ways I bungle my priorities and lose my focus on the most interesting thing in my life—her.

It wasn’t the Saturday night we had hoped for, but I think it was the Saturday night we needed.

How to Fight Within Marriage Ourselves

You don’t fight for your Saturday night by fighting with your spouse. You fight for your Saturday night by fighting with yourself. By fighting back against your shame. Except in our fight against shame, we don’t wield weapons toward others, we lay them down.

We breathe deeply, giving ourselves just enough space to make a wise decision—the decision to look in rather than shouting out.

We cultivate a quiet-still attentiveness—it pulls the covers of anger off the bed of our shame and reveals the aching, hurting kid underneath, who just wants a place to call home.

We use a graceful self-compassion. Until we can be gentle with ourselves, we can’t be gentle to anyone else. So, when we discover the hurting kid within us, we speak to him or her like we would to any kid with a skinned knee or a bloody elbow—with an embrace and a whispered, “Hush…”

We use courage and vulnerability to reveal it all to the person we love. We say things like, “This isn’t about you; this is about me. I’m terrified I’ll never be good enough for you, but I bluster as if you are the one who isn’t good enough for me, because that feels way safer.”

And we insist on being with people who can receive this kind of confession gracefully and receive us within their embrace.

So, as the marital therapist, I often find myself saying, “I can’t help until you have faced your shame. But if you are willing to do that first…

…I don’t think you have any idea what kind of radical, life-altering, world-changing love the two of you could create together. Then, marital therapy will be a rebellion that turns this world upside down.”

How has overcoming shame improved your marriage? Share your thoughts, or any other ideas, in the comments section at the bottom of this post.

———

Free eBook: My eBook, The Marriage Manifesto: Turning Your World Upside Down, is available free to new blog subscribers. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can click here to subscribe, and your confirmation e-mail will include a link to download the eBook. Or, the book is also now available for Kindle and Nook. 

The Mess: The messy places in life—and the messy places within ourselves—present us with a choice. Because the mess is where our shame collides with grace, and we can choose to succumb to shame, or we can fight to receive grace. Come visit The Mess, and join the rebellion against shame. And as always, thank you for reading; it’s a gift. Sincerely, Kelly

Preview: It’s spring break! No mid-week post this coming week. The next post will be on Friday, March 29, and is tentatively entitled, “Why Christians Can’t Stop Sinning.”  

Disclaimer: This post is not professional advice. It should be read as you would read a “self-help” book. For professional and customized advice, you should seek the services of a counselor, who can become more intimately familiar with your specific situation. Counselors can be located through your insurance network or through your state psychological association.

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The 5 Barriers to Empathy in Marriage (And How to Overcome Them)

March 6, 2013 — 29 Comments

Empathy is the foundation of any authentic connection. It’s the bedrock of togetherness, it’s the fuel of compassion, and it’s the mortar of grace. We must hone our ability to feel it and to give it. But empathy can be elusive. Even psychologists, who are skilled in empathy, can struggle with it when they walk out of the office and into their homes…

Separation

Photo Credit: Lorenzo Sernicola (Creative Commons)

Dusk is closing in when the shrink arrives home from work and walks in the back door. Some nights, all is well. His wife is smiling, the kids are happy. But on other nights, all is not well.

Some nights, his wife is tired and worn-thin after a long day at work and the onslaught of the children’s cries for food and attention. Some nights, his oldest son is anxious and fretting about the upcoming standardized tests, which his teachers have been hyping more than the Superbowl. Some nights, his middle son is sad and distraught about the various injustices suffered by any middle child. Some nights, his youngest daughter is bouncing and bubbling with joy and eager for a Daddy mirror, for someone to reflect all that effervescence.

Some nights, everyone wants a little empathy and the therapist is feeling stubborn.

Some nights, he gets home, and he knows what he should do. He should remember that sometimes the people we love act in such a way toward us that we begin to feel exactly what they are feeling. He should get quiet and notice that just beneath his stubbornness are his own feelings of fatigue and frustration and anxiety and injustice…and maybe even joy. He should notice this and offer himself up, reach out, find the common ground. 

He should. But he doesn’t.

Because even for psychologists, empathizing with the people we love is so hard to do. And I think it’s particularly hard to empathize with our spouses. After all, we don’t expect much empathy from our children. But we expect an awful lot from our partners.

The Five Reasons We Don’t Give Empathy

I think there are at least five fatal barriers to establishing empathy in our intimate relationships:

1. I don’t want to go first. In any relationship, both members need empathy. But at any given moment, empathy is unidirectional—it can only flow in one direction at a time. Which means someone has to go first. Someone has to be willing to meet the needs of the other, before their own needs are met.

2. I don’t agree with you. Empathy requires us to place ourselves in another person’s shoes, to allow our hearts to beat to the rhythm of theirs. We often fundamentally disagree with their perspective, and so we are tempted to debate them intellectually, rather than join them emotionally.

3. What if I get it wrong? When we try to place ourselves squarely inside of someone else’s emotional landscape, it can be a little scary. It’s unfamiliar territory. They are inviting us in, but what if we get it all wrong? Empathy can be terrifying if we have any perfectionism within us.

4. I don’t want to feel that. On the other hand, you might know exactly what your partner is feeling. It may bring up thoughts and feelings in you that you would prefer to avoid. If we don’t want to feel our own sadness, we won’t want to feel sadness on behalf of the person we love.

5. It’s not my job to fix you. We confuse empathy with “fixing.” We think we have to do something to take the emotion away, and we don’t want to be put on that hot-seat. Or some of us will have the opposite reaction: I’m going to fix you. But this undermines our ability to provide empathy, as well. Because empathy is not fixing. Empathy is joining.

Climbing the Barriers 

If we want to give empathy in our relationships, we will have to sacrifice some values we hold dear:

We will have to be willing to lose, because it will feel like losing. It will feel like our partner’s needs are being met before our own. But there is no other way.

We will have to put aside all of our intellectual debates. Empathy is not a matter of deciding who is right and wrong. It is simply a matter of finding an emotional common ground.

We have to be willing to get it wrong, because we will get it wrong. Empathy is messy. There are no three-easy-steps to accurately understanding the person we love. We have to be okay when our partner tells us we’re not getting it. And then we have to try again.

We need to embrace our discomfort, because empathy will take us into some uncomfortable place within ourselves. If we are unwilling to go there, we need to quit talking to our spouse and start talking to a therapist of our own.

And we have to quit trying to fix things. There will be a time for that later. For now, empathy is about connecting within an experience, not making the experience go away.

Empathy is for Everyone

Some nights, I know that stubborn-grumpy therapist, because he is me. I wish I could tell you he always finds his way to empathy, but I can’t. Some nights he does. Some nights he doesn’t. And you won’t always find your way to empathy, either. But that’s okay. That’s not the point. The point is that we begin to try.

Because empathy isn’t just for therapists, it’s for all of us.

Questions: What makes it difficult for you to empathize? Share your experience in the comments section at the bottom of this post.           

Free eBook: My new eBook, The Marriage Manifesto: Turning Your World Upside Down, is available for free to new blog subscribers. Just click here to subscribe, and your subscription confirmation e-mail will include a link to download the eBook. Or, the book is also available for a low price on Kindle and Nook. As always, thank you for reading; it’s a gift. Blessings, Kelly

Preview: My next post will be this Friday, March 8, and the working title is, “Winners Anonymous: Breaking Our Addiction to the Extraordinary.”

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It Takes Two to Tango (But It Only Takes One to Love)

March 1, 2013 — 20 Comments

For most couples, conflict involves a gradual—or not so gradual—escalation of hostilities. But there is another way to dance through our love, and it contains some pretty “unexpected” steps…

Photo Credit: Rick & Brenda Beerhorst (Creative Commons)

Photo Credit: Rick & Brenda Beerhorst (Creative Commons)

I’m a mixture of several stubborn-blooded ethnicities, including Irish and German. My wife is mostly Portuguese, so her blood tends to run a little hot.

I have to admit, when we were first married, we had no idea what to do with all of our hardheaded energy.

In my eBook, I describe one fight that ended with a door slammed so hard it cracked right out of the plaster wall. My wife and I were experts at “negative escalation” of conflict. Most people are. 

The Dance to Divorce

Negative escalation is a cold, clinical term describing the very hot kind of one-upmanship that happens during most conflict, both within marriage and without:

You yell—I yell louder. 

You put up walls—I lay my walls with brick and mortar. 

You insult—I sling back an even more painful zinger—So you insult my mother—So I insult the way you mother our children. And so on.

Each iteration of the conflict is like climbing the rungs of a ladder. Except it’s the ladder of vengeance, and when you finally reach the top and fall off you don’t bust your skull—you break a heart or two. 

But here’s the really counterintuitive and disturbing fact revealed by decades of “sequential analysis” research: positive escalation is also damaging to marriages. That is, couples who engage in a quid pro quo exchange of positive behaviors also report less satisfying relationships.  

When our behavior in marriage is dependent or contingent upon what has been done to us—regardless of whether that behavior is positive or negative—it results in the destruction of relationship.

In high-conflict marriages, we obliterate our love with hostility and anger. In polite marriages, we smile our way into saccharine staleness. It takes two to tango—two people executing all the expected, eye-for-an-eye steps in relationship—and we can dance ourselves all the way into divorce.

Love is In the Unexpected

It takes two to tango. But the the good news is, it only takes one to love.  The very same marital research has revealed negative escalation can be disrupted when just one partner chooses to do something different and new.

As it turns out, love is doing the unexpected. Love is refusing to read from the script. It’s refusing to play the usual games. Love is laughing at yourself when you’re supposed to be yelling at your partner. Love is snuggling in when you would normally be choosing a night on the couch over a night in the bed. Love is a cup of coffee on the bedside table the morning after a big fight. Love is a surprise, and it only takes one.

And sometimes, the biggest surprise of all is when we respond with empathy instead of a retort. 

Transforming Conflict into Common Ground

Empathy is a place of common ground where we understand the interior landscape of the other because we feel it, too. I know what you’re wondering: How in the world can we find that kind of common ground when we’re cut and bleeding from the daggers being thrown at us?

The answer is deceptively simple but painfully hard: the daggers lay the foundation for common ground. When our partner is hurting, they behave in ways to make us feel exactly the hurt they are feeling. They want us to “know what it feels like.”

I see it happen every day in marital therapy: Husband hurls an insult and wife gets hurt. I stop the interaction and I ask the wife how she feels and she says, “I feel hurt and alone.” And the angry husband fires back, “Well, that’s exactly how I feel.” They often look at me in stunned disbelief when I say, “Good, now you are both feeling the same thing. You can make that the common ground where you meet and have real empathy for each other. Or you can keep fighting. The choice is yours.” 

And the truth is, it is up to each spouse. Either partner can be the one to do the radically unexpected—to transform that hurt into a place of empathy, to put down the verbal weapon that will move the conflict to the next rung of the vengeance ladder and instead to take a step down.

The surface of our conflict is loud, so we rarely become aware of the quiet and shared emotions beneath the surface. The gentle, vulnerable emotions whisper instead of screaming. They sob instead of shouting. They feel hurt instead of spreading hurt. They go completely unnoticed, and yet they are the common ground in which we can all exist together, look each other in the eye, and say, “Yeah, me too.” 

Climbing a New Kind of Ladder

Our best research has revealed that love thrives when we stop giving our spouses what they deserve and start giving them the unexpected embrace of all that they are—when we give them, in a word, grace. 

Ironically, in this regard, our scientists sound a lot like some of our theologians.

Let’s be still and quiet, and let’s listen for the pain beneath our anger. And when we finally notice the quiet common ground beneath the surface of our conflict, let’s go there. Let’s put words to it. Let’s be vulnerable. Let’s connect within it.

And let’s start climbing an entirely different kind of ladder together.

Comments? What makes it hard to de-escalate conflict and to empathize in this way? Your ideas may make it into the next post post! Share your thoughts in the comments section at the bottom of this post.   

Preview: Transforming our conflict in this way can be even harder than it sounds. My next post on Wednesday, March 6, will unpack some of the barriers to doing so and is tentatively entitled, “The 5 Barriers to Empathy (And How to Overcome Them).”    

Free eBook: My eBook, The Marriage Manifesto: Turning Your World Upside Down, is available free to new blog subscribers. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can click here to subscribe, and your confirmation e-mail will include a link to download the eBook. Or, the book is also now available for Kindle and Nook. 

The Mess: The messy places in life—and the messy places within ourselves—present us with a choice. Because the mess is where our shame collides with grace, and we can choose to succumb to shame, or we can fight back. Come visit The Mess, and join the rebellion against shame. And as always, thank you for reading; it’s a gift. Sincerely, Kelly

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Why Good Enough Love is Better Than Amazing Love

February 14, 2013 — 20 Comments

On Valentines’s Day, we aspire to make love look amazing. But an enduring love must be rooted in the midst of our mess, where we see each other fully and embrace each other’s brokenness. To do so isn’t settling; it’s sublime.

Photo Credit: bored-now via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: bored-now via Compfight cc

I acted like Rocky Balboa on my wedding day.

When my wife and I were pronounced husband and wife, we practically skipped back down the aisle to a joyous song—“Amazing Love.” Within hours we were introduced again at our reception, while the DJ played “Gonna Fly Now” from the Rocky soundtrack. Caught up in the moment, I stopped and raised my arms triumphantly, mimicking the mythical Rocky statue in Philadelphia.

It felt thrilling and victorious.

But I think somewhere inside of me I was already feeling the pressure to maintain an amazing love, to be perfect and strong and unshakeable, to be a Hallmark card—day in and day out. Somewhere inside of me, I knew I wasn’t up to the task. I knew I was weak and cracked and faulty. I knew I wasn’t even close to amazing.

When I look around on Valentine’s Day, I realize I’m not alone.

“Amazing” Love

Valentine’s Day bleeds expectations of amazement and perfection.The National Retail Federation predicts we will spend $18.6 billion on Valentine’s Day this year, up from $15.7 billion in 2011 and $17.6 billion in 2012. I suppose we could chalk this up to a little romanticism and the need to connect once a year. Yet, look how we’re trying to achieve our connection:

By spending. 

I think when we distrust the value of what is inside of us, we invest in valuable things outside of us. We compensate for our perceived shortcomings with glitz and glamour. Deep down, we know we’re not amazing, and we’re pretty sure that is unacceptable. So we throw money at a holiday and we hope it feels amazing. And we hope to hide our cracked and crumbling selves. 

Ordinary, Good Enough Love

Last October, after a week of vacation, I returned to the office, anticipating the wave of phone calls and complications that always follow an extended absence. Fourteen hours later, I arrived home, and my wife was standing in the kitchen. She must have seen the look of defeat in my eyes, because she asked me a question:

“Were you able to take care of everyone today. Did you return all the phone calls?”

“No,” I answered.

“Are some people going to be disappointed in you?”

I looked down. “Probably.”

“Are you still good enough?”

My chin came up, and I looked at her. My eyes held a question and her eyes held a smile.

And she said, “You’re good enough, Kelly. No matter how much you did or did not get done today, you are good enough.”

I hugged her and thought, “Wow. That feels amazing.”

Shameless Love

Last week, a friend told me he was at a gala event, where every person looked beautiful and every performance was polished. And he said it made him feel a little depressed. When I asked why, he responded, “There was no room for things to be a little broken.”

Maybe that’s why the Hallmark cards and bottomless candy and saccharine perfection of Valentine’s Day is a little depressing to so many of us—it doesn’t leave us any room to be a little broken. 

And we need that room, don’t we? Because we’re not amazing; we’re human. And we’re all a little broken.

We don’t need pressure to be amazing. We need permission to be broken.

This Valentine’s Day, maybe we could give each other room to be a little broken by giving each other a priceless gift: the gift of grace—the assurance we are good enough even in our brokenness. 

You tripped on the ice and broke your hand and now you can’t hold the baby, but you are good enough, and I will carry your load.

You gained twenty pounds after your mother died, but you are good enough, and you will always be beautiful to me. 

The kids are making horrible decisions and they might be doing drugs and you are doubting every decision you ever made as a parent, but you are good enough, and I will walk through this with you. 

You lost your job and we might lose the house, but you are good enough and I’ll rent an apartment with you. 

You are sick and the diagnosis is scary and we have no idea what tomorrow holds for us, but you are good enough, and I will be next to your bed through everything.  

I think this is the gift we are all yearning for this Valentine’s Day. Perhaps this year, instead of a pricey dinner or a sparkling jewel, you can give your partner the freedom to be broken and beloved, all at the same time. It’s a free gift, and I think they will be amazed. 

Questions: What is one way you show grace to your partner and communicate they are good enough? Share your experience in the comments section at the bottom of this post.         

Dear Reader, My new eBook, The Marriage Manifesto: Turning Your World Upside Down, describes “good enough love” in more detail. New blog subscribers will receive a free PDF copy by clicking here to subscribe (your subscription confirmation e-mail will include a link to download the eBook). The book is also now available for Kindle and Nook. As always, thank you for reading; it’s a gift. From good enough person to another, Kelly

Preview: My next post will be on Wednesday, February 20, and the working title is, “The Best Way to Guarantee a Blog Post Will Not Be Shared on Facebook.” 

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Parenthood is for Losers

February 8, 2013 — 9 Comments

“Why can’t they all just get along?!”

It’s every parent’s lament. Siblings who won’t quit fighting can put tremendous stress upon a marriage and a family. As a parent of three, I know it all too well. And as a psychologist, I hear the lament from countless couples who are wondering how to navigate complicated sibling rivalries. But I think we can simplify things a little: 

If we want our children to live peacefully with each other, they must learn to embrace mutual surrender and loss. Which means the people they emulate must become willing losers… 

Loser

Photo Credit: Niklas Hellerstedt (Creative Commons

Last week, I stood at the bathroom sink as my two youngest children battled for the toothpaste. As Quinn yanked it from Caitlin’s hands, her eyes flamed and she reached deep down into her arsenal and bellowed, “Loser!” 

Quinn sent the tube of toothpaste flying past my face, along with his retort, “That’s mean!” 

After ensuring the toothpaste had missed its intended target, I turned to Quinn and asked him why the name had hurt him so much. He replied, “Losers are bad. I hate losing.” 

I looked into the sink and wondered, “Why does my son have such hatred for losing?”

A War-Torn World

Maybe it’s because we live in a victory-crazed world, and “loser” has become the ultimate slur. Several weeks ago, Lance Armstrong confessed to years of lying and cheating. He was willing to trade his integrity for victory.

Last Sunday the Superbowl was played before millions—young men exchanging concussions for first downs, trading health for a big ring and bragging rights.

An article in last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune recommended parents begin competing for their children’s college placement before the tikes are out of diapers. 

I hear teens in my office describe Facebook as an internet death match—losers are destroyed by cyber-bullying and then resurrected by a slew of “Likes.”

And even our churches are in competition, fighting for a shrinking number of parishioners.

I Hate to Lose

I stood at the sink, head hanging, and I wondered to myself, “Is that why Quinn has so much hatred for losing?” Then, shaking my head in frustration, I looked up. I was staring into the mirror, and I saw the real answer staring back at me.

I saw myself. 

It would be easy to blame our hyper-competitive world for my children’s behavior. But the truth is, I friggin hate to lose. And my kids aren’t watching the world. They’re watching me.

Parents, our kids are watching us.

We can preach humility and compromise and forgiveness and reconciliation, but do we act like its okay to lose?

Or are we fighting a covert war for our worth? Mothers competing with other mothers for the mantle of most composed and most competent. Fathers competing against other fathers to be the best provider with the most successful kids. Spouses competing with each other for affection and affirmation and power. In one breath, we encourage our children to share the toys and forgive a sibling, and in the next breath we turn back to our partner and continue the perpetual battle for a satisfying love.

We resist becoming a marriage of losers, and then we wonder why our kids refuse to lose to each other with grace. 

As it turns out, my children aren’t casualties of a war-torn world. They are the product of my refusal to lose. 

Family is for Losers

In a world bent on victory, if we want our children to find peace amongst themselves and within themselves, we must shape our households into enclaves of sacrificial love, mutual surrender, and courageous vulnerability. 

We must become families of losers.

But we won’t transform our homes by preaching it. We have to start living it. We have to start living it in our marriages and friendships and communities. But even more importantly, we have to start living like a loser with our children.

I send my kids to time-out for a rules infraction. But how often do I let them send me to time-out for the very same infraction?

I make sure they apologize when their anger does damage, but how often do I chalk up my raised voice and caustic words to stress and the burden of parenting? What would happen if I got down on one knee, looked them in the eye, and apologized for my behavior?

How often do I chastise them for choosing petty battles and then turn around and do the same thing? How might their hearts soften if I surrendered, gave them a hug, and told them it felt good to lose to somebody I love?

I think as parents, it’s time we learn the art of surrender and teach our children about the quiet-subversive rules in this game of Life:

When we choose loss, we choose love.

When we lay down our weapons, we lay down our burdens.

Becoming weak is the strongest thing we’ll ever do.

The heartbeat of life is connection, not competition. 

When we bury our pride, we resurrect our marriages and families and friendships and a world thirsty for humility.

When we embrace vulnerability, we wrap our arms around an entirely different kind of victory. Because losing graciously is the doorway to peace, and peace is the real victory we are all chasing anyway.

And finally, we are defined by more than our wins and losses. We are defined by Grace. It testifies to everything beautiful within us.

I want our grace to testify to the beauty within our children. I want them to learn about the subtle rebellion of the loser, and I hope they will turn this world upside down with their love.

Question: In what ways do you live out surrender in your family? We all need to hear your creativity; share your experience in the comments section at the bottom of this post.      

Dear Reader, My new eBook, The Marriage Manifesto: Turning Your World Upside Down, is all about becoming a loser. If you want to read it, there are two ways to get a copy. New blog subscribers will receive a free PDF copy. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can click here to subscribe, and your subscription confirmation e-mail will include a link to download the eBook. Or, the book is also now available for Kindle and Nook. As always, thank you for reading; it’s a gift. From one loser to another, Kelly

Preview: My next post will be on Tuesday, February 12, and the working title is, “10 Lessons I Learned in 10 Days as Mr. Mom.” This will be followed by a special Valentine’s post on Thursday (replacing Friday’s normal post), and it will be entitled, “Why Good Enough Love is Better Than Amazing Love.” 

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