Quality Versus Quantity...

In 2019 a team at Trinity College Dublin researched 1,839 adult Americans between the ages of 18 and 70. They found that the quality of their relationships had a far greater impact on their mental health than the number of their relationships. Those with toxic relationships turned out to be far worse in terms of mental health than those with very few relationships - those whom we might call loners.

We have other research that shows the risk of heart disease increases for women in bad marriages and hypertension is more frequent among couples who assess their marriage negatively. All this is still correlational data - so we have to take it with the same grain of salt we apply to the studies on loneliness. But at a minimum, it should give us pause.

There are many potential benefits to this added perspective, especially during a pandemic. Maybe we should focus more on the relationships we have rather than fretting about the gatherings we are temporarily losing.

Let me get super vulnerable here for a minute. I hate not being with my community several times a week. Like most pastors, I literally am at our church almost every time the doors open and often when I have to unlock them to gain entry. I like my life this way. But this was my pre-pandemic life.

At some point I had to grow up and realize that nothing was stopping me from having connections and human contact except my own lethargy about picking up the phone. Has contact with all my relationships survived this loss of personal contact? No they have not. But I suspect there is much for me to learn here about the nature of those relationships. Did the pandemic cause me to lose these relationships? Not really.

What about the ones I’ve gained and strengthened? Nothing like a good pandemic to find out who your friends are!! And it is instructive to examine ourselves and notice who we have been inclined to contact and who we have not (and vice versa). This reach out and touch someone is a two-way street.

Before you assume that I am going to encourage you to make contact with everyone in your phone list - stop. Don’t go there! We’ll unpack this more in tomorrow’s blog post.

We live in a world that defines us by our “isms”. Don’t buy into that nonsense. Spend time today and every day in gratitude for you being you - warts and all.

Building Better Skills

Last year I taught a class for married couples, something I had avoided doing for about ten years. For one thing, who am I to teach on marriage? I’ve only been married 42 years; I’ve only had one husband. Really, my experience is pretty limited.

People kept asking and I caved. But the timing felt right. Scott and I had been working on learning some new skills. They seemed to be a good fit for a discussion on marriage. The more I learned, the less I knew. I became increasingly aware of the distance between my intentions and my reality. And honestly - this is a good thing. Certainty is a relationship killer.

It also confirms what Richard Bach said, “We teach best what we most need to learn.”

I was prepared to teach a class on marriage when I realized how desperately I needed to work on my own. The main clue was exposed when I noticed how we struggle to really listen to each other. After knowing each other for 48 years, it is easy to assume we can complete each other’s sentences. Sometimes we can. I can predict with amazing accuracy what Pete is going to yell at coaches, players and refs during UVA football and basketball games. But do I know what he is most afraid of? Do I know what he is interested in us accomplishing in the next ten years of our lives? Maybe not.

This listening deficit is not exclusive to my marriage; it really is much broader than that. But, it seems to me, in marriage, if we are not listening well to one another, if we cannot validate one another, if we cannot mess up and make amends with one another, the loneliness will kill us.

So how do we get better at listening? As I suspected, it turns out it is a teachable skill set. And I want to talk about it. Write about it. And eventually get around to wrestling with why we need to improve our listening skills as a function of learning how to repair broken relationships.

Marriage as a Mirror

We do not practice our shortcomings in isolation. One of my issues is this habit of getting defensive when challenged. Large or small, any hint of somebody getting too close to my humanity and threatening my fragile ego freaks me out. I understand why I developed such a talent for this strategy and I admit that it is hard to let it go. I can show myself grace over this AND my step work invites me to live differently.

One of the most obvious places it shows up is in my marriage. My husband will offer me a suggestion for improving something - like loading the dishwasher, or how to use my car’s blinker when changing lanes. I am always tempted to come back with something snarky like, “Well, if you are so great at loading the dishwasher, do it yourself!” The problem with that defense is that he loads and unloads the dishwasher way more often than I do. You see my dilemma. I do not want to bite the hand that so often loads my dishwasher with excellence. The truth is, I resent any suggestions for improvement because I do not like to think about all the ways in which I could improve. It is far easier to think about my husband’s limitations and blame him for being so full of….suggestions.

Humility reminds me that I am only responsible for recognizing the truth about myself. I repeat: humility is the capacity to recognize the truth about myself. Period. Full stop. This provides me with a much-needed boundary for behaving. I am responsible for myself; I am responsible to others. My attention rightfully returns to working my own program.

How has selfishness, self-seeking, dishonesty and fear negatively impacted your willingness and ability to look at your own limitations?

It's simpler than you thought

Yesterday we talked about how a previously happy couple began to question whether or not they wanted to stay married to each other.  Instead of doubling down on discontent and blaming, these two chose curiosity and humility. They heard about a workshop that sounded like it might be helpful and they took it.  They followed up with a support group - one for him, another for her. They worked hard to apply what they were learning and when they felt stuck, they asked for support from a person they trusted.

Eventually, they made a few changes and found immediate relief and reconnection.

1. The wife decided that it was not her husband’s job to provide her with a sense of community.  She realized, accurately, that her community connections of the past had never involved him. She engaged her “ME” work, and began contemplating what she loved - as opposed to what her children needed.  Upon reflection (in the “ME” arena), she realized that she loved gardening (as did her husband fyi) but had neglected that personal interest in lieu of parenting responsibilities. She signed up for a master gardening course and made new friends while learning a ton.  Together, she and her husband (who had no interest in classes) began to garden together - a job previously left solely to Mr. Solitary. See what happened there? She used all three relationship areas - her “ME”, her “YOU and ME” (making hubby quite happy), and “WE”. Before she knew it, she was volunteering at local gardening events.  Eventually she ended up getting a part time job at a local nursery.

2. The husband in this story engaged his “ME” to discover why he was so upset when his wife complained about his solitary ways.  He was aghast when he realized that his previous passion - his work - had become more taxing and less inspiring. No one was as surprised as he was to discover that he was ready to retire.  Once retired, his willingness to socialize a bit more became not only doable but a welcome part of their calendar. (His “ME” allowed him to reduce his “WE” which was no longer serving him well and that allowed the “YOU and ME” to find new “WE” expressions together.)

Finally, notice how as each of them took responsibility for themselves, he positively impacted their intimacy and sociability!  Can you imagine if the husband had retired and his wife did not have outside interests? She may have used her gardening skills to fertilize the back yard with body parts!  

We can all do this.  We must continue to assess and reassess our lives.  Notice how important it is to own our “ME”; rejoice in the reality that as we own our “ME” it often benefits our intimate and social connections.  This is such good stuff! How are you doing in these arenas? Anything that needs shifting?

Marital Mayhem

In a previous blog entry, I concluded it with the following statement:  When we do not appropriately match up our needs and wants within the appropriate context for addressing them, we have issues.

I provided a couple of examples to illustrate my point: we need to become more self-aware and attentive to the love arena we are in at any moment AND manage our expectations accordingly.  One example was of a woman who acted as if a social relationship was the place to meet her needs for intimacy; a second was of a widower whose loss of a key intimate relationship cost him vital feedback that his spouse once provided.  In both examples, these folks suffered in all their relationships because of an imbalance in the area of intimacy.

Another example that might help us understand the need for balance involves a gentleman with the opposite problem from those two folks.  He is a quiet introverted sort married to a sociable wife. Their imbalance was not obvious while the children were at home. His wife was busy with the commitments involving her children - she was active in the PTA, they had sporting events to attend, one of their children was active in a local theatre group.  But once those kids flew the nest and before grandchildren arrived on the scene, a previously contented marriage began to fall apart at the seams.

What went wrong?  Can this marriage be saved?

The wife grew increasingly restless and discontent in the marriage.  The more she complained about her situation, the more withdrawn her husband became - exacerbating the problem.  How did they move through this rough patch?

They figured out that they were out of kilter in a rather simple and fixable arena of love.  They had TOO MUCH intimacy and NOT ENOUGH tribe. This required the contented husband - who was living his dream of a quiet and peaceful home with his beloved - to acknowledge that too much of a good thing was too much.  And his irritable wife had to come to grips with her changed circumstances (reduced social interaction) and take responsibility for herself. She needed to figure out how to re-introduce more tribe back into her weekly schedule.  

Kind of neat, right?  Both had some responsibility in the situation.  All of this came about because each accepted the premise that every human needs three love arenas:  ME, YOU and ME, and WE. He preferred the “you and me” place; she really loved the “we”. Both were a bit off kilter.  

Tomorrow, we will explore a couple of very practical ways these two got back on track. For today, notice these things:  1. They were looking for answers not just blaming their life stage OR each other for their marital woes and 2. Both were willing to take responsibility for their part (they both were fairly health in the “ME” arena).