The Truth Sucks... But Only at First

Not that long ago, Jessi and I were driving down the road in Moscow, Idaho where it was snowing extremely hard.  The roads were white with snow and becoming quite dangerous.  As we were driving, we noticed a newer Subaru Outback with a spare for one of its wheels.  You know the kind, the ones that look like they belong on a wheelbarrow?  The family of four looked quite comfortable inside, and likely going someplace close by judging by their clothing and lack of items in the car.  Maybe one of the kids’ sports games? I wondered for a moment why they would be driving in these conditions with a spare?  Seemed dangerous.  Why didn’t they just take a few minutes and take their flat to the tire service center?  Seemed like an easy thing to do, and considering the weather, likely a safer thing to do as well.

Granted, it’s always easy to judge someone else’s situation.  Who knows, maybe they stole the car as it sat on the side of the road with the spare recently changed?  But it got us thinking…how often do we drive with a spare in our life?  In our relationship?  How long do we travel thinking that we will take care of something when it becomes convenient?  

How bad does it have to get before we decide we “have to” change the spare?

How long are we willing to go before doing an honest self-assessment of our marriage? And when we do, how long until we take action to actually DO something about it?

Getting honest is hard because the truth can suck… but only at first.

Everyone thinks they want the truth, thinks they want to know the whole story, thinks they want the answers to the tough questions… I know I thought I did.

Then I actually had Jessi look me in the face and lovingly tell me that parts of our marriage weren’t working for her.  And even though I had parts that weren’t working for me either, it was so hard to hear.  So hard.  

It’s actually kind of surprising, because it’s not like I didn’t know things weren’t perfect.  She was living in the basement, we were going to counseling and pretty much in marital crisis.  Obviously things were not in good shape. You would think I would be prepared to hear some of what I already knew.  But somehow hearing it out loud was different.  It was raw and brutal. So hard.

So hard in fact, that there was even a fleeting moment where I wished that I didn’t know.  My feelings were hurt.  A moment where I wished I could turn back the clock and erase the truth I now knew.

Ignorance is bliss, right?

Wrong.

What I soon discovered is that the hard conversations and the truth about where we REALLY were (not where we wished we were), were the starting line to a journey towards a thriving marriage.  

It built intimacy.  It built trust. It was a building block for a healthy foundation for our marriage to rebuild upon.  

So where do you even begin with uncovering the truth and coming to grips with how your marriage is really doing?

For us, it started with a recommendation from our counselor to check out the marriagebuilders.com website as part of our “homework” for the week.  In investigating the site, which has a lot of great resources on it, we came across Dr. Harley’s Emotional Needs Questionnaire and agreed to take it and go over our evaluations together.

The basis of the inventory is that there are 10 basic emotional needs: affection, sexual fulfillment, recreational companionship, domestic support, intimate conversation, financial support, physical attractiveness of spouse, honesty and openness, family commitment, and admiration.  

The inventory has you rate each emotional need in terms of your level of need in that particular area, your satisfaction with the way your spouse meets that need, and it also gives you the opportunity to share information about how you feel that need could be better satisfied in your marriage.

There is also a section at the end of the questionnaire where you rate the 10 emotional needs in order of importance for you.

A couple of thoughts:

1) As horrifying as it is to sit and go through each of these categories and see how the “ratings” shake out, having these conversations in a calm discussion as opposed to the middle of a fight makes a WORLD of difference.

2) Prepare to be shocked.  We now commit to take this survey every year and each time we do, we learn something new.  As I take the inventory, I can't help but think about how Jessi will answer the questions.  Sometimes I’m right, and sometimes I’m off.

3) Every time we have had the courage to be honest, we have grown as a couple and our marriage has improved in that area… even though it can be uncomfortable to talk about at first.

4) The book “His Needs, Her Needs” goes in depth into each of these 10 emotional needs if you want more information about them.  When we think about putting effort into meeting our partner’s needs, we focus in on the top 5 for the majority of our energy (you get the most “bang for your buck” here).  This year Jessi even took a picture of my emotional needs rankings to keep it in her phone.  She said, that way, when she is thinking about how to fill my love tank, she doesn’t just do what fills her tank (you can see how this could easily happen when affection is #9 ranking for me, but #2 for Jessi).

5) One thing we have added in our responses (not included in the inventory itself) in each emotional need category is what IS working and going right.  It’s an opportunity to praise each other as well as makes the constructive feedback a little easier to hear when it’s sandwiched between some positives.

This growing opportunity not only helped us get to know each other better, but helped us put effort towards the areas where our marriage needed it the most.  One of the added and unexpected benefits was that it also gave us some things to celebrate.  It was nice to go into this feeling overwhelmed with a marriage that wasn’t working and come out of the experience feeling like although we have a few major areas to work on, we also have some areas that we are good at.  We don’t suck at everything! Hooray for us!

#15hoursaweek

I listened to this amazing podcast sent to me by my beautiful friend, Carla.  It talked about the power of sharing your story... it talked about the importance of having mentors... it talked about making an impact.  I listened to it twice grabbing all kinds of inspiration each time.  Carla knew it was perfect for me in this journey, just another thing I love about her!

One of the take-aways for me had to do with baby steps.  I think about it in the context of fitness and nutrition all the time. It's kind of a no-brainer, but I hadn't really thought about it in terms of relationships and marriage.

This really got my mind turning. What were our baby steps in rebuilding our marriage?

This journey of rebuilding started from a place where I was living in the basement, had given up emotionally and was pretty much checked out of our marriage entirely. I was tired of caring, tired of trying, tired of losing, tired of all of it really.  I didn't feel optimistic anymore.  I didn't even wish or hope or pray about a healthier marriage anymore.  When I look back on that time, I still get a stomach ache and my eyes fill with tears.  I was so broken.

For whatever reason, the moment I hit the wall was the moment Roger got the strength and courage to carry me.  And that was a heavy weight.  Dead weight.

When we reflect back on that time in our lives, neither of us can really explain how that switch happened or why he finally heard and saw how done I was.  With great regret, we wish it would have happened earlier... our work would have been far less difficult had we figured it out before it got so far gone... but it didn't.  We had so many challenges ahead of us.

We had Mt. Everest to climb and I wasn't walking.

At the time, Roger did something that was instinctual and not really planned, but was our first baby step.  Insane amounts of time together.

This was not fun and romantic time together like much of our shared time is now.  This was terrible time.  I wanted to be left alone and Roger was RELENTLESS.  He just kept me talking, yelling, sharing at any opportunity that I would open up.  And when I wouldn't, he was still there.  I remember falling asleep talking (me in the guest bed and him in the doorway sitting on the floor).  I would wake to him bringing me coffee before Emma woke up and engaging in more conversation.  I kept sharing every hard memory, emotion, and feeling until they were all out of me.  Roger listened for the most part.  He shared too, but did a lot of listening.  He kept apologizing and owning his part of every situation I brought up.

He knew I had to somehow empty my tank of all of the hurt before we could refill it with anything else.

Other than incredible strength from God and his insane ability to continue on through pain (it's the athlete in him I think), there's no other explanation for how he endured almost 3 months of that torture.  Because it took that long for me to even begin to look at my part in our mess and start to own up to my own behaviors that contributed to our loss of intimacy, love and trust.  It took almost 3 months for me to apologize for much of anything.  That's a long time to carry dead weight.

During those 3 months when we were in the depths of the dungeon, we spent nearly every waking minute together except when we were at work (although we often spent lunch time together).  We hardly communicated with friends or family during that time and just focused inward. The minute our daughter went to bed, the conversations started again.  We woke up early and were talking until she woke up.  Our family was together all. the. time.

Again, we were in survival mode, so this "strategy" wasn't really planned or suggested by our counselor, but it just sort of happened.   Later as we learned more and read more about emotional needs and staying in love, we learned that undivided time together is the FOUNDATION for a marriage.  Without knowing it at an intellectual level, we were taking our first baby step, time together.

Since then, we have learned a lot from author, Dr. Willard Harley.  In his book, His Needs, Her Needs, he talks about how couples need to spend 15 hours a week together to stay "in love" and that couples in crisis need to spend more than that.  He said he prescribes couples in crisis to spend up to 30 hours a week together.  The rules of this time are very well spelled out.  No kids, no screens, no friends or family present, and no phones.  You can share recreation together as long as you can still share conversation.  You can have sex.  You can talk. You can be present together.  That's it.  So... watching a movie together doesn't count.  Neither does having family dinner with your kids or going out to dinner with another couple. It's pretty black and white.

When we were in crisis, we were probably doing exactly what he was suggesting (spending 30 hours a week together) without knowing that was any kind of strategy or prescription from a book or counselor.  The difference in our situation is that we spent time together...tough time...rather than what we used to do which was pull away.

At the time we actually read the book and the suggestion to spend this kind of quality time together as a couple, we were in a much better space and much further along in our journey (and our miracle, Owen, had entered the picture).  We calculated up our time spent together and realized we were at about 8-9 hours per week.  We wondered if there would really be a difference between that amount (which we were pretty proud of) and 15 which seemed like a tall order.  So, we did our own experiment to find out.  It took us almost a month to hit the 15 hour mark and, without a doubt, we can say that there was/is a BIG difference for us.  HUGE.

I will also say that the intimacy in all aspects of marriage at 15 hours of time and undivided attention a week is like driving a Porsche for the first time.  It corners like it's on rails!  But if/when you slip back (we have done that many times too), you won't be satisfied driving your Toyota anymore, even though it does the job just fine.

So there are lots of reasons and excuses why scheduling 15 hours a week is hard to do. (Note I said "scheduling" - it won't just happen by chance - we tried that :).  It takes more than a little effort.  The payoff, however, comes back ten fold.  It's sort of like sleep.  Sleep takes more time out of your day, but it makes your waking hours more productive, you have more energy and you make better choices when you're awake.

We choose not to live in a world of reasons why we can't do it.  We choose US and realize that EVERYTHING in our lives is better when our marriage is thriving.

The first time we hit 15 hours a week!

We started to use the #15hoursaweek hashtag on our pictures and posts to share our goal of spending more couples time together.  This was our babystep in our journey to follow God's calling to encourage other couples.

So... here's to baby steps! No matter how fast or far you're moving, just keep moving forward.