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Sunday, January 17, 2010
Quotes About Relationships
Compiled by Dr. Harvey Martz for his Sermon Series
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Love, Relationships, Marriage, and Sexuality: Insights from the Bible
January 17, 2010
Quote About Relationships
A Wedding Prayer by Bonnie and Don Messer at their wedding
Grant unto this young couple the divine grace and guidance necessary for their marriage that they may live in Christian love. Look with favor upon their marriage, O God, that they may love, honor, and cherish each other; caring for one another with faithfulness and patience, and persevering together through all tribulation. May their concern for each other and their compassion for others unite them always.
An Email for a Parishioner
The most important thing for surviving infidelity is a commitment to forgive. A new relationship can be formed. And I believe a stronger one at that. When you get into the process of forgiving, unusual emotions surface. The commitment to ride it through is sometimes the only thing that keeps you going. Therefore, your reason for your commitment to forgive must be truly from your inner being. We wanted to keep our family together. We still had love for each other; we just had to find it again. There were many times when we both did not like the other person. But we loved the idea of our family staying together. I’m not condoning infidelity. However, a marriage can survive it. I am proof.
Hold Me Tight
by Susan Johnson in Psychology Today, January/February 2009
Among people who do have affairs, they don’t do so because their sex lives are boring. I’ve never had anyone come to my office and tell me that they had an affair because they were bored in bed. They have affairs because they’re lonely, because they can’t emotionally connect with their partner. Then somebody else smiles at them and makes them feel special and valued – and suddenly, they’re in this strange situation where they’re committed to one person but find themselves responding to another.
Passion is like everything else: It ebbs and flows. But sex is always going to be boring if it’s one-dimensional, cut off from emotional connection. On the other hand, if you’re emotionally involved, sex has a hundred dimensions to it, and is as much play as passion.
I call this kind of secure sex “synchrony sex,” where emotional openness and responsiveness, tender touch, and erotic exploration all come together. When partners have a secure emotional connection, physical intimacy can retain all of its initial ardor and creativity and then some. Lovers can be tender and playful one moment, fiery and erotic another. Securely attached partners can more openly express their needs and preferences and are more willing to experiment sexually with their lovers.
From God Hides in Plain Sight: How to see the Sacred in a Chaotic World
by Dean Nelson
Pg. 133 – Marriage is a sacrament, according to the ancient tradition, because, as two people visibly live with the other’s interests as more important than his or her own, the relationship reveals self-emptying love. Marriage bears witness to that love because it points to something bigger than just the two participants. That’s what a sacrament does. When Christ refers to himself as a bridegroom, and Paul speaks of Christ and the fellowship of believers in a marriage context, then we understand our own marriage relationship better. It is to be filled with humility, selflessness, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. The very attributes of Christ are supposed to be manifest in how spouses treat each other. Marriage lived out this way ushers in the presence of God. And the world sees it. But this purpose is often missed, which can lead to unreasonable expectations in a marriage, which can then lead to disillusionment or worse.
“Loving on another is not clinging to one another so as to be safe in a hostile world,” Nouwen wrote, “but living together in such a way that everyone will recognize us a people who make God’s love visible to the world.
From The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide
from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert by John M. Gottman, Ph.D. and Nan Silver
Pg. 4 - Speaking of those odds, the divorce statistics remain dire. The chance of a first marriage ending in divorce over a forty-year period is 67 percent. Half of all divorces will occur in the first seven years. Some studies find the divorce rate for second marriages is as much as 10 percent higher than for first-timers. The chance of getting divorced remains so high that it makes sense for all married couples – including those who are currently satisfied with their relationship – to put extra effort into their marriages to keep them strong.
Pg. 5 – Part of the answer may simply be that in an unhappy marriage people experience chronic, diffuse physiological arousal – in other words, they feel physically stressed and usually emotionally stressed as well. This puts added wear and tear on the body and mind, which can present itself in any number of physical ailments, including high blood pressure and heart disease, and in a host of psychological ones, including anxiety, depression, suicide, violence, psychosis, homicide and substance abuse.
Not surprisingly, happily married couples have a far lower rate of such maladies. They also tend to be more health conscious than others. Researchers theorize that this is because spouses keep after each other to have regular checkups, take medicine, eat nutritiously, and so on.
Pg. 26 – I predict their marriage will falter not because they argue – after all, I asked them to. Anger between husband and wife doesn’t itself predict marital meltdown. Other couples in the newly wed study argue far more during the fifteen of videotaping than do Dara and Oliver. Yet I predict that many of these couples will remain happily married – and they do. The clues to Dara and Oliver’s future breakup are in the way they argue.
The most obvious indicator that this discussion (and this marriage) is not going to go well is the way it begins. Dara immediately becomes negative and accusatory.
Dara’s harsh startup sounds the warning bell that she and Oliver may be having serious difficulty. Now, as their discussion unfolds, I continue to look out for particular types of negative interactions. Certain kinds of negativity, if allowed to run rampant, are so lethal to a relationship that I call them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Usually these four horsemen clip-clop into the heart of a marriage in the following order: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
From Making Love Last a Lifetime: Biblical Perspectives on Love, Marriage, and Sex
by Adam Hamilton
Pg. 64 – It is often said that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, used to tell his ministers to “preach faith until you have it.” I encourage you to practice love until you feel it. There is hope for every marriage. What you many feel now will pass, but only if you are committed to that profound calling you accepted in your marriage vows: “for better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.”
From Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
by Elizabeth Gilbert
Pg. 99 – This is how infatuation begins. And infatuation is the most perilous aspect of human desire. Infatuation leads to what psychologists call “intrusive thinking” – that famously distracted state in which you cannot concentrate on anything other than the object of your obsession. Once infatuation strikes, all else – jobs, relationships, responsibilities, food, sleep, work – falls by the wayside as you nurse fantasies about your dearest one that quickly become repetitive, invasive, and all-consuming. Infatuation alters your brain chemistry, as thought you were dousing your self with opiates and stimulants.
Pg. 101 – The problem with infatuation, of course, is that it’s a mirage, a trick of the eye – indeed, a trick of the endocrine system. Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love; it’s more like love’s shady second cousin who’s always borrowing money and can’t hold down a job. When you become infatuated with somebody, you’re not really looking at that person; you’re just captivated by your own reflection, intoxicated by a dream of completion that you have projected on a virtual stranger.
Pg. 102 – Psychologists call that state of deluded madness “narcissistic love.” I call it “my twenties.”
From Building a Home with My Husband: A Journey Through the Renovation of Love
by Rachel Simon
Pg. 226 – 227 – So this is commitment, I realized, as we walked up the hill toward our house. Pressing myself to admit my feelings aloud, and how they arose – even when I’m so convinced that he did something wrong that I’m on the verge of running. Of course, commitment requires that the other person must love and respect me enough to want to hear, and I must love and respect him enough to speak words he can hear. But assuming that is the case, then this is commitment: valuing our unity over my pride, the whole of our us rather than the sum of my righteousness.
Not only did I have the love thing all wrong, I thought as we reached our house. I was also wrong about commitment. Love is not just a feeling, and commitment is not just a decision. They, when intertwined, are action. Love and commitment move, and touch, and listen, and speak. They are deeds that sacrifice individual pride. Their goal is not just happiness, but mutual vulnerability.
Basic Rights in a Relationship
Besides understanding the various categories of verbal abuse and recognizing the abuser’s reality, it is useful to understand the basic rights of relationship which are violated by verbal abuse. Following is a list of some of these rights:
- The right to good will from the other.
- The right to emotional support.
- The right to be heard by the other and to be responded to with courtesy.
- The right to have your own view, even if your mate has a different view.
- The right to have your feelings and experience acknowledged as real.
- The right to receive a sincere apology for any jokes you find offensive.
- The right to clear and informative answers to questions that concern what is legitimately your business.
- The right to live free from accusation and blame.
- The right to live free from criticism and judgment.
- The right to have your work and your interests spoken of with respect.
- The right to encouragement.
- The right to live free from emotional and physical threat.
- The right to live free from angry outbursts and rage.
- The right to be called by no name that devalues you.
- The right to be respectfully asked rather than ordered.
Source: Several internet sites about domestic violence include this list of Basic Rights, however its original origin is unknown.
Guidelines for Enhancing Communication with Those You Love
by Bonnie J. Messer, Ph.D.
- Affirm that the other person is a unique child of God with positive and negative qualities.
- Reach out and touch the person you care about.
- Consider your relationship a long-term commitment, not to be discarded because of one disagreement, no matter how serious.
- Conflict, a fundamental characteristic in all relationships, is not to be unilaterally avoided. However, when in disagreement, remember that the goal is NOT to gain a victory; rather, the focus resides on carefully listening and seeking to be heard in order to achieve a mutually satisfying solution.
- LISTENING is key to conflict resolution. Note whether you are really attending to what your partner is saying, or whether you are preparing your rebuttal.
- Limit the conflict to ONE THING AT A TIME.
- Avoid making speeches. Adults have short attention spans. You enhance the probability of being heard if you keep it short and to the point!
- Keep the discussion in the here and now, avoid bringing up past failures.
- Focus on the issue, avoid attacking each other.
- No name calling. Avoid being derogatory about your partner’s personality or physical appearance.
- Don’t’ play psychoanalyst – trying to explain the other person’s feelings or behaviors.
- Speak only for yourself.
- Don’t try to mind read. ASK instead.
- Conversely, don’t expect your partner to read your mind. YOU are responsible to let your partner know what you are thinking and needing.
- Eliminate phrases from your discussion, such as:
- You never or You always
- You should or You shouldn’t(parent/child statements)
- I can’t (substitute I won’t)
16. Be honest about your feelings, but seek to keep them under control. NO one responds positively when the other person strikes out angrily to hurt or blame.
17. Physical violence towards another human being is NEVER acceptable.
18. Not all conflicts can be resolved in one session. Limit the length of the discussion. Sometimes it is necessary for the sun to set and persons to pull back and reexamine their feelings and concerns before resolution can be reached.
19. When one or both parties are exhausted, angry, overwhelmed, have been drinking, need to go to work, etc., it is wise to call a TIME OUT. Agree to a specific time to resume the discussion (usually within 24 hours). The person who called the time out assumes responsibility to bring up the subject again at the agreed upon time.
20. Be sure to include fun in your relationship.
Principles for Healthy Marriage
According to Dr. Judith Wallerstein in her book The Good Marriage, here are the nine psychological tasks necessary for making marriage work:
1. Separate emotionally from the family you grew up in-not to the point of estrangement, but enough so that your identity is separate from that of your parents and siblings
2. Build togetherness based on shared intimacy and identity, while at the same time set boundaries to protect each partner's autonomy
3. Establish a rich and pleasurable sexual relationship and protect it form the intrusions of the workplace and family obligations.
4. For couples with children, embrace the daunting roles of parenthood and absorb the impact of a baby's entrance into the marriage. Learn to continue the work of protecting the privacy of you and your spouse as a couple
5. Confront and master the inevitable crises of life.
6. Maintain the strength of the marital bond in the face of adversity. The marriage should be a safe haven in which the partners are able to express their differences, anger, and conflict.
7. Use humor and laughter to keep things in perspective and to avoid boredom and isolation.
8. Nurture and comfort each other, satisfying each partner's needs for dependency and offering continuing encouragement and support.
9. Keep alive the early romantic, idealized images of falling in love, while facing the sober realities of the changes wrought by time.