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Caron Loveless

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50 Ways To Keep Your Marriage Fun

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One of the first things that drew me to my husband was his sense of humor. The guy was a blast to be with. I never laughed so much in my life. But the longer we were married, the more kids we had and the more pressures we experienced leading a large church, the more our serious adult responsibilities seemed to be squeezing the fun out of us.

We still had our lighter moments, but that constant, easy, light-hearted laughter that had once been a staple of our relationship kept getting harder and harder to come by. Maybe you can relate.

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Research from the University of Denver supports a high correlation between fun and marital happiness.

They found the amount of fun couples have together was

the strongest factor in overall marital happiness.

Another study by colleagues at State University of New York-Stoney Brook showed that sharing new and exciting activities consistently contributes to better relationships. They found that people in happy relationships plan fun activities and that fun keeps the relationship strong and fresh.

We get how easy it is to slip into a rut doing the same things, going to the same places but over time that sucks the life out of a vibrant relationship.

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A Happy Marriage: What If It’s More Than Love & Respect?

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Almost every day we coach leadership couples who are just like we were. They really want a great marriage, they work hard at making it the best they can but something mysterious and unforeseen keeps tripping them up. They think the mystery lies somewhere in their spouse. And they feel disconnected and discouraged after all their attempts to fix the problem.

But, we can’t fix what we can’t see.

So, what’s going on?

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We believe, in many cases, the answer lies in our failure to understand the profound impact our individual “attachment styles” are having in our relationship.

Right now, we’re so big on this we want to corral every couple on the planet and give them access to this vital, game-changing insight.

IN THE PAST WE’VE BEEN TOLD:  a happy marriage is all about understanding the different needs of men and women- or an unhappy marriage is a “failure to communicate”  or it all boils down to the way we love and respect each other.

Those do have a part to play in relationships —

but we don’t think they play the lead role.

We believe the solution is even more fundamental, more primal and without it, we can attend all the marriage classes and conferences we want, but if they don’t address THIS ONE ISSUE most marriages will stay stuck in disillusionment.

Identifying the attachment styles operating in your marriage

and learning how to accept and grow through them

is the most significant way to improve

 the long-term health and happiness of your relationship.

Originally, attachment style was thought only to be significant in the way infants bond with their caregivers.  But groundbreaking research by Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver indicates that adults show patterns of attachment in their love partnerships similar to the patterns children develop with their parents somewhere between birth and 18-24moths.

Adult Attachment Theory says there are at least three (*some divide it into four) predetermined ways we:

1) engage in conflict

2) experience connection in romantic relationships.

 

How we “attach” ( or don’t) in our marriage affects a whole host of issues like:

– our view of what togetherness looks and feels like

-the way we deal with conflict

-our attitude toward sex

-our ability to communicate our needs and wants

-our expectations for our partner and our relationship

Different streams of attachment theorists give various names to help identify each attachment style- but, to keep it simple, we break them into these 4 categories:

1) Anchored

2) Anxious

3) Avoidant 

4) Anxious/Avoidant

 

1) The Anchored attachment means a person most often feels comfortable with intimacy and they are usually warm and loving. They neither run from conflict nor feel the need to grasp for or over pursue their partner during or after an argument. They easily repair any breaches that arise in a relationship and usually feel relationally secure.

2) The Anxious attachment means a person often has a deep need, even craves intimacy and can be preoccupied with their relationships. They quickly feel any distance in a relationship and strive to do whatever it takes to reconnect and they may become clingy or angry when a connection isn’t happening.

3) The Avoidant attachment is where adults often equate intimacy with a loss of independence and try to minimize closeness. They want to avoid conflict -sometimes at all costs, so they shut down, back away or walk off during an argument. They do want closeness but they often don’t know how to go about staying connected when partners get too close or require true emotional intimacy.

4) The Anxious/avoidant attachment is just like it sounds. This person both avoids and feels anxious at different moments in the relationship. They do a conflicted dance of pulling their partner in and then pushing them away if they start to get too close.

The first step to building more harmony in your marriage 

is to identify which attachment styles are at work in your relationship. 

For example: what if both spouses are avoidant?

Emotional intimacy is desired but rarely acquired. Everyone is avoiding conflict so maybe fights aren’t the issue. They are less in touch with their feelings and have a harder time talking about their emotions. Sex might be good to a point, but without true emotional connection, they will probably have fewer deeply satisfying moments.

(*On our podcast this week we’ll be talking about what a couple in this situation might do to increase the closeness in their relationship.)

Once David and I discovered that he has an avoidant attachment style and I have an anxious it took the mystery out of our history! If ever I got angry with David for withholding or distancing himself then he felt the need to back further away for self-preservation.

That  increased my reaction and we would go into a cycle of approach/avoidance -approach/avoidance until we both ended up feeling mad and misunderstood.

Learning attachment theory has brought huge levels of closeness and connection to our marriage. And it helped that both of us were willing to do whatever it took to fix what ailed us.

David was startled to realize he struggled with emotional closeness. At first, he put himself in the Anchored category, but our history actually shows otherwise. He now sees that he was not as comfortable as he imagined with emotional intimacy or relational conflict, both of which had a direct impact on his ability to relate to my needs and face some of our differences.

And, it was equally as important for me to see how my anxiety to be close sometimes amped my reactions in an angry, negative way. The anger ( rooted in fear or hurt) I felt when David distanced himself or shut down had to be significantly curbed in order for us to heal this self-sabotaging cycle that kept snagging an otherwise great relationship.

 Want to learn more on how your attachment style might be negatively affecting your marriage?

 1) LISTEN to this week’s Episode of The Live True Podcast.

2) Click HERE for our next available consultation.

*** PLEASE HELP US ENCOURAGE OTHER COUPLES BY SHARING THIS BLOG  

 with anyone you think might be interested. Thanks!

 

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How To Get It Right When You’ve Been Wronged

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Over the course of my life, things have happened to me, people have done things to me that have frightened me, angered me and broken my heart. I had legitimate hurt worthy of comfort and understanding.

Replaying the tapes of the wrongs that were done became my obsession.

Maybe you know something about that, too.

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And when these lovely things happen to us there always seems to be a wise-cracking person in the crowd (with no trace of blood on their clothes) saying…

Just let it go.

We hear this phrase a lot. It has a nice ring to it. We think it’s probably a good idea— for other people. We tell ourselves that strategy won’t work in our situation. Our situation is different, more complicated, more drastic or sad or life-altering or special.

So we hold on to “it.” This seems like the best plan.

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5 Ways We Look for the Living Among the Dead

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There is always one question that most compels and convicts me whenever I read about the resurrection of Jesus, and it’s this:

 “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” 

 The scripture says two men that “gleamed like lightning” spoke these words to the women who arrived early in the morning at the tomb of Jesus. (Luke 24) The women had gone to pay homage to the dead and were stunned to find a robbery.

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And so, I ask myself and I ask you,

“why are we all still looking for the living among the dead?”

Why do we think we’ll find life in that which has no breath? 

If we follow Jesus we’ve put our faith in his words, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”  John 10:10

But I don’t really think we believe this because we keep on clutching at cobwebs and digesting decay. We keep looking for life in all the wrong places.  Here are at least five of them:

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10 Powerful Quotes That Bring Life to the Death of Jesus

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If you are in any way familiar with the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, like we are, you know how easy it can be to walk through this Holy season on spiritual auto-pilot. As someone we know has said, ” What else can we possibly say about the most profound event in history that hasn’t already been said a million times?”

Perhaps, one way to make The Passion of Christ come alive again in our hearts might be to see it through our own suffering, our own wounds and our own little deaths.

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To encourage some fresh seeing for our own lives we’ve gathered ten quotations that provoke us toward a more conscious Good Friday and Easter. In addition to scripture, over the next few weeks,  we plan to read these quotes, first, all at once, then slowly in meditation.

Here are 3 simple ways you can join us: 

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Why You Should Embrace Your Flaws

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When the abstract paintings of Jackson Pollock were first introduced people said, that’s not art. It’s too weird, too chaotic. Everyone hated his work. No one would buy it. “What a mess,” they said. “My two year old could do that.” Then, one day art collector Peggy Guggenheim looked at a painting and said,
“Not a mess, people. You’re looking at a masterpiece.”

In 2006 one of Pollock’s paintings sold for $ 140,000,000.

So, are you a mess or a masterpiece? 

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You don’t have to be a perfectionist to be bugged by your flaws. No one likes to fail, show weakness or make a mistake.  And, if you have any kind of religious background, the concept of “spiritual perfection” can really do a number on you.

The way we interpret scriptures like “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” can set us up for zealous legalism or total defeat.

An egotistic mind takes scriptures like these and applies them like a mathematical mandate. That can lead to head-based, black and white, good or bad thinking that results in our pretending, splitting, and living in denial that evil could exist in us.

God knows we are flawed. And God doesn’t beat us over the head with it.

But, God’s acceptance of our weakness never lessens his desire for our wholeness. 

It’s all in how we go about getting there.

The secret is learning to participate in God’s perfection. As we “abide in him” we grow into God’s wholeness.

However, much of church history has been dominated by “ladder theology” where our spirituality has been judged by outward performance, willpower, and acceptable moral achievement.

This is far from the way Jesus intended us to live.

Once he told this parable:

 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”  (Luke 18)

Jesus’ set-up is brilliant. People look up to the Pharisees and despise the tax collectors. From the get-go we already know who the good guy and the bad guy are. The crowd must have gone…”Come on, Jesus. This one’s too easy.”

But, hold on.

In this story the bad guy wins. Jesus is totally messing with us. This can’t be a “religious story.”

Jesus emphatically teaches us to despise the

pretense of perfection and admire humble confession.

But, nah. We don’t buy this lesson. We keep motoring in the direction of perfection.

It makes no sense to our finite minds that the Sinless Son of God should stand up for a messed up, shameful person.

Yet, it is the sickly, unseemly people that really get God’s attention. Blind eyes, deaf ears, and outcasts – did not repel him, they compelled him. He preferred to dine with the destitute, call on the crippled and welcome the wayward. The baddest man in the region? Jesus is headed to his house. A compromised woman with perfume? He says, I’ll make her famous.

What?!

Jesus doesn’t badmouth our brokenness.

Even, if we should have known better.

Then, why is it that when the sorry shambles of our life breaks public, we think we’re done? Or, if someone we know turns up tainted, we run?

Where did we learn this?

Not from God.

Jesus is a lover and gatherer of the splintered pieces of what was our lives (get this: even if it used to be known far and wide as an exemplary, lovely Christ-honoring life) and like a master artisan; he finds a way to refit and restore what is left into something surprising and breathtaking. And from all those nasty shards he makes something so purely whole that it shows off his glory in something splendidly new.

Mess or masterpiece?

Don’t hide or deny your brokenness. Confess it. Repent of it. And, like the tax collector, make it your offering to God-because without it you might not even know you need God.

Richard Rohr says, “Imperfection is the organizing principle of the entire human, historical, and spiritual enterprise. Imperfection, in the great spiritual traditions, is not just to be tolerated, excused, or even forgiven. It is the very framework inside of which God makes the god-self known (to us) and calls us into gracious union. It’s what allows us and sometimes forces us to fall into the arms of the living God.”

The real goal is not private perfection but divine union. When you’ve experienced any level of divine union or connectedness you know that you have been chosen and loved even in your imperfection. That kind of love can flip a person right side up. It’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. (Romans 2:5)

Rohr goes on to state “a spiritually mature person could use the word perfection and know they are talking about God’s perfect abiding in us. An immature and still egocentric person will think of it as a moral achievement that they can personally attain by trying harder.”

So, in light of this now read Philippians 3:9,15 “I no longer seek any perfection from my own efforts… but only the perfection that comes from faith and is from God… We who are called perfect must all think in this way…”

 Why should we embrace our imperfections?

Because God does.

 God chooses to love the human, the ordinary, our imperfect world, an imperfect us. Even more counterintuitive is that God seems to actually use and find necessary for our growth the very things we fear, avoid, deny, and deem unworthy. This blows our minds!

 So, a truly perfect person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is above and beyond it. 

You come to God not by being strong, but by being weak; not by being right, but through your mistakes; not by self-admiration but by self-forgetfulness. We know… this is shocking! And yet it shouldn’t be. Both Jesus and the Apostle Paul lived and taught us this.

This is the good news of the gospel.

When you have faced your own imperfection, impurity and unwillingness to love then you are actually ready to believe that the gospel means that God loves, forgives and transforms all… including those “bad guys.”

We are learning to hold the mixture of both the dark and the bright sides of ourselves in the compassionate way our Heavenly dad does.

Author Hugh Prather has said, “ Forgiveness doesn’t excuse behavior; it looks past it to a greater truth.

In the tragic part of our story, there is no excusing what happened. But it has been fully and profusely confessed, wept over, investigated, profoundly owned and presented to God. All that’s left now is for us to live into that much greater truth.

Indeed we are.

And the really good news is, so can you.

* A part of this blog is an excerpt from the book Nothing to Prove: Find the Satisfaction and Significance You’ve Been Striving for at the Core of Your True Identity by David and Caron Loveless.  To get more information on this book or to order it, CLICK HERE.

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The Gutsiest Blog I’ve Ever Written About The Scariest Thing We’ve Ever Done

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What I’m about to share with you is deeply personal. This is the first time I’ve shared it publicly. And I’m a little anxious because once it’s out there, it’s out there. But I’m motivated. I believe what could come from it is utterly critical for someone- maybe several someones.

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One morning, almost three years ago, I woke to the sound of my husband sobbing. He was hunched over in a chair at the foot of the bed. His face, streaming tears, his eyes, scared and bloodshot.

I bolted up. “Oh, my gosh, honey. What’s the matter? What in the world? What has happened?” My mind darted through possibilities. I’d seen him cry plenty of times, but never like this. I instantly hurt for whatever drastic thing was causing him such anguish.

“I have a really, really hard thing to tell you.”

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That really, really hard thing was going to shatter every molecule of our entire world. Except for learning that my husband had died –this news was the worst possible. It was the one announcement I was 1000 percent certain would never be handed to me.

If someone had held a gun to my head and said, “True or false. Your husband has been unfaithful. If we find out that statement is false you live. If it’s true, you die. ” Cool as a cucumber I would have said, “Oh gee. I’m shaking in my boots.”

But the gun went off .

And I did die- for a long time — I died a thousand, million big and little deaths.  And so did the man I loved. 

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#1 Way to Grow Emotional Intimacy

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My husband, David, has always been a strong, confident guy who didn’t get easily rattled when things went wrong or difficulties popped up. He was good at tackling huge, complicated situations and moving on.

But, this was not always the case when certain challenges surfaced between us.

I didn’t realize, that just because a guy responds well to huge vocational obstacles he may not process relational ones with the same ease.

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There were many times my reactivity or sensitivity stifled the freedom David needed to be fully open to me with all his thoughts and feelings. Certain subjects were hot buttons for me and David learned to steer clear of those if he wanted to keep the peace. His peace. And, unbeknownst to me peace was his holy grail.

What I learned (the hard way) is that if we want deep enjoyment and satisfaction in our most significant relationships we need

one important thing.

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5 Meaningful Ways to Experience Advent

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We always meant to observe Advent. We really wanted time for meaningful reflection but there were cards to mail, gifts to buy and wrap, parties to host and attend on top of all our normal responsibilities. As spiritual leaders we found ourselves pulling out the stops for everyone else’s Christmas but not focusing as thoughtfully as we would have liked on own Advent experience.

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The Christmas season can distract us all from what we most truly want. So, we’ve learned it helps to have a simple devotional guide.

One resource we use is Advent Reflections by one of our spiritual mentors, Ruth Haley Barton, founder of the Transforming Center (www.transformingcenter.org.) It has powerfully spoken to us so we wanted to pass on some of Ruth’s thoughtful insights to you.

The season of Advent gives us the opportunity to practice waiting for the light of Christ’s coming into the dark places of our world and our lives. Advent literally means “arrival,” and the themes of this season sensitize us to the coming of Christ—not just back then—but now, in the places we long to see his presence and need his intervention.

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Banking On the Benefits

Thoughts on gratitude

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Gratitude

sees the good in things

and drops it’s anchor there.

 

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Like muscle

gratitude grows

when it’s put to work.

 

It is active

not passive

moving mountains

to find diamonds in the rock.

 

Gratitude is vocal

it speaks to what is working-

it always says the kind thing.