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

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!

 

God’s Message To You Through A Violin

Not long ago, I was asked to speak at a church and just before I brought the message the worship team led us in a song that featured a violin. Later, I learned that violin was being played by a girl named Mariana, who was one of the top young violinists in Romania.

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As Mariana played I sensed God drawing my attention to the instrument and saying, “have something to say to you and to the church through this violin.”  So, as I sat there, totally moved by the soaring, emotive melody God spoke two things to me :

1) Just like in nature, everything that appears to have died, comes back again in other life-giving forms.

That violin was a miracle.  Once, it was a piece of dead wood.

Now in the hands of Mariana, it became a singing tree!

In 1 Corinthians 15:46, scripture says that “first comes the natural, then the spiritual.”  One of the best ways to understand what’s going on in our invisible, spiritual world is to notice what’s happening in front of us in the material one.

LTP 25- Rethinking The Glorification Of Busy

In this podcast Episode, David & Caron Loveless discuss how to Rethink The Glorification of Busy.

The busyness of our lives has led to unprecedented levels of exhaustion, stress, and vulnerability. Conventional wisdom tells us to the key to sanity is changing or better managing the external chaos of life. But transformative wisdom tells us that our internal chaos is ALWAYS the key to changing our external chaos.

Listen to the Audio.  Click the play button.

Here is a brief summary of today’s episode of “The Live True Podcast.”  You can use this as a reference or reminder of key things you feel like you need to pay attention to or pass on to others, in the next 7 days of your life.

The typical conversation these days always start with the same question: “How are you doing?” And the standard answer is usually: “Busy… tired… exhausted.”

Can this be different?  Should it be different?

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Busyness and exhaustion seems to be the new merit badge of acceptance these days.

Here are three take-away’s you’ll find in listening to the audio portion of today’s podcast:

How To Get It Right When You’ve Been Wronged

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.

LTP 24- Finding Good News In Harsh Places

In this podcast Episode, David Loveless talks about how good news is birthed in harsh places.

Listen to the Audio

Here is a brief summary of today’s episode of “The Live True Podcast.”  You can use this as a reference or reminder of key things you feel like you need to pay attention to or pass on to others, in the next 7 days of your life.

For most of us, we’ve believed that good news is birthed in good places, not harsh places.  But Mark 1 turns that notion on its ear.

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Mark 1:1-4  The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:  “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”— “a voice of one calling in the wilderness/desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness/Desert, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

 I’m drawn toward the fact that the beginning of the good news… the birthplace of the good news is in the desert.- where it feels like bad news.

Listen to David’s examples, in today’s audio podcast, of his time in both deserts and gardens.

All of living, loving, & leading seem to flow on a continuum

between garden and desert experiences.

Garden experiences Desert experiences
Promised land

Lush

Abundance

Joyful

Easy

No mans land

Barren

Scarcity

Painful

Difficult

It’s interesting to me that our spiritual story begins in a garden in Genesis 2:8… and our biological story begins in a garden-like womb.

But, look where we’re first introduced to the ministry of Jesus —in the desert.  God’s Good News Tour doesn’t open on top of a scenic mountain or in a palatial garden. It starts from a place of isolated emptiness.

Listen to the audio podcast as David describes how he reacted over the years, to have desert-like experiences and what was the result of them.

 Luke 3: 4-6   “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low.  The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth.  And all people will see God’s salvation.’”

In your place of difficulty or temptation or hardship where you feel most exposed to enemies activity… God says make a straight path for me there and let me walk there…  let me walk in the desert place of your life and let’s walk straight into it and straight through it.

Here is another part of challenge of Luke 3: many people never step foot in the church because they don’t feel welcomed or invited.  They see the church as an exclusionary institution, that decides who’s right and who’s wrong.

The church often makes mountain tops higher

and the valleys deeper for people to get through.

It tends to turn the whole thing into an obstacle course.

But the job of true religion is to make it easy for people to understand and draw close to the very thing they were made for.

Here’s several things I had to ‘get straight’ in my desert…

A.   I had to ‘get straight’ in my mind that this path, while difficult beyond description, was going somewhere profoundly good and it wasn’t to hell.

B.   I had to ‘get straight’ in my mind that this path, wasn’t going to last forever…. even though I could see no other road ahead.

Jesus came bringing this good news.  And a part of what makes it so good is that it stands up to the heat of even the most difficult places.

Where is your desert?  Your place of need?

Wherever that place is for you, God says let me walk with you THERE, because I’m not ashamed of it anymore than I am ashamed of you.  I’m good news to you in the desert, as well as the garden.  I love you. I’m with you…wherever you are.

Here are some amazing words from Isaiah 35:

Wilderness and desert will sing joyously, the badlands will celebrate and flower—Like the crocus in spring, bursting into blossom, a symphony of song and color.  Energize the limp hands, strengthen the rubbery knees. Tell fearful souls, “Courage! Take heart! God is here, right here, on his way to put things right And redress all wrongs. He’s on his way! He’ll save you!”

Springs of water will burst out in the wilderness, streams flow in the desert. Hot sands will become a cool oasis, thirsty ground a splashing fountain.

The people God has ransomed will come back on this road. They’ll sing as they make their way home, unfading halos of joy encircling their heads,  Welcomed home with gifts of joy and gladness as all sorrows and sighs scurry into the night.

David finishes this podcast with a blessing for you in your desert places.

To find out more, listen to this podcast in its entirety by clicking on the play button.

Ask Us a Question

If you have a question, comment, or thought to share with us,  we’d love to hear from you.  Simply click here: “COMMUNICATE w/ David & Caron.

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If this podcast has been helpful & you’re thinking of someone else you know that could benefit from it, then click on any of the ‘Share’ buttons below or the one’s located at the top of this post.

LTP 23- Accepting Our Necessary Losses

In this podcast Episode, David & Caron Loveless discuss how to live through and actually cooperate with both little and big deaths or losses throughout our lives, so something even larger and more fulfilling can emerge from it all… and how the resurrection shows the way.

Listen to the Audio

Here is a brief summary of today’s episode of “The Live True Podcast.”  You can use this as a reference or reminder of key things you feel like you need to pay attention to or pass on to others, in the next 7 days of your life.

Let’s begin with my confession:  “I don’t like to die!”

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It’s no surprise that as humans we avoid physical death, like the plague.  But there’s actually a far more significant death that we avoid… it’s the death of our ego… the death of who we perceive we are, or think we should be… the death of who we think others want us to be or think that we are.  So let me try again.

“I don’t like for anything I’ve manufactured…. created… can take credit for… I’m attached to… my beliefs, my opinions… my compulsive thinking….that i believe enhances or supports my identity.. I don’t like for any of that to die.”

We have a fear of dying our little deaths but it is the thing that keeps us from growing.

5 Ways We Look for the Living Among the Dead

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:

Why You Should Embrace Your Flaws

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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LTP 21 Healing Wounds From Our Parents

An Interview with Francis Anfuso

In this very emotional podcast episode, David Loveless interviews Francis Anfuso on how we can see further healing from wounds that initially came from our parents.

Francis grew up in an extremely difficult home that people throughout the country thought would have been magnificent, but behind the curtains, it was everything but that.

Here is a part of his journey toward healing… and we believe, your journey toward healing.

Listen to the Audio

Here is a brief summary of today’s episode of “The Live True Podcast.”  You can use this as a reference or reminder of key things you feel like you need to pay attention to or pass on to others, in the next 7 days of your life.

We know that our pain can lead to our passion which can then lead to our purpose in life… unless we get jaded in that pain.

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In the interview, we explore some of these questions and more:

  • What does your journey look like when someone else’s script is informing your story, and the wounds remain unattended?
  • What do you do when you can’t even relate to God as father?
  • How can that be changed?
  • Can a person who has been through any difficulty in their childhood, reclaim any part of that childhood?
  • How can we process our experiences of:

A Wounded Heart

An Abandoned Child

The Neglected Child

The Fearful Child

The Embittered Child

The Abused Child

The Performance Driven Child

LTP 20 Our Vital Need For Soul Care

An interview with Dr Rich Plass & Jim Cofield

In this podcast Episode, David & Caron Loveless interview the counselors, whom they met with for more than a year, and who helped get them through their worst nightmare.

What does it look like to engage in the vital soul care that every person yearns for? What causes relationships and marriages to go from great intent to horrible experiences? What do leaders need to be paying attention to in their own personal lives and why?

Listen to the Audio

Here is a brief summary of today’s episode of “The Live True Podcast.” 

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In today’s interview, the following subjects are explored:

  • Understanding how the very core of our being and identity is completely wrapped up in relationship.
  • How the understanding of your core identity as a relational soul, is radically different than thinking that relationships are one of the many slices of the pie of your life… or one of many different roles you play.
  • What causes the soul to thrive vs wither?
  • How increasing one’s knowledge of God will NEVER bring about desired life transformation unless it is coupled with increasing knowledge of one’s self.
  • What are the danger points in leaders lives?

 Resources mentioned in this podcast episode:

  • The Relational Soul by Dr Rich Plass & Jim Cofield.  To purchase, click HERE.
  • You can find more about Rich & Jim’s ministry by clicking HERE. 
  • The softcover and/or audio version of our book Nothing to Prove: Find the Satisfaction and Significance You’ve Been Striving for at the Core of Your True Identity are both available now

And for the next 4 days only to those who purchase a book we are offering  special discounted packages that include considerable *FREE bonus material. 

To get yours now or get more info, click HERE.

To find out more, listen to this podcast in its entirety by clicking on the play button.

Ask Us a Question

If you have a question, comment, or thought to share with us,  we’d love to hear from you.  Simply click here: “COMMUNICATE w/ David & Caron.

Subscribe to & Share the Podcast

If you have enjoyed this podcast, you can subscribe by clicking on one of the below buttons:

Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes

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If this podcast has been helpful & you’re thinking of someone else you know that could benefit from it, then click on any of the ‘Share’ buttons below or the one’s located at the top of this post.