The Fun Factor from MarriageToday on Vimeo.

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When I woke up this morning I was met by wife’s voice talking to someone on the phone as she said “that’s personal responsibility”.  As you may know Lorrie and I are marriage and relationship coaches and personal responsibility, the power of one, is a session we teach from Gary Smalley’s book The DNA of Relationships. We had recently shared this session with a group and I personally have been meditating on the subject for a few days. When I heard Lorrie say this it immediately triggered a series of thoughts in me that went like this:

“I am responsible for my actions today. I am personally responsible for my happiness. I am responsible for spending time in God’s word and prayer. If it happens it’s because I did it. If it does not it’s because I didn’t. No one makes me happy or sad today. I won’t give that power away…to anyone. I am personally responsible for whether I exercise today or not , whether I spend quality time with my kids and whether I talk to my wife. I am responsible for motivating myself today, for creating the personal drive to do what needs to be done and go forward…”

The thoughts went on and on and I began to see all of the areas that I am personally responsible for – that I have control over.  Things that I once waited for others to provide are no longer in their hands. I am the one I’ve been waiting for. I am the one who determines how I react in every situation and circumstance, I am the one who chooses the words that come out of my mouth, the actions that I take and the thoughts that I think…I am the ONE. Therefore, I and no one else have to take hold of the reigns of my life and start steering this wagon.

Now, please don’t misinterpret this as putting yourself in the place of God or some type of self worship. To do so is to miss the point entirely. We will each stand before the Lord one day to give account for how we lived our lives, what we did for Him. At that point there will be no one (you know all of those people who “made” you unhappy and “hindered” your progress like your wife and children or that mean boss, your parents, your pastor or a co-worker) to stand by your side and explain why you didn’t do it God’s way.  You see you are personally responsible for your walk with the Lord. No one can make you love Him and when you are His, no one can separate you from Him. Either way the central figure in the conversation is you – what will you choose? What have you done with the time you’ve been given? What will you do going forward. When will you stop blaming everyone else and point the finger squarely where it belongs…at you. We get angry, emotional and reactionary because we constantly give our power away to other people and say things like “look what you made me do!”, “If the kids would just (fill in the blank) then I would/could  (fill in the blank)” or “ If only you would (fill in the blank) then I would be happy”. How long will you allow yourself to be held hostage to emotions, actions, thoughts and reactions that are like a runaway train with no brake? You are the brake. You are the one you’ve been waiting for.

Popular Sanguine: Fun, lively, entertaining talker, looking for the next party. (aka Tigger)

Powerful Choleric: Dynamic, active, strong-willed leader, looking for the club that needs a president. (aka Rabbit)

Perfect Melancholy: Deep, thoughtful, creative poet waiting for someone to listen to and understand them. (aka Eeyore)
Peaceful Phlegmatic: Low-key, easygoing, relaxed peace maker looking for a comfortable place to sit down. (AKA Pooh)

***Think I’ll join Pooh for some honey and we’ll have our little party of two!

Lorrie mc

Below is a great worksheet experience on how to identify your Core Relational Fears, which was discussed on the Joyce Meyers show and in the DNA of Relationship resources. Please download the following PDF, which is the full chapter out of Michael and Amy Smalley’s Marriage Restoration Retreat Training Manual on Core Fears. It will give you great insight on Core Fears and how to identify your own Core Fears when you get in to conflict:

To make sure you understand the dance, let’s take a look at what the Fear Dance might look like for you.

1. You hurt.

What does your hurt look like? Think of the range of emotions you feel when you are wounded: bewilderment, sadness, disconnection, anger, confusion, worry, rage, frustration, horror, embarrassment. Those are just a handful of the words that could describe your real-life hurts.

2. You want.

When you hurt, you want a solution. You want things that will make you feel better. Sometimes you might think that eating will make you feel better, shopping will replace the hurt, focusing on the children or other things will make you forget your troubles, drinking will dull the pain. You spin lists of things that you believe would satisfy your wants. Or you reduce the conflict to that one, solitary thing that you believe you need to feel satisfied: if only the other person would change so that you could feel better.

Without realizing it, you often expect that the other person will change to satisfy you and give you what you want. You see that person both as your problem and as your solution: You think, If only my spouse would change. Or, If only I had a different boss, I would get the promotion at work. Or, If only she would just … Or, If only my friends would … The end of that sentence is always: then I could be happy.

Do you see the common thread in all this thinking? Two words: misplaced expectations. When you expect people, places, and things to fulfill your wants, you will be disappointed. And anytime you put your expectations for help in the wrong place, the result is fear.

Our Wants

ACCEPTANCE – I want to be warmly received without condition.

GRACE – I want something good (e.g., forgiveness) that I don’t deserve.

CONNECTION – I want to be united to others.

COMPANIONSHIP – I want deep, intimate relationships.

SUCCESS – I want to achieve or accomplish something.

SELF-DETERMINATION – I want to have independence and free will.

UNDERSTANDING – I want to be known.

LOVE – I want to feel attractive to others.

VALIDATION – I want to be valued for who I am.

COMPETENCE – I want to have skills and ability that bring success.

RESPECT – I want to be admired and esteemed.

WORTH – I want to feel important.

HONOR – I want to feel like a priceless treasure.

COMMITMENT – I want to have unconditional security in relationships.

SIGNIFICANCE – I want to have meaning and purpose.

ATTENTION – I want to be noticed.

COMFORT – I want to feel a sense of well-being.

SUPPORT – I want to be cared for.

APPROVAL – I want to be liked and accepted.

WANTED – I want to be sought after.

SAFETY – I want to feel protected and secure.

AFFECTION – I want to feel fondness and warmth.

TRUST – I want to have faith in others.

HOPE – I want confidence that I will get what I love and desire.

JOY – I want to feel satisfied and happy.

3. You fear.

Through thousands of marriage intensives, both at our counseling centers and with people around the world, we have come to realize that when a conflict stirs powerful emotions of hurt and want, it also touches specific fears. Think about your own troubled relationships. You want to connect, but you fear you’re not attractive enough (or competent enough or smart enough or whatever). You want to be accepted, but you fear you’re not good enough. You want respect, but you fear the other person will look down on you. You want to control your situation, but you fear you are powerless.

Do you see how your fears actually reflect your wants? When you feel your wants won’t be fulfilled, you experience fear:

“We can’t live without ________. So we fear ________ “(You fill in the blanks)

Acceptance – Rejection

Grace – Judgment

Connection – Disconnection

Companionship – Loneliness

Success – Failure

Self-Determination – Powerlessness

Understanding – Being misunderstood

Love – Being scorned

Validation – Being invalidated

Competence – Feeling defective

Respect – Inferiority

Worth – Worthlessness

Honor – Feeling devalued

Dignity – Humiliation

Commitment – Abandonment

Significance – Feeling unimportant

Attention – Feeling ignored

Support – Neglect

Approval – Condemnation

Wanted – Feeling unwanted

Safety – Danger

Affection – Feeling disliked

Trust – Mistrust

Hope – Despair

Joy – Unhappiness

Even though we have listed twenty-five wants and fears here, Greg and Bob’s team found that all of our deepest desires stem from our desires for connection and control. Our deepest fears, then, are the fear of losing connection and losing control.

4. You react.

If you are like most people, you consciously and unconsciously fall into well-worn patterns of reacting when someone pushes your fear button. You’ll do anything to soothe your hurt. You’ll do anything to avoid the awful feeling of want. You’ll do or say anything to calm your fear.

More often than not, your emotions and thinking result in behavior that damages your relationships. When you fear that your wants will not be fulfilled, you react. You may fear losing control, so you try to seize control.

You may fear losing connection, so you try to seize connection. Our team describes these reactions as your attempt to become the broker for your own wants. You desperately want your way to be sovereign, to overcome your feelings of helplessness.

This means that it’s not merely your core fear that disrupts and injures your relationships. It’s how you choose to react when someone pushes your fear button. Most of us use unhealthy, faulty reactions to deal with our fear, and as a result we sabotage our relationships.

For those who consider divorce to be an easy answer to marriage problems there is an increasing amount of evidence to the contrary. First of all, the damage done by divorce is devastating. Research has proven that the damage of divorce on children not only lasts for a lifetime, but is also transferred to their children. Adults tell me that going through a divorce is worse than death. Businesses experience up to two years in lost productivity from employees going through a divorce.

Also, more recent research proves that the vast majority of people who divorce are no happier than unhappy couples who stay married. The reason for this is because when divorce occurs you simply exchange one set of problems for new ones.

Another fascinating discovery is that among unhappy couples who stayed married five years later almost eighty percent rated their marriages as happy. The greatest turnaround was reported by couples who were the unhappiest five years earlier.

No fault divorce came to us with the promise that it would make divorce less common and less painful. What a lie! Divorce has become an epidemic and it is still devastating. The legal conveniences of no fault divorce can in no way counteract the serious emotional consequences on adults and children.

In fact, the greatest marriages I’ve ever seen are those that have gone through very difficult times and have lasted through them.

Every marriage goes through difficult times. In fact, the greatest marriages I’ve ever seen are those that have gone through very difficult times and have lasted through them. This is certainly true for Karen and me. We have now been married for thirty-three years and have a great marriage. On the way here, we’ve had some very tough times and were on the brink of divorce almost thirty years ago. The choice to stay together has paid huge dividends.

If you want to have a happy life and marriage lose the word divorce and don’t believe the lie that it brings happiness. In most cases, divorce is the answer to marriage problems in the same way that cutting your arm off is the answer to a broken bone.

Our society is reeling under the effects of broken homes and broken hearts. Many today are fearful of getting married because of all the pain they see. The truth is marriage works when you enter into it with a firm commitment. The vows we say during our wedding ceremonies are designed for this purpose. When we say, “For better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, til death do us part…”, we are making an essential commitment that lays a firm foundation for a successful marriage.

These vows worked for many years in our country until the lie of easy divorce took hold. Since then, it has been a trail of tears. Spare yourself the heartache. Tough it out…and when the devil tells you the lie about easy divorce don’t believe it.

You feel stuck.  Your marriage is no where near what you dreamed it would be.  Your satisfaction has dropped to an all time low.  What do you do now?

The greatest advice no one wants to hear is that of taking personal responsibility for your own thoughts, actions, and emotions.  When your spouse is hurting your feelings or frustrating you, it is difficult to hear someone say, “I hear what you’re saying, but where do you need to change?”  But this question is exactly the question that is going to get your relationship headed in the right direction.

Until you recognize that God alone changes people (especially your spouse), you will remain stuck in your relationship.  The worst posture we can take in our marriage is when we point the finger and blame.  When we look at our spouse and think, “You are both the problem and the solution to my sadness.”  What this means is that we look at our spouse’s poor behavior and believe that if only they would change, then we could be happy.  But this is a lie!

The only thing you can do to truly make an impact on your marriage is work night and day on being the best husband or wife possible.  What other choice do you have?  If you enter into the dysfunction of your spouse, then things are guaranteed to get worse.  If you decide to do the right thing (patience, mercy, kindness, forgiveness) then at least you are setting up the relationship to change for the better.

What do you think keeps you from working on yourself?

This weekend I learned something that I have known for some time, but never fully understood until yesterday. That is, you cannot control your spouse. We strive for control all the time in our lives. We want to control as much of our worlds as possible. The thought of a boss, parent or significant other controlling us is sometimes a difficult pill to swallow, especially if you are married. In marriage and in life, I believe that the driving force behind control is fear. Fear of losing, fear of failing, fear of being hurt, fear of repeated abuse, fear of being cheated on, fear about your kids…the list of fears goes on and on. But yesterday, while working with another couple and then talking to my wife afterward, my eyes were really opened to how much about our spouses is out of our control. At the same time, it also opened my eyes to the power of what we can control.

Us guys (and some of you ladies, too!) tend to use control as a means to get our spouse or other people to do what we want them to do. Control says “I am afraid of that relationship” so I’m going to try to negatively influence and/or impact that relationship. Control says “I’m afraid you are going to cheat on me” so I won’t let you go anywhere or do anything.  Control says “I’m afraid you won’t do it the way that I want you to” So I’m going to micro-manage every aspect of what you are doing. Here’s the truth, you can’t control the way that your spouse thinks or control who their friends are. If you do, they will find ways to do so without you knowing or bluntly go against your wishes. You can’t control the things they may say when you are not around (or vent about you to that fiend, I mean “friend”, you don’t like). You can’t make them love you.  You can’t make them love God …Whether you like it or not, there are some areas in your marriage and in your spouse that you cannot control. Unfortunately, we can get so busy trying to control people and situations and things that we stop living. I am finding that if we would back up from our control and deal with the real problem–our fear–we just might find ourselves better than we ever thought we could be. Check out this scripture from 1 John 4:18

There is no fear in love; but perfect love cast out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. -KJV

There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life-fear of death, fear of judgment-is one not yet fully formed in love. -The Message

Verse 10 of that same chapter says something I think is pretty amazing;

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the payment for our sins. -KJV

Since I can’t control her, I have to focus on the one thing that I know I can control…ME! We didn’t come to God loving Him from the beginning, He loved us first and that love draws us to Him. The more we get to know Him the closer we get and the more we come to love Him back. We have to do the same with our spouses. We have to love them first and trust God to make the changes that need to happen. When we love our spouses the way God shows us to and trust Him with their lives, we win. We can be sure that God will work it out in them or in us. Either way, we win.–David