A while back as I was reading the story of David in the Bible, I found myself noticing a biblical principle in how David handled an unsafe relationship.   In the realm of Christian relationships, I have seen many Christian women putting up with risky, harmful situations under the guise of being submissive wives to husbands asserting their authority as “head of the house”. 

The following is the story of how one who was under the authority of another, reacted when he was put in harm’s way by that authority figure.   


​

​When King Saul was disobedient to the Lord, the Bible says that the Lord’s Spirit departed from Saul, and he felt tormented.  Saul took his servant’s suggestion to have David come into his palace and play his harp for him, finding that the music that David played eased his troubled soul.   Because David met such a valuable need and Saul liked him, David became a “regular” in the palace. 

After David killed Goliath and established his reputation as a warrior, King Saul’s jealousy toward David became unmanageable and added to the torment he had already been feeling.  Though he was a successful warrior, David continued to play the harp for the king.  King Saul, obsessed with jealousy, became filled with anger toward the warrior-musician and was no longer calmed by the music.  So much, that he hurled his spear at David twice while he was playing the harp.  Because Saul knew that the Israelite people loved David, he sent him away on many war campaigns, hoping the Philistines would kill him.  Over and over again, Saul recognized that the Lord was with David, but because of his uncontrollable emotions, he hated David and treated him as an enemy.   

King Saul’s son, Jonathan who was also David’s best friend, tried to act as a mediator between the two and convinced David to come back to the king’s palace as before.  Strike 2—once again Saul’s jealousy got the best of him and David became spear target practice again.  Understandably, David decided it best to stay away from the king’s presence, when the whole family was accustomed to David sitting down to dinner with them every night.    Meanwhile, Jonathan as an optimistic family member, continued to hope that his dad had no ill intentions toward David.  

David decided to give Saul another chance from afar.  He had a special signal arranged with Jonathan, regarding Saul’s response when the king found David missing from the family meal.  David was highly suspicious that the vacancy would spark the king’s hot temper.  When King Saul noticed that David was missing, and Jonathan explained his absence, Jonathan became the new target for his father’s spear.  Now, convinced by personal experience, Jonathan gave the signal that began David’s tenure of running from King Saul.  

During the years that followed, much of Saul’s focus was fueled by his obsession with killing David, not on the ruling of the nation of Israel.  But the Lord continued to be with David during this huge relational conflict.  David even had the opportunity to kill King Saul twice, the first time cutting off a section of the king’s robe, the second time taking his spear.   Both times with the king’s possessions in hand,  he confronted the king respectfully, asking the king to consider his innocence, desiring the longstanding wearisome “hide and seek game” be over.  Both times, the king confessed his sin and proclaimed David’s virtue.    The second time he asked David to come back and called him his son.  Because David had experience with Saul’s words not ringing true with his actions, he refused to trust his words and continued to flee.  Sure enough, the chase continued until King Saul died.  

I see many parallels with this story and those in abusive relationships. 

1.     There was a pattern of abuse from King Saul toward David.   Abusive relationships also involve patterns of abuse, not usually one-time events.  

2.     Saul came from position as king, an authority figure over David, who was in the king’s service. The abuse was from one in an authoritative role over one in a deferent role. 

3.     At times, the relationship between Saul and David was pleasant.  There are times in abusive relationships when the abuser is nice to the victim, which serves to give hope to victim.  

4.     Jonathan, King Saul’s son, had a hard time believing that his father meant harm to David.  Those who are not privy to the relationship may not believe the victim of abuse, and may defend the abuser.  

5.     Saul revealed his anger to his own son with the same action of thrusting his spear at him as he had with David.  The abuser will often show his emotional reactivity to others around him.  

6.     David came to a time when he recognized he needed to separate from Saul to save his life.  An abuse victim needs to recognize that she needs to separate from the abuser to save her life.  

7.     David continued to honor the authority of the king while living in separation from him.  Those who consider themselves under the authority of their husbands can continue to honor their spouses while being separated from them.

8.     The Lord continued to be with David when he separated from Saul.  God’s favor will still rest upon the abused even if the victim feels the need to separate. 

9.     Saul admitted his fault and expressed his sorrow over his evil actions.  Abusers commonly apologize for their wrongful actions.    

10. David learned not to trust Saul’s words but instead observed his action when it came to reconciliation.   Abuse victims should pay attention to consistent behavioral changes rather than the apologies and words of their abusive partner before considering reconciliation. 

I believe the New Testament also emphasizes the importance of actions matching words.  The words, “I’m sorry” are relatively easy to say.  Saying “I’m sorry.  I was wrong.” is a little harder.  John the Baptist admonished his followers to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance”.  Repentance is turning away from a sinful direction and going the opposite direction.   In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told the people to be fruit observers in order to judge whether or not the tree (or person’s character) is a good or bad one.  Galatians 5:22-23 reveals the fruit of the Spirit as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”.  Each of these qualities are incorporated with actions in order to demonstrate these fruits.  

If you are in a relationship in which you are beginning to wonder if it’s abusive, 
ask yourself these questions:
Is this a pattern of behavior?  Does the person in question place himself in a position of ‘one-upmanship’? Am I and those I love in harm’s way?  Does the person “lose it” with others in his life as well as with me?  Does the person continue in the same behavior despite frequent apologies and periods of “niceness”? Do I really trust this person’s word?  

Consider the response of David, one often referred to as a “man after God’s own heart, as to how he handled the abusive situation in which he found himself.   

 
 
 

​By virtue of diversity, people have varying standards by which they evaluate or judge others, including their own children.  One of the problems is that parents often see their offspring as extensions of their adult selves, not recognizing that the offspring are separate individuals who are their own “works in progress”.   An adult judges from a more comprehensive mind than a child’s capacity.  When performance standards deemed worthy of approval are based on unrealistic parental expectations, a child will develop a sense of inadequacy.  

Sometimes this contributing judgment is obvious—physical abuse, name calling, shaming statements, “why can’t you be like…”   Other times it is more subtle.  A woman once meticulously cleaned and organized her new house in dreaded anticipation for her mother’s arrival, recognizing that time constraints had prevented her from organizing the side of the wrap around porch.  Her hope was that maybe her mother would not notice the undone work.    The feelings of inadequacy came flooding back with the completion of the tour, when her mom asked a seemingly harmless question, “What are you going to do with all this junk over here?”  Isolated questions don’t evoke the same responses as do questions that are patterns of pointing out deficits and imperfections.  However, an isolated question from an isolated individual can provoke a similar response when the person has been subjected to a deficit- focused pattern from a significant other. 

After Jesus was baptized before beginning His earthly ministry, a voice was heard from heaven saying, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”  Jesus had not yet “performed”, but God, the perfect parent, lovingly and verbally affirmed Him.   Jesus, in turn, continually sought to be in relationship with His Father.   

I’ve heard my pastor, Andy Stanley, say one of he and his wife, Sandra’s goal was to be a home to which their grown children would look forward to returning.  What is the key to being this type of home?   I believe it’s unconditional acceptance based on who a person is, not approval based on what a person does.  It involves recognition that each person is unique and separate and is in the midst of a struggle of growth and maturation.  

My teenage son was in drug rehab a few years ago.    Because one of my primary goals had been to be a “good” mom, the evaluation of that outcome was deemed by me to be the outward performance of my children.  And that performance looked pretty ugly…  As part of one of the family groups we were coached to own and express our feelings to our children as a means to facilitate healthy communication.  There was one feeling word, which was on the tip of all our tongues,  to be excluded:  that being the word, “disappointed”.  “Disappointed” is one of the few feeling words that comes back to reflect on the performance of another.   When one says “I’m disappointed in you”, the person addressed automatically takes the comment personally rather than considering the speaker’s actual feeling.  We were instructed that it was better to say, “ I felt sad about the (behavior) because….”

Also, as the more experienced person of the parent-teen dyad, I felt obligated to let my son know my views, and to give him advice.  The counselor advised me, “Just be interested.”  Interested?  What did that mean?  It meant I was to be a student of my son.  It meant not evaluating, but simply exploring, discovering who he is, what his struggles are, what he likes, what he dislikes, and accepting the answers in acknowledgment that he is his own person, not an extension of me.  It means allowing him to make his own choices, realizing that good choices come from wisdom, which comes from experience, and experience comes from learning from bad choices.  

When I consider the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, I realize that if I feel more free to be my best self when I am accepted and appreciated for where I am in my unique process of growth rather than evaluated as a “should be” completed adult, then when I accept others in their spot in the maturation process rather than make an evaluation, I also provide them with a sense of freedom in their journey.      
 
 

​As a recovering co-dependent, I know what it’s like to feel the feelings of others more intensely than I feel my own.  I had become an expert in pleasing others.  It wasn’t until about ten years ago, I learned the value of having a strong sense of self.  I also realized the disservice I had done to those I knew by not truly interacting with my authentic self.  But how could I? When I didn’t know who I was.  
 
When I first began my career as a counselor, I re-watched the 1999 movie, Runaway Bride, and saw it with new eyes.  I always liked the movie, but I have come to see the movie as personifying the “Being Known” vision of my counseling practice.  

​In Runaway Bride, the psychological principle that most rises to the top is that Maggie has no definitive sense of self.  Her dad is an alcoholic; her mom is dead.  Her identity has come from being a flirt and being attractive to men.  She has developed the ability to attract men to an art.  She seems to subconsciously pick up on the personality of her current man and to adapt her personality and interests to whoever her current love interest is.  Her first three wedding ceremonies reflect her absorption of herself into her all very different grooms.   Her current husband-to-be is a sports nut—his conversation topics, the engagement ring, the proposal, his analogies—obviously reflect his persona.    On first impression, Maggie’s most obvious personality characteristic is based on her reputation as a commitment phobic bride with her family and fellow townspeople joking at her expense

Ike, the feature writer who came to Maggie’s small town to write a story about this woman with the reputation of breaking men’s hearts, falls in love with her himself.  The difference is that he is actually interested in learning about her, and appreciates and defends what he sees.   While Maggie responds well to being “known” for a change, it is not enough to stem the tide of her “fear of commitment” flight pattern.  It turns out that Maggie needed to know herself first before she could make the commitment to the man who took pleasure in her uniqueness.  Maggie epitomizes many women, those who are accommodating, people pleasing, and conflict avoidant at cost to themselves.

Dr. Henry Cloud, a well known Christian psychologist and author, as part of his Language of Love series in 2004, gave a talk called  “No” is a Sexy Word.  In this talk he presented the common problem of single men and women being attracted to those who are not attracted to them, and not being attracted to those who are.  He suggested that this phenomenon was attributed to accommodation to the desires and likes of the other person, rather than bringing who one truly is to the relationship.  He likened the accommodation process to giving one’s date a videotape as a portrayal of one’s self, with the date pushing, “play” to find a blank blue screen, rather than an interesting movie.    

In his book, How Can I Get Through to You, Terry Real discussed how the socialization of boys and girls in our society contributes to faulty self images and subsequent disconnection between the sexes.   Research indicates that both boys and girls start off being “expressive, dependent, deeply embedded in the matrix of emotional connection.  Boys show a marked decrease in connection and expressiveness by the ages of 3-5, perpetuating the stoic code of masculinity.  Whereas girls, show themselves to be articulate and expressive about their personalities and relationships up until around ages 10-13.  At that time, they will themselves to become accommodating to others, as likeability takes center stage and their “voices” get lost in the shuffle.  Researcher Carol Gilligan writes, “Girls lose relationship in the service of maintaining relationships.” “Traditional socialization teaches girls to filter their sense of self-worth through connection to others, often at great cost to themselves, while it teaches boys to filter their sense of self-worth through their performance.  Neither sex learns about true intimacy.”

So what is the difference between accommodation and the self-denial that is a critical component of intimate relationships?   Self-denial involves choosing to attend to another’s world instead of focusing only on one’s own needs, wants, feelings, opinions, and dreams.  Accomodation is more subconscious, giving in perhaps to the pressure of the other, perhaps as a personal habit of discounting one’s own needs.   Love can neither be demanded nor given by default.  It involves an active choice, which can only occur when one has strong enough sense of self that can consciously be denied.

What about a lopsided relationship where there is not a balance of give and take?  “The extent to which there is a balance of love and power in your relationship is the extent to which both of you will feel valued, safe, loved, and ready to move into deeper intimacy with each other.  If your relationship gets too lopsided, tilting too far one way, then your love boat will take on water and eventually sink.” (Cloud and Townsend, Rescue Your Love Life) In most relationships, there is one person who generally takes more initiative with the other being more responsive. Cloud and Townsend suggest that “the less assertive person should ask herself and her partner, ‘if I did want to speak up more, do I feel the freedom and support from you to do that?” A healthy indicator of the relationship is to see if  “the initiator is always looking for, asking for, and truly open to the feelings and opinions of his partner.” 

My vision for fostering healthy relationships continues to be to help individuals discover who they really are and to bring that authentic self to connect with others in building genuine and emotionally healthy relationships.  

 
 

​Becoming more emotionally aware of one’s own feelings is one of the first steps to becoming known.  Many people seem to be on a quest for happiness, not realizing the importance of identifying  and experiencing  the many other feelings that pass through our “self” on any given day.  A few years ago the cartoon movie, “Inside Out”, came out and though it was supposedly a kids’ movie, I found myself identifying many lessons adults can learn about the unseen element of our emotions.

​The “Inside Out” movie personifies the emotions of an 11 year old girl named Riley.   Since the beginning of her life, Riley’s moments had been largely controlled by her positive emotion, Joy, with occasional appearances of her more negative emotions:  Anger,  Fear, Disgust, and Sadness 

One of the focuses of my practice is getting people to understand the impact of their emotional experiences on their choices, actions, and relationships.  I often hand out  a feeling wheel that includes at the center the same emotions as the Inside Out emotional characters along with the two additional emotions of Peaceful and Powerful .  (I suspect that Inside Out didn’t include these emotions because they are not as predominant in children as they are in adults.)    I’ve found the feeling wheel useful because when someone experiences an emotion, he or she can quickly identify which type of feeling it is, using the center of the wheel, tracing it to a more specific nuance of the feeling toward the outer edge of the circle.  In most interactions, emotions speak louder than the words.  Emotions contribute to vocal changes such as inflection, tone, and volume.  These factors significantly impact how  the words are interpreted.  I believe it’s very important to identify and express feelings, thereby making it possible for the listener to accurately interpret the message that the speaker is trying to communicate.  

In the movie, Riley’s “go to” emotion had been Joy.  When Riley’s happy life was disrupted by a move, the emotions of Fear, Anger, and Disgust came to the forefront, with Sadness trying to take the controls from Joy.  Joy prevailed for a while, by calling on Riley to look at her happy memories in order to add some joy to the bleak new situation.  Her parents responded well to her happy little attitude, but it was obvious the tragic loss of all things familiar had affected the whole family.  Riley experienced a traumatic incident the first day at her new school. She was called upon by her teacher to introduce herself and tell about her previous life in Minnesota.  The recall of past happy memories, brought Sadness to the forefront, when Riley was forced to face the loss of the many positives from her past.  As she cried in front of her classmates, she experienced humiliation, which she promptly internalized, becoming a new core memory.   When her parents tried to get her to talk about her day, Anger took the controls and she exploded, and ran off to her room, bearing the pain all alone.  Joy and Sadness got sucked out of the control room, leaving only Fear, Anger, and Disgust in charge to muddle through taking the controls which would impact Riley’s decisions in Joy’s absence.    

Joy and Sadness found themselves in a different part of Riley’s brain, winding their way through shelves of balls representing Riley’s many memories.  The memory balls were mostly gold representing joy, with a few red (anger), blue (sadness), fear (purple), and green (disgust) interspersed.   At first, as Joy and Sadness began their  journey through the recesses of Riley’s brain back to the control center, Joy dragged Sadness along out of obligation, rather than seeing Sadness’s value to Riley.   A turning point for Joy came when she realized that a precursor to one of Riley’s happiest memories, had been a time when Sadness had been present in the loss of one of Riley’s hockey games.  Riley’s expression of sadness to her parents had led to their comfort and support, which in turn became one of Riley’s core memories, colored with both gold and blue.   Once Joy and Sadness returned to the control room in Riley’s brain, she was able to express her sadness to her parents, and in return receive comfort, which was crucial to her adjustment to her new setting.  As Riley matured, her emotions became more intertwined and complex, thus necessitating the need for a more extensive control panel.  

Inside Out on first glance, may appear to be just another successful Pixar children’s movie.  Actually, University of California at Berkley psychologist Dacher Keltner was hired as a consultant to provide an understanding how emotions interact in the brain.  I found myself gathering some insight from the movie to apply to my own personal experiences.  Pictures can be worth a thousand words.


I’ve learned a lot about emotions over the years.  As a child and as a teenager, I just wanted to be happy, and naively thought it possible, having been brought up on fairy tales with “happily ever after” endings.  As a 21 year old college student, I experienced the deep well of depression, resulting from the loss of relationships when I transferred to another university.  This began a journey of me discounting my emotions, using my will to “act myself into a new way of feeling”.  Discounting emotions eventually led to the wasteland of numbness, in which I didn’t feel extreme joy or sadness.   I, instead, relied on my more automatic flight or fight emotions of fear or anger, and watered down versions of the other emotions  to get me through a “black and white” version of life.  Having gone through many personal struggles over the last several years, I learned the importance recognizing and expressing to caring friends and family the negative emotions that came as a result of legitimate traumatic experiences.  

Now I recognize as an adult, the essence of my character is related to my many memories.   Our ever-fleeting present is our opportunity to make wise decisions that affect our futures.  These choices are informed by our past experiences.  Sowing healthy decisions in our present sets our direction.    Every golden memory has  been touched by sadness, if for no other reason than because “it’s over”.    And in the blue—which have ranged from inconvenience to devastation—I’ve seen the principle of “God causing all things to work together for good”.  In so doing, those memories of sadness, often mixed with fear, have been coated with joy.   Somehow, those multi-colored memories contribute to a depth of life that is much richer and meaningful than the simple one-colored memories of childhood.    

As Riley experienced comfort when she was able to share her negative emotions with her loving parents, so transformation in individuals becomes possible when deep seated emotions and traumatic experiences, long held as “secrets”, are shared with caring, supportive others.  

As a follower of Christ, I know this Bible verse to be true:   “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.  Old things are passed away.  All things have become new.  (I Corinthians 5: 17)  Receiving God’s forgiveness for ourselves and practicing forgiveness toward others enables us to start afresh in building all those rich multi-colored memories that add up to a life well-lived.
 
 

A few years ago, Clay Scroggins, brought a message at North Point Community Church entitled "The Empathy Lens" as part of a series called "Bad Blood".  He referenced Romans 12: 18--"If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”  He talked about how a professional golfer not only analyzes a putt from the putter’s side of the hole but also gets the perspective from the other side of the hole.  Likewise, when making peace in a relational conflict, it is imperative to view the conflict from the other person’s side.  Clay referred to Brene Brown’s TED talk in which she listed the following four qualities of empathy:  1.  Taking on the other’s perspective as truth 2.  Suspending your judgment 3.  Recognizing their emotion 4.  Communicating that emotion

​When thinking through these four qualities of empathy, I can see why empathy, especially in conflict, is more easily said than done. 
 
The first quality:  Taking on the other’s perspective as truth.  We tend to believe we are the holders of truth and the thought that the other person might be the holder of truth goes against our grain.  The idea, though, is that the other person’s perspective is very much truth to them and that it makes sense to them because of who they are and their experiences.  Empathy goes much deeper than agreeing that their perspective is their truth—it involves understanding their personhood, their experiences, and how they’ve reached the conclusions they’ve reached.  That kind of empathy takes a lot of investment. 
 
The second quality:  Suspending your judgment.  “If that was me, I would have done _______________________  . ”  But they are not us, and cannot be expected to behave based on our personal judgment, which is made up of our emotions, personality factors, intellect, and experiences.   When we judge another, we put our self in a superior position, which is not conducive to building a connected relationship. 
 
Quality number three:  Recognizing their emotion.  In order to recognize an emotion, one has to have experienced that emotion themselves.  I may not have had that emotion in response to a similar circumstance, but I need to be able to identify with the emotion.  Perhaps it’s an emotion like “helplessness”—I know what it’s like to be out of control.  Maybe I chose not to respond to the emotion through escape through an addictive behavior the way they did , but if I understand what they’ve been through, I can understand why they made their choices.  Understanding is  neither condoning or agreeing. 
 
Quality number four:  Communicating that emotion. When the sender’s emotions are felt by a receiver and identified correctly and empathically verbalized, an emotional bridge is built between the individuals which is much stronger any intellectual exchange ever will be.  This requires sensitivity, time, and a choice to emotionally respond rather than react. 

Having many positive experience together as a couple can help overcome  the many obstacles that can sometimes leave a couple wondering  if this relationship is worth the effort 

​I’ve long valued positivity, but it was in 2007, when doing a small group study on the book, “ Calm My Anxious Heart” by Linda Dillow that I saw the direct impact that a positive perspective has on my emotions and motivation.  I read of Linda and her family’s experience living in Hong Kong.  Her first description described the gorgeous ocean views, the bargain shopping, delivery of fresh food to her doorstep, the ease of travel to other countries, their beautiful apartment, the perpetual sunshine, the wonderful public transportation, and their successful ministry.  By the time I read the description, I remember thinking, “Wow, I think I’d like to visit there someday.”  Then she gave the flip side:  the claustrophobic feeling she got from living in such a densely populated area, the digging through piles of clothes to find bargains, the heat exhaustion caused by the suffocating heat and humidity, the mildew on the walls, the geckos that crawled around in the house, the high crime rates exemplified by a prowler being their bedroom while they slept, the high cost to rent their apartment.  After reading the flip side, I felt my heart sink & and the excitement to visit Hong Kong had quickly dissipated.    I also completed an exercise in which I wrote my own positive things that were going on in my own life at the time, followed by another paragraph about all the negative things that were going on in my life.     Just looking at the positives gave me a sense of well being, that all was right.  In contrast, reading the negatives gave me a sense of hopelessness and discouragement.
 
The value of positive interactions in married couples cannot be overemphasized. 
​
John Gottman, one of my heroes in marital therapy, found in his longitudinal observation of couples that happy couples’ ratio of positive to negative interactions is 20 to 1, whereas conflicted couples’ ratio is 5 to 1, and 0.8 to 1 in soon –to-divorce couples.  Even in conflict resolution, positive affect was found to be crucial. 
 
Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Community Church, in his IMarriage sermon series a few years ago said that in every relationship, there will be a gap between what we expect and what our partner does.   The choice of what we put in the gap will contribute to the atmosphere of the marriage.  We can choose either to believe the best or assume the worst. 
 
A phenomenon called “Negative Sentiment Override” is prevalent in marriages headed for divorce according to the Gottman Institute.  Negative feelings color the messages in such a way that the hearer interprets even neutral or positive interactions negatively.  This would be comparable to assuming the worst about one’s partner.   A social psychologist, Fritz Heider, in 1950’s came up with a theory that was eventually called “fundamental attribution error”.  I mention this complicated sounding term because what it means is that people generally blame their own mistakes on external factors while attributing the errors of others on personality or internal characteristics.  
 
Another contributing factor to “Negative Sentiment Override” is a common cognitive distortion of seeing people and situations as either “all good” or “all bad”.  No one can live up to the standard of being “all good” & when the “bad“ shows up, disillusionment is bound to occur.  When one sees a person as all bad, there is a tendency to write the person off, as one who is condemned to stay the same.   The healthier way is to accept the good and the bad as being inherent in individuals as well as circumstances.  This is where the biblical alternative of grace and truth comes in – we can forgive the “bad” in others rather than condemning it as a characterological flaw.   At the same time, it is important to still express the truth gently by letting others know how their “bad” behavior affected us.  When we see others and ourselves in a process of growth, we perceive offenses as aberrations that are much more tolerable. 
 
Other contributing factors to this overall sense of negativity in the marital relationship according to Gottman are criticism, defensiveness, contempt, stonewalling, emotional disengagement and withdrawal, turning against bids for emotional connection, and the failure to make repair attempts during disagreements.
 
Since the path of least resistance within marriage is to gravitate toward negativity, increasing positive interactions will take intentionality.  
 
From what we’ve read thus far, here are some suggestions to positively relating in marriage:
 

1. View each other from the perspective that you’re both a work in progress.
2. When faced with a gap in expectation and behavior, fill the gap with believing the best about the other person.
3. Focus on the positive attributes of the other person, rather than the negative.

 
The following suggestions are from the Gottman method of marital therapy:
 

1. Continually build on the friendship foundation of the marriage by knowing each other’s worlds, the nature of each other’s hopes and dreams, greatest accomplishments, disappointments, and traumas. 
2. Build fondness and admiration by showing appreciation, expressing gratitude, and giving genuine compliments.  See your partner as better than they really are, rather than worse. 
3. Turn toward each other when the other makes a bid.
4. Make repair attempts during disagreements.
5. Practice really listening to each other.
6. Seek to understand each other’s point of view before trying to influence the other.  
7. When addressing negative aspects of relationship, use gentle start up approach talking about what you feel and what you need, minimizing the problem.

 
 
 And lastly the Bible offers these principles for positively relating to one another:
 
1.“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up….” I Thessalonians 5: 1
 
2. “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.”
Proverbs 19: 11
 
3. “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
I Peter 4: 8
 
4. “With humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”  Ephesians 4: 2-3
 
5. “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. “ I Corinthians 13: 4-7

Photo Credit
"https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/woman">Woman photo created by freepik - www.freepik.com</a>

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ​

I have had the privilege of seeing some really good marriages over my many years of life.  I wanted to take the opportunity to acknowledge these and the qualities I noticed in these special relationships.  

This picture is of my parents, Tom and Peggy Bryant, made on Valentines Day, the year my dad passed away following open heart surgery.  They were married 39 years.  My dad was a rancher/farmer and my mom was a homemaker.  What stands out about their marriage was the way they worked together as a team.   Even in her traditional roles of cooking meals and taking care of the house and the kids, my mom pitched in wherever necessary to help my dad fulfill his role as provider.  I never heard them argue.  He adored her, protected her while she knew that the choices they made together were in the best interest of her and the four of us children.  They consistently lived their lives according the values they had internalized from their Christian faith. ​

Ned and Louise Kerr were a couple who hosted me in their home near Temple, Texas almost every weekend for the year I was their tiny little church's pianist.  They were in their 80's and had been married over 60 years.  He was the cook in their home & loved to try new recipes.  She had Parkinson's disease and though her hands were shaky, she had her specific tasks that she could do to help them maintain their home.  They had a fondness for each other that radiated in the sweet way they spoke to one another.  Louise had a flirty little giggle and seemed content to let his misconceptions remain unchallenged.  ​

My uncle and aunt, E.L. & Wilma Fowler, are now in their 90's.  They married shortly before my uncle E.L. was drafted into the army in World War II in 1943.  Wilma was a Rosie the Riveter in California  when my uncle landed on Normandy Beach, later wounded and captured and  held in a prisoner camp in Germany for almost 10 months.  At the time of his capture, she did not know whether he was alive or dead.  They have been a couple with tremendous resiliency , both with joyful spirits and concern and interest in others.  As my aunt Wilma has deteriorated in her vision, hearing, mobility, and memory, my uncle  has tenderly cared for her, until he could no longer physically do so.  They are a living example of devotion.  ​

The three couples in "My Marriage Hall of Fame"  all had a strong Christian faith & never had marriage counseling.  I believe there are some Biblical principles when followed are also helpful in creating strong marriages.  I have included these principles on another page: ​