I have to confess I have fallen short on the ScreamFree reading this week and so has Michele. I think back-to-school season is taking us hostage. But not for long! If you all are still trying to catch up, we can extend one more week if needed 🙂
We are on Principle 8 (according to the study guide which most of you probably don’t have but has helped us along here). The title is “Intimacy always begins with an “I” ” (keeping with the authentic self theme).
Some quotes from this chapter:
Intimacy is mutual self-representation. ASR in marriage is what we’ve been talking about and promoting throughout this entire book. It’s when an individual voluntarily shares her true self with another, warts and dreams and all. It is the movement of one person willingly making a step toward another, choosing to reveal her hopes, her desires, her preferences, her fears, everything. (p.204)
Beginning to pursue true intimacy is always a centered-self affair, with one spouse acting bravely to initiate with integrity. (p. 206)
Here are some discussion questions for this week – comment below as you feel comfortable:
1. Is there something you have been wanting to tell your spouse? If you feel the time is right, try it this week and let us know how it goes.
2. Do you have a hard time sharing with your spouse? Why or why not?
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Firefighter Wife on a mission to save fire marriages, nurture and encourage other fire wives and love on Jesus, my firefighter and our 4 kids.
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I started very late and am far, far behind. I’m reading every day and I love the book! Selfishly, extend it (so I can get closer to catching up). 🙂
I’m glad we are extending it so we can all catch up! And glad you found us!
I had a hard conversation with my husband last night about how I feel like our life is getting his leftovers because it seems like he gives his time and energy to everyone and everything else first and then if there is any left over he will give it to stuff we have going on. Don’t get me wrong, he’s very loving and we have a very good marriage. We also get to spend a good amount of time together. It’s just hard because there are so many projects we want to do around our house, which we’ve had for two years now, but we aren’t even halfway through because he keeps volunteering to help our families with their home projects (his dad and brother, my grandpa, my brother, etc…). So I just told him that I wish he would take care of our projects first and then help others with the “extras”. He’s been so stressed lately and I know it’s because he is spread too thin. I wish he could tell people no sometimes. It was so hard for me to tell him all of this because I didn’t want to make him feel bad or have him feel like I was blaming him for the way things are. But he said that he understands and he is going to try to reprioritize. This has been a minor problem throughout our whole marriage. He’s such a great guy and so eager to please that he will often commit to helping others when he can’t even keep up on our projects at home together. I want to feel like we are doing projects together and making our house a home, and he will tell me we will do all this stuff but then it just keeps getting pushed aside for when he has time to do it. I know this sounds ungrateful and there are a lot more serious problems we could be having, but this is something that bothers me sometimes so I felt like it was a good time to address it. It was hard for both of us but I am glad we were able to talk about it and get on the same page for now.
I have been afraid to come out and ask my ff more about his previous marriage because other than saying they had communication issues, he wouldn’t say anything negative about what had happened with his ex. This last weekend, we had a chance to have some honest, eye opening discussion about what didn’t work for either of us in our prior relationships and I told him I was afraid that we were almost sliding into one of the pits I wanted to avoid just because we hadn’t talked about it…
We have a lot more work to do together and need to each work on our parts of the relationship. I’m learning that because of his prior military service and excessive work hours while he was married (80+/week), he’s just not used to being in constant contact with someone. I’m usually the one who has to put limits on when someone can expect to hear back from me because of my work. Not hearing from him for days and at times weeks is NOT good for either of us and that was another topic we revisited this last weekend.
I always have a hard time confronting issues like this because I learned very early in life that it usually meant I would get a bad/painful response. It’s taken me 30 years to overcome that conditioning and come up with the courage to work on a healthy real relationship with someone who I think is worth the work.
Lori-how are you doing?
I am soooo late in this one but I just finished Chapter 8. It couldn’t have come at a better time for me.
1. Is there something you have been wanting to tell your spouse? If you feel the time is right, try it this week and let us know how it goes.
I have wanted to talk to him about something he’s done lately that was VERY passive aggressive. So, I did. It went over okay with him admitting he was doing it. Then, we got into a long discussion about parenting the children…more specifically, my interaction with his children. He tends to focus on what I’m NOT doing and overlooks all o the good things I am doing. For instance, his middle son has started randomly saying, “I love you Heather” which is super sweet, but he does it about every 15 minutes. I usually respond with “I love you too bud.” In his eyes, I should drop whatever I’m doing and fully engage his son and say it back. However, he didn’t see me give him a huge hug that same night, or walk with my arm around him last night.
2. Do you have a hard time sharing with your spouse? Why or why not?
Only face to face and the big reason is because he doesn’t want to have serious conversations at the end of the night. But, that is the only time we have without kids around us. I don’t know when else to have those conversations, so I usually just send an email or something like that. Depending on his day, he’ll either respond or forget all about it. But at least I feel better getting it out there.