Marriage Retreat -Practical Tools

Here are some practical communication tools that we were excited to learn about at our marriage retreat at Deer Run this weekend. We wanted to share with you with hopes that it might be helpful for your marriage as well.

I. There are five levels of communication.

Sharing Cliches   (surface level)
Sharing Facts
Sharing Opinions
Sharing Feelings
Sharing Needs     (deepest level)
                     
Sharing opinions is where conflict occurs and a lot of couples get stuck there. We are striving, obviously, to get to the place where we feel safe enough to share our needs with each other.

II.  According to the book, The Voice of the Heart, there are 8 feeling words we can learn to use to communicate to each other about where our heart is at any given time. There is also the impaired version.We want to read the book and teach our children, so we can start learning to identify and communicate how we feel and learn to better understand each other.

Authentic                    Impaired
Sad                             Self-pity
Lonely                        Apathy
Anger                         Depression, Pride
Fear                           Rage, Anxiety
Hurt                           Resentment
Guilt                           Pride, Toxic shame
Shame                       Toxic shame, Shamelessness
Glad                           Lust, Entertainment


 III.  M.C.I. is a method of active listening that we learned about this weekend and also have been practicing in our marriage counseling. The object is for the talker to feel genuinely heard by their spouse. It is helpful to try to implement this method when discussing an area of conflict.

M - Mirroring -The talker shares small pieces of communication at a time. After each segment, the listener says back (mirrors) what (s)he heard word for word.

C - Clarifying - The listener asks, "Did I get that right?" or asks for clarification if necessary.

I - Inviting - Once the talker and listener feel satisfied that what was said was heard, the listener asks, "Is there more?"

My disclaimer here is that this looks a lot easier on paper than when you try to put it into practice. It's good to have a third party to help in the beginning stages, especially when talking about a sensitive topic.


IV. A daily check-in for spouses. Each spouse communicates 3 things while the partner listens. This should just take a few minutes to do.

    1. Feelings - Share your feelings (not your thoughts).
    2. Affirmation - Share something positive about your spouse.
    3. Needs - Ask for something you need.

This helps you to become present with each other and it cuts to that deepest level of communication, even if you don't have a lot of time. Be careful to "stay on your side of the street" for these, or it can qickly explode. This isn't a conversation. Just an opportunity for one spouse to share while the other listens.


Our teachers, Bob and Heidi Elder were so real and vulnerable. They were such a blessing and encouragement to us! It's really refreshing when people are genuine and don't feel the need to pretend that they don't have any issues in their lives. I'm finding that those are the kind of people that encourage me most.  Michael and I are striving to be real and to be genuinely known by others. God is revealing to us that we would love to be used by Him to intentionally minister to married couples.We pray that, by His grace, our marriage will be a testimony to His greatness and an accurate reflection to others of His great love for His Bride, the Church.