Hi, this is Shawn Maguire with a New Vision counseling.live Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City podcast episode number 15 what hope you guys are having a great week. It’s been freezing in Oklahoma this week for reasoning. They’re canceling school because it’s too cold. Not even because the roads because it’s too cold, but we homeschoolers. We have, we have pressed on, we have pressed on and continued with our schooling. Well guys, I’ve been going over some amazing key six APP, six of them actually six amazing creek keys to create an amazing relationship. Realized he’s amazing marriage. Now how can you do this? Well, I’ve given you five of them so far. Five of the keys to creating an amazing marriage, and this is whether you’re an Oklahoma City, whether you’re an Edmund or around the world, these keys work. Now I know for those of us who are in Oklahoma City and Edmond, these make a big difference and they have for the past 25 years I’ve been in practice.
The first one is parties. How you say goodbye really matters, whether it’s kiss, hug, find out something significant about your spouse’s day. The second one is reunions. How you say hello really matters because it sets the tone for the rest of the night. And then third, appreciation, how you say thank you or you’re grateful for the person you’re spouse is, and this actually is an antidote or antivenom to the poison of contempt and criticism, which John Gottman, who’s a marriage mad scientist has said are the four, two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse that destroy any marriage. And really g Gottman is who I derived a lot of this information from. He’s been in the field for over 30 plus years. This love lab. He has studying marriages and what makes them fail and what makes them successful. So John Gottman, thank you for being the mad scientist who has added so much to the field of Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City and helped all of us help people’s marriages become great.
The fourth is affection. The fourth key is affection. Hello. Do I really have to tell you to love, touch, hold your spouse? Well, the answer is a Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City counselor. I would say it’s absolutely yes, yes. We need to be intentional about that. Some people like me naturally move towards touching towards being affectionate, towards using hand gestures and hugs to connect with others, other people, which there’s a large majority because of their past, the way they were raised don’t. And so they have to make more effort. But this is nonetheless vital to a healthy relationship that fits when we went over is date night, date night, date night. What did I say? That’s right. Date, night and night. Or you remember, remind yourself and the cast the vision in the future of the greatness of the dream that you said yes to when you said I do.
However many years ago when you married your beloved, the fifth one is amazing and man, I hope, I hope I can help you see that I should not need to pressure you to spend time with this amazing person you call your spouse. Now that may require faith diligence in a really long memory because your marriage might be in a tough spot now, hey, no problem. We can start wherever you’re at and you know you may be the person that needs more help. Again, go to our website and he was in Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City that live. We have a team of therapists and Oklahoma City, Edmond right now that would love to partner with you because we married biblical principles with cutting gets counseling techniques to help you succeed. So that’s your story and where you’re at. Great. Reach out to us from his love to help you, but for the rest of you, date nights.
Awesome. Six. This is growth time. John Gottman, we’d love to tell you that this is the state of the Union meeting. This is when we discover what is actually happening in our marriage, which is vital, which is vital. You know, my garage needs a state of the union meeting. It’s still has, it’s we’re, we’re, we’re halfway through, uh, four months out of Christmas or three months out of Christmas and man, we have Christmas stuff still there. Everywhere on the ground. I have things from when we moved in, it needs to state of the Union meeting, you know, every time we’ve had a garden weeding, it is a state of the union meeting. If you don’t have time to go over and see what’s working, what’s not, and identify like in a garden, the areas that are sucking and choking out life, what will progressively happen is the things that you want to grow, like strawberries, peppers, maybe blueberry trees, things like that.
We’ll be suffocated by what naturally happens in this world and that is weeds reads, grow without any effort. Weeds grow without any water. Somehow they mysteriously appear in place of what we planted and that’s how marriage works. If we’re not intentional about talking about the areas of our life that are good, then they’ll start to die. If we’re not intentional about bringing them in, then we won’t have them. If we’re not intentional about weeding out the people, the processes, the TV shows that really hurt our marriage, then it will continue to atrophy to continue to die, a slow, painful death, and I don’t want that for any of you, and I know you don’t either. That’s why you’re listening to this. So how do we have a state of the Union address? What does that look like? Well, one seat is a sacred time. It may not be your funniest, most enjoyable, celebrated Tory time, but it is a time that sacred to your marriage because without these times, without the resolution of conflicts, identification of issues, and the creation of solutions, a great marriage cannot survive.
Simply can’t. So this is part of you guarding, protecting and growing your marriage. So what we do is we start the process first. We make time to have it weekly. Then we start the process by talking about what’s going great in your marriage, what’s right about your marriage. And a lot of times you can start this with five, six, seven, eight identification of what’s right. What are five appreciations or admirations that you can give to your spouse or your marriage in general that will help you feel better about where you’re at. Start there if you haven’t expressed it yet, if it’s hard, write it down in advance so you don’t put yourself in a spot where you don’t remember where you can’t think of something and then your spouse gets angry at you because of it. Now that this has ever happened to me, but it will be really helpful if you come with something and you’re prepared to say positives at first.
And when you talk about problems, remember we want to externalize them. Don’t make your spouse the problem, even if it’s their behavior. So instead of saying, when you always leave the toilet seat down, when you fail to get the kids and are late, constantly say, you know, being late causes stress to me. Or when the toothpaste cap is off of the toilet seat, his dad is up instead of down tonight, slip into the toilet bowl. That causes me stress and I feel unloved. That’s you using I statements and not vilifying your spouse, but it’s taken the problem, externalizing it so that you both can focus on solutions and dealing with the issues instead of making the person a villain, which will put them in a position of fighting you instead of loving and working with you towards solutions. Look, you know, the great news is my, my wife’s here doing your quiet time right now.
So I’m sure hoping that we get double benefits out of this podcast today. And if there’s somebody that you know that this applies to outside of you, I know a lot of you will share this with your spouse, man encouraged, share this with them. Go back and listen to the five podcasts before this. You’ll experience tremendous benefit. Really. You will also, we have a free guy that if you go to our website and you sign up for it, and he was in counseling.live, whether you’re in Oklahoma City or Edmond, you can benefit from Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City we provide because there was a video sent to you via email each week for six weeks. That will encourage you and exactly what I’m talking about today. So you’re going to talk about things that are positive. Then you’re gonna start to bring up the issues. A great way to do this is to sit.
I like to set time limits. You know, I don’t, I like to set time limits because it helps me manage. John got me. I would say an hour because his love lab, that’s what they liked to do. But I would say, man, I don’t know if I can commit to an hour. That’s a lot. I think Gottman’s a man has all these great principles, but, but for maybe you, maybe you’re 30 minutes, 30 minutes is what you can commit to without your brain exploding more, without you feeling overburdened by time. And if you need more time to talk about when you can get that, uh, but you don’t want to manage your emotions so that these are productive conversations and you can have them each week. So if it gets hot as you share, take a 20 minute break and do make an effort to come back.
You may not be able to that day just to discuss a time within 24 hours that you can come back to this. Come back to this. Now, one of the things to do when somebody speaks, you listen, I like to time it. I like to use a technique called speaker, listener technique. If you can go online. Speaker, listener technique helps with marriage. It’s what I use in marriage counseling, Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City. People love it. Non Christian kick marriage counseling. People love it. Everyone loves speaker listener because it puts you in a position to succeed and win. It gives you rules to play by, gives you a time limit that you make. I say 20 minutes or less. Each person gets three minutes. You read the rules and then you say, look, your spouse in the, I say you are not my enemy, and what that does is it recalibrates that no matter where you’re starting at, it helps you to discover that’s not your enemy.
The problem may feel like you’re going to be somebody outside of your marriage may feel like the enemy, but you didn’t marry your enemy. You made somebody that may feel like you’re EMEA times, but, but for most of us, you did not marry your enemy. You made a spouse. So this is something that will get better and better over time as you learn the rhythms of how to navigate issues, how to take timeouts when you feel flooded, when you get defensive, when your emotions are so heightened, you can get one of the um, oxygen measures you put in your finger and it measures your blood pressure is even if it goes up. If it goes down, your measures, your heart rate goes up, goes down. Well, these are indicators. You might need a timeout because you’re getting too hot in the moment. So I just encourage you to consider doing this every week.
This is a six principle that we’ve talked about. It’s something that we really need to jump into. Now. This takes one hour. Gottman says, let’s say 30 minutes to an hour for a total of six hours a week for the six amazing keys I gave you to creating an amazing marriage. Six amazing keys to creating an amazing marriage. Go back, listen to all the keys. You’ll be glad that you did. Listen to it on your way to work on your way home to work. Share with your spouse. Share with your friends and for those of you who who are listening to this, let’s say, Sean, that’s great. My relationship or my marriage are nowhere near where we can even do this. Great News. Go to New Vision counseling.live and contact us. Let us partner with you. We marry biblical principles with cutting it’s counseling techniques to join you or ever you’re at in your story today.
We want to use marriage counseling as a platform to set you free live and to be loved in your life today because it knew it was in counseling. We help you discover what better looks like for you and then we equip you with the tools and resources to create it. Now, it would mean a lot to us if this has been helpful. Share it with your friends like us on Facebook and Instagram. It’s Nivision counseling. Okay. C is a handle for both. That gets the word out. It just is the way social media works and a big win would be to like our new version, counseling debt, live, Google or Google. Review us. Share what you’ve learned. Share the techniques, the processes, because we want to help as many people as we can. We want to spread the word that God made a way, not just through going to church on Sunday or just reading your Bible alone. Those are both necessary and great, but he made a way through people like us that can help you break free and doing those reviews really helps others believe the process is impactful and they really can change their lives. Thank you so much. Listen, don’t wait for a great day to happen to you. Go create one and let it happen to the world because of your decisions. God bless and I’ll talk to you again really soon.