1. Husband and Wife Communication

2. Let’s Keep it Simple 7 Points to Consider
The Ideal of Marriage - Expectations
The Attitude of Change
Where Do I Start
Listening Skills
Self Observation
What Can I Learn From My Spouse
Boundaries in Marriage

3. The Ideal of Marriage
— Expectations

4. What is the Big Picture
To establish the four-position foundation, you first must go through the heart of a husband and wife.
Individual Maturity
Mind
Body
Individual
God
Character
Family
Society, Nation, World
School of True Love
God
Husband
Male
Children
Wife
Female
To experience the heart of a husband and wife you must first take responsibility for your own character.
The Divine Principle reveals God’s purpose for creation.
It also reveals why that purpose has not yet been realized.
Therefore, even when we join as husband and wife through the Marriage Blessing,
we are not yet individually mature.
Only then can you experience the heart of children and the heart of parents.
Sun Myung Moon

5. The Higher Purpose of Marriage
Marriage is a relationship where two partners can console each other in times of loneliness, rejoice together in times of happiness, and help each other in times of difficulty. This is the life of marriage.
Sun Myung Moon GSG138-97,
God created men and women on earth rather than in heaven to realize God’s love horizontally… and their love can make a vertical relationship of love with God

6. Attitude of Change

7. It’s how much control we give them that matters.
Attitude is Everything
We all have our ups and downs in life
It’s how much control we give them that matters.
“Change your thoughts, and you change your life.”

8. Until you
are grateful
for what
you have, you will never get what you want

9. We enter marriage with dreams and expectations for a long, successful relationship where we experience
joy and happiness.

10. It’s how we resolve them that matters.
Yet marital challenges are inevitable in any marriage.
It’s how we resolve them that matters.

11. Through What Lens Do You View Your Spouse? It’s Your Choice to Make
Understanding
Respect
Acceptance
Appreciation
Complaint
Blame
Rejection
Shut Down or
It’s Your Choice to Make

12. The Impact of Marital Problems
Interpersonal relationships do not exist in a vacuum. If you and your spouse are having marital difficulties, they are likely to disrupt the entire family.
When your marriage is not going well, your parenting skills and your children will suffer.
The adults in the most successful families do not neglect marital problems.
They commit themselves to spending time together as a couple and working together to resolve any misunderstandings, jealousies or conflicts.
They make a commitment to communicate, praise, and forgive each other;
They try to understand each other; and
They routinely examine their relationship and how it can be improved.
Clearly, this is not a healthy situation

13. Where Do I Start?

14. First: Be Stubbornly Married
“Love is not always easy, so the key to real love is being too stubborn to let it ever go away. If you do not stubbornly insist on loving your spouse, then it is easy for that love to slip away. Love must be stubborn to survive.”
Ask God for wisdom to learn whatever you need to overcome relationship obstacles that come before you. Be stubborn in doing whatever it takes to be the spouse God wants you to be. Stubbornly hold onto God and onto each other. That’s what it is to be stubbornly married.
Kelsey Robertson

15. Healthy Communication is the Starting Point
Sometimes we need Marriage Counseling.
Many times we just need to learn the skills of Effective Communication.
These include:
Listening Skills
Self Observation

16. Listening Skills

17. Listening – With Your Heart as Well as Your Ears
I speak because I know my needs,
I speak with hesitation because I know not yours.
My words come from my life's experiences
Your understanding comes from yours.
Because of this, what I say,
And what you hear, may not be the same.
So, if you will listen carefully,
Not only with your ears,
But with your eyes and with your heart,
Maybe, somehow, we can communicate.
Herbert G. Lingren,
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Cooperative

18. How often have you heard these statements?
Effective Listening Skills
How often have you heard these statements?
You're not listening to me!
Why don't you let me finish what I'm saying?
If you only let me, I'll tell you!
I may as well be talking to a brick wall!
You just don't understand!
But that's not what I said!
Stop Talking
Give the speaker your full attention
Listen for what is not said, ask for clarification
Listen to understand, not oppose
Reflect back
Be patient, don’t interrupt
Men and women process information differently
They give and receive love differently.
Learning to accept, and be grateful for, these differences allow us to see our spouse from God’s point of view.
Hold your temper
Listen to why, not just the what
Ask yourself:
“Do I Truly Care?”

19. Self-Observation

20. We may even notice when we are truly content, peaceful and joyful.
We notice when we are putting on a show for someone rather than aligning our behavior with the truth.
We may notice we are pretending to be mad when we really aren’t, just to manipulate someone else’s behavior.
Or, we may notice that we are thinking negative thoughts about ourselves, making us feel insecure.
We may even notice when we are truly content, peaceful and joyful.
Practicing self-observation allows us to see when we are behaving in alignment with our goals and our values, and when we are not.

21. What Can I Learn From My Spouse

22. It is a school, a place where the
What do you think
marriage is?
It is a school, a place where the
men learn something they did not know about women,
and
women learn something they did not know about men
Sun Myung Moon

23. Has Your Spouse Become an Irritant?

24. What Can I Learn From My Spouse?
How to become a better me!!
How to give love
How to receive love
How to let go of my ego
How to see from God’s viewpoint

25. Why are Boundaries important in Marriage?

26. In a relationship there are two major areas in which we need to set boundaries with ourselves.
The first deals with our lack of control over our own character,
the other with our desire to exercise control over others.
The highest calling of a man and a woman in a marriage is the call to love.
Loving your spouse means being willing to become the best person you can be.

27. Setting boundaries has little to do with limiting others —
it is about learning SELF-CONTROL
And self-control means taking ownership of our own lives, so that we can grow in our faith and develop mature relationships with other people, particularly with our spouse.
Christoph Kreitz

28. Boundaries With Our Own Character
Self growth is our job and no one else's. However, this is not so easy because we are more concerned about the problems we see in others - particularly our spouse - than the state of our own soul.
We waste our energy on changing somebody else instead of investing it into the person that we can change - ourselves
Feelings
Attitudes and Beliefs
Values
Thoughts
Behaviors and Choices

29. Boundaries in Relationships means loving your spouse enough to change
Love means that you do everything you can for your spouse, and one of the most loving things you can do for your spouse is working on your own character weaknesses while at the same time giving up the desire to control your spouse instead of yourself.
For most people a marriage begins just the other way around - we try to work on the weaknesses of our spouse and have no desire to control ourselves.

30. Is Will-Power Enough Playing God Denial Withdrawal from Relationships
Of course, we cannot just will ourselves into maturity. Our will is not strong enough to deal with our weaknesses. We will always experience defeat if we try to deal with our faults using sheer will-power
Playing God
Denial
Withdrawal from Relationships
Irresponsibility
Self-Centerdness
Take Responsibility

31. Summary

32. The husband and wife relationship sets the pattern for the family dynamics. How the husband and wife communicate, show respect, trust and love establishes the pattern the children will follow.
Good communication is the lifeblood of a successful marriage, so when spouses stop talking at a deep level, their marriages slowly begin to die. After all, a marriage will only be as good as a couple's communication.

33. Some marriages need a resurrection. Others need a just bit of help.
God IS alive, and wants to be invited into every marriage to work His miracles.
Some marriages need a resurrection. Others need a just bit of help.
God knows what you need.
Even if your spouse is not open to working with you on your marriage, God can still help you in important ways (when you change maybe your spouse will start to change also).
Who knows? God does. Give it to Him. With Christ, there is always hope.
Cindy and Steve Wright