Connect 09- Marriage

Roles and stereotypes are naive
It's not my mariage is hard and theirs is easy, marriage is a function of what you put into it.

When we are born we have no sense of identity
Then we make an attachment- Out of that attachment we form a sense of identity- it's based on need. Many people never gain a sense of attachment such as families where connections are not allowed in the family. We go through this until we are ten.
Detachment- recognise you are a unique individual
(See Eat,Pray,Love for an example of this)

Many marriages are based on need. But moving to maturity we need to move past attachment. Attachment is not initmacy. Intimacy does not occur until the next stage.

There is the cycle from attachment to detachment and back again.
"I don't want to be alone." to "I want to be alone because you consume me."
(See Eat,Pray,Love for an example of this)

Connecting- What most people call connnection is actually attachment. Attachment is predictible, connection is not.

Unhappy and Stable Marriages:
-See marriage as completion; two halves making a whole and not two wholes coming together. "If you love God more than you love your spouse you will love your spouse more than if you love your spouse more than God."
-Characterized by relationship of demands. They see the other person for what he/she provides for them and expect/demand for them to complete it. ex. of one person always starting the conversation and the other person relying on them to do that.
-Think about marriage as natural and self maintaining. Think a good marriage is a gift. If only we find the right person than everything will be alright.
-Are reactive and not responsive
-Think "if you really knew me you would leave me."
-Wants to change the other person's culture. You be like me. (Colonial approach)
-Don't want to know how they impact the other person. Don't want to see who they really are.
-Is about control and dependancy (follows the pattern of addiction)
-Emmeshed, co-dependant

In Healthy Marriages:
-Exposes their incompetencies and emptiness. See exposure as an opportunity to move toward mature at each exposure. Not looking for the other person to complete them.
-Knows a good marrage is an achievement that takes a lot of work. (and a gift from God.) Understand our relationship is breakable. They are intentional, relational, and make counter intuative actions like forgiveness, exposure, and confession etc.
-Plays together
-Respects the other person's culture. Knows that they have no control over wheather the other person understands them. Studies what the other person does, how they are shaped, longings, history, reactions,etc (antropologist approach)
Ex of potato. Can find potato usually but if we peel it than harder or mash it it is impossible. Why do we peel or mash our personalities. Let the unique indiviual personality come out.
-Makes their own model. Looks different from other people's marriages. No biblical model for a healthy marriage. Corriagraph your own dance.



Other thoughts:
Men and women have more like 85% the same and 15% different and not the other way around.
Processing with an intravert or extravert is still necessary. Intraverts like to have limits on the length of the converstaion. Ok to say, "I want to talk about it but just not right now." as long as you make a time to talk about it later.
In marriage you make a vow to God and not to the other person.
We are maticulously made. We will never know the other person fully because they are infinately complex.
We don't usually need agreement. We need understanding.
If pathology is invloved it changes things.


Q. How does someone break out of the attachment/ detachment cycle? Attach to God?

Source: Hud McWilliam