Strengthen Your Marriage With a Meet Up

This program is sponsored by Focus on the Family and is made possible through the gifts of generous friends like you. I asked the question still years ago it what what is really made a relationship with his hard work.

But what what really made it work and what we came up with was we decided early on to be tough on ourselves and tender on the best Bill Ferrell joining us today on Focus on the Family along with his wife Pam and I'm John Fuller your hostess Focus on the Family president Dr. Jim Daly John you and I both know people would've hit the wall. Just a few months or years in their marriage and just become a place that they're not as happy as they thought they would be.

Some couples are facing that intense conflict right now and if that's where you're at. We want to help focus is here so please get in touch with us with so many great resources including a marriage intensive. It's four days typically and you spend about 3840 hours working on your marriage is one of the best things that we have going here focus. It has a post-two-year survey of 80% of those couples still married and doing better so I'm proud of that and I will continue to talk about it from time to time. Oftentimes husbands and wives. They just feel so disillusioned because there marital experiences not met their expectations and today were in talk with a wonderful couple about how how to really do marriage so much better if they been married for over 40 years, Bill and Pam Farrell have been here a number times they always get a great response to my listeners and I would be talking about one of their books called marriage meet ups a planner for couples who want a productive passion and purposeful life and you can find details in the program notes or give us a call for more. It's one 800 K and the word family. Bill and Pam, welcome back to focus. I love your enthusiasm is as genuine and I told him early in our marriage. You cannot drink coffee because you came in three Seven is very okay so early this morning is get ready for the show and is reading the prep Jean set down have a cup of coffee with me and that she was sent you.

I kind of explain the concept of marriage meet ups and she sent. I like that is like really lazy chores than when I see love the idea. She said we should do this please advocates today is intervention. That's what's funny. I mean, I think to the opposites. Mary not always and I get that but I think in this area.

Jean really connected with the concept of having a weekly marriage meet up and talking things over eyes like I've got so many meetings that I want to have you counter all the time some upsides to this meeting that probably are other meetings as well invest wisely.

You jot in your introduction you much. We've been married over 40 years, which seems calm and possibly gets her so fast, but we didn't write this book. Early even though we've been doing this our whole marriage is a reaction we get is really it's really good right now and we you even ask ourselves how we do this in a way that people can relate to because when you say show business meeting with your your partner. Those I have a lot of players on one with my spouse and when the whole covert shutdown.

Everybody was just home. We thought this is a good time to get this written yes it has been practicing this for long. And the reason why think people resistant is the big disruptor of intimacy is responsibility. So when you get married in your first edit your response, please often the site you just focused on each other and then every year adds more responsibility and pretty soon it gets in the way of intimacy. You know I relate to Jean's enthusiasm. It's like for her. It's a solution to something she's you know wanting let's clarify some of the things etc. how did the meet ups marriage meet ups help you to with conflict and disagreements over parenting right to the job we started before we were even some of our discussions we call it a 90 morning marriage meeting.

That's we called Monday no pastor. Okay, so I landed there was a youth pastor when he first started, so some conversations or even about, like when we you know how many so simple to tackle some big issues and sometimes it's a little annoying issues that you Pam and Zachary have this like connection to each other because they just get one another. Zachary has a completely different personality. For me, so I have to learn about Zach.

I don't instinctively get him so he's in high school and we decide he needs to get a vehicle before he leaves to college for me getting a vehicle is a very practical discussion to find something that's practical something is reliable something that will suit his needs, but Pam and Zachary heavy emotional connection to this vehicle so I self and I'm thinking we have to budget for this. This purchase we have to have reasons why it's a good vehicle and it needs to be relatively economical.

Those are not the reasons of Pam's bringing to then sound like a Honda or Toyota drive and the first time Pam said to me we need to get him a truck or he's going to be mad for years now.

The leverage like who cares if he wants me dangling. I trust Pam and I know Pam understands that better than I do but I don't like her reasoning that was bad and we could take our time over a few weeks tonight and so we just need to bring Zach into bed, etc. so he could find what he wanted to have your lifted track that's exactly what happened because Bill is very practical and deal Free Jacuzzi and Craigslist like his parents backyard swing wherever caregiving we have a little fun so we got on board and Zach to get that lifted track which for the captain of the cheer team at University of Louisville. That's the kind of statement you want to make yeah I'm a man's man. I can like throw girls and raise them over my head on national TV, larger than life is ever dropped his never jot curious about that. He just transitioned 10 years being strength coach at he did a back flip and I lead the crowd in the ARD cards. So let's talk about the three components of marriage. What are the three components so the first of which I actually think the most important one is affirmation because this meeting has to be different than every other meeting you have when you go to business meeting with business partners. You're not worried about the emotional climate of your relationship you not worried about were done with this meeting. Are we going to like each other enough that we would like to make love to one another but doesn't come up in business.

Hopefully your marriage is vital that I wanted one things I learned early as I have to set a tone with Pam that says the only reason I'm having this meeting with you is because I love you enough to connect my whole life to you. So the affirmation in this meeting starts with a prayer with one another and a complement to either something I love about you that I've seen this week or reminder of why I married you, so it sets the tone that I am glad to be here because of who you are beautiful example. That's affirmation what's another two of you have these habits as if you can organize your life. You have to develop habits like doing your budget some inspirational activity in life according your calendar for the week is not an inspirational thing. Identify what projects you have to finish this week is a couple of those are just the work of marriage and if you can turn those into habits where it's not.

It's on insult I asked you about your schedule this week it's on insult were talking about money. It's not that I hate the way you spend money and I want to tell you right now. It's how do we manage our money in a way that works if you develop those habits, you take some of the emotional steam out of it right, plus the other thing that I wish I'd known earlier in marriage is the general rule in life is your emotions. Always follow your decisions. So if you can take the decisions of your marriage and turn them into habits where every week you're effective at making decisions together creates an emotional environment between the two of you that satisfy and if you're not good at making decisions build resentment and it builds this common negative tone so 20 years in the marriage you now you like. I don't like each other, why it's probably because you weren't good at making decisions along the way. So the emotional atmosphere just he wrote that's good. Also part is you pull forward anything that was not finished selling unfinished decision on an unfinished attitude or heart ache.

You don't just like she evident that the right you just move forward, we can say is this a good time to talk and for that money thing. Sometimes it's a long and sometimes it's like, okay, is this a week I can spend money or not and that's really helpful because there are some things in life you can't solve. If you have a special needs child solve a child right to mention we were in the tail end of caregiving couldn't solve my parents.

They just their needs are gone higher than they used to be in have to endure it, not solve it. And if you can bring it forward. You can say we think he prayed about this because we don't have a solution.

You know it's got some time limit, but you don't know how much that together but the hardest things to maintain. I think in marriage is the notion really better together.

It's a great goal yeah is the right one. As you get more responsibility tends to make you more independent.

So saying we don't to do about this, but were in it together is a good way to remind template like that makes me happy is the actual template that we have use for 42 years so these are the components that we've seen work for us so we like to say coffee plus conversation equals connection really Water. That's affirmation habits, affections, third inspection so that's parts is we decide what day we can have what we call red hot like a business meeting for me so that's a part of the cell bookend affection. Early you know you get that prayer that verse that company we pray over each other and we thank each other for something we saw during the marriage meet at cell cans of love surrounded by a whole lot of productive work like the affectionate part of marriage.

Early on, it's easy to do, the longer you're married, more deliberate, it needs to be subject to keep dating your spouses because you decided to write if you keep expressing affection to one another in you private or public, it's because you chose to. If you set a legacy for your kids and grandkids that they see that your love it's because you chose to because again, over time, you tend to follow you around if you don't find it, and so keeping affection on the forefront we we never ended. Meeting with okay were done we always ended with thank you for spending this time.

Thank you for being this person right here in my life and pray for each other in case it sets a tone that we could have another one of these events tend to like placements from time during the cold years we had bistro undergrad