Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Marriage seminar


“Marriage Seminar”

            Kay and I agreed to be facilitators at a marriage seminar that was sponsored by our church. The good thing about being a facilitator is that you don’t need to be all that qualified.

            My job was to tell each individual in our group when it was his or her turn to answer a question from a booklet. It was Kay’s job to tell speakers when their two minutes were up. There are some women, uh, spouses who can talk the sheetrock off a wall. With five couples in a group, there’s no time for that. The time-keepers husband would come unglued.

            One major rule about each session had to do with saying only positive things about your spouse. And, you could only talk about “yourself” in relation to your spouse. If anyone said anything negative about her husband or his girlfriend, it was my job to put a stop to it. And when each person finished responding to a question, everyone in the group had to say “Thank you,” to make the person feel good about what was said.

            With these strict rules, you can surmise that the seminar was not geared toward marriages that were on their last leg. Facilitators are not qualified to handle stuff like that. Even if it’s their marriage that’s in a nosedive. The goal of this program was to make spouses more aware of their mates’ feelings. The way it was put to us is that we were encouraging “acceptance” of one another.

            Turns out, our speaker, Dr. Jon Anderson, said that you can’t change your mate. – Did you know that? If you try to change your spouse, the effort will result in both of you liking one another less. Apparently, you can’t shame or nag a person into changing. With enough firepower you can alter their behavior, but it will cost the both of you love for one another.

            Take Kay, for example. Before we married I never noticed that she had a problem putting things away. Perhaps, before marriage, she was trying to hide her aggravating behavior from me. Once we married, I began noticing things about her that would  register on my Peeve Meter. She could not put away her cereal bowl. It would end up on a coffee table, kitchen counter, or the hood of the car.

            The girl could not reseal a loaf of bread. It would end up opened on the counter. When I reminded her of it, she’d say, “I’ll take care of it later.” That was a bit off-putting, because Kay’s definition of “later” is “whenever.” My nagging didn’t help. It usually just made her cry. Kay and I never argued. We couldn’t because it made her cry. I can’t bear the thought that I made a sweet person cry. That’s why I would’ve made a horrible Daddy.

            Over the years, I accepted Kay’s propensity for leaving stuff out. I didn’t like it, but I accepted it. Eventually, I accepted it without feeling bad about it. It was just something Kay did, and I loved her too much to let it bother me. That’s called “acceptance.” And, yes, there is spousal behavior that a person should never accept. Leaving a cereal bowl on the countertop is not one of ‘em… which is fortunate, because Kay has continued to do stuff like that over a 46-year period. .


            There may be things about me that Kay has learned to tolerate. It’s unlikely, but possible. She didn’t mention anything to the group, because we couldn’t say anything negative about one another. It was an event where each spouse had to come up with things she could do to improve the marriage. I mean, “he or she” could do.

            The only way one’s marriage can grow is through the “acceptance” each mate has for the other. The only way that can happen is if, after every decision, they believe that the both of them were winners.  True, that happens only on the planet Nirvana. However, here on Earth, we should each try to move in that direction.

            By the way, in the seminar we were assigned homework on the first night. That was not mentioned when I signed-on to facilitate. The assignment involved a list of 11 questions concerning your mate that you had answer.  For example: Who is her favorite relative? What does she most like about me? What does she fear most in life? – That kind of stuff. We each graded the other. The highest score possible was 33. Kay scored 29 and I got a 26. Dr. Anderson later told us that the spouse with the lower score was the winner, because he or she graded the other more leniently. Boy, was that ever the truth. Kay cut me no slack.

            What I learned from our experience is that it’s best Kay and I not over-think our marriage. Right now we’re in a good place, and if we start trying to come up with ideas to make things better, we’ll get self-conscious about stuff and end up having to take the next course titled “Nine Essentials of Lifelong Love.” If I have to try to concentrate on nine of anything, I’ll end up in cuffs.

            As is, there is nothing Kay does that upsets me. And, she could say the same thing. -- There’s nothing she does that upsets me.

end
Mark can be contacted at hayter.mark@gmail.com. An archive of Hayter’s articles can be found at http://markhayterscolumn.blogspot.com

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