Tag Archives: love

What was I thinking?

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creating enduring relationships - CLEWhen you meet someone and fall in love, nothing else seems to matter. It is like being on love-heroin. All you want to do is be with that person. You say things like, “You had me at hello” or “You complete me.”

How quickly things change. After the wedding, it is not long before your first skirmish. Those mild scuffles escalate into battles that evolve into long standing crusades. Gradually, all you can think about is getting a break and you are asking, “What was I thinking when I married him or her?”

You vowed you wouldn’t be like your parents. As you grow, you begin seeing how your partnership is reminiscent of your parents’ relationship. When you are honest, you accept that you have many of the same traits as your mother and father. You are inexorably drawn to recreate your parents’ marriage and your family of origin. It is as if it is part of your DNA.

Mary thought James was so much kinder and more sensitive than her father. Her dad was an unhappy alcoholic who spent most of his time at work during the week and at the country club on the weekends. James was a caring people person. He not only did not drink, he was a pastor. James was very devoted to the church and spent most of his time faithfully ministering to his congregation. He numbed his pain by isolating and overeating. In counseling, Mary gradually came to realize that she had married her dad. The circumstances were opposites; however, she was seeing that she felt the same pain of loneliness and abandonment she knew as a child.

Why do you pick the partners you do? I believe in part it is because you are drawn to that which is known. You seek comfort and familiarity, confusing them with safety. Your partner is a composite of your mother and father. He or she is your personal consultant offering you the opportunity to complete lots of unfinished business from your childhood. He or she is your guide to learn, grow, and transform yourself into the person you are capable of becoming. I guess you do know what you were doing!

Watch for our blogs, newsletters, and workshops to learn more about how you can have the marriage you have always dreamed of. It may make sense for you to talk with one of our finely trained therapists to personally walk with you through your journey to wholeness and a life of joy.

Faith, Day by Day

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(This is an excerpt from the eleventh chapter of my soon to be released book, Grappling with God: The Battle for Authentic Faith. This chapter introduces the importance of living by faith day by day. This book gives an account of the life transforming work we do at the Center for Christian Life Enrichment.)

…I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances

Philippians 4:11b

 

Living by faith is not an easy road. Becoming more Christ-like stretches us in uncomfortable places, beyond our boundaries and over the thresholds of our old limits. We can no longer afford to be shut down in any part of our lives. To be like Christ is to be alive in all of it, in the joy, the pain, and the sorrow.

To live by faith is the process and purpose of this book, bringing together each of the stages of growth that we have discussed. We acknowledge that we are created to live in community; that our connections with others and within ourselves reflect the state of our relationship with God (and vice versa). We need grace and truth to open those places we’ve hidden inside where fear, sadness, anger, unworthiness, rejection, abuse, and abandonment have kept us from connecting fully with others. With grace and truth, we accept ourselves and each other just as we are.

Seeking to become more spiritually mature, we recognize the importance of our feelings. No longer satisfied to live in our heads in a world we think we can control, we risk feeling and expressing what’s in our hearts. Feeling more deeply our fear, sadness, and anger, we become more honest with ourselves and others, including God. Admitting our fears empowers us to develop the confidence to be open and vulnerable. Acknowledging our sadness and hurt, we affirm our hunger to connect with others. Learning to access our anger and express it responsibility, we assert ourselves in relationships without damaging our connections with others.

With purpose and intention, we embrace our responsibility to chose how we are going to live and who we are going to be. We give ourselves a sense of direction as we explore such questions as: where am I going, why am I here, what are my gifts, how am I going to give back… We commit to use our abilities and talents to love and support one another.  And, we know that questioning is necessary on the path to becoming more spiritually mature; that the paradox of abiding faith is also to have doubt.

No matter how far we’ve come, we remain works in progress. We continue to stretch and grow, experience setbacks and comebacks, and keep moving forward toward deeper truth, more authentic expression of our feelings, and greater connection within ourselves, and with others and God. In short, we grapple– wrestling with what it means to be human, to be in relationship, to be loved unconditionally by God.  The more we grasp and the tighter we hang on, the more God engages and invites us to fight the good fight.

In my book, Grappling with God, I will share about the time when my physical strength and athletic ability, which I had always prided myself on, suddenly slipped away from me, and I became more vulnerable than I had never been before. Watch for the early release tool kit offering a sample chapter and other resources to help you grow in your faith and love for God.

 

Authentic Love: The Journey from Infatuation to Intimacy

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When my wife, Sue, and I first met it was electric. I was so drawn to her it was as if nothing else mattered. We dated for a few weeks, got engaged, and were married nine months later. Often, this is the way 21 year olds act when they are idealistic and in love.

Romantic relationships follow a predictable path. People meet, date, become infatuated with each other, marry, mate, and then watch entropy erode away their illusion of intimacy. Infatuation carries most couples through engagement and the early years of marriage. We find at Center for Christian Life Enrichment that infatuation is a time characterized by magical thinking and the desire to be made whole and complete by their significant other. Some think the key to marital bliss is finding their perfectly predestined partner while others marry believing that the love of their life can transform the defects of their significant other. These fairy tales never come true. Infatuation only gets us in the game. It offers no assistance in architecting genuine intimacy.

At CLE, we believe intimacy is the result of courageous honesty, deliberate practice, hard work, and supportive counseling. It is not about finding the best partner…it is about becoming the best partner. It begins by dispelling the romantic myths of being saved by another—being miraculously made whole by your mythical mate. It confronts the mistaken belief that love is something you find instead of forge.

In a mistaken attempt to find intimacy, I did for my wife everything I was hoping she would do for me. I would wash the car instead of making time to talk. I would build a deck instead of creating meaningful opportunities to connect and grow as a family.  I had no idea of how little I understood about intimacy. I had confused intimacy with infatuation. There was no work in falling in love. You don’t form it; you simply fall into it. What I associated with intimacy was a copy of the enmeshment I shared with my mother. What I confused with love was the sense of being lost in another person, where my feelings were their feelings and my desires were their desires. I had no differentiated sense of self.

Enmeshment or fusion is one of the most dangerous counterfeits of intimacy. Enmeshment involves the process of getting lost in another as an unconscious way of avoiding ourselves. We confuse supporting another person with unconsciously trying to live our lives through him or her. Most all spouses and parents struggle to discern the difference between true intimacy and enmeshment.

One of the most helpful tips in building intimacy is that both partners must dedicate themselves to their own individual growth and development. I will not be able to shape something with another that I am not in the process of forming within myself. Intimacy begins with me. It is about me stretching and growing into my Christ-self; not, me finding the right person. As I am individuating and becoming more mature, then I am going to have more and more resources to invest in my partnership.

As I am becoming more and more like Christ, I will be bringing more of myself to my relationships with my wife, my kids, and my trusted partners. As I am growing, I will be expecting more from those I love and they of me. I will be speaking the truth in love when they are not living true to their vision and values and expecting the same from them. I will be taking pleasure in the journey toward genuine intimacy.