This week Alison and I completed part one of a five week marriage called The Marriage Kit by Dr Byron & Francine Pirola . . . and you know what? It works!
Every year we have always tried to find a course or a seminar to do to fortify our marriage. As Andre Maurois said, “A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day”. Alison and I believe that the only way to have a good marriage is to build a good marriage.
In other words, we need to be pro-active when it comes to our relationships. Many men would never dream of trying to drive their car without a service very 10,000 kms. Without a service the oil could coagulate; the gearbox oil could become turgid; the spark plugs could start to misfire because of a build up of sediment, along with a hundred other things. In fact, not giving our car regular oil and proper service could destroy it.
It is exactly the same with our marriages. We need to check under the hood and get some new ideas and fresh lubrication as marriage and family are moving parts. The challenge is to keep the moving parts in the same engine, under the one hood. Just like a car, this means being committed to regular times of marriage help and education.
This week, I learnt things about Alison I never, ever knew. You would think that after 39 years of marriage I would know it all. Famous last words!
One of the assignments was to write out the things about my spouse that made me “fall in love with her”. We then had to read these various qualities out to one another. This proved to be a great talking point. The sharing of these thoughts and feelings was enough to start to refill the emotional love tank. We both felt it and I can honestly say our love tank is higher now, at the end of this week, than it was before we started this course.
We promised to give you a weekly report together so here Alison shares her thoughts about Part 1 of The Marriage Kit:
“We survived the first week of the Marriage Kit – ha, and without any arguments!! Francine and Byron have done an excellent job of putting together the first module of this great course. Module 1 deals with the topics of: what is marriage for; for better or worse; attraction and sexual difference; the power of appreciation and making your marriage a mission.
Each of the video clips is quite short and very to the point. I liked the way Francine and Byron use light but personal examples to get their points across.
A great start to the course, but nevertheless heavy going! Why? Because it required time and prioritising on our part. Although very to the point, there is still quite a lot of content to get through (as in topics) and quite a bit of discussing and writing to be done along the way.
But did I learn anything? Absolutely! Even after almost 40 years of marriage I gleaned quite a few good ideas and tips.
Without giving any of the content away:
– some of my assumptions about marriage and relationships were challenged.
– I’ve had a shift in my thinking about ways to do marriage better.”
One thing we both found is that you do need to commit to two solid hours, ideally in one block to get through the module. We did one hour on two consecutive nights. The single biggest challenge for us to do the course was gouging out the time and not being ‘too tired’ to complete it.
Subconsciously we seem to always put our marriages last. We have to stop this practice because in the process we actually put our children last at the same time. The greatest thing a man can do for his children is to love his children’s mother and stay married to her. Mignon McLaughlin said, ‘A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.’
Lovework
The good news is that you can sign up to do the first module of The Marriage Kit for free.
If you want to continue, it will cost $200 but that is far better than spending $50,000 on divorce lawyers. Marriage education is a great investment in more ways than one.
Happy investing!
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