Well all good things this side of heaven must come to an end.
What did we learn in the last module of the Marriage Kit, Module 5 “From Me to We”?
What do we think of the online Marriage Kit?
I will let Alison answer first:
Alison: Initially I was surprised that Francine and Byron chose Decision Making as their final topic for this 5 week course. However as we got into it I thought that making decisions is one of the most important subjects a couple can learn about, and learn to cooperate on.
Did I learn anything? Absolutely! Warwick and I have been together for over 40 years and obviously have made a lot of decisions in our married life, but I still had some light bulb moments in this module. For example, I feel that I have rarely made decisions with the direct goals of: What is best for our relationship in this situation, will it actually bring us closer, and how can our individual values be met as we work out an agreement? I’m sure we have subconsciously made most of our decisions with those goals in mind, but it is so good to have it made so obvious, clear and direct.
If you have been following us on this five week journey, you would have heard us say over and over again how good we have found the online Marriage Kit as a course. Francine and Byron are refreshingly honest as they give examples from their own marriage to demonstrate their points.
Yes, The Marriage Kit has been hard work, and yes we need to put it into practice again and again and again.
We can all benefit with help in our marriage. The Marriage Kit has helped us improve.
Warwick: What did I learn in Module 5? Firstly I think I would have liked to have done this course in the first five to ten years of our marriage. I think we would have had a better marriage as a result as we had discussions on topics that we have never touched on and yet needed to. This last module on decision making was very practical. We could both see how our parental background affected our decision making both positively and adversely – even realising this was helpful. I could see how I had not consulted Alison enough and how much more she needed to be listened to in the process of making decisions.
One of the things we had never talked about was working out our common values to provide a framework to make our decisions. When our children were young we formulated a Family Mission Statement which provided a lot of shared values. This was a huge plus, but did not mean that all our values were necessarily agreed upon, or articulated. So we found the unit on values-based Decision Making to be of great value as it affirmed our existing core agreed values and identified other common values. This enabled us to put them into our framework for future decision making. We felt this tool was particularly helpful.
To sum up, Alison and I both feel closer together after doing The Marriage Kit. We would strongly advise anyone else to do the same. As Andre Maurois said, “A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day”.
Yours for better or worse
Warwick & Alison Marsh
PS: The Date Night for Module 4 was fun. Looking forward to getting away together at the end of this week to celebrate final week and date night of the Marriage Kit.
Dr Byron & Francine Pirola not only have invented the Marriage Kit, they are also popular speakers at conferences both in Australia and overseas. Their marriage formation programmes and resources have been adopted in a number of countries including Great Britain and New Zealand. Sign up for the Marriage Kit here.
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