But you know what? At the end of the course we found that not only was it really cool to spend such a decent chunk of our time purely to concentrate on 'us', we actually came away with some interesting info.
One such topic was about the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Yep, we giggled a little at that too. I mean, gees, how serious do they want to be?!
You see the 4 Horsemen is a theory developed by Dr John Gottman, a PhD Psychologist known for his theories in analysing the relationships of married couples. He claims that he can predict with 90% accuracy within the first 3 minutes of a couple having a conversation whether the relationship will last the long-haul or crash and burn. Hmmmm...
Check this out:
So the aim of the activity was to firstly work out what horseman we were and we were then given ideas of how to deal with arguments as they came up. It would always frustrate me when hubby would walk away or shut down when we were in the midst of an argument. I would keep at him as this is the way I would deal with things (sound a little like your fights maybe?), when all I had to do was to let him take 20 minutes to himself and for us to both calm down and then address the issue at a late time.
Sounds a little too good to be true right? Well I'm the first to admit that we're far from perfect, but it does help to put a little light on the reasoning behind the way we behave in the heat of the moment...
You can read more about the horsemen here.
Which of the horsemen do you think you are when it comes to fighting?
It may sound like a cliche - but thanks for sharing! I enjoyed that video a lot! Made me think about the way I act in my marriage.
ReplyDelete... and I'm still thinking about it - about how I can eliminate at least one of the horses that keeps popping its ugly head every now and then. And I hate to admit it, but for me, (and I say it again - for ME, not my Husband, he's such an empathetic human being, it makes him almost perfect!) it's contempt. Somewhere in my upbringing, someone thought it would be a great idea to make a child believe she is better than the rest. Bad. Idea. :( as far and as hard I've tried to put that horse to sleep, sometimes it's there, ready to mess it all up :(
Contempt is a hard one isn't it? And unfortunately it's one of the ones that's hardest to get rid of as, like you mentioned, it's often been around for a very long time.
ReplyDeleteI myself relate most to criticism the majority of the time but I also sometimes see contempt come up and when it does I feel terrible about it afterwards...
Being married to a stonewaller means while he is shutting down I am often on the attack, not wanting to take 'time out' - Although I know that's the key to calling a truce most of the time with us...
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