Peace in the world begins with peace in the family.
This is one of the fundamental principles of the Baha’i Faith, and yet how difficult it is to do!
HOW DO WE STICK THROUGH THE HARD TIMES?
We are given a clear blueprint on how to end a relationship through every media outlet we have. Movies, TV shows, newspapers and music all teach us to crave the euphoric just-fallen-in-love stage and to run as far away as we can from any sign of problems.
Where do we learn to call on the strength to sludge through the daily drudgery and terrible heartbreak that comes from giving your heart to someone? If all we see is to run, how do we learn to stick through the hard times?
PROBLEMS FOLLOW YOU, NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO
We usually marry people who are our opposites. We are attracted to the qualities in them that we need to develop in ourselves. This brings our own personal issues into our face twenty-four hours a day. There is no escaping from ourselves, not even if we run away from relationships. The problems will follow us wherever we go and we will end up repeating the same relationship with a different person.
MARRIAGE BUILDERS
Dr. Willard Harley, author of a dozen marriage books and the popular Marriage Builders website, teaches the steps on how to fall in love again with your spouse. We all think that love is just a mysterious coincidence, but in fact there are very specific things that we do that make someone fall in love with us or help us to fall in love with someone. They are not easy things to do. But they do work.
15 HOURS A WEEK
One of the key things that I learned from Dr. Harley is that in order for a relationship to thrive – and to feel in love with each other – you need to spend at least 15 hours a week together.
At first I was shocked when I read this. 15 hours a week? How are we supposed to do that? Somehow I expected that we could live off of the fumes of previous time spent together. But remember how we all fell in love in the first place? By spending a lot of time together. Now when things aren’t going well I can usually trace it back to the simple fact that we have been too busy and not spending enough time together.
PRIORITIZE
Finding 15 hours a week to spend together – not with kids or other people – takes conscious thought, experimentation and prioritization. But wouldn’t you rather be in love again rather than bankrupt and heartbroken?
BABYPROOFING YOUR MARRIAGE
Having children is one of the leading causes of divorce. Your life as you know it is over once that baby pops out. You have to learn to become a parent and try to save your marriage at the same time. Babyproofing Your Marriage is one of the books that I wish I had read before having children. It will make you laugh out loud, cry and possibly cringe at all of the silly things we do after having children that destroy our marriages. It might also help save yours.
UNIFIED FAMILIES = UNIFIED WORLD
The family is the basic unit of society. In order to have a unified world, we need to have unified families. It all boils down to that.
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Art prints and greeting cards of Peace in the Family and Peace in the Family (Close Up) are for sale at my Art Store.
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This is a really interesting idea – 15 hours together to maintain the love and unity. What I would add to that is that it needs to be POSITIVE time interacting. The secret ingredient for the success of our marriage – 37 years and going strong – is to focus on the positive in the other person. When we acknowledge the virtues we see in each other, and try to be encouraging and supportive instead of critical, it draws our hearts together.
LOVE the painting! I want to use it for my brochures advertizing my parenting classes!
Thanks! Definitely being positive helps too, but I am always so amazed by what more time can do.
I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around finding 15 hours a week for couple time, and I am stumped! If you have any secrets to share, they would be appreciated. I know that we need to find a sitter aside from grandma, who already spends 4 days a week with baby.
I know! It’s so hard at first to figure it out. It seems like working up to it is the easiest because it takes a lot of re-shifting of priorities and releasing of addictions.
One thing for example that we both set out to do was to stop watching TV. It’s a hard addiction to break, but once it’s gone it’s amazing how much more time we had.
The other key thing we do is put the kids to bed early. Everyone has to be in the their bed at 7:30pm. That’s our sacred time to spend together. Our oldest one stays up reading later than that, but we still get our privacy and the kids get their down time and sleep.
Reblogged this on KohlRabie's Weblog and commented:
As I was just enjoying MUDSPICE’s amazing banana bread I remembered another post by her that I read this week and that I would love to share with you.
I’m not going to say more because you can read it yourself – except that even my dear hubby read it and liked it a lot! We’re going to take this to heart now and work on those 15 hours! Even if it’s maybe not 2 hours a day at a stretch, but instead come cuddle time here, a quick GTalk chat during the day, a phone call there, …
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