Couple of Snowflakes

Questions for Couples:

• Do you want or need time apart from each other?
• How much money/time is devoted to each of your hobbies?
• Is it important to share your spiritual beliefs?
• Who takes care of the cleaning, the cooking, the bills, the planning?
• How often to you see family and friends, and are you together or apart?
• How many kids will you have, and when? If you do, how will you raise them?
• How do you deal with conflict?
• What makes your partner feel good? How do you show your love to them?
• How has your relationship or how have your views changed over time?

It's fascinating to talk to friends and other couples about how they view romantic relationships and marriage. Whether or not they're single, every person has their own perspective on these things. And each couple seems to have a very unique set of "ground rules" that they live by, a common understanding about how to live together and how to relate to one another.

This personal perspective is developed by many things. It's based on our values, the things that we believe in and expect. It's based on our personality, the way that we communicate and listen, the things that make us feel good or bad. It's based on how we grew up, on our experiences, on our history. It's based on everyday things, like how much money we have or where we live. Everything that makes us so distinctly us drives how we see relationships.

That's where things get interesting. The lessons that we have learned and the rules that we live by may not work very well at all for someone else. The spoken and unspoken guidelines that we use (or will use) within our own romantic relationship may give us a lifetime of love but those same guidelines may cripple another couple.

And when we discuss these things with other people, we may be shocked to learn how they look at things. We may try to convince them that we have it figured out. We may analyze their relationship to spot potential dangers and explain their actions. We have gained some wisdom and we're confident that everyone would benefit from it.

Just look at the first question at the top. Some couples love being together constantly. At home, at work, at play, with friends...they're hardly ever apart. Some couples relish their time apart, showing that absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. Some couples live with the fact that their careers keep them away from each other for extended periods of time, and some couples would prefer to change careers rather than be apart for weeks at a time. The thing is, a healthy relationship is possible in any of these scenarios.

As I continue to learn and grow as a married man, I'm always discovering things about myself and about my beautiful wife and about our relationship. I want to write and explain some of these things. Sometimes it's practical ("Take out the trash before it stinks") and sometimes it's more philosophial ("What about her love languages?") but the goal is to deepen a healthy and passionate love for one another.

And as I continue to write about what I/we have learned, it's tempting to turn these insights into dogma and present it as wisdom from on high. That's just not how life works. We're all unique, we're all a little normal and we're all a little odd. We're a couple of snowflakes - or just some flakes, if you will. Each relationship is an incredible combination of two individual souls and we need to appreciate that and learn from each other, applying whatever works without dismissing the rest...

His Needs, Her Needs

In preparing for our wedding last June, we did some premarital counseling with my former pastor Leonard Terry and his wife Carrie. They spoke with us about their experiences in a very matter-of-fact way and were really able to relate to us. They explored various issues like financial plans, past romantic history, and future goals. They wanted to make sure we knew each other well and that we knew what we were getting into. They emphasized balance in everything, repeatedly giving examples about how even the best relationship advice in the world can become harmful if you take it too far.

Beyond that, they provided us with a few different books to work through together. To be honest, some of them weren't expecially good but several of them were amazingly insightful. They captured the dynamics of committed romantic relationships and explained them in a way that was easy to grasp. Even though we were both in our late twenties, it was surprising to discover so much about ourselves and about our relationship as we worked through these books.

As I begin to write about marriage, I wanted to introduce some of these books along with the core concepts. The first one, and the one that we refer to most frequently, is called His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F. Harley Jr. It discusses the idea that both partners each have their own needs - not just selfish desires or preferences, but genuine needs. The author offers his list of the ten most prominent needs for married couples, which includes (in no particular order)...

1. Affection
2. Sexual Fulfillment
3. Conversation
4. Recreational Companionship
5. Honesty & Openness
6. Physical Attractiveness
7. Financial Support
8. Domestic Support
9. Family Commitment
10. Admiration

Very often, we don't even realize that we have some of these needs so it's helpful to analyze ourselves. We may not realize how fulfilling or ignoring these needs can make us feel either good or bad, and how these things affect our relationship. With this in mind, we can learn how to express ourselves better. On the flip side, we can learn more about our partner and we can see how to draw closer together.

The needs are co-operative. Fulfilling a need for our partner often leads to them reciprocating and fulfilling our own need in some way. It's a positive effect, building and building. For example, sharing in some recreational fun that we both enjoy can easily lead to extended conversations afterwards. As another example, the parallel needs of affection and sexual fulfillment become entwined, displays of love leading to sex and sex leading to more displays of love.

Conversely, this spiral of needs can also be destructive. Hurting our partner may lead them to shut down on us and ignore our needs, which in turn hurts us and makes us less inclined to fill their needs. Sometimes this process is intentional, withholding something in revenge or for spite. Sometimes it's unintentional, like when we feel hurt by dishonesty and we're not in the mood to touch one another. Either negatively or positively, whether we're aware of it or not, we always play this role in the health of our relationship.

These principles apply to married couples and non-married couples alike, which is why I like to refer to "partners" instead of "spouses." Naturally, I'm a big fan of marriage since I love my wife so much but these same dynamics are active in any long-term romantic relationship. This back-and-forth is always happening and we have to realize that we honestly require some things and the other person is the same way. It's the natural give and take (although "Give & Take" is something I will get into more later).

I have a lot of thoughts about this topic and about the various specific needs, and the book has much more to say about it. I may follow up with more thoughts on these things in future posts but you're welcome to track down that book yourself or open more discussions on this blog...

Life Together

As a newlywed, I have found that my entire perspective on life has changed quite dramatically. It's like I was wandering in the dark by moonlight and the sun has risen. It's like I was severely near-sighted (as I actually am) and now I have better than 20/20 vision. It's not that life itself has changed but now I can see so much more of it.

Not only can I see more but I also see things differently. Through the lens of my relationship with my wife Cam, everything is transformed. How I see myself, how I know God, how I value friendships, how I look at marriages... I feel like I was an ant that was surrounded by these gigantic things and I suddenly grew into a man that could hold these same things in my hand. My life will never be the same and it's amazing and incredible and miraculous.

As I go along, I am planning to write about a few concepts that I have learned that have really helped me understand the dynamics of relationships, in particular romantic relationships. It's interesting to discuss these things with my friends and discover how diverse we are, how unique each couple is and how different our ideas are. Hopefully you'll enjoy my thoughts on these matters and maybe you'll even find some of these things practical and useful in your own life. In return, you're welcome to share and contribute your own wisdom and experience...

Links & Blinks

Whole buncha random links for ya today...

The man who has been playing the Raptors Mascot for the past twelve years was voted as the best mascot in North American professional sports. He also worked as the red mascot at the recent Summer Olympics. This article talks about his humble beginnings as a small-town tumbler. How cool is it that we have one of the best mascots in the world?

A few weeks back, Toronto hosted the annual Buskerfest. Street performers from all around the world join the fun. Check out that link to see some videos and hear some cool stories. You may also recognize one of the "poppers" from recent IKEA ads on television.

Wanna see a cool clip of Tiger Woods putting a Rubik's Cube?

In recent news, Google has released a new web browser called Google Chrome. Check out this comic that explains the advantages and functionality. I like it when a subject combines my geeky comicness with my nerdy learningness...

Here's a cool video of a presentation given by the MythBuster guys. They have an automated paintball gun that can pain the Mona Lisa in less than a second!

From the creator of The Sims, they present the new game Spore. You design and build animals, evolving them from single-celled organisms through to giant creatures that can duke it out with others. Quite the novel concept, I'd like to try it sometime.

And finally, here's a story about an elephant that was addicted to heroin. Now that's a curious problem...

Links & Blinks

A few weeks ago, our parents took a vacation to B.C. While they were away, my sister hatched a plan to give them an excellent birthday gift. My brother, my sister, Cam and I teamed up to completely remodel their two-car garage. My brother bought and installed a new garage door opener, which my dad has been dying to have for a couple of years now. My sister worked her butt off for two weeks, mudding the drywall and a number of other things. And Cam and I joined the fun, spending tons of time over one weekend painting and cleaning and installing new window blinds.

It was an excellent surprise that utterly astonished our parents. Flabbergasticated. My dad wrote about his reaction here and my mom wrote abour her reaction here. Congrats a la famille!

(And now for something completely different...)

Just for fun, I recommend that you visit the website http://wordle.net/create. You can enter a URL or type in a paragraph of text and it creates a randomized graphic with the words. Click the "Randomize" button at the bottom and it will change the layout. The trick is that words that are used more frequently appear larger. I plugged in my blog and it generated the picture shown above, and you can see that I speak fairly frequently about my loving wife Cam. ;)

As for sports, I happened to come across an ancient article written by the legendary Bill Russell, 11-time NBA champion. It was published in Sports Illustrated 1965, and he explains various tricks that his teams used to psych out their opponents. Fascinating insight into what it takes to get that competitive edge...

Finally, my good friend Battle has created his own photostream on flickr. He's still out around London creating his awesome graffiti. Keep up the good work, mon ami!