Author: Karen

This post is about my personal experience with The Love Dare. If you would like to learn more about The Love Dare, go here. If you would like to win a copy of The Love Dare book, or the “Fireproof” DVD, go here.

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Day Six: Love believes the best. For today’s dare, get two sheets of paper. On the first one, spend a few minutes writing out positive things about your spouse. Then do the same with negative things on the second sheet. Place both sheets in a secret place for another day. There is a different purpose and plan for each. At some point during the remainder of the day, pick a positive attribute from the first list and thank your spouse for having this characteristic.

From The Love Dare book:

¤¤¤ In the deep and private corridors of your heart, there is a room. It’s called the Appreciation Room. It’s where your thoughts go when you encounter positive and encouraging things about your spouse. And every so often, you enjoy visiting this special place.

On the walls are written kind words and phrases describing the good attributes of your mate. These may include characteristics like “honest” and “intelligent,” or phrases like “diligent worker,” “wonderful cook,” or “beautiful eyes.” They are things you’ve discovered about your husband or wife that have embedded themselves in your memory. When you think about these things, your appreciation for your spouse begins to increase. In fact, the more time you spend meditating on these positive attributes, the more grateful you are for your mate.

Most things in the Appreciation Room were likely written in the intial stages of your relationship. You could summarize them as things you liked and respected about your loved one. They were true, honorable, and good. And you spent a great deal of time dwelling on them in this room … before you were married. But you may have found that you don’t visit this special room as often as you once did. That’s because there is another competing room nearby: the Depreciation Room.

This room is lined with the weaknesses and failures of your husband or wife. Their bad habits, hurtful words, and poor decisions are written in large letters that cover the walls from one end to the other. If you stay in this room for long enough, you get depressed and start expressing things like, “My wife is selfish,” or “My husband can be such a jerk.” Or maybe, “I think I married the wrong person.”

Some people write very hateful things in this room, where tell-off statements are rehearsed for the next argument. Emotional injuries fester here, adding more scathing remarks to the walls. It’s where ammunition is kept for the next big fight and bitterness is allowed to spread like a disease. People fall out of love here.

Spending time in the Depreciation Room kills marriages. The more time you spend in this place, the more your heart devalues your spouse.

It’s time to move into the Appreciation Room, to settle down and make it your home. As you choose to mediate on the positives, you will learn that many more wonderful character qualities could be written across these walls. Your spouse is a living, breathing, endless book to read.

Develop the habit of reining in your negative thoughts and focusing on the positive attributes of your mate. This is a crucial step as you learn to lead your heart to truly love your spouse. It is a decision that you make, whether they deserve it or not.¤¤¤

Ah, I remember the Depreciation room. I don’t visit it very often any more, but I do take the occasional peek every now and again.

I used to virtually LIVE in that room. EVERYTHING my husband did irritated me. Even the good stuff – either it wasn’t done right, I questioned his motives for doing it, or it simply wasn’t good ENOUGH.

I lost sight of myself in that room. I turned into this ugly shrew while I lived in that room. That room changed me so much, I didn’t even recognize myself anymore.

It got to the point where I couldn’t stand being around myself, let alone being around other people.

The Depreciation room has always held a certain appeal to me. I felt strong, independent and powerful in that room. I visited it from time-to-time during our first six years of marriage so by the time our seventh year of marriage rolled around, I had moved in.

Big, BIG mistake.

I look back on that marital seven-year itch and to this day, I couldn’t tell you exactly why I was so pissed off all the time.

But I was.

And I had no reason to BE that angry. I had two small, adorable boys, Kevin was working hard and building a foundation for us and there I was … angry, bitter and feeling very dissatisfied with my life.

I think, looking back, it was actually a myriad of things that caused me to pitch a tent in that Depreciation room.

1. I was young. That’s not exactly an excuse, but everything seems so DRAMATIC when you’re young. Old age really does mellow you out.

2. I was resentful. I had a promising, and rewarding, career at the bank. And I felt like I HAD to give it up because of my babies. Never mind that it was the best decision in the world, at the time, I hated having to leave it.

3. I missed the adult interaction and the mental stimulation. Every stay-at-home parent knows what I’m talking about here.

4. I felt suffocated. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it anymore. I was accountable to my children, who sucked every last ounce of strength out of me (because they were young – and only 28 months apart) which left me little to no energy, or desire, left over for Kevin.

5. I felt like I was being controlled. Not only because I was “stuck” (and I use that term loosely) at home with two small boys, but because I never felt like I was quite good enough for Kevin. I was always too fat, or too lazy because I didn’t have the house picked up or dinner on the table when he got home. You know how it is, when the children are small, there simply isn’t enough hours in the day to do it all.

I think working spouses have a hard time understanding that because they honestly don’t know what is going on when they aren’t there. Our days … don’t belong to us when the children are little. Our needs are put on the back burner because these little munchkins need us to do everything for them. And we have to watch them every single waking moment because children, are curious and don’t have the wisdom to keep themselves out of trouble.

Well, I don’t have to tell you parents how it is, you KNOW.

Suffice it to say, I was just itching for ways to discard my unhappiness and unfortunately, Kevin was nearby.

Now I’m not saying he didn’t contribute to this rocky stage in our marriage. His expectations were way too high. I was not, nor will ever be, a woman who DOTES on my house. I do not like to clean house, I do not like to shop for my house – if it looks nice and is comfortable, I’m good.

And I have not, nor will ever be, the type of woman who wears lipstick every waking moment or wears makeup when they clean house.

Sorry. Get over it.

But Kevin came from this background, so naturally, he expected the same thing from me.

Uh, no.

Needless to say, our problems escalated. I won’t go into all of the ugly details but suffice it to say, it got to the point where he changed the locks on my house so the kids and I couldn’t get in and I ended up shopping for lawyers.

I’m telling you this because when I say I understand hitting rock bottom in a relationship? I was there, baby. And the view? Ain’t so pretty down there.

So what saved us?

That’s a very good question. Somehow, I mustered up the desire to save my marriage. And Kevin had no desire to go through a divorce so … we talked. We didn’t go to a counselor – we simply got rid of the kids one night and had a serious heart-to-heart talk.

He got some things off his chest, I got some things off my chest and together, we made a pact to work on the problem areas and to trudge forward in our relationship.

It wasn’t easy. I was SO ANGRY with him for so long. And he certainly wasn’t happy with me. But somehow … we worked through it. I swallowed several bitter pills about myself in the process and I … well, got over myself.

I simply don’t know how else to put it. I had such an attitude about things, about life, about marriage, that when I finally summoned up the courage to take a good, hard look at myself and knew that if I wanted things to change, they would have to change with me – well, our relationship started getting better.

It didn’t happen overnight. In fact, it took close to a year before we even got to the point where we could laugh and be comfortable around each other once again – but we did it. And our marriage is so much stronger today as a result of our battle to get here.

And in case you’re curious – Kevin did a lot of changing as well. I refused to move forward until he chilled out about some of his expectations – we compromised and met each other halfway.

It takes effort on both sides of the marital fence.

But it quite honestly HAS to start with YOU. Nothing will change if you’re not willing to do a little emotional housekeeping on your part.

Trust me on this.

I can’t believe I shared this with ya’ll. It’s been cathartic to write this all out. Perhaps this explains why I feel so compelled to beat myself up at times because it’s my way of reminding myself to “keep it real.” To not get too big for my britches.

To be a fair, loving and good PARTNER. Because you know? Marriage isn’t about a person, it’s about living life as a team.

My list of positive attributes for Kevin:

Honest
Compassionate
Loving
Patient
Intelligent
Hard-working
Persistent
Excellent problem solver
Funny
Sweet
Mischievous
Handsome
Caring
Mine 🙂

This post is about my personal experience with The Love Dare. If you would like to learn more about The Love Dare, go here. If you would like to win a copy of The Love Dare book, or the “Fireproof” DVD, go here.

(click on the badge for details).

Day Five: Love is not rude. Ask your spouse (during a quiet, relaxed moment), to tell you three things that cause him/her to be uncomfortable or irritated with you. You must do so without attacking him/her or justifying your behavior. This is from their perspective only. What things did your spouse point out about you that need your attention? How did you handle hearing it? What do you plan to do to improve these areas?

From The Love Dare book:

¤¤¤ Nothing irritates others as quickly as being rude. Rudeness is unnecessarily saying or doing things that are unpleasant for another person to be around. To be rude is to act unbecoming, embarrassing, or irritating. In marriage, this could be a foul mouth, poor table manners, or a habit of making sarcastic quips. However you look at it, no one enjoys being around a rude person. Rude behavior may seem insignificant to the person doing it, but it’s unpleasant to those on the receiving end.

As always, love has something to say about this. When a man is driven by love, he intentionally behaves in a way that’s more pleasant for his wife to be around. If she desires to love him, she purposefully avoids things that frustrate him or cause him discomfort.

The bottom line is that genuine love minds its manners.

Embracing this one concept could add some fresh air to your marriage. Good manners express to your wife or husband, “I value you enough to exercise some self-control around you. I want to be a person who’s a pleasure to be with.” When you allow love to change your behavior — even in the smallest of ways — you restore an atmosphere of honor to your relationship. People who practice good etiquette tend to raise the respect level of the environment around them.

There are two main reasons why people are rude: ignorance and selfishness. Neither, of course, is a good thing. A child is born ignorant of etiquette, needing lots of help and training. Adults, however, display their ignorance at another level. You know the rules, but you can be blind to how you break them or be too self-centered to care. In fact, you may not realize how unpleasant you can be to live with.

Do you wish your spouse would quit doing the things that bother you? Then it’s time to stop doing the things that bother them. Will you be thoughtful and loving enough to discover and avoid the behavior that causes life to be unpleasant for your mate? Will you dare to be delightful? ¤¤¤

Rude people turn me OFF. People who spout off the first thing that come to their mind, without giving any thought to how that will affect those around them, annoy me. People who say hurtful things and think they’re “entitled” to speak their mind and do so without caring how their angry words will be received, disgust me.

Who died and made them curator of human kind?

Kevin is anything BUT rude. He goes out of his way to be nice to people – so much so, sometimes, that I get irritated with him because people, being people, take advantage of his good nature and he ends up doing way more than he should simply because he’s too nice to tell them no. He’s gentle, kind, and quite thoughtful and I can probably give you a handful of examples of him being rude to people in the 21 years I’ve known him. Now don’t get me wrong, the man has a temper, when provoked, but it takes a lot for him to get there and when he does, I’m usually the first to back down. But overall, he’s a pretty even-tempered person.

Now me, on the other hand, can be quite rude. I can be quite cutting, and disturbingly cruel if provoked (or not – sometimes I’m rude just because I’m feeling b*tchy).

I’m quick on my feet and when angered, can be uncaring and unfeeling in order to reduce the other person to mush in about 2.2 seconds.

Given this fact about me, and looking back over the years with my spouse, I can honestly say that I don’t think I could have gotten along with any other personality OTHER than that of my gentle and patient husband.

If I had married another volatile personality, such as myself, I think we would have killed each other by now.

Seriously.

I’m not telling you this to boast, or make myself out to be some badass, but because this has been one of my more serious flaws and one that I’ve struggled with my entire life.

I have an ugly temper. And being intentionally rude? Is never far behind that temper.

This has been one of my personal, and most challenging, demons to date. And I struggle with this demon on a daily basis – with both my husband and my children.

Heck, with every aspect of my life, since we’re being frank here.

But here’s where it gets confusing – I’m rarely rude to people outside my family.

Go figure.

I have more patience with other people. I suppose, if we’re being analytical here (and we are), it’s because I don’t really have any expectations when it comes to other people – I can roll with the punches and deal with any disappointment because I’m not invested enough in those around me to honestly CARE how they handle themselves.

But when it comes to my family, I have high expectations. And when they don’t act a certain way or do something that I think they should be doing, I’m disappointed and one way for me to deal with my disappointment is to be annoyed with them.

I’m painting such an attractive picture of myself, aren’t I? But hey, I’m just keeping it real and I’m not revealing anything that I don’t already know, or that I haven’t accepted about myself for years now.

What I’m trying to tell you is this – it’s taken me a long time to recondition myself to NOT be rude to my husband so if you think this is an exercise you can master over night, I think you’ll be disappointed. It takes time. It takes a willingness to improve. It requires a level of honesty that some people are not willing to obtain.

It’s not easy.

But so worth it in the end because I feel like I’m a better person NOW than I’ve ever BEEN.

This morning, I asked Kevin to list three things about me that made him uncomfortable. Here is what he said:

1. The fact that I’m an excellent liar. (He’s right).

2. My unwillingness to go see a doctor when he can see I’m in pain. (True).

3. The fact that I make him out to be villain and unduly accuse him of being mean.

This last one took me aback. Do I do that? I’ve been thinking about what he said all morning and yeah, I think he’s right. Whenever I’m talking about my relationship with my mom, or have revealed anything about my relationship to my girlfriends, I HAVE made him out to be some evil villain when I knew, in my heart, he wasn’t; I was simply saying those things to justify my own irrational behavior.

But I think what bothers me the most is that HE sees that – that he’s aware of what I’m doing and that it hurts him when I do.

Ouch.

Hearing things like this about yourself is never easy, but it’s almost always helpful – IF you have the right frame of mind about it and take it with humility. I think the real challenge is trying to do something about it.

On a side note: Looking over the next several Love Dare lessons, I’ve decided I’m going to just skip around and list five more lessons that I think are moving the challenge forward. Lessons six through ten are pretty much a regurgitation of what has already been covered, so let’s ramp this up a notch and go for the jugular, shall we? *grin*

P.S. I find it interesting that I’ve lost some RSS readers this week. It’s never easy to self-analyze and I’m sorry if I’ve made anyone uncomfortable with these Love Dare posts -but I’ll be honest, I think this stuff NEEDS to be said and if I’m making people uncomfortable by trying do something positive and worthwhile (saving relationships), then I’m willing to take the punches. I’m sorry to see you go, but I have to do this. I feel compelled to do this.

Thank you for reading.

This post is about my personal experience with The Love Dare. If you would like to learn more about The Love Dare, go here. If you would like to win a copy of The Love Dare book, or the “Fireproof” DVD, go here.

(click on the badge for details).

Day Four: Love is thoughtful. Contact your spouse sometime during the business of the day. Have no agenda other than asking how he/she is doing and if there is anything you could do for them. What did you learn about yourself or your spouse by doing this today? How could this become a more natural, routine, and genuinely helpful part of your lifestyle?

From The Love Dare book:

¤¤¤ Love thinks. It’s not a mindless feeling that rides on waves of emotion and falls asleep mentally. It keeps busy in thought, knowing that loving thoughts precede loving actions.

When you first fell in love, being thoughtful came quite naturally. You spent hours dreaming of what your loved one looked like, wondering what he or she was doing, rehearsing impressive things to say, then enjoying sweet memories of the time you spent together. You honestly confessed, ” I can’t stop thinking about you.”

But for most couples, things begin to change after marriage. The wife finally has her man, the husband has his trophy. The hunt is over and the pursuing done. Sparks of romance slowly burn into grey embers, and the motivation for thoughtfulness cools. You drift into focusing on your job, your friends, your problems, your personal desires, yourself. After a while, you unintentionally begin to ignore the needs of your mate.

Let’s be honest. Men struggle with thoughtfulness more than women. A man can focus like a laser on one thing and forget the rest of the world. Whereas this can benefit him in that one arena, it can make him overlook other things that need his attention.

A woman, on the other hand, is more multi-conscious, able to maintain an amazing awareness of many factors at once. She can talk on the phone, cook, know where the kids are in the house, and wonder why her husband isn’t helping … all simultaneously. Adding to this, a woman also thinks relationally. When she works on something, she is cognizant of all the people who are somehow connected to it.

If a couple doesn’t understand this about one another, the falllout can result in endless disagreements. He’s frustrated wondering why she speaks in riddles and doesn’t come out and say things. She’s frustrated wondering why he’s so inconsiderate and doesn’t add two and two together and just figure it out.

Love requires thoughtfulness – on both sides – the kind that builds bridges through the constructive combination of patience, kindness, and selflessness. Love teaches you how to meet in the middle, to respect and appreciate how your spouse uniquely thinks.

But too often you become angry and frustrated instead, following the destructive pattern of “ready, shoot, aim.” You speak harshly now and determine later if you should have said it. But the thoughtful nature of love teaches you to engage your mind before engaging your lips. Love thinks before speaking. It filters words through a grid of truth and kindness.¤¤¤

And just think, this only touches on the fundamental differences between men and women because no matter how hard society tries to make both sexes equal in every way, the more it’s apparent they are not, nor will ever be, the same – males and females are completely and utterly different.

That is the way they were created. And that is the way they will remain.

It’s a natural fact. And the sooner people stop fighting that fundamental difference, the happier they will become.

Ladies, men really do think linearly. Gentlemen, ladies really do over-think situations – it’s just how the genders are programmed.

There’s no use denying it. It doesn’t matter how many times we try and change that fact, the deal is – that’s the way it is.

So, given that information, isn’t it time we accept the differences and make allowances for them? I’m not saying this difference is an excuse to shirk personal responsibilities or not give 110% to the relationship, but the sooner we take these differences into account, the sooner we can adjust our thinking, and behavior, and make our marriages stronger.

It took me a long, long, LONG time to accept the fact that my husband has specific emotional and physical needs.

A long time.

I fought those needs for years. And I think I largely fought them because they interfered with MY activities, MY moods, MY time, or … whatever else you want to throw in there.

Because once again, OUR marriage was about ME.

Or so I fooled myself into thinking for years and years.

Think how much time I wasted by simply being selfish and stubborn. Once I accepted his … maleness, things began to settle for me. We started having more good days than bad. I chilled, to put it bluntly. And once I chilled, he relaxed. And once I became more thoughtful, patient, kind and understanding, he did as well. He started “living” with me as opposed to simply “existing” with me.

Suddenly, our marriage had substance. It was fulfilling. It was satisfying and most of all? It became FUN once again.

Not to make anyone roll their eyes or anything, but honestly, Kevin and I communicate several times a day. We send sweet, flirty emails back and forth. Either I call him to see how his day is going, or he calls me to see what I’m up to. We’ve done this for so long now, I can’t remember a time we DIDN’T do this.

I realize not everyone has the freedom during their day to communicate on a daily basis, but making that effort, especially when you don’t have time, carries even more weight with your spouse. Because he/she KNOWS, you took time out of your busy schedule to make room for him/her.

Oh sure, there were (are) times I felt squeezed and a bit suffocated by all the attention.

I’m weird, I suppose. I NEED my space from time-to-time. But whenever that has happened (or happens), I simply tell Kevin that we need to stop the lovey-dovey stuff for a bit because I’m feeling impatient/claustrophobic/stressed … whatever. I don’t simply pull back and start acting like a cold fish thereby confusing and hurting him – I TELL the man what’s going on in my head.

And he returns the favor.

We have learned to embrace our differences.