The Road To Marital Success- Twenty-Five Lessons

Where ever you are on your marriage journey, this series of Lessons is designed to give you a very good chance of reaching your dream of a successful marriage that lasts a lifetime.The Cost of These Lessons is only $99.00!The purpose of this Introduction is to provide you with information to help you decide whether to purchase these lessons.  The lessons have five advantages:

1. They are comparable to 25 or more marriage counseling appointments;
2. The information is not just someone’s opinion. To the degree possible, the information contained in these lessons are based on research.
3. You and your spouse can go through the lessons at your own pace, at your home and on your schedule.
4. Each lesson has: points for discussion, exercises, and drills to learn the skills involved.
5. Marriage should be fun. The lessons are written in a way that doing the lessons should be fun.  Like learning a sport, there is effort involved, but it should be fun.

More Information About the Lessons

The natural tendency is for a marriage to be dominated by feelings.  Falling in love and deciding to marry can be so emotional that important obstacles are often not given sufficient consideration.  When having disagreements, the emotions can escalate and lead to damaging behavior towards one another.  Disagreements can turn into arguments, and left unresolved, escalate into painful conflict.   These Lessons focus on learning to use skills to overcome escalating negative feelings and resolve disagreements successfully.

The sources of information in these lessons are based on scientific research and the experience of years of marital therapy and of working with couples who are divorcing.  The backgrounds of your authors are listed on this website.  The cost of these lessons is only about half of one session of marriage counselling.  Please read on!

Love is not enough! A long-term successful marriage does not just happen because people love each other and want it to happen, any more than loving the idea of tennis is enough to play it well.  Reaching the goal of a successful marriage reflects a realistic, science-based understanding of marriage and having the marital relationship skills to make it happen. The Lessons that you are considering are a toolkit of realistic knowledge of what a marriage offers and about the skills needed to reach marital success.

What you should know now. There are several aspects of this series of Lessons that are important for you to know at the outset:

1. Team play. These lessons are designed for both spouses, not for just one spouse. Building a successful marriage is necessarily a team effort.  The lessons are designed for both spouses to participate together at the same time.
2. Time commitment. How quickly you progress through the lessons depends on how long it takes for both of you to master each lesson. There is no “quick” path or fix to a successful marriage, particularly if the starting point is a marriage that has significant problems or obstacles.
3. In spite of number 2 above. These lessons are designed to be fun. A successful marriage is fun most of the time, and therefore, “playing” to improve a marriage should also be fun, not work.  That does not mean that you will not have some serious steps to take, but it is like learning to play a sport, develop a hobby or learn to play a complicated game of cards.  There are tasks, but these lessons are designed to make those tasks as much fun as possible.
4. It does not take a long time to improve a marriage.  In fact, the day you start these Lessons, you should notice some improvement.
5. Starting over.
   1. We ask you to forget everything that you think that you know about marriage. This is particularly true if you are already married and are having serious problems. The early lessons will teach you what a marriage really is so that you can learn to play marriage well.
   2. If you are in a marriage that is not going very well, you will especially be asked to forget why you think that is. The reason is quite simple: you are very likely wrong, even though you might have completely convinced yourself that you are right. This is especially true if you blame your partner or believe that your unhappiness is the result of who your partner is. The same is true if your partner blames you or that the problem is who you “really” are.
   3. Everyone has positive characteristics but also negative characteristics. There might be some exceptions on both ends of this continuum, i.e., all good or all bad, but most people have both. A poorly going marriage simply brings out the worst in people, and the people who have the skills to play marriage well bring out the best in one another.
6. What you will learn from the lessons.
   1. These lessons are based on the results of research on marriage. They are not just someone’s opinion or temporary feel-good exercises. The lessons focus on our nine essential ingredients of a successful marriage and how to handle the real challenges of marriage well.
   2. No marriage is without serious conflict. All marriages face gut-wrenching disagreements. The difference between a successful marriage and an unsuccessful one is simply the percentages of time spent having meaningful experiences. e.g., raising children, having fun and managing gut-wrenching disagreements. A successful marriage should be about 90% of the time a combination of taking care of business and having fun and 10% resolving challenging disagreements. An unsuccessful marriage is spent managing disagreements most of the time, without reaching solutions, either in open conflict or in steaming silence and a cold war.
   3. What you will learn in these lessons is what marriage really is, what it can be, what it is not and what it cannot be. You will learn that all nine ingredients of marriage must be present in a marriage for it to be successful. You will learn the source of all marital conflict, and you will learn the skills to manage normal marital conflict so that the conflict is not only not damaging, but also that the resolution of that conflict actually improves the marriage.
   4. Research tells us that spouses have differences, some of which add quality to the marriage but some of which lead to gut-wrenching disagreements. Common sense tells us that all people have a collection of positive and negative traits. The key to a successful marriage is having the skills to resolve common but emotionally challenging disagreements. Spouse who have the skills, resolve disagreements quickly, with little harm to one another and with solutions that accomplish most of what both spouses want to accomplish. The rest of the time in the marriage is spent taking care of marital and family business and having fun. This brings out the best in one another, rather than the worst.

Lessons Overview 

1. Myths of Marriage. The lessons begin by focusing on mistaken beliefs about marriage that many people, particularly people in troubled marriages, share. One of those “myths” is the belief that a divorce is always a tragedy.  The reality is that sometimes a divorce is the best and healthiest decision, because some problems in marriage simply have no other solution.

2. Developmental Stages of Marriage. The lessons also describe developmental stages of a marriage, with a key focus on the stage when spouses start to have serious problems. We explain in detail what is so challenging about that stage in a marriage and how to meet that challenge successfully.  Research tells us that the top four types of disagreements in marriage are:
   1. resolving different wants and needs for a physical relationship (sex and affection),
   2. money,
   3. social relationships and activities and
   4. parenting.

3. Ingredients of a Successful Marriage and Skill Building to Resolve Disagreements
   1. The first step in meeting the challenges of the difficult stages of a marriage is to determine if you have the nine essential ingredients of a successful marriage. This is like a recipe list of ingredients for a cake. If the marriage is missing any one or more of the ingredients, the cake won’t bake or taste good. Guidelines are provided for introducing to your marriage the ingredients that are lagging or lacking.
   2. The second step is learning about and using our seven skills to resolve disagreements. The Lessons focus on those skills in a particular order, provide comprehensive definitions so that they can be understood and exercises and drills to learn the skills. This is the heart of a good marriage. i.e., the ability to resolve disagreements that work well for both spouses.

4. Lessons Wrap-up. Finally, the lessons will wrap things up with some shortcuts and a description of the depth and breadth of a successful marriage and why most people dream of getting to the last stage of a marriage which is the pot of gold and why it is worth pursuing. However, we do have a few warnings.

Warnings

1. These lessons do not guarantee a successful marriage.
   1. About 20% of marriages are successful.
   2. About 60% of marriages range from somewhat to very problematic. Some spouses will tolerate an unsatisfying marriage, but many will seek a divorce.
   3. About 20% of marriages involve people with significant mental health problems and/or conduct problems (e.g., physical abuse, addictions, serial affairs, abandonment and criminal behavior). This last group is highly unlikely to benefit from these lessons.
2. Many if not most of those in the middle (60%) group who take these lessons seriously and learn the skills to make their marriage work well are likely to see improvement. Although spouses in successful marriages will likely respond to these lessons with “that is what we do,” they too might learn something that will help them improve their marriage.
3. If someone reading this Introduction suspects that they are in a relationship with someone with serious mental health or personality disorders, or damaging conduct and behavior problems, they would do well to seek counselling, or other services, to assess their situation.
4. Interestingly, some people reading this Introduction might be sceptical, because there are only 25 lessons, none of which require a great deal of time to learn. They might think, “It can’t be that easy;  we have been struggling for years.”  Ken and Allan both play tennis.  Because of this, we will often use tennis to make a point.  After years of playing mediocre tennis, Ken decided to take lessons.  He anticipated spending a lot of money and time, perhaps taking lessons for a year or more.  He met with a coach three times.  The instructor showed him the three tennis grips for which type of shots, the four zones that a tennis ball will be coming at him and the two ways to hit the ball back, using the different grips and depending on the zone of the coming ball.  He then told Ken to practice these skills Ken’s tennis began to improve dramatically. i.e., quickly.

The Lessons we introduce are very much like that.  You will understand what a marriage is and is not, learn the nine essential ingredients and the seven skills needed to achieve a successful marriage. That is it.  After that, all you need to do is practice the skills until you are really good at marriage.

In Closing: We encourage you to purchase these lessons and make them a part of your marriage.  At the very least, the lessons will change your perspective on marriage, and if you put effort into each of the lessons, you will likely have fun together and see important improvements in your marriage.