subject: Solutions To Your Marriage Problems. [print this page] How to Have a Successful Marriage: Characteristics to show you the RIGHT way to get rid of your marriage problems and find the results and solutions you want, Pt. 6 - The Importance of Comfort.
You may not realize this, and in fact I'd be willing to bet you the state of California you don't, comfort is one of the MAJOR skills which will drastically transform your marital relationship & help you to get the breakthroughs you want. The reality is if you're unable to experience comfort your marriage problems will continue to persist, get worse & go unresolved. Maybe things aren't volatile, however I bet there's a lot of avoidance, passive-aggressive behavior, and the old "sweeping problems under the rug" going on too. To be frank: If your marriage is less than you hoped a huge chunk of your disappointment is because there's no consistent expression and practice of comfort. It is a skill you and your spouse lack.
You're probably thinking to yourself right now, "What's the big deal about comfort?" Or perhaps, "I don't need comfort, I need my husband to get his act together". Or maybe, "Comfort? How's that going to change the way my wife shuts down whenever she doesn't like something?" How about, "Comfort? It would be way more useful to learn how to resolve conflict because I'm sick of the arguments." Well, I'm glad you brought up that last point; that's exactly what learning how to give and receive comfort will do.
How would YOU define "comfort"? ... Think back for a moment with me...when was the last time you can remember someone actually comforted you? My guess is you're not too sure how to define comfort and you can't really remember any memories of being comforted. Or, the memories you have involve someone doing something for you, like making you soup when you're sick, or saying something along the lines of "It'll get better. ... It'll be OK. ... You'll pull through it. ... Everyone goes through this. ..." None of those examples are actual comfort, and if you identified with any of them it means you've never experienced comfort, which tells me it's no surprise you don't know how to OFFER comfort either. After all, as I like to say, "How can you ever be expected to be able to do something you were never TAUGHT to do in the first place?"
You can't use a skill you don't have.
Comfort is ESSENTIAL in truly getting to know each other. I'm not saying you don't know what you're wife's birthday is or your husband's favorite hobby. I mean truly getting to know each other on a deeply intimate level. Do you know what it was like for each of you to grow up as a child in your family of origin? Do you know if your spouse was ever bullied? Did their pet die when they were young? How did it feel moving and starting at a new school, if this was one of your experiences? This stuff may seem like it all 'happened in the past', however, as you know from the last section on resolving childhood issues, the past - our past relationship history - is a huge part of what shapes our beliefs and expectations about future relationships & how we will 'show up' in our relationships. It shapes our thoughts, values, attitude, feelings & behavior. It shapes who we choose romantically. It shapes how we deal with conflict.
Comfort helps you to get to know each other on this deeper level. It helps you to have compassion & empathy for each other because you now know why your husband responds the way he does or why your wife has the beliefs she does. Most of the reasons we respond the way we do in our marriage have little if NOTHING to do with your partner. Mostly, we're responding to the person or persons our partner represents to us. What this means to you is you may be responding to what happened to you at 8 years old, or when your girlfriend twenty years ago cheated on you or when your parents divorced when you were thirteen or when you're dad left when you were six or when you were in a car accident when you were seven and you weren't allowed to see your mom for two months. Hell, you may not even remember this kind of stuff, but as you now know from the previous article series, this stuff severely affects you in the present. As you learn to practice the skill of comfort you'll be able to reclaim these "lost" aspects of your self. The feelings which were dangerous to feel, the thoughts which were scary to express, the questions which were denied answers...all of this stuff gets brought out, expressed, VALIDATED, and RESOLVED by practicing the simple skill of comfort.
P.S.: If this article was helpful to you, encouraged or supported you, or if you learned something new or were reminded of something you needed to be reminded of - let me know! I'd love to hear from you!! Email me. Also, if you think it would benefit someone you care about, please do them a favor and "pass it on
