That’s a question we’ve been asked many times here at Marriage Missions because of the “ripping and tearing” that many have experienced after their other “half” dies.

So to help you in whatever way we can —knowing that this will be a very painful journey that no one, except those who have traveled this road as well, can truly understand, below is what we have found. Below is a portion of a letter written to a widow that reached out to us for help. We pray God will use it to minister to your heart as well, and below it, we will include links to additional articles posted on the internet as well:

I’m so sorry to hear of the death of your husband. I can’t even imagine how difficult that must be for you to get beyond this — especially at this stage in your grieving. My heart cries with yours over the pain you must be feeling so deeply inside.

I wish I could do more than what I can for you, but as far as sending you some things that might help you in some way, I did some research and came up with a few things that I pray will minister to you. The first is a web site that you might want to visit if you have access to the Internet (which I hope you do). Here is a description of the web site:

•  Griefnet.org Their groups operate 24-hours/day, 365 days/year to help those who are grieving with the loss of a spouse, child, parent, friend, and other unique losses.  Members participate when they wish and are able to, not at a set time.  When one member of a group sends an email message to the group, everyone in the group receives a copy. This allows many people to respond with love and caring to the thoughts and feelings of an individual, day and night, year-round. Since 1994 these groups have helped thousands of people around the world deal safely with their grief.

Also, having lost my husband Steve’s dad just recently I’ve been reading a lot on grieving. Most of all it seems that those of us who have lost a loved one, need to do whatever it takes to get through every moment, celebrating the happy moments we had with our loved one and crying when we can (because tears are cleansing and healing). It’s also important to look for ways to get through the tough times with our heads held as high as we can. God will give you strength as you keep looking to Him and praying that He will be your husband (as He promised to those who are widows).

I did some searching for you and the following are various quotes I came across from author Martha Whitmore Hickman that might help you in some way:

• “In case we’re feeling driven to somehow ‘get done with’ our grieving (if I do it faster, maybe I’ll feel better sooner), let us be reminded that, as in many of life’s profoundest experiences—making love, eating, and drinking—faster is not necessarily better. Perhaps the thing about grieving is that the process will not be cheated. It will take as much time as it needs. Our task is to be attentive when the messages of mind and memory come. If we let them go by unattended the first time, they’ll probably cost more in the long run.”

• “Sometimes it’s the last thing in the world we feel like doing—getting out and being physically active. Aside from the effort it takes to get up and move, who cares whether we keep our body in good working order anyway? This is one of the times when thinking has to overcome feeling. We know exercise is ‘good for us.’ It’s hard to continue to feel depressed when muscles are working vigorously, when we’re paying attention to covering ground or swimming through water.

“As we release physical energy in these rhythmic motions, part of the energy of grief rides away, too. Part of the psychic value of such activity, I suspect, is that we’re witnessing our own competence, our ability to move rhythmically, to be ‘in charge’ of our bodies. Our sense of self-confidence will spread. Maybe we won’t be forever captive to grief after all. The physical invigoration of exercise invigorates our spirits as well.”

• “Sometimes we’re unconsciously fearful that if we begin to move away from our grief, we’ll lose what contact we have with the one we miss so much… Perhaps the relinquishing of our most intense grief makes a space into which a new relationship with the loved one can move. It’s the person, after all, whom we want, not the grief.”

• “May I hold my grief lightly in my hand so it can lift away from me. My connection to the one I’ve lost is inviolate; it cannot be broken.”

• “It’s a costly wisdom, and God knows we would not have asked for it. But it’s also true that coming through a great sorrow can make us stronger, and teach us what’s really important. But to survive the death of a loved one is no guarantee of greater wisdom. We can also become embittered, reclusive, and grasping. But if we can weather the storm, we’ll have a better sense of who we are and what we want most in life. And we’ll learn to savor and cherish cool water, sunshine and wind, the smell of roses—and the love and friendship we have now.”

• “Guess what? What women have known for a long time and maybe men are beginning to discover—crying really does make you feel better—and for good reason. Now we’re learning that crying has helpful physiological as well as psychological effects. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that emotional tears (as opposed to those shed from exposure to the wind, say, or a cut onion) contain two important chemicals, Leucine-Enkephalin and Prolactin, and that the first of these is thought to be related to one of the body’s natural pain-relieving substances.

“Tears are, they tell us, an exocrine substance—like sweat, or exhaled air—and one of the functions of such processes is to help cleanse the body of substances that accumulate under stress. Then why are we embarrassed by our tears? Why are we fearful they’ll make others uncomfortable? Often, when people cry, the work of healing can begin.”

• “No more apologies. No more uneasiness. My tears are for my healing. Perhaps, too, my tears will give others permissions to cry when they feel the need.”

• “One of the things so astonishing and costly losing a loved one is that, while the sun continues to rise and set, newspapers continue to be delivered, traffic lights still change from red to green and back again, our whole life is turned around, turned upside down. Is it any wonder we feel disoriented and confused? Yet the people we pass on the street are going about their business as though no one’s world has been shaken to the core, as though earth has not opened and swallowed us up, dropped us into a world of insecurity and change.

“It is, as Emily Dickinson says, ‘a new road’ —for us as surely as for the one we have lost. It will take us time to learn to walk that road. Time, and a lot of help, so we don’t stumble and fall irretrievably. Those who have had their own experiences of loss will probably be our most helpful guides—knowing when to say the right word, when to be silent and walk beside us, when to reach out and take our hand. In time, we’ll be helpers for others.”

• “Sometimes we berate ourselves: Why are we not doing better? Particularly if we’re people with any pretense to faith, why can we not muster the resources of faith and be a model of calm acceptance and inner serenity? It’s because we’re human beings and we’re hurting. No one worth his or her salt is going to think less of us if we acknowledge the shattering pain this loss has brought.

“People may conceivably hold us in some kind of awe if we exhibit an unnatural calm, but they’ll feel closer to us (and better able to deal with their own grief when their time comes) if they sense we’re being honest. We need to let the grief flow through us even as we try to be aware of the ongoing life around us. Sometimes it’s a matter of precisely that—letting the grief flow through us. It’s an act of the utmost courage.”

• “I will not further burden myself by trying to fit some image of a ‘model griever.’ The strength I have is the strength to be myself.”

• “Change is the order of life, yet how we resist it. Sometimes, looking back, we see that only by letting go were we able to move on to the new adventures, new insights and satisfactions. A widow, who had lived in her husband’s shadow, doing the dutiful wife-and-mother things, emerged after his death as a featured speaker at many church and civic gatherings. She said to me once, ‘Isn’t it a shame I had to wait until he died before I began to come into my own?’

“We live our lives in chapters. What was right for her in the early years of her marriage was obviously not suitable in her later years. Nor would she have wanted to consign home and children to someone else’s care when her children were small. There is consolation in knowing that change, even difficult change, brings surprising gifts. Though the thought may be unappealing to us now, let’s not shut the door too soon on something good that could be waiting for us in the next room.”

“I will keep my eyes open. Something surprising and good may happen tomorrow—or the day after.”

Also, the following are quotes from the book, “Will I Ever Be Whole Again?” by Sandra Aldrich (who wrote what she learned after she was widowed). Even though we include several quotes in this article from the book, we HIGHLY recommend that you obtain it (preview or purchase this book now). There are many, many other statements and points and stories included in the book that will weave all of these statements together:

• “Our brains often move slowly as we try to absorb bad news.”

• “I’m convinced that our bodies are constructed in such a way that we must grieve. And if we aren’t allowed to grieve appropriately, we will express it inappropriately, often through anger or depression. …Bereavement is the time after a major loss. The outer signs, such as wearing black or having annual memorial services—such as the Ethiopians do—are set by societies.

• “Grief is an emotional response and can stay with us for years. But a thin line exists between grieving the loss of someone we love and grieving the way our life has turned out. We all know people who display grief so intensely even years after a death that they’re difficult to be around since they are convinced no one has suffered as they have.”

• “During the year I worked on a funeral-home counseling team with Dr John Canine, a Detroit area grief therapist, part of my job was to encourage new widows. Of course I knew the widows’ pain all too well, but while I agreed that [my husband] Don’s death was an amputation, I had decided it didn’t always have to bleed. Most women found comfort in my soothing, ‘It may always hurt, but it won’t always hurt this much.’”

• “The grieving process may be complicated by the individual situation, but the intensity with which we grieve often depends on a combination of four variables: the closeness of the relationship, and whether the death was sudden, premature, or violent. Any one of these characteristics means intense sorrow, but with each additional grief intensifier, our emotional pain deepens.”

• “Suicide, war, murder, accident, devastating disease. Death often is absolutely senseless and even my refuge of the sovereignty of God doesn’t offer a satisfactory explanation. How tired our heavenly Father must be of our blaming Him for the consequences of human decisions! I’ve finally settled on this: Our only choice in the midst of tragedy isn’t whether we’ll go through it, but how. Only the Lord’s presence offers comfort —and the hope that we will see our loved ones again.”

• “I truly believe that God in His re-creative way can bring His good out of our pain, but I also believe that we have to be willing to see the good that is created. But how do we accomplish that when the loss is so senseless? Granted, sometimes the victories are small by themselves, and it’s only in the comparison of how we used to be that the miracle is seen. I’m convinced that even the most tragic loss ultimately can be turned into good —if we allow it to be.”

• “The loss through death will always be an amputation, but it does not always have to bleed.”

• “Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross found that the dying work through five basic stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We know that the families of the terminally ill go through these stages too. But after the death, the griever faces additional challenges through numbness, searching, disorientation, and resolution.”

• “Numbness can last from just a few hours to several weeks. Everything seems to move in slow motion, causing the grievers to feel as though they are in a bad dream or walking through a fog. As the numbness begins to fade, the intense grief of this early stage may produce chest pains or feelings of suffocation.”

• “Searching —the next stage–can be an intense time as the grievers come out of the fog and ask, ‘What exactly happened?’ In the early part of this stage, the survivors will want to see the autopsy report or police account. Not only is it normal, but it is healthy. Getting our questions answered, painful though the process may be, gives us some emotional control.”

• “During the searching stage, that awful question ‘Why?’ surfaces. Often it’s accompanied by ‘What else could I have done?’ or ‘Should he have stayed on chemotherapy?’ or ‘Maybe he should have gotten off the chemotherapy.’ Of course this is a painful time for listening to the griever’s questions too. No quick answers exist. After [the famous preacher] Peter Marshall’s funeral, his anguished widow, Catherine, asked her mother why this had happened.Her mother, also a widow, answered quietly, ‘In God’s time, He will give you His answers.’ With hindsight we see that the Lord brought blessing out of the pain as He gave Catherine her special [writing] ministry. Countless people have been comforted by writings that could not have been produced except through her own suffering.”

• “When the survivors are ready to let go of the deceased’s personal items [and everyone comes to this point at different times so don't rush into it if you aren't ready yet], they often wonder which ones they should discard and which ones they should keep. Many counselors divide the items into two categories: linking objects and mementos. Linking objects are personal items, such as toothbrushes, [pillows and such] and should be discarded as quickly as the griever is comfortable with throwing them away. Mementos include family pictures and heirlooms that are an important part of the family’s memories. Mementos should be kept [unless it causes more pain than joy].”

• “Resolution signals the beginning of rejoining life. Joy, and even laughter, returns. …How soon laughter or even quiet grins return to our lives depends on how intense the circumstances were that caused our grief. But a time comes when we must allow the laughter to return–or pull our gloom even tighter around our shoulders. Medically, laughter causes the brain to release chemicals called endorphins, which relieve pain. …When Proverbs 17:22 says ‘A merry heart doeth good like a medicine’ (KJV), it’s true!”

• “FACE THE LOSS. It’s okay to hurt. You aren’t damaging your Christian testimony if you cry. It’s okay to miss someone you love. Remember, even Jesus wept–over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41) and at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35). …So if Jesus, the son of God, can cry, it’s okay for me —a frail imperfect human —to cry.”

• “In facing the grief, it helps to remember that some of the dumbest things are gong to get to you. …Talking through even those ‘dumb’ symbols of loss with a trusted friend or a knowledgeable grief counselor can be an important step in acknowledging the hurt. Those who try to ignore looking at their distress —whether because it’s too painful or because they think ‘good’ Christians don’t cry —often battle stress and depression later.”

• “Something healthy happens when we say, ‘This hurts!’ Releasing that pain may be as dramatic as sobbing on the kitchen floor, as intense as crying all evening after the children are in bed, or as quiet as a deep sigh when a young family reminds us of what we’ve lost. Southerners have an expression to describe the intangible longing that occasionally sweeps over us: ‘feeling homesick and lonesome.’ The only immediate cure I’ve found for that pain is the Bible. Every human emotion is recorded there. Immediately Psalm 74:1 comes to mind: ‘Why hast thou cast us off for ever?‘ (KJV). Once we’ve accepted the reality of our situation, we can begin to work through it with the Lord’s help.”

• “For those still hounding themselves with the ’should-haves,’ they’re dealing with false guilt —the kind the Enemy loves to use against us. One way to release it is to say aloud, “This is false guilt, and it is not from God.’ As you keep talking to God about it, the peace will eventually come.”

• “Believe it or not, we do have the choice of whether we want to be better or bitter because of what we’ve experienced. What if we stopped asking ‘Why me?’ and pondered ‘Why not me?’ Why do we think we’re supposed to get through this life without sorrow? Think of Job’s observation: ‘Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?’ (Job 2:10). Allow that grief to help you become a better person as you learn from it and help others through their pain. We can also help ourselves as we grasp the importance of this moment and this day.”

• “When Jesus said ‘Come unto me,’ He did not add ‘But come without tears.’”

• “We are truly ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14). God knew what He was doing when He gave us tear ducts. In fact, when we’re under stress, crying is a healthy thing for us to do. In fact, when we’re under stress, crying is a healthy thing for us to do. In the early eighties, William H. Frey II, Ph.D., director of the Alzheimer’s Research Laboratories at Ramsey Medical Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, led a team of researchers testing the content of tears. By comparing the tears shed when the subjects peeled onions against the tears shed when those same people watched a sad movie, the researchers discovered noticeable chemical differences.

• “But haven’t we always known that? Think of the times we’ve responded to ‘What’s wrong?’ with ‘Nothing, I just need a good cry.’ If we’re not allowed to cry because of our own or society’s standards, I’m convinced the brain holds the toxins that should be released, thus producing other problems. It’s better if the tears flow now so we can move on later. That’s why the friends who were the greatest comfort to me were the ones who simply put their arms around me and cried too.”

• “Grievers are caught in a time warp; each moment rolls heavily toward us as a reminder that our life has been changed forever.”

• “From my personal and professional experiences I’ve learned some important steps in helping children: ~ Tell the truth right away. ~ Be truthful. ~ Tell only what the child can handle. ~ Encourage children to express feelings. ~ Allow children to attend the funeral. ~ Take the child to the cemetery. ~ Let the child talk. …How many times have we approached the adult at the funeral home and ignored the children standing nearby? It’s important that they, too, be allowed to talk– to explain how their [dad or mom] died or to share a special memory. Not only does that attention acknowledge their place in the family, but it acknowledges their grief as well. … ~ Encourage communication. ~ Be there. ~ Affirm the child’s feelings.”

• “If well-meaning people forget the promises they’ve made to you in the funeral home, try to remember they cannot be all we want them to be —just as we can’t be all they need us to be.”

• “Inappropriate responses can result in greater problems later. As searing as fresh grief is, the recovery still is swifter when we face our loss.”

• “Concentrating on what we have left instead of what we have lost helps ward off depression.”

• “Our children learn how to handle stress by watching the adults in their lives.”

• “Philippians 4:19 was the scripture [my son] ten-year-old Jay was memorizing the day his dad died. The copied verse from the King James Version was on the kitchen counter when I came home from the hospital to tell the children the bad news. The note paper almost seemed to glow, as though the Lord Himself was offering special comfort: ‘But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.’ Many times I tested that promise, even occasionally challenging Him with ‘Even this need, God?’ Gradually I learned that He hadn’t overlooked anything. Amazingly I learned to do many of the things that had belonged to Don’s traditional roll —even changing the oil in the car and balancing the checkbook. But most of all I grew, learning much about myself and even more about my heavenly Father.”

• “TAKE GOOD FROM THE PAST INTO THE FUTURE. Second Corinthians 1:3-4 reads, ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.’ In Genesis 50:20, Joseph says he talks to his brothers in Egypt, years after they had sold him to a caravan, ‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.’ I am convinced that God can —and will —bring His good out of any situation we give to Him.”

• “Learning to take care of ourselves in the midst of grief can be both a challenge and a new beginning.”

• “Find ways to help others and thus help yourself.”

And then here is something from the book, Coping with Life After Your Mate Dies:

• “The death of your mate will greatly affect your physical and emotional health. Grieving can cause numerous physical manifestations, such as headaches, dizziness, insomnia, moodiness, and various appetite problems. When reminders of your departed loved one cross your consciousness, anxiety and panic attacks may occur, manifested by irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath, trembling hands or feet, among other symptoms. Most physicians agree that there is a direct link between physical health and one’s mental/emotional state. Mental-health authorities have discovered that prolonged and unresolved grief can actually cause physical disabilities that may indirectly become life-threatening.

• “One of the most common complaints of grieving spouses is difficulty in establishing a regular pattern of restful sleep. A professor friend of mine recently witnessed the long and painful death of his 53 year old wife. He found that he awoke several times during the night with “flashbacks” of the wonderful times that he and his wife had enjoyed. On other occasions these sleep disturbances bore reminders of the occasions when his afflicted wife needed him to move her to another location in the bed.

“Other persons we have interviewed complain that they are prone to awaken at a very early hour, such as 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. One dear lady said she cried herself to sleep each night because she was now sleeping alone for the first time in 37 years.

“There are a number of ways of attempting to cope with these and related problems. First and most importantly, it is helpful to recall certain verses and promises that God Almighty has given us. Always recognize that there are countless conditions and situations, such as your mate’s death, over which you have little, if any, control. Man-made explanations and remedies cannot remove your present grief. No amount of talking on the part of your friends that “you need  to get on with your life” will resolve your problems.

“Unfortunately, too many people (including faithful Christians) utilize the resources found in God’s Word as a last step in helping them in their present need. To help you with your sleep and other physical problems, you can remember special promises that God has given us. For example, read Deuteronomy 31:6; Matthew 7:7; and John 14:14. Your pastor can suggest many other relevant Scripture passages.”

With that in mind, the following are some scriptures that might help you as you begin this journey:

• The good men perish; the godly die before their time and no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to realize that God is taking them away from evil days ahead. (Isaiah 57:1 LB)

• Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave you or forsake you. (Deuteronomy 31:6)

• God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1)

• The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. (Psalm 145:18)

• Fear not, for I am with you, be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you. (Isaiah 41:10)

• Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. (James 4:8)

• Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. (Psalm 116:15)

• Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. (Revelation 21:3-4)

• Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)

• Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord. (Psalm 31:24)

• Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will not be shaken. (Psalm 62:5-6)

• I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me. Though I have fallen, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light. (Micah 7:7-8)

• You are God my Saviour, and my hope is in you all day long. (Psalm 25:5)

• I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I put my hope. (Psalm 130:5)

• O Lord, sustain me according to your promise, and I will live; do not let my hopes be dashed. (Psalm 119:116)

• This I call to mind and therefore I have hope; Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. (Lamentations 3:21-22)

• Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. (Romans 12:12)

• Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)

• Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)

• We say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:6)

• As for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more. (Psalm 71:14)

• May our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who loved us and by His grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word. (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17)

• You will be secure, because there is hope; you will look about you and take your rest in safety. (Job 11:18)

Another thing you may find helpful: is to go into your Bible and take a journey through the Psalms. Many people I know who have experienced grief have found a lot of solace by reading through the Psalms. There are a lot of verses throughout it, that ministers in a very personal way to those who need a voice to express their hurting hearts and also need verses that will comfort and inspire them. Read, pray through, cry through, write out, and take into your spirit, all that God impresses upon your heart through this journey.

I pray this helps in some way. If any of this gives you a momentary bit of relief, I’m thankful. I pray the Lord brings others to minister to your needs in the ways in which you need.

God Bless,
Cindy Wright

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit!” (Romans 15:13)

“Even in the darkness light dawns for the upright.” (Psalm 112:4a)

— ALSO —

There are additional articles that can give you additional insights that are provided below. Please click onto the following web site links to read:

• A CHRISTIAN PRAYER AFTER THE DEATH OF A SPOUSE

• DEALING WITH THE DEATH OF A SPOUSE

• WHEN YOUR SPOUSE DIES

•  HOW TO COPE WITH THE DEATH OF YOUR SPOUSE

Tragically, so many couples deal with this horrible situation every day — losing their baby before the 20th week of pregnancy, commonly called a “miscarriage.” Even the word “miscarriage” brings with it the thought that the parent will “miss” being able to “carry” their baby physically, this side of heaven. And yet, they will always carry the baby emotionally in their hearts.

For those of you who are grieving through this loss, the emotional effects upon your marriage and upon each of you as individuals, can vary greatly.

“Sometimes a husband may blame his wife, or the wife may even blame her husband. Confusion and hurt can develop and cause great tension in a marriage if they are not handled properly” (Elizabeth Honeycutt, who developed Babygrief.com).

That is why it is extremely important to give each other the grace, space, empathy, and help that is needed so the grieving process doesn’t push you farther apart as a married couple, rather than draw you closer together as partners who work together through every tragedy that is encountered.

There’s something that Christi Bear wrote, that you might consider about all of this. It comes from the article “Understanding Miscarriage” (posted on www.troubledwith.com):

“It’s common to experience extreme sadness, anger, guilt and anxiety about future pregnancies. There is no ‘typical’ time-frame for emotional recovery; every woman experiences the grieving process in her own way and travels the road to healing at her own pace. While it’s important to allow time and personal ’space’ for grieving, if the grief becomes too overwhelming — leading to a more serious episode of depression and despondency — it may be necessary to get professional help.

“Fathers, too, are profoundly affected by the loss of a child. Unfortunately, a common misconception regarding miscarriage and stillbirth is that only the mother is affected. Women often feel more freedom to cry and express their grief, whereas men tend to feel pressure to ‘remain strong’ and may busy themselves with work or other activities in an effort to deal with their grief.

“Because men and women typically express their emotions and process their grief differently, it’s important for both parents to communicate their feelings to one another, helping to avoid the added pain of misunderstandings.”

John and Sylvia Van Regenmorter wrote something about this in their book, When the Cradle is Empty, that could help to explain the pain and tension that a miscarriage can bring into the marriage:

“The following reactions are common among women: ‘Does my husband feel as badly as I do about our baby? Does he know that since our baby died, I hate having sex? Why do I feel so unattractive? Why is becoming pregnant again such an obsession for me, but not for him?’

“Conversely, it’s not uncommon for the husband to think, ‘I have to be strong for my wife’s sake. She’ll only grieve more if I show my emotions, so I’ll keep my thoughts to myself. Why has she withdrawn sex? Is she blaming me? I know she wants to become pregnant again, but I’m afraid of what losing another baby would do to her. It seems like she’s crying all the time, and it’s really getting to me. I wish we could be happy again, like we were before the baby died.’”

John and Sylvia go on to give suggestions for walking through the loss of a baby like personalizing your baby, not rushing through to “move on” before you are ready, and bringing “your turmoil to God.” But they also suggest that you “grieve in your own way.” They write:

“Greg Bodin, director of pastoral care at North Medical Center in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, has worked with hundreds of families who’ve experienced miscarriage, still-birth, or early infant death. He and his wife have also suffered the loss of two children through miscarriage and stillbirth. Among the things he’s learned are:

• Loss is uniquely personal. There is no typical response or ‘right’ reaction to a pregnancy loss or death of a newborn.

• Feel the freedom to grieve in your own way. Don’t let anyone prescribe how you should feel, and don’t try to adapt your feelings to the expectations of others.

• Remember that the length of pregnancy doesn’t correlate to the grief felt. Some parents experience a great sense of loss even though the pregnancy was short-term.”

“Many couples feel the grief over miscarriage or stillbirth years after the loss,” Elizabeth Honeycutt from Babygrief.com says. “Others close up their feelings and try their best to move forward. For those who have felt the personal pain of losing a baby, the emotions, questions and grief need to be felt, answered, and worked through.”

To help those of you who are living through the pain and confusion that this experience brings into your life, we have found several articles posted on different web sites, written by those who have experienced miscarriage, firsthand. We pray they will minister to your hearts and your marriage relationship. You will find the links posted below.

The following article is written by Laura Mills, and is featured on the Today’s Christian Woman web site. Please click onto the following link to read:

• MOURNING A MISCARRIAGE

The following article, written by Lisa Brock, is featured on the web site Troubledwith.com. Please click onto the link below to read what Lisa learned about:

• LIFE AFTER MISCARRIAGE

This next article is written by Jennifer Maze Brown and is featured on the web site for Today’s Christian Woman. Please click onto the link provided below to read:

• EMPTY ARMS

The following article, featured on the web site for Marriage Partnership Magazine, is written by Bob Perry, and gives insight into what a husband was able to learn after his wife suffered a miscarriage. To read, please click onto the link provided below:

• WHEN MR FIX-IT WON’T DO

This next article, which is featured on the Stepping Stones ministry web site (Bethany.org), talks about the “Do’s” and “Don’ts” women want others to know about, as it pertains to approaching them after a miscarriage. To read, please click onto the link below:

• AFTER MY MISCARRIAGE

The following article is written by Cyndie Odya-Weis, and is featured on the Stepping Stones ministry web site (Bethany.org), and talks about the feelings she has for her three children in heaven that she lost through miscarriage. To read, please click onto the link below:

• LOST CHILDREN

This last article is written by Una McManus, as told to her by Mary Cunningham Agee, and is featured on the web site for Today’s Christian Woman. Please click onto the link provided below to read how miscarriage birthed a ministry to unwed mothers:

• FROM TEARS TO JOY

But you don’t want to just survive to the end. You want to work together to the point where your marriage relationship is thriving and growing — where you each become a better individuals because of the teamwork you have built together over the years, to the glory of God.

It’s like what author Dennis Rainey said in a radio interview on the subject of romance and growing a marriage to be the best it can be. He was quoting the book that he and his wife Barbara wrote titled, Rekindling The Romance, and said the following:

“When marriage is firing on all cylinders, it’s truly glorious. You might say that marriage is the Cadillac of all earthly relationships. There is no other expression in life that rivals the indescribable ecstasy of romance and sex shared between a husband and a wife in the covenant of marriage. But it’s a glorious minefield. You see, there is a cosmic battle raging around your romance.”

Dennis goes on to explain,

“There is an enemy of your soul who wants to destroy romance between you and your spouse. For a man, the minefield may mean that his needs aren’t being addressed, or they’re not being met.”

For a woman, it may be something entirely different or different in a similar way. But the point is that the battles that rage within a marriage are deeper in meaning and consequences than what either spouse may recognize.

They want to make sure that they make it past the worst of the adjustment times together in a way in which both of them are emotionally intact, and get to a better place where in the process they have learned the skills they need to help them to enjoy the best of what marriage can offer them.

To help you with this mission, we’d like to lead you to a radio interview which the wonderful ministry of Family Life Today put together. It was part two of a ten part series on marriage and was aired on various radio stations on January 29, 2008. You can choose to either listen to the interview with Dennis and Barbara Rainey or read the transcript.

Whatever your choice, we believe you will learn things that could help you to survive and grow through the seasons of marriage.

To make your choice, please click onto the following web site link:

• SEASONS OF MARRIAGE

- ALSO-

There is another article posted on the Marriage Partnership Magazine web site that we believe you will also benefit from reading. Please click onto the link provided below to read:

• WILL YOUR ROMANCE LAST?

• You have teenagers who will soon leave the nest.
• Your own parents are aging.
• You were recently invited to a 25th high school reunion.
• You exercise more and burn fewer calories doing it.
• You just received an invitation to join AARP.
• By the time you get your spouse’s attention, you’ve forgotten what you were going to say.

If you identify with these symptoms, you are in or are approaching the second half of marriage. The first half of marriage involved launching your union and surviving the active parenting years. Did you, like us, think those children would be around forever?

With the birthing of the second half of marriage, couples enter an uncharted course where mentors are few and far between. In the past, people didn’t live as long as they do today. Increased longevity has many implications for your marriage. A second-half marriage as long or longer than the first half provides the opportunity to build a closer friendship, to set new goals, to travel and pursue new interests and hobbies, to begin a new profession, to influence your adult children and grandchildren, and to continue to make an impact on this world in one way or another. The second half can be the best time of life! But marriage at this stage comes with challenges.

The transition into the second half of marriage is a crisis time for many couples. The current trend is alarming: long-term marriages are breaking up in record numbers. According to the National Center of Health Statistics, although divorce in the United States generally declined from 1981 to 1991, divorce among couples married 30 years or more showed a sharp increase.

From our surveys, we discovered that for couples who hang together through the midlife transition, marital satisfaction begins to rise again and stays that way—if couples risk growing in their relationship. The second half of marriage gives you the opportunity to reinvent your marriage, to make mid-course adjustments, and to reconnect with one another in a more meaningful way. Healthy long-term marriages have staying power, because they’re held together from within. Competent couples invest time and energy in building and maintaining a positive relationship with each other.

From our work in marriage enrichment over the years, and based on our surveys, we believe that the following 8 challenges describe the areas in which couples with healthy long-term marriages are investing their energies. We’re convinced that if you work on these 8 challenges, your marriage will be enriched. If you don’t surmount these challenges, your marriage will not be as fulfilling as it could be.

1. Let go of past marital disappointments, forgive each other, and commit to making the rest of your marriage the best. Are you willing to let go of unmet expectations and unrealistic dreams? What about that missed promotion — for either of you or your spouse? Can you give up your dream for a condo on the ski slope? Or maybe you’re realizing that your kid is never going to be a Rhodes scholar or professional baseball player. Can you accept those extra pounds? Those gray hairs —or lack of hair? Your mate’s little irritating habits don’t seem to be disappearing —can you accept them?

Giving up lost dreams and dealing with each other’s imperfections is a positive step toward forgiving past hurts and moving on in your marriage. Holding on to marital grudges and disappointments will only prevent you from moving on in your relationship and developing a new, more loving marriage.

2. Create a marriage that is partner-focused rather than child-focused. Too often when the children leave the nest, couples move from a child-focused marriage to an activity-focused marriage. Community or church activities may now take up the time and energy formerly devoted to children. Unfortunately, these activities may still be buffers to a mutual, partnership marriage. How can you make the transition to a partner-focused relationship?

In the second half of marriage, the dynamics of the relationship change. Roles and functions that previously worked are no longer relevant. Without children as distractions, you have the opportunity to refocus and redefine your marriage. Marriage in the second half can be more personal and more fulfilling as you focus on the couple relationship and not on children.

3. Maintain an effective communication system that allows you to express your deepest feelings, joys, and concerns. What can you do when the communication patterns that seemed to work during the first half of marriage are found to be inadequate and lacking for the second half? With the children absent, there are more spaces of silence; there is less to say to each other. You may ask yourself, We made it this far —why is it now so difficult to have a really personal conversation?

When we begin to talk about really personal matters, it’s easy to feel threatened. Midlife is a time when it’s really vitally important to develop interpersonal competence —the ability to converse on a personal level by sharing your deepest feelings, joys, and concerns. Successful couples are able to find a proper balance between intimacy and autonomy, and this is critical for healthy relationships in the second half of marriage.

4. Use anger and conflict in a creative way to build your relationship. Love and anger can both be used to build your marriage, but you must process your anger in an appropriate way and develop a proper balance that allows you to express your concerns in the context of a loving relationship. A healthy marriage is a safe place to resolve honest conflict and process anger. The reason this challenge is so critical to long-term marriages is that in most conflict situations, it isn’t the facts that are the real problem, it’s the strong negative (or even angry) feelings we harbor. Once those feelings are dealt with, it’s simple to move on and work at resolving the conflict.

5. Build a deeper friendship and enjoy your spouse. At this stage of marriage, we can deepen our friendship and become close companions. One advantage of a long-term marriage is being more familiar and comfortable with each other. We know we aren’t perfect, so we can relax and enjoy each other.

What are you doing to build your friendship with your spouse? Are you taking care of your health and pacing yourself for the second half? What are you doing to stretch your boundaries and prevent boredom? The second half of marriage is a great time to develop as “couple friends.” How can we put more fun in our marriage and use humor to diminish the effects of an already too serious world? Friendship and fun in marriage —especially in the second half —is serious business!

6. Renew romance and restore a pleasurable sexual relationship. Many people assume that as people grow older, they loose interest in sex. Research shows otherwise. Amazingly, our survey results suggest that sexual satisfaction increases rather than decreases with number of years married. As we enter the second half of marriage, it’s important for us to protect our privacy, cherish our love relationship, and renew romance, while acknowledging the inevitable changes in our bodies. The quality of our love life isn’t so much a matter of performance as it’s a function of the quality of our relationship.

7. Adjust to changing roles with aging parents and adult children. Just as you need to release your children into adulthood, you need to reconnect with them on an adult level. At the same time, you need to balance relationships with your own parents. If your parents didn’t successfully meet with this challenge in their marriage, it may be more difficult for you.

Whatever your situation, the relationship with your elderly parents and your adult children definitely has an effect on your marriage. Realizing and accepting what is realistic in your family relationships is so important. You can’t go back and change your past family history, but what you do in the future is your choice and decision. You can choose to forge better relationships with those loved ones on both sides of the generational seesaw.

8. Evaluate where you are on your spiritual pilgrimage, grow closer to each other and to God, and together serve others. Our faith in God and his banner of love over our marriage should make a difference in the quality of our marriage —especially in the second half. The relationship of the husband and the wife to God is tested and validated in their relationship to each other. The closeness we have when we pray together is a closeness we can achieve in no other way.

Let us challenge you to evaluate where you are on your own spiritual pilgrimage and to seek to grow closer spiritually to each other and to God. To meet this challenge, first you must be on a spiritual journey, your journey must have your attention, and your journey must be a priority. Also important to your marriage is a commitment to serve others and pass along the wisdom you have gained. This commitment is a natural outgrowth of love for God.

Marital success comes through daily struggles. Marriage is made up of the daily grind —the little things like making unselfish choices and forgiving each other help to build a healthy marriage. Little steps, if taken in good faith, can turn the tide. Our desire for you is that you will gain new insights and knowledge that will motivate you to make the rest of your marriage the best. The choice is yours.

The above article came from the book, “The Second Half of Marriage” by David and Claudia Arp, published by Zondervan Publishing House. As you go through this book you’ll have the opportunity to transform your own marriage, to make mid-course adjustments, and to reconnect with one another in a more personal way. And whether you’re in your second marriage or it’s the second half of your first marriage, they’ll show you how your marriage can be improved. The Arp’s will set up and then take the 8 principles outlined in this article and spend an entire chapter on each point offering strategies and exercises for meeting each of them.

They also have a DVD series by the same name as the book, “The Second Half of Marriage” as well as participation guides. You can obtain these resources by visiting the web site for the ministry of David and Claudia Arp at www.marriagealive.com.

— ALSO —

Here’s a question you might like an answer to:

“WHAT IS MIDDLE AGE? 40-60 1. Ogden Nash —’Middle age is when you’ve met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.’ 2. It is when you don’t have to have fun to enjoy yourself. 3. It is that time of life when everything begins to wear out, fall out, or spread out. 4. It is that time of life where you need to not fight it, but face it gracefully and adapt.”

To find out more, please click onto the progressive links below to read what Glenn Pease has to say:

• MIDLIFE MARRIAGE ENRICHMENT (Part 1 of 6)

• MIDLIFE MARRIAGE ENRICHMENT (Part 2 of 6)

• MIDLIFE MARRIAGE ENRICHMENT (Part 3 of 6)

• MIDLIFE MARRIAGE ENRICHMENT (Part 4 of 6)

• MIDLIFE MARRIAGE ENRICHMENT (Part 5 of 6)

• MIDLIFE MARRIAGE ENRICHMENT (Part 6 of 6)

When your kids are in the last years of high school, life seems a whirlwind of homework, extracurricular activities, community service projects, ACT and SAT prep and testing, college visits and applications, and scholarship meetings. But somewhere in the midst of this frenzy, it hits you—the kids are leaving. The nest will be empty.

As far as life changes go, this is a big one. It’s like finding yourself unemployed, or, worse, fired. A lot of time, love, and effort went into those offspring, and suddenly the hands-on, daily part of the job is over. You can’t help feeling a little sad and lonely, and no matter how well the kids turned out, you probably have some regrets.

But your toughest assignment won’t be adjusting to missing the kids. It’ll be adjusting to your marriage. Couples realize they’ve let their lives revolve around the children, and once they’re gone, the big question is, “Now what?” “All of a sudden the two of you are sitting there thinking, ‘What do we talk about?’” says Ingrid Melrose of Houston, whose youngest child recently started college. “You have to readjust to having conversations with your spouse.”

Chances are, family activities revolved around the kids, too. Remember the last time you went out as a couple, just for fun? No? You’re not alone. “Your marriage has been child-centered, and one of the big challenges is to go from that child focus to a partner focus,” points out Claudia Arp, marriage educator and coauthor of Empty Nesting and The Second Half of Marriage. “Issues you think are long buried resurface. It’s easy to be lonely and stressed out. An empty nest is a time of particular danger for an affair.”

Without intentional focus on the marriage, empty nesters may find they have no reason to stay together. The overall U.S. divorce rate has declined slightly, but couples married 30-plus years are splitting up 16% more often. Reason? The empty nest. “I’ve seen friends who were totally wrapped up with their children and found they didn’t have much in common and no outside interests or commitments,” says Cal Chaney, general counsel for a physician’s group in Dallas and parent of two college-age sons. “Some of those marriages break up.”

But fortunately, the empty nest also has the potential to be one of the best times of married life. “You forget in 20 years what it is like to choose what you want to do every night,” says Audrey Jackson, mother of three sons in college. “We can cook what we like or go out to dinner if we feel like it. Our weekends are free to do what we want.” With a little preparation and planning, you can enjoy your empty nest, too.

Stare Into the Emptiness: As your kids prep for college, you need to do some of your own prepping —and you shouldn’t wait until they’ve moved into the dorm. Make a list of the positive and negative aspects of your soon-to-be empty nest. Write down your personal interests besides your children and set goals for this next stage of life. List the things you’ll never do—and need to let go of—and things you want to do when the kids are gone. Don’t be completely realistic here, and do include things you want to do with your partner. Dr. Clare Chaney, for example, plans to accompany Cal to some of the many conferences he attends, and they’re booking a cruise with old college friends.

The idea is to anticipate the void your kids will leave and find ways to fill it, now. If you aren’t working, consider a part-time job or make plans to go back to school (just not the same one your children will attend!). If you’re working full time, volunteer, pick up an old hobby, or find a new one to take the place of all those kid-related activities.

And don’t forget the physical void: Make plans for the space in your home that will be freed up. You don’t have to make the kids’ rooms unrecognizable, but you can change things a bit. Think about downsizing into a smaller house. Or think about filling the space with a new pet. It’s positively uncanny how many couples do this, consciously or unconsciously giving themselves something new to take care of. Just be sure you both want to do this, and find a good pet sitter so you won’t be tied down.

Accentuate the positive—you aren’t losing a teenager, you’re gaining a bathroom! And plenty of hot water. Clean towels. The food you like in the fridge (food in the fridge, period!). The television show you like to watch. You get the idea.

If you think you want to spend as much time as possible with your teenager—after all, he’ll be gone soon—consider that your teenager probably wants to spend less time with you. That’s healthy. “Disengaging is a two-way street, and parents who don’t do their part end up having more of a problem with their adult children,” warns Sheri Stritof, co-author of The Everything Great Marriage Book.

Instead, focus on your friends and start spending more time with your partner. The kids may be leaving, but you’ll be spending the rest of your life (you hope) with your partner. The greatest predictor of marital success is the level of friendship, Arp says, and one way to build that friendship is by going out on dates. Go out to dinner with another couple (this will help you talk about things other than the kids). Plan a parents-only vacation. Working on the senior prom with a group of other moms helped Clare Chaney let go of her son, and she enjoyed the bonds formed with other senior parents.

After The Fall: Once your kid actually leaves, put your plans into action. Have a party to celebrate. If you drop a child off at college, you might not want to go straight home to an empty house—take a few days at the beach to ease the transition. On the other hand, if you’re exhausted, go straight home and sleep for a few days, then take a trip. When you get back, re-energize your love life. If you don’t remember what that is, check Arp’s latest book, 10 Great Dates for Empty Nester’s, for ideas.

To feel linked to your child’s new life, join the parents’ association at your child’s college. “That was one of the best things that happened to us,” says Mary Anne Barber, previous co-chair of the University of Texas Parents Association. “Getting involved with the college and meeting other parents who are in the same boat helped with the empty nest. One of the things I had missed the most was the interaction with parents of kids who were in school with mine.” Ask the Dean of Students’ office at your child’s college about parent orientations and publications for parents.

And don’t forget to let yourself grieve. Go ahead and cry. Talk about your child and all the things you remember and what you’ll miss. To give yourself a tangible event to anticipate, make arrangements for future time with your college student, like his trip home for the holidays or a family getaway during the summer.

Most of all, enjoy yourselves. “We think this is the best stage of marriage,” says Arp. “We moved. We’re traveling more and rediscovering things we liked to do before the kids came along, like playing tennis. We’re having a blast.” You can, too.

MELISSA GASKILL, a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas, writes a weekly parenting column for the Austin American-Statesman and contributes to magazines such as Family Fun.

“If you stop to think about it (which most couples don’t), it’s not surprising that newlyweds begin to drift apart. Throughout life, we move through phases. These phases call for continual reassessment and renegotiating to the marriage “contract” we made when we first got married.” (Louis McBurney) 

It never even occurs to most couples (ourselves included until recently) that our married life could go through “phases” just like every other aspect of life.  Life isn’t just one steady up-hill battle — there are ups downs, valley experiences as well as mountaintop experiences. And with every experience you have the opportunity to grow and mature or go backwards in your how you handle things.

The article we’d like to direct you to read, is written by Louis McBurney, and is featured on the Marriage Partnership Magazine web site. It explains those life phases in marriage and also explains how to negotiate through those seasons and “keep magic in your marriage.”

To read the article titled:
Life Phases: Will Your Romance Last?

CLICK HERE

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Yet these and other changes in a marriage, can be turned from bad to good once you recognize what they are. A marriage that appears dull and mundane can be made to sparkle. A hopeless situation can emerge into bright promise. A good union can be made better. It all depends upon finding and managing the sources of trouble, the clinkers and changes. We want to help you do that.

Because no marriage is perfect, every couple weathers these problems to some extent. But when the problems loom too large to handle and threaten the union, trouble will follow.

When Doctors Newman’s or Minirth or Hemfelt deal with a marital problem, they deal with 3 entities: the husband, the wife, and the marriage itself, as if the marriage were a living, breathing organism. We have found that if a marriage is not growing, it’s dying, just as any living organism. When a marriage gets hung up in a passage, it ceases growing. Growth is, therefore, critical.

By definition, then, PASSAGES ARE PREDICTABLE AND NECESSARY STAGES, INVOLVING THE PHYSICAL, THE EMOTIONAL, AND THE SPIRITUAL. Through them, partners journey toward the lifetime goal of growth as individuals and as a couple.

We’ve identified 5 distinct stages, passages through which marriage passes. The developmental stages through which a child passes from birth into adulthood are well known. Similarly, a marriage matures from developmental stage to stage —from passage to passage —according to the number of years it has existed. Remarriage may differ somewhat; because the partners have been married previously, they might telescope a passage into a briefer time or extend a passage beyond its normal life span.

THE PASSAGES OF MARRIAGE: Not counting courtship, which by definition is a passage of pre-marriage, we divide the lifetime of a married couple into 5 distinct units. Although some people hasten ahead of time into the next passage, or linger a little longer than average in one passage or another, in general, marriages hew pretty close to this outline. The passages are these:

• The First Passage—Young Love, the first 2 years
• The Second Passage—Realistic Love, the 3rd through the 10th year
• The Third Passage—Comfortable Love, the 11th through the 25th year
• The Fourth Passage—Renewing Love, the 26th through the 35th year
• The Fifth Passage—Transcendent Love, 26 years and there-after

Each of the passages through which every married couple travel, like bases on a softball diamond, must be appropriately dealt with if the next one is to count. And the tasks that accompany these passages must be completed before the next tasks commence. By tasks we mean attitude changes one must make and jobs one must complete in order to maintain an intimate marital relationship.

Should a runner skip over a base, inadvertently or on purpose, dire problems result. Should a runner get stuck on one base, the only way he can leave is by walking away scoreless that’s less satisfying than making it to home plate, for the aim from the very beginning is to make it home.

What If My Marriage Doesn’t Fit the Pattern? Remember the age-guessing booth at fairs and carnivals long past? A man would offer to guess your age within 3 years. If he guessed, he won and you paid him. If he missed, you won and he paid you. And he almost always won. Why? Because age makes itself known in certain ways, and the trained eye can see those ways in every person.

A marriage also ages in certain ways regardless of the persons involved, regardless of the circumstances. The same patterns prevail even though yours may be a most unusual union. In fact, what is “normal?” The passages themselves are the norm, the common denominators of any marriage. They are universal. They form the skeleton upon which problems are pleasures attach.

If you’re reading this at a later passage in your marriage, we advise you to read through the early passages. We have counseled couples whose marriages were in the Third and Fourth Passage, but their relationship was actually stuck in one of the tasks of Passage One or Two. In counseling we walk them back through these earlier passages so they can examine their marriage history. Then we show them how to complete these earlier tasks by rewriting their marriage contracts.

If you know chess or backgammon, you recognize that the strategy changes as the game proceeds. Your goals at the beginning of play are not the same as those at the end. It’s the way with marriage too. The original contract ceases to serve and must be rewritten. [Editor's note: But the foundation—Covenant vow to each other—stays constant.]

Right in the beginning, as in the Fourth Passage of marriage, the stool is 2-legged, and therefore unstable. The happy newlyweds are certain that in each other their lives are complete. They don’t think they need a third leg. Their lives don’t have room for one. As a result, the marriage bond at first is extremely fragile and easily hurt, as are the marriage partners.

The First Task:
Mold Into One Family: The first task newlyweds must accomplish if they’re to complete the First Passage is to mold two absolutely different, independent persons into one unit. That won’t come easily. Take two headstrong individuals and forge them into a unit without sacrificing their individuality. What a formidable task! To get through the passage of Young Love with flying colors, you, as well as every other newlywed, have to master this task. Several things help in completing it.

On the Plus Side… A powerful tool comes built into this task of Young Love: excitement and enthusiasm. Raw, exuberant energy.

On the Other Hand… One thing seriously hinders the move to unity: the possibility of breakage. Regardless of what the couple think (or imagine), their intimacy in the beginning is superficial. true intimacy grows only as a couple get to know each other better. Persons in a new relationship haven’t had enough chronological time to do that in depth. This is true no matter what the actual age of the persons involved. Teenagers and 70 year olds suffer equally. They feel compelled to walk on eggs, as it were, when dealing with each other. “Will this upset her?” “How will I tell him about this?”

A new couple, regardless of chronological age, has simply not logged enough time in harness to develop deep intimacy. Often a new couple inadvertently strain their fragile intimacy by loading it with burdens it cannot carry. “This is the intimate relationship that will solve all my other relationship problems from the past. I will finally receive what I need.” Friction with parents, failed prior relationships, perhaps even failed marriage—all melt away in the brilliant heat of this new and encompassing love.

Putting Original Family Patterns Behind… Pulling up roots exists in another dimension. The bride and groom have successfully left home. They’re on their own. But the home has not left them. The old patterns from home color nearly everything in the new marriage. Do you open gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning? Do you make your bed immediately upon rising or when you go through the house tidying up? Which is right? The way you did it when you were growing up is right, of course. Another way, though not exactly wrong, isn’t right either. Obvious examples such as these seem overly simplistic, but far more subtle “rights” and “not rights” color our day-to-day living. What’s more damaging, they color a mate’s perception of the spouse.

The Second Task:
Overcome the Tendency to Jockey for Control… The second task is one which will resurface off and on throughout all the passages of marriage. Each spouse will ask, “Who’s in control here?” as different situations arise, from the choice of a restaurant for a Friday night date to the purchase of a new home. The source of conflict will change, as will the couple’s methods of responding to it, but conflict itself is present in all relationships.

Conflict is inevitable, no matter what the ages or backgrounds. The new couple aren’t far enough into their relationship to know that conflict is nothing more than a normal part of marriage. How the couple deal with that conflict, however, can make or break the union. [Editor's note: for help in this area of your marriage look in the "Communications" section of this web site for tools to help you work through conflicts in less damaging ways.]

Also, expectations transfer from courtship into marriage and so does every unresolved issue. conflicts the couple thought would disappear, little things in their engagement, blossom into big things in marriage.

Attitude Adjustment in Conflict… The couple in the throes of Young Love, not yet fully comfortable with each other, will instinctively guard what they say and do. They know (although they might not articulate that knowledge) that the greater the openness, the greater the potential for conflict. What they may not realize is, the greater the openness, the greater the potential for improved intimacy.

The Third Task: Build a Sexual Union… Unlike other biological needs —food, shelter, water —the sex drive is profoundly influenced by factors outside biology. Physical factors such as drugs or alcohol, fatigue, stress, and physical disabilities alter sexual response. But the most active sex organ, and the least appreciated, is the brain. It does its thing largely beyond the conscious level. Personal problems and distractions, fear, misconceptions about sex (“hang-ups”) and the emotional states of both parties are subconscious mental factors.

In the area of sexuality, as in the areas of many decisions within the new family, time capsules from your childhood family may begin to affect your sexual intimacy. We have never yet seen an exception to the rule that a woman (or man) abused in childhood will suffer some degree of sexual dysfunction in adulthood. Problems within the person include damage done by sexual abuse and other traumatic sexual experiences. Such damage almost always affects marital sex. In these cases professional counseling is almost always necessary We also recommend reading the book, The Wounded Heart… Hope for Adjust Victims of Sexual Abuse by Dr Dan Allendar.

The First Task: Hang On To Love After Reality Strikes… A pervasive so-far-so-good feeling helps the couple to hang on to love after reality strikes. “We’ve made it to this point; we’ve the impetus to keep going.” Lord willing in those first couple of years, the young marrieds (and remember this young-married business applies as much to elderly newlyweds as to teens) have ironed out some of the issues causing conflict. One person or the other has made a love gift of compromise in easing tensions, or they decided to make the problem a non-issue. Comfortable adjustment has begun.

There’s also a momentum in this passage, like a strong tidal current, washing the couple along from day to day. Of course, getting caught in a riptide is no fun. Busy-ness also works to disadvantage. But a lot of things other than busy-ness can mess up the smooth progress of this passage.

What Hinders Completion? This marriage is no longer new. And yet, neither has it a long history. There’s great power in the ability of a common history to unite a married couple. Add to that the fact that couples in the Second Passage are on the run, pursuing careers, making a living, raising the kids, trying to pay for the house or car or perhaps just the daily food. The very tidal surge that carries them along also washes the gloss off all their dreams.

Now is the time the partners start taking each other for granted. Add to that complacency the familiarity of sex. No longer is it an exploration. The same old marital partners engage in the same old sexual practices. The gloss, the new, has worn off that aspect as well. Too often, disillusionment replaces the sparkle of Young Love. [Editors note: This is the time to be aware of "The Seven Year Itch" when "a husband or wife, bored, doubting, and anxious in the marriage relationship, find a sympathetic ear of the opposite sex" and attraction multiplies outside of the marriage.]

People who feel restless and frustrated in this passage start going back through the files of their mind, digging out the reasons they shouldn’t have married in the first place: “I was too dumb to know I wasn’t in love. I was trying to escape from my parents, but I just didn’t know it then.” “He’s a nerd. Boring. My friends even told me so. But I blinded myself to it. Now my marriage is so boring I can’t stand it. It’s been one big, tragic, continuous mistake.” And on and on the rationalizations go.

All marriages have unwritten secret contracts, hidden agendas. That’s exactly why Passage Two is Passage Two. Hidden agendas, the fine print of the marriage contract which we never read, do not surface as much during the First Passage. The stars in the newlyweds’ eyes obscure them even if they do. (This, incidentally, really hobbles premarital counseling. The couple try their best, but 80% of the issues they face later fail to surface before the wedding.) Now, during and following the Second Passage, is when they tend to appear. The hidden contract may lie dormant for years, only to be triggered by some supposedly random event.

The Second Task: Recognize the Hidden Contracts in Your Marriage… We’ve found that most hidden contracts remain submerged during the First Passage of marriage. They usually emerge during the Second Passage or later. As illustration, recall the timeworn plot gimmick in films and novels a generation ago. The battleship commander leaves port under sealed orders. He has no idea where he’s taking his fleet until he crosses a certain longitude. Then, in a dramatic moment, he opens his sealed orders and learns for the first time of his destination.

Marriage contracts work just like that. The happy couple go steaming off into the sunset unaware where they’re really going. Then the sealed orders spring into effect and they find themselves on a totally different course. Apparently God allows a lot of unconscious stuff to remain sealed until the marriage gets rolling. After all, if we saw all the thoughts of our partner’s and our own darkest corners of the mind, we would become so disillusioned we’d never get together.

Fidelity Matters… The Second Passage is a time of high vulnerability for an affair (so for that matter is the Fourth Passage). In the Second Passage an affair usually represents a flight away from intimacy. Here is the poor married man or woman, struggling with control issues, financial and career pressures, kids, and, in some, a fear of true intimacy. An affair offers an easy pseudo-intimacy; intimacy with no strings.

The new love approves of the harried married person and accepts him or her without conditions. No one worries about who takes out the garbage or who handles the finances. Control issues aren’t a problem. Persons involved in an affair need not deal with boredom and everyday minor crises. That’s the hard work of marriage. Yet these issues create a special, rich kind of intimacy.

The bottom line of your marriage contract is a bottom line of any of Ian’s union contracts—two entities helping each other succeed and move forward.

The Period of Drifting—School-Age Kids… We call this a period of drifting for several reasons. For one, it seems the family members are each cast adrift, going separate ways, aimlessly. For all the churning activity, you see very little real progress day to day. In fact, with school-age kids, how do you measure progress, if any?

Also, the family itself tends to drift. Pressed severely by all the issues school-age kids dump into the family stew, parents have little time for work, for play, for each other—even the kids. It just didn’t seem this hectic a generation ago.

The Stability Flutter… What children need most of all, though, at any age but particularly during the school years, is a stable family life. Unfortunately, as the kids get wrapped up in school with all their needs and demands, and the parents struggle with work demands, stability tends to flutter.

Family stability is no stronger, no less fluttery than the stability of the marriage itself. Parents who would give their children the best possible schooling, then, would make the marriage their first priority. We’ve long known that the child blossoms when the father loves the mother. Children learn love and family unity best by being part of the loving family unit.

As children grow, the marriage continues its inexorable changes, from reality into comfort. You’re slipping into the next passage much as you would slip into a comfy pair of old house slippers.

The Second Task: Say the Final Good-byes. Only by saying good-bye to one thing can you embrace another. You must put down the pen in your hand if you wish to pick up the pencil. That is what good-bye is about. For every good-bye there is a hello. Important good-byes remain, and you just about have to reach this stage of life before you can do it well.

All couples in this passage face the realities of middle age which causes us all to pause and take note of where we are and where we are going. An important task of the Third Passage is to accept the losses surfacing now saying good-bye to lost youth and lost health.

By this Third Passage, most couples must face and accept certain limitations on their financial and vocational achievements. “Is this all there is?” they ask themselves. Or, “Has it been worthwhile?” To paraphrase the words of a retired friend of the Minirth’s: “When I graduated from high school I was going to change the world. By the time I finished college I hoped to make my mark in America. In graduate school, I thought I might change a little of Arkansas. Now I’d be content to redecorate my office.”

Rare is the person who meets or exceeds the dreams of the beginnings of life. All the rest of us mourn shattered hopes. We wanted our kids to be farther above average than they are. We wanted to be higher up the vocational ladder and more elevated in the community than we are. Regrets. Emptiness. Too much of life is gone and not enough has been accomplished.

Foundational tasks of Passages One and Three of your marriage involve individuation. Passage One requires that the couple meld their singleness into a team. The Third Passage calls upon each of them to not let individual-ness get lost in the marriage union.

By the Third Passage (or frequently even before then), serious threats to intimacy abound. At times they cannot be resolved by a few simple changes or even by writing a new contract. They must be ferreted out and reversed, or the marriage partners will find themselves either stranded on base or deliberately walking off the field. A task of the Third Passage—Comfortable love — is to maintain an intimate relationship with your spouse.

A task of this passage is to overcome the now-or-never syndrome, the disillusionment that is frequent during this passage is compounded by the fear, “It’s now or never. I’ve got to get out of this marriage so I can build another life.”

Intimacy is the sharing of the soul—hopes, dreams, fears, shames, joys, sorrows. Intimacy is knowing another person deeply and well and appreciating him anyway. It’s an easy, comfortable balance between dependence upon another and independence—the living of one’s own life; of aloneness and sharedness; of distance and closeness. By the end of the Third Passage the fine balance can be achieved.

If by this Third Passage your needs are not being met, you will start to make negative assumptions about what your spouse feels. Those assumptions, apart from being unjust, destroy intimacy. Sometimes the assumptions are true or at least border on truth. The vast majority are not.

Considerable temptation looms in this Third Passage. Temptations to quit trying and just to get a divorce; to seek with someone else what you feel is lacking in your marriage (understanding, affection, whatever); to marry your job because on the job you get all sorts of positive strokes and at home you get nagged.

Probably no area of life is more poorly perceived, and invites more just plain ignorance and stigma, as sex-over-forty. Even if you make that sex-over-fifty, myths and errors hold sway. Those untruths can ruin your sexual relationship and even open the partners to sexual dalliances with younger persons.

If you have been married more than twenty-five years, you know that this is a time of either renewal or alienation. Intimacy involves opening up to each other, becoming vulnerable. It also requires learning new things about each other.

Young Love, the first two years. Realistic Love, the third through the tenth year. comfortable Lord, the eleventh through the twenty-fifth year. Renewing Love, the twenty-six through the thirty-fifth year. You’ve been together a long time now. The final passage lies ahead: Transcendent Love. True love at last.

THE FIFTH PASSAGE: Transcendent Love, the Thirty-sixth Year and On… The first task: prepare for retirement. Previous generations didn’t have the benefits of modern medicine and financial safety nets. Their experience colors our perceptions. Their retirement years too often brought disillusionment and sadness compared with what today’s retiree can expect.

Celebrate the new opportunities. Grieve and accept the unavoidable limitations. Amend the dream, if necessary, as circumstances require. “You have to be flexible or you’ll never get anywhere,” Mary Alice Minirth is fond of saying.

A major transition and adjustment is to be mentally prepared for shocks and bumps. A very damaging myth promises that two people, together for decades already, can slip quietly and friction-free into retirement. Expect some surprising rough spots. They’re coming. Many psychologists claim that the life change of retirement is as great as that of puberty or of marriage itself.

Persons who have not resolved the control issues and individuation-versus-union issues of the first three passages are going to slam into those unresolved problems right here, at retirement. you may have been able to put off facing certain issues for twenty or thirty years. When one of you reaches retirement, there will be no escaping the problem. Control and personal boundaries are the two big factors in retirement adjustments.

In this stage each person needs his or her own space. There must also be neutral space, shared as a couple, in order to be content with the increased amount of physical and residential togetherness. These spaces may be in or outside the home, but they must exist. Also, each spouse must be willing to respect the other’s territory.

Time must be reapportioned as his, hers, and ours. Negotiate to agree how much time you’ll be spending together and how much will be set aside for individual use. Neither partner ought to feel chained to the other.

Activities should be scheduled according to two needs: the universal need to feel needed, and gratification of personal interest. Outline and share activities to participate in daily, weekly, monthly, whatever. Then indicate shared activities.

Given that retirement is a beginning and not an end, look closely at goals. Husband and wife should each have several. They should share several as a couple. When writing goals, also mention a few words how those goals ought to be pursued. Goals definitely must provide for each other’s needs. Both spouses should establish goals before entering the actual retirement phase. It is far easier to come up with acceptable goals when you’re feeling good about yourself, active and working. If you are lonely, sitting about with time on your hands, goals come hard and assume less apparent importance. “Why bother?” smothers “Let’s do it!”

Spiritual growth should continue until death, just as temporal wisdom grows. Not only should your spiritual dimension not be neglected, this is the time of life when it should be nurtured.

After you talk about these items together, build a new working outline, not unlike a contract. It then becomes your template for everyday life. The outline in addition offers one more chance to iron out any unresolved issues from previous passages. The plan need not be embedded in stone; but it promotes good solid teamwork right from the beginning.

A fount of troubles frequently is the situation where one spouse has had little or no outside interest throughout pre-retirement. The workaholic husband who does nothing else, the isolated homemaker whose idea of recreation is watching TV in the afternoon, suddenly find themselves at sea, confused and aimless. Establishing goals and shoving the horizons out is absolutely essential for situations of that sort. Sit down and think of something new to try, some place new to explore, a hobby or volunteer project to begin. Deliberately talk about goals and purpose, and then set some.

To avoid trouble of another sort, maintain utmost care in respecting each other’s turf. His place, her place, and their place is an immensely important concept.

When dissatisfaction crops up, go back to the chart to pinpoint the trouble spot. And don’t expect the same chart to work forever. As people change, so do their needs, and as needs change, so must the spouse. Revise the chart as necessary.

Another trouble spot we find often is the interference in the couple’s daily life posed by adult children and grandchildren. If solid, comfortable boundaries are not in place, grandchildren and adult children can become too much of a good thing. The retired couple find themselves curtailing their own plans as they serve as hosts, baby-sitters, or emergency counselors. To an extent, this is good; older people have a wisdom and balance that youth need. Too much is not good.

There is no right or wrong plan when it comes to setting boundaries. Some couples like a total open-door policy. Others cannot live with that. Make your policy known and don’t be afraid to stand up to family members who fail to honor it.

We often say that relationships are everything to young children. As we mature, material objects and financial security become too important. Now in the Fifth Passage we come full circle again. Couples begin to reorder their priorities. Relationships become most important. Not the mortgage. Or the bank account. Or the membership in the country club. All of that pales in comparison to relationships with other human beings and with God.

We’ve found that couples in the Fifth Passage can have an unusual perspective toward sex. Their sexual relationship can go either way. If good sexual channels are open (if there is no real physical impediment to sex), this experience can be deeper than ever. If, however, illness or the death of a spouse makes sex impossible, spouses have a better capacity to accommodate that situation. A true paradox exists here. At this time when we are nearing the end of our story, we can feel greater sexual fulfillment rather than the leftovers, as some would have us believe.

Transcendent love is a profound and peaceful perspective toward your partner and toward life. Transcendent love does not depend upon smoothness. It’s not a tidy ribbon tied on the Fifth Passage package. It means, rather, that there has been a quantum shift in perspective. It is not that you somehow become oblivious to pain, that you suddenly can say an easy good-bye to all you cherish, but that you can rise above it.

There of course is so much more that the book contains including great self-tests and worksheet pages which coach you through some of the difficult passages of marriage. If you have the opportunity to find this book somewhere, you’ll want to obtain it because it’s filled with so much valuable advice and guidance and pages filled with worksheets to help you and your spouse work through this journey together.

The marriage map is meant to give you a broad overview of the experiences most couples have when they negotiate the marital terrain. As you read through these stages and developmental passages, don’t get too hung up on the timetable. Some couples move through these stages more quickly than others, and some bypass certain stages entirely. See if any of this sounds familiar to you as you think about your own marriage and that of friends and family.

Stage One — Passion Prevails:

Head over heels in love, you can’t believe how blessed you are to have met your one and only love. Everything other than the relationship quickly fades into the background. Much to your amazement, you have so much in common: you enjoy the same hobbies, music, restaurants and movies, and like each other’s friends. You can finish each other’s sentences. You’re completely in sync. Everything is perfect, just the way you imagined it would be. When little annoying things pop up, they’re dismissed and overlooked.

At no other time in your relationship is your feeling of well-being and physical desire for each other as intense as it is during this romantic period. The newness and excitement of the relationship stimulates the production of chemicals in your bodies that increase energy, positive attitudes and heighten sexuality and sensuality. You feel good in your partner’s presence and start to believe that he or she is bringing out the best in you. Depression sets in when you’re apart. You never run out of things to say. Never, have you felt this way before with anyone else. “It must be love,” you tell yourself. While in this naturally produced state of euphoria, you decide to commit to spending the rest of your lives together. “And why not,” you reason, “we’re perfect together.” And marry, you do.

Unless you elope or opt for a simple, judge’s chambers-style wedding, your euphoria takes a temporary nosedive as you plan and execute your wedding. Once you get past the superhuman challenges dealing with family politics and hosting a modern-day wedding, your starry-eyed obsession with each other re-emerges and takes you through the honeymoon period. At last, you’re one. You’ve committed your lives to each other forever —soul mates in the eyes of God and the world. And for a period of time, nothing could be more glorious. But soon, your joy gives way to an inevitable earth-shattering awakening; marriage isn’t at all what you expected it to be.

Stage Two — What Was I Thinking?

In some ways, stage two’s the most difficult because it’s here that you experience the biggest fall. After all, how many miles is it from bliss to disillusionment? Millions. What accounts for this drastic change in perspective? For starters, reality sets in. Little things start to bother you. You realize that your spouse has stinky breath in the morning, spends way too long on the toilet, leaves magazines and letters strewn on the kitchen counter, never wraps food properly before it’s put in the refrigerator and, to top things off, snoring has become a way of life. There are big things too.

Although you once thought you and your spouse were kindred spirits, you now realize that there are many, many differences between you. Although you share interests in hobbies, you disagree about how often you want to participate in them. You like the same kinds of restaurants, but you enjoy eating out often while your partner prefers staying home and saving money. Your tastes in music are compatible, but you prefer quiet time in the evening while your mate enjoys blasting the stereo. You have many common friends, but you can’t agree on which nights to see them.

You’re confused about what’s going on. You wonder if an alien abducted your partner and left you with this strange and complicated being, a person with whom you can’t agree on a single thing. You argue about everything. “Who’s this obstinate person I married?” you ask yourself. “What was I thinking?” You knew life wouldn’t always be a bed of roses, but you never thought all you’d get was a bed of thorns. You figured that love would carry you through the rough spots, but you didn’t imagine there’d be times you didn’t feel love. You feel so disillusioned. You wonder if you made a mistake. When you remind yourself you made a life-long commitment, you start to understand the real meaning of eternity.

Ironically, it’s in the midst of feeling at odds with your once kindred spirit that you’re faced with making all sorts of life-altering decisions. For example, it’s now that you decide whether and when to have children, where to live, who’ll support the family, who’ll handle the bills, how your free time will be spent, how in-laws fit in to your lives, and who’ll do the cooking. Just at the time when a team spirit would’ve come in mighty handy, spouses often start to feel like opponents. So they spend the next decade or so trying to “win” and get their partners to change, which triggers stage three.

Stage Three — Everything Would Be Great If You Changed:

In this stage of marriage, most people believe that there are two ways of looking at things, your spouse’s way and your way—the “right way”. Even if couples begin marriage with the enlightened view that there are many valid perspectives on any given situation, they tend to develop severe amnesia quickly. And rather than brainstorm creative solutions, couples often battle tenaciously to get their partners to admit they’re wrong. That’s because every point of disagreement is an opportunity to define the marriage. Do it my way, and the marriage will work, do it yours and it won’t.

When people are in this state of mind, they have a hard time understanding why their spouses are so glued to their way of seeing things. They assume it must be out of stubbornness, spitefulness or a need to control. What they don’t realize is that their spouses are thinking the same thing about them! Over time, both partners dig in their heels deeper and deeper. Anger, hurt and frustration fill the air. Little or no attempt is made to see the other person’s point of view for fear of losing face or worse yet, losing a sense of self.

Now is the time when many people face a fork in the marital road. They’re hurt and frustrated because their lives seem like an endless confrontation. They don’t want to go on this way — 3 choices become apparent. Convinced they’ve tried everything, some people give up. They tell themselves they’ve fallen out of love or married the wrong person. Divorce seems like the only logical solution. Other people resign themselves to the status quo and decide to lead separate lives. Ultimately, they live unhappily ever after. But there are still others who decide that it’s time to end the cold war and begin to investigate healthier and more satisfying ways of interacting. Although the latter option requires a major leap of faith, those who take this leap are the fortunate ones because the best of marriage is yet to come.

Stage Four — That’s Just the Way S/He Is:

In stage four, we finally come to terms with the fact that we’re never going to see eye-to-eye with our partners about everything and we have to figure out what we must do to live more peaceably. We slowly accept that no amount of reasoning, begging, nagging, yelling, or threatening changes our partners’ minds. We look to others for suggestions; we seek religious counsel, talk to close family and friends, attend marital therapy, read self-help books, or take a relationship seminar. Those of us who’re more private look inward and seek solutions there.

We more readily forgive our spouses for their hardheadedness, and recognize that we aren’t exactly easy to live with either. We dare to ask ourselves whether there’s something about our own behavior that could use shaping up. When disagreements occur, we make more of an effort to put ourselves in our partner’s shoes and, much to our surprise; we have a bit more compassion and understanding. We recognize that, as with everything in life, we have to accept the good with the bad.

Fights happen less frequently and when they occur, they’re not as intense or as emotional as in the earlier years of marriage. We know how to push our partner’s buttons and we consciously decide not to. When we slip, we get better at making up because we remind ourselves that life is short and very little is worth the pain of disharmony.

We learn that when you’ve wronged your spouse, love means always having to say you’re sorry. We mellow. We let things roll off our back that might have caused us to go to battle before. We stop being opponents. We’re teammates again. And because we’re smart enough to have reached this stage, we reap the benefits of the fifth and final stage.

Stage Five — Together, at Last

It’s really a tragedy that half of all couples who wed never get to stage five, when all the pain and hard work of the earlier stages really begins to pay off. Since you’re no longer in a struggle to define who you are and what the marriage should be, there’s more peace and harmony. Even if you’ve always loved your spouse, you start to notice how much you really like him or her again. And then the strangest thing starts to happen. You realize that the alien who abducted your spouse in stage two has been kind enough to return him or her to you. You’re pleased to discover that the qualities you saw in your partner so very long ago never really vanished. They were just camouflaged. This renews your feelings of connection.

By the time you reach stage five, you have a shared history. And although you’d both agree that marriage hasn’t been easy, you can feel proud that you’ve weathered the storms. You appreciate your partner’s sense of commitment and dedication to making your marriage last. You also look back and feel good about your accomplishments as a couple, a family and as individuals. You feel more secure about yourself as a person and you begin to appreciate the differences between you and your spouse. And what you don’t appreciate, you find greater acceptance for. You feel closer and more connected.

If you have children, they’re older and more independent, allowing you to focus on your marriage again, like in the old days. And you start having “old day feelings” again. You’ve come full circle. The feeling you were longing for during those stormy periods is back, at last. You’re home again.

About the Marriage Map:

I’m certain that if more couples realized that there really is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they’d be more willing to tough it out through the downpour. The problem is, most people fool themselves into thinking that whatever stage they’re in at the moment, is where they’ll be forever. That can be a depressing thought when you’re in the midst of hard times.

And in marriage, there are lots hard times—unexpected problems with infertility, the births of children (marital satisfaction goes down with the birth of each child), the challenges of raising a family, children leaving home, infidelity, illnesses, deaths of close friends and family members. Even if there is lots of joy accompanying these transitional stages, it’s stressful nonetheless. But it’s important to remember that nothing lasts forever. There are seasons to everything in life, including marriage.

Also, it’s important to remember that people generally don’t go through these stages sequentially. It’s three steps forward and two steps back. Just when you begin to feel more at peace with each other in stage four, a crisis occurs and you find yourselves slipping back to stage three — change your partner or bust! But if you’ve been fortunate enough to have visited stage four, sanity sets in eventually, and you get back on track. The quality and quantity of love you feel for each other is never stagnant.

Love is dynamic. So is marriage. The wiser and more mature you become, the more you realize this. The more you realize this, the more time you and your spouse spend hanging out in stage five. You’re together again, at last.

The above article came from the book, “The Divorce Remedy… The Proven 7-Step Program for Saving Your Marriage” by Michele Weiner Davis www.divorcebusting.com. It was published by Simon & Schuster. Although this book does not come from a “Christian” perspective, most of the principles presented are very solid. She teaches you how to identify specific marriage-saving goals, move beyond ineffective, hurtful ways of interacting, and become an expert on “doing what works.” Inspirational anecdotes and in-depth case studies show how couples have used these techniques to save their marriages, and how you can use these same techniques to rescue yours.

The author also offers solution-oriented strategies for readers to cope with infidelity, and midlife crises. And if you think you partner already has a foot out the door, this proven program is a recipe for change, even if only you participate.

NOTE: While we wholeheartedly agree with about 95% of what this book presents, we do disagree with some of Michelle’s advice to couples who face an Internet Pornography problem. But, even so, we recommend this book to couples because the rest of the advice is very helpful.

It’s September. The children are off to college and many parents are packing their bags, too. Although some may be going off on vacation, many couples will be headed for divorce court, say marriage specialists. The “empty nest” can be a perilous time for married couples, said Claudia Arp, who, with husband David, has written two books on how to “retool” a marriage after the children leave home.

Many couples stay together as long as their children are the focus of the family, Mrs. Arp said in an interview. The whirlwind of work, school and social activities can be all-consuming — especially during the teen years — and may act as a buffer for problems in the parents’ relationship. So when the children leave home, the natural next step is for couples to move their focus from their children to each other, Mrs. Arp said.

But in many cases, husbands and wives “look around at that other bird in their nest and think they don’t know them, they’re not sure they like them and they’re not sure they want to spend another 30 years in the marriage,” she said.

The marital meltdown can be swift, said Mrs. Arp, often stemming from a mountain of “little issues” that have accumulated and created an emotional distance between spouses. For instance, she recalled, a well-to-do man recently called her in a panic, saying that after his children left, his wife told him she didn’t love him anymore and wanted out of the marriage. “I’ll do anything; just tell me what to do,” the man had begged his wife.

Mrs. Arp said that based on her and her husband’s experiences running Marriage Alive seminars, “there really is a way back” to a happy marriage if both spouses want to work for it. But the reason the Arps are sounding an alarm about late-in-life divorces is because they believe it happens far more frequently than couples realize.

According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, the overall divorce rate declined by 1.4 percent between 1981 and 1991, the Arps said in their book, The Second Half of Marriage: Facing the Eight Challenges of the Empty-Nest Years. However, during those same years, the divorce rate grew 16% for couples married 30 years or more.

Diane Sollee, director of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, said “with baby boomers hitting that empty-nest wall in droves, we might see a spike in the divorce rates if we don’t do something.”

“In our focus on preparing newlyweds,” she added, “we often forget how fast things can unravel at the other end of marriage.”

“It’s certainly possible that there could be a peak in the divorce rate via the numbers of baby boomers,” said Craig A. Everett, a marriage therapist in Arizona and editor of the Journal of Divorce and Remarriage. “However, there are other important factors in the equation,” he said. Both baby boomer spouses often have careers, which may reduce their “empty nest” feelings, he said.

Also, “the new marital enhancement movement may encourage couples who have been unhappy during their parenting years to seek either therapy or educational experiences at the time of the empty nest rather than divorce.”

Members of the Adult Kids of Divorce (AKOD) club, who were all 18 or older when their parents divorced, said they didn’t need statistics to tell them that something terrible was happening in too many families.

AKOD club co-founder Susan Cherepon said the 1999 divorce of her parents after 25 years of marriage was “absolutely the worst thing that ever happened to me, bar none.” “It rips your whole world apart,” said Miss Cherepon, who lives near Boston. “Everything you thought you were sure of, suddenly you’re not sure of.”

“It was a terrible time. I went through all the pain and grief that any child does when this sort of thing happens, but I had the added bonus of having zero support because I was an adult,” said Susan Hackett of Toronto, whose parents divorced when she was in graduate school.

Many AKOD members said that divorce caught them by surprise.

“My parents appeared to have an ideal marriage—married for 30+ years, laughed a lot, always made up after fights, so the fact they were divorcing, splitting up, was a shock to me,” said Rachel Michelson of Sunnyvale, Calif., who learned of the breakup while she was planning her wedding.

“I often thought [divorce] would happen growing up, yet after the 30-year mark, I felt sure we were through the bad part,” said Kelly Stewart of Wartburg, Tenn., whose parents are in the process of divorcing. “My father thinks things are still salvageable,” she said, but her mother believes she can “do her art thing” only if she’s free of him.

Several AKOD members said postponing the divorce didn’t make it any easier. “Regardless of whether I’m 7 or 27, I’m still my parents’ child and it’s still my family that’s breaking up,” said Karen Eddins of Brooklyn, N.Y.

“I don’t believe there’s ‘better timing’ when you are talking about your parents’ divorce,” said Mandy Hagood of Austin, Texas, who was 25 years old when her parents parted.

“I’ve often wondered if it would have been easier had I been a child,” she said, since hearing details about the breakup even as an adult was traumatizing and led her to question her own marriage.

Some marriage specialists say few resources are available for families who are wrestling with late-in-life marriage problems. The Arps said they wrote a second book last year with Scott M. Stanley, Howard J. Markman and Susan L. Blumberg because of a lack of practical advice on the issue.

Jana Staton, a marriage therapist in Missoula, Mont., uses the 1999 movie “The Story of Us” to help married couples avoid empty-nest divorces. The movie is about a 15-year married couple played by Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer, who separate and consider divorce while their children are away at summer camp. “This is the only movie I’ve seen that really looked at the anatomy of a marriage” with respect for the union and its difficulties, said Mrs. Staton.

“A lot of couples think they can wait until the kids are out of the house before dealing with their marriage,” she said. “The message I want to give is not to wait.”

The above article titled, EMPTY NESTS AND EMPTY MARRIAGES was written by Cheryl Wetzstein and was featured in The Washington Times – September 4, 2001.

• EMPTY NEST OR EMPTINESS

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