What is a great marriage?

A great marriage is emotional connection and attachment.

It’s deeply beautiful that we each experience emotional connection and attachment in our own unique way, though this difference can often feel like a frustration.

Emotional connection and attachment is neither emotional dependence nor gridlock, which are the results of resisting the path to deeper emotional connection and attachment.

To more deeply obtain emotional connection and attachment with our spouse, we must choose it because we desire it, not because we fear losing it. The seeming paradox is that the capacity to make this choice is derived from our individual strength of character.

A functioning marriage pushes us toward deeper emotional connection and attachment which in turn pushes us to develop the individual character necessary to obtain it.

To take an account of one’s marriage, one might best seek evaluation on his or her own level of engagement in (or resistance to) this process.

There are many ways to resist. Common resistance techniques include spousal-blaming (if s/he would, then I would, but I can't, because s/he won't), avoidance (pretending it's not there, hoping that will make it eventually go away), entitlement (I shouldn't have to, it's not my responsibility), and despair (it's not worth it, I can't make it work no matter what I do).

There are many more forms of resistance -- which one is most common for you?

Is now the time to take a step in a new direction?

Conversations are Rivers, Especially Important Ones

Conversations are rivers, they flow and progress, each its own journey.

In any relationship, especially close, important ones, when you avoid a conversation, you dam a river, trying to not let any of it continue flowing.

If the conversation is important to either person or to the relationship at large, you will have to avoid more and more forcefully. Because the water keeps coming, you must keep building that dam higher and stronger.

However, the more you build, the more intense the pressure becomes, especially deep down.

It may be painful to let that river flow. There may be rapids, waterfalls, or uncomfortable turns along the way. Avoiding that pain is why you built the dam in the first place. But to what end?

Ultimately, there are only two possible results:
1) You create a spill way and start opening up the flow. That is, you stop avoiding. You begin having the hard conversations. You face the pain of self confrontation and growth that ensues.

Or

2) You build and build until finally the pressure is too much. The dam breaks, decimating, devastating, and wreaking havoc all over. Relationships destroyed, hearts broken, families torn apart.

That may sound overly dramatic and it may well be oversimplified, but it's frequency can not be overstated.