The most popular seminar I do is called Love, Sex & Marriage. Typically churches sponsor it. They may choose between a Friday night / Saturday version or an all day Saturday version. Obviously, I share a great deal of information about all three of those topics — love, sex, and marriage. I use humor throughout the seminar so that people don’t wear out from information overload or “numb bum” fatigue. (Think British for a moment and you’ll get it.) It’s a great seminar that gets great reviews. If you would like to know more about bringing it to your church or organization, email us at info AT joebeam.com. But this isn’t a commercial for that. Actually I’m using it to introduce a problem that you may already have but don’t yet know about.
One of the areas I cover at the beginning of the LSM seminar is a quick check-up for marriage. I ask everyone to silently and inwardly answer three questions:
1. How satisfied are you with your marriage?
2. How satisfied are you with your husband/wife as a spouse?
3. How satisfied are you with your relationship with your spouse?
These questions come from the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale in use since the 1980s. Most often it is used in research but I’ve found a way for a couple to get a quick snapshot of their marriage via these three questions. Each person rates them on a seven point scale ranging from extremely dissatisfied to extremely satisfied. For the snapshot I ask them to get an average of their three scores. Then comes the interesting part.
I show them a four-quadrant model I developed so that they could compare their average scores. If you’d like to have this four quadrant model to use in your relationship, just ask for it via info AT joebeam.com.
Without going into greater detail, I’ll just share with you the bottom line. I can do it better by describing a couple, so let’s just make these the average ratings of an imaginary couple named Charlie and Sally.
Charlie averages 6 while Sally averages 2.
We’d call Charlie BLIND. His wife is very dissatisfied but he is very satisfied. She likely has indicated to him in many ways that she is dissatisfied but Charlie ignores it because he’s convinced they have no real problems.
Sally is FRUSTRATED because dear old Charlie refuses to acknowledge her dissatisfaction. It’s not just that he refuses to be dissatisfied; he refuses to believe that her dissatisfaction is of consequence. They are in trouble, but only Sally knows that. Charlie could know it, but by ignoring her complaints, requests, and the like, he continues blissfully along the path of “everything will be okay.” Sally may ask him to see a counselor.
He refuses. “We don’t need any help. I especially don’t need any help. Forget about this counseling stuff.”
There are more parts to the four-quadrant model but those are enough for now. Let me jump to the bottom line.
We’ll hear from Charlie. When I say we, I mean Charlie will show up on one of our web sites for marriages in trouble.
What will finally bring him there?
Sally.
Or, more accurately, Sally’s actions. When she finally has enough of the misery that accompanies her dissatisfaction, she will eventually emotionally check out of the marriage. Odds are that at some point she will either wind up responding to the attentions of another man, or she’ll just become so miserable she’ll tell Charlie to get out. (By the way, odds are greatly in favor of the first possibility over the second possibility.)
That’s when Charlie starts calling his minister, seeking a counselor, reading relationship books, and surfing the web for help. He may pay some Internet guru $39.99 for an eBook that will allegedly solve all his problems. He might hire a Private Detective to follow Sally to see what she’s up to. He’ll do all he can to get her to change her mind and stay in the marriage.
He’ll have a tough time and will alternate between panic, anger, and fear. Maybe he or someone will convince Sally to get help for the marriage. Maybe she’ll just ride off into the sunset with the new man she views as her knight in shining armor who showed up just in time to save her.
Do you know what could prevent all that last minute panic, anger, and fear?
Charlie listening to Sally early on, when she still cared and wanted things to be better. That would have kept them from reaching the dangerous stage of separation and divorce. So, if you have the nerve and are willing to know the truth about your relationship, email us and we’ll send you the Scale. You both complete it and send it back to us and we’ll use our four-quadrant model to tell you what it means. Then you decide what should be done next, if anything, to make your marriage great before it goes completely sour.
So, what if you didn’t do that and are already in the “help me save my marriage” mode?
That’s what folks like me are there for. We specialize in helping save marriages where one (or both) no longer want to save it. Over nine years we’ve proven that they don’t have to want to stay in the marriage or even want to attend the workshop. If we get them in it for all three days, our chances are three out of four that we can help them save the marriage.
Remember, to get the Scale, email us at info AT joebeam.com. To find out more about how we help save marriages already in crisis, click here.
Don’t wait.