THOUGHTS ON READING MARRIAGE BOOK TOGETHER

Laura:

We're reading our mariage book a bit at a time at the moment, discussing it as we go. This week we read a chapter on how to talk effectively.

Ben:

The chapters are very insightful and provide much food for thought, but reading the boook together also provides an excellent springboard for open communication about marriage and our relationship, and allows topics of conversation to arise that might not be discussed otherwise. It's also healthy to talk about our dead good relationship in an objective and *safe* environment. With this in mind, reading the marriage book course jobbie togther is good for the all round communication in our relationship, outside, perhaps, of the context of the prose.

Laura:

This chapter brought up more things than just talking effectively. Ben in particular finds communicating thoughts and feelings more dificult, so he's started keeping a diary which makes it easier for us both to kickstart a conversation.

The next chapter is about listening effectively, but I learned from this chapter that in order to enable Ben to talk to me effectively, as a listener I need to be open to him and make sure he feels safe to open up, and that it's good to ask probing questions and draw him out of himself.

We also covered hobbies/interests in this chapter - one of the things talked about in the blurb/introduction of the book is that marriage is a discovery of how rich and rewarding each other is. It suggested sharing activities together, and we thought it might be nice to start something together from scratch so we can have fun learning about something together - dancing might be this and will come in handy at our wedding!

We also talked about mealtimes and how they can be a huge source (Ben: sauce - geddit!) of time to communicate and how mealtimes are a unique opportunity for a family to sit down together and talk. We'd love to have a bigger kitchen because it's only really big enough for one person to cook and we get stroppy being in each other's way, so that's something to look for in a future house, but in the meanime we'd like to utilise the time around meals more - preparing the meal, eating it and then washing up is big chunk of time for us to be able to share our days with each other and talk in depth.

The thing I'm struggling most with at the moment is the idea of giving our best to each other. So often I come home from work and want to flop down and be boring for the rest of the evening. The book talks about how we can make such an effort for work etc but forget that the people we need to make the biggest effort to save our best for are those closest to us. I need to work on this - I'm my grumpiest and tiredest after a day at work and this isn't fair to Ben.

I'm really enjoying the time we set aside to talk about us. I hope we never forget to do this even once we're married, because it's invaluable time invested in the thing that's most important to us.