Creating Passionate Commitment
Earlier this month we were interviewed by Coach Iris Benrubi about passionate commitment. We first familiarized our audience with the five levels of commitment from the Commitment Scale in our book I Do! I Do! The Marriage Vow Workbook:
- Uncommitted—Disconnected entirely from your partner
- Obligated—Begrudging participation, duty-bound
- Desiring—Wishing for a deeper connection
- Committed—Connected to one another as allies, equals
- Passionate commitment (or inspired)—Synergistic partnership, deep connection to one another as well as connection to the world-at-large
Though we may move up and down the scale, the idea is to spend most of one’s time on the committed end of it.
But how do you fully commit to your significant other, whether in a new relationship or in an existing relationship? We offer the following suggestions. You can learn much more about each of these strategies in our book.
- Choice—Choose to be committed, then keep your focus on this choice.
- Vision—Create a joint vision, a vivid mental picture, for the future of your relationship together, and bring that vision into your consciousness on a regular basis.
- Vows—Craft vows or commitments about how you will be one another.
- Live your vows—Put practices in place that support you to be intentional about keeping your commitments to yourself and to one another.
- Daily housekeeping—Handle all disconnections from your partner as they arise, stepping over nothing; work through conflict and bring yourself back to connection.
- Empathic listening—Make a conscious effort to truly hear and understand your partner’s point of view.
- Forgiveness—Refuse to hold ill will and clean up resentments as you go. Ask for and offer forgiveness for all transgressions.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us. Review the first 15 pages of I Do! I Do! The Marriage Vow Workbook (PDF format).
Essential skills for a fantastic, long-lasting relationship (part 2)
“When you are for me as much as you are for yourself, and I am for you as much as I am for myself, we will start to understand the meaning of our relationship.”~ Brad Brown
The process of creating a conscious, enduring relationship is a sacred journey, an evolving partnership in which both partners are fully committed to loving, honoring and respecting one another and themselves. Below are some suggestions for creating such a relationship for yourself.
- Be clear about what you really want in your significant other and in your relationship.
- Choose to fully commit—all the way in without reservation.
- Create meaningful guidelines—vows or commitments—for your relationship that you and your partner intend to follow throughout your time together.
- Have a clear vision about where you want to go together and how you intend to get there.
- Ensure that your values are in alignment, not necessarily the same but aligned nonetheless.
- Meet regularly to review your vows/commitments, acknowledge one another, and tell your truths.
- Tell the truth even when you believe it might be challenging for the other to hear.
- Focus on what is working in the relationship and the positive attributes of one another.
- Clean up your space as you go and step over nothing.
- Refuse to hold onto ill will. Resentment is the real relationship killer.
- Support one another to be fully authentic, rather than try to get your partner to become the person you sometimes believe he/she should be.
Take these actions and see how your relationship blossoms and your happiness grows.
Marital bliss — One couple’s formula for 24 love-filled years
If you want some great, tested advice about how to make your relationship thrive, read What Has Made it Work? Wisdom from The Happiest Couple I Know a post by our good friend, Adrian Deal. In it she shares the practices of her uncle Mike and aunt Kathy. Below are the 10 habits they’ve used to cultivate their happiness through the years.
- We Only Made Two Promises
- We Don’t Expect Things From Each Other
- We Let Go of Jealousy
- We Treat Each Other as True Friends
- We Don’t Tease
- We Build and Cherish Private Traditions
- “That’s The Wrong Answer!”
- We Make No Deals
- We Assume We Won’t Fulfill All Needs
- We Hug Often
Shonnie’s observations: I think their light-hearted way of saying, “That’s the wrong answer,” is a great way to diffuse the tension of potentially sticky situations. It’s a gentle way of redirecting the conversation without making it easy for anyone to feel guilty. Not having expectations is also a great way to avoid conflict and minimize one’s chances of being “let down.” Equally valuable is not teasing and this is a conversation Bruce and I have from time to time. Though swaddled in the guise of “just joking,” teasing often has an unloving or dishonoring message at its core.
Bruce’s observations: I don’t know what Mike and Kathy’s two promises were, yet it’s clear that they’ve made it simple to be intentional about their commitments to one another. Bravo! Plus hugging is a great way to stay connected–physically, emotionally and spiritually. A practice I learned from David Deida: When I sense a disconnection between me and Shonnie, I hug her, really hug her so that our hearts are physically close, and without words I let her know that I love her deeply, that all is well, that I’m with her all the way.
Yeah for Kathy and Mike for making their first 24 years so fantastic. Here’s best wishes for the same kind of bliss over the next quarter-century.
What guys really want
What do guys really want? Chicks with nice boobs? Copious amounts of cold beer? Plenty of sports? A really cool car? The new iPhone? Well, that
online video of Jennifer Aniston strolling topless down the beach is pretty titillating. And it’s hard to beat a pint of good ale with a hot slice of pizza. Furthermore, when our favorite team is competing on TV, family, social and business commitments are often out the window. And, yes, nice wheels are imperative. As are the latest gadgets from Apple.
But beneath all the grab ass, locker room banter and fascination with things that go fast (cars and computers alike), we guys have some deeper wants and needs that we don’t always share with our female counterparts. So in the interest of greater XX-XY harmony, here’s a list of what guys really want from the women in our lives.
We want you to tell us what you want. Of course, sharing what you really want from us doesn’t guarantee you’ll get it. But it sure as hell increases the odds. Plus it eliminates the need for us to make dubious assumptions, take half-assed guesses or play Kreskin and try to read your mind. For starters maybe you could tell us how and when you prefer to be touched, how you want to be comforted when you’re feeling low and what really turns you on in bed.
When we’re grumpy, sullen or withdrawn, we want you to understand that it’s
probably not about you. We guys have our ups and downs just like you do. Often we’re not even conscious of what’s going on. We just know something’s not quite right, and we tend to pull back. From your perspective, it may be easy to think we’re pissed at you or dissatisfied with the relationship, when frequently it’s just that we’re not at peace with ourselves, which brings us to . . .
We sometimes want time alone. Don’t take our desire for solitude personally. Occasionally we just want some down time to “be,” to consider our own wants and needs, to reconnect with who we really are so that we don’t become enmeshed with you, so that we can come back and offer you the best of who we are.
Just listen when we dream out loud. Sometimes we guys like to share our dreams aloud. When we do so we are not asking for your approval, feedback, opinion on how realistic they are or strategies for achieving them. We’re merely having fun envisioning future possibilities that we may or may not intend to actually manifest.
If you’re pissed about something, put it out straight. If we do something and you react with anger, we’d appreciate it if you’d share your displeasure then and there. It might not be very pleasant, but it’s a hell of lot better for us than being blindsided by pent up resentment that leaks out days or months after the original event occurred.
Be gentle with your language. Frequently teasing, clever banter and wisecracks directed toward us or toward the male sex in general are actually thinly disguised criticism and disapproval. This kind of behavior tears at the fabric of our connection, and when we’re on the receiving end, it hurts more than we’re typically willing to let on.
We like to be acknowledged. Let us know when we’ve done something for which you are grateful. A simple, sincere “thank you” can foster a stronger connection between us as well as increase our desire to replicate the action or way of being.
We want you to love us as we are. Guys are not here to live up to your expectations. We’re not projects or fixer-uppers. As the eminent philosopher Popeye
the Sailor Man once said, “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.” Having said that . . .
We want you to help us remember who we are when we forget. As members of the human race, we sometimes forget who we really are and what the hell we’re doing here. At times like these we yearn for you to nudge us in the right direction. We may resist at first, but when you compassionately remind us of our strengths, our personal power and the gifts we have to offer the world, we’ll ultimately be deeply grateful for your love and support.
Fully commit to the relationship. Yeah, we know. We’re supposed to be the ones with commitment issues. But when we’re assured that you’re in all the way, the space is opened for us to join you. And when that happens, there’s no more looking around for someone better, no more “should I stay or should I go,” no more exit strategies. We’re both on firm ground and can relax and enjoy it.
When all’s said and done, we’re not the indifferent, irascible bad boys, the technoholic geeks or the politically correct metrosexuals we may sometimes appear to be. We’re just guys . . . with hearts and minds and spirits. Wanting to connect, wanting to love and be loved, wanting to express our tenderness toward you . . . but sometimes just aren’t quite sure how.
Oh, and about Jennifer Aniston’s boobs . . . they’re definitely not real.
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An earlier version of this post appeared in the June 2007 Y chromosome issue of Western North Carolina Woman. In addition, an abbreviated version of this post was entered in Problogger’s Top 5 Writing Project.
Our 8th wedding anniversary
Today is the eighth anniversary of our marriage, and we’re off to a two-day holiday in the mountains north of here to celebrate.
I created a card for Shonnie and gave it to her this morning:
Happy anniversary, my sweet Shonnie!
The longer we’re together, the more certain I am that we’re supposed to be. We’ve created such a rich and fulfilling life together in just eight (plus 2.5) years together, I look forward to seeing what we manifest in the coming decade. I love you, I love you, I love you!
Bruce
And Shonnie responded with a card and a note of her own:
Once upon a time
two people fell in love . . .
They took every smile and every tear,
a few differences of opinion,
some major triumphs,
and several minor miracles,
and turned them into something very beautiful.
I love what we’ve made together.
I love you.In just 8 years of marriage we’ve been on such a fantastic, interesting, challenging, opening, expanding, enjoyable journey. As this card says, “I love what we’ve made together.” I look forward to many more memories as we travel into our future. I feel confident in our abiity to find/create/follow the best life path for us and I feel grateful that we are so good at sharing all parts of the journey with love, grace, humor, agility and strength.
With love and gratitude, Shonnie
Yesterday I wrote about how we’ve created a rich and rewarding relationship. Below are my thoughts on this:
* * *
Tomorrow we will have been married eight years. In addition, we lived together for more than two years prior to our marriage. Our relationship continues to grow, deepen and become more fulfilling. Some of the reasons for this include:
We were both clear about what we wanted in a primary relationship (and what we didn’t want) before committing to one another. In fact, I (Bruce) had a four-page typed list of attributes I wanted in a mate. Approximately ten of these were non-negotiable, including authenticity, integrity, compassion, physical attractiveness, athleticism, and commitment to personal and spiritual growth. By going through this process, I gained the clarity I needed as to who I was looking for and where they’d be hanging out. Then the Universe responded. I met Shonnie at a marathon training group in Austin in the summer of 1995.
We have a clear vision about where we want to go together. We are not on the exact same path, but we do have a similar vision of where we want to go in terms of right livelihood, spirituality, personal growth, sustainability, and service. To paraphrase Neale Donald Walsch, the two questions that must be answered are “Where are you going?” and “Who’s going with you?” And they must be answered in that order. Not to do so presents problems for couples, if not now, then somewhere down the road.
Our values are in alignment. We were clear that we both valued love, compassion, honesty, integrity, authenticity, commitment, impeccability, emotional and spiritual growth, generosity, service, gratitude, playfulness, and simplicity early in our relationship.
We made a deep and abiding commitment up front, and we keep that commitment. Before we moved in together, we created agreements about how we would be with one another. And before we married we created marriage vows for the ceremony and as commitments for how we would live our lives together.
We meet regularly to review our vows/commitments, acknowledge one another, and tell our truths. In fact, at each evening meal we state at least one thing we’re grateful for, then acknowledge each other for at least one thing they did that day.
We tell the truth. Each of us tells the truth even when we believe it might be challenging for the other to hear. And we do our best to really listen when that truth is being told.
We focus on what is working in the relationship and the positive attributes of one another. The tendency in today’s culture is to focus on what’s not working and what we don’t like about our partners. To do so, guarantees that more of the same will be created. On the other hand . . .
We clean up our space as we go. We step over nothing. For example, if I (Bruce) do something thoughtless, disrespectful or unloving, Shonnie has committed to bring it to my attention in a way that I can hear it.
We refuse to hold onto ill will. This is the real relationship killer–resentment that has built up over weeks, months, years and creates walls between partners. We have a process that we use regularly to cleanse ourselves of resentment.
We support each other to be fully authentic, rather than try to get our partner to become the person we sometimes might like him/her to be.
Thanks to all of you who have acknowledged us on our special day. And thanks to those of you–family and friends–who helped create our marriage weekend May 28-30, 1999 (see photo above). This remains one of our fondest memories during all of our time together.
Publicity hounds Lavender and Mulkey are at it again!
In our ongoing promotional campaign for I Do! I Do! The Marriage Vow Workbook, Shonnie and I were featured in a recent AP column, “On the Money.” This story, along
with photos, has appeared in 20+ newspapers around the country including the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Sacramento Bee and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
The photo to the right shows us with the bowls we use to manage our money, a system we learned at a Peak Potentials workshop in Atlanta. We have set up six bowls to divide up our money for day-to-day expenses and other things we want to do, like giving to worthy organizations, investment, education and just having fun. (Chuck Burton–AP Photo)
Couples can find joint money strategies
By EILEEN ALT POWELL — AP Business Writer
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
NEW YORK (AP) Bruce Mulkey and Shonnie Lavender have a lot in common when it comes to love and marriage, but not when it comes to money.
Mulkey and Lavender met more than a decade ago while training for a marathon. They married in 1999 and shared their thinking about marital commitment in their book “I Do! I Do! The Marriage Vow Workbook.” But the Asheville, N.C., couple said it took them a long time to figure out how to handle their finances together. (more…)
Creating your ideal relationship
Yes, you can create the relationship you’ve been longing for. Doing so takes willingness, and it takes commitment. More than anything, however, it requires the awareness that you create your own reality. No one else is responsible. Just you. So if you really want something other than the reality you’re currently living, fully commit to the seven behaviors below and begin creating something different for yourself. You’re welcome to check out a post from my personal blog (“My story and I’m sticking with it”) to learn how my relationship with my wife, Shonnie, was manifested.)
1. Fully commit to one another. Making a commitment to someone is ultimately a matter of choice. So there’s really no excuse not to fully commit to your partner. What’s more, being committed can be deeply liberating. No more looking around for someone better, no more “should I stay or should I go,” no more exit strategies. You’re in all the way, and you can relax and enjoy it.
2. Be clear about your purpose in life and live it fully. Get in touch with your purpose in life. Why are you here? What would you be doing if you didn’t believe you had to earn a living? What will you ultimately do with this one cherished life that you have been given? Discover your individual purposes and support each other to go for them with gusto.
3. Create a compelling vision for your relationship. Envision what you want to create, your biggest dreams for yourselves–individually and together. Then, on a regular basis imagine that your vision has already come to pass, and feel the feelings that accompany this visualization. Presto, you’re on your way to attracting what you want into your life and making it a reality.
4. Make and keep your agreements with one another. Make agreements about how you will be with one another and what you will do together to move yourselves toward your vision. These can be marriage vows, recommitment vows or any other type of agreements you choose. Create a regular ritual during which you review your agreements, speak them aloud to one another and, with no recrimination, recommit to those that you haven’t upheld.
5. Make your word law. When you tell your partner (or anyone else) that you’ll do something, do it. No excuses. When you get right down to it, your word is all you have. By consistently keeping it, you’ll nurture your self-esteem and engender trust between you and your partner.
6. Really listen to one another. Listening is a skill that few truly master. When our partner is speaking, we’re often thinking about our response to what is being said, discounting our partner’s thoughts because they doesn’t match up with our beliefs, wondering what’s for dinner, etc. Practice really listening to your partner, then mirror back what was said so he/she really knows you got the true intention of the words that were spoken.
7. Acknowledge one another regularly. To create a great relationship it’s essential that we really acknowledge our partner’s achievements, be it something they’ve done, something they’ve said or a way of being they’ve exhibited. Some words and phrases that are meant for speaking aloud often and with feeling:
- Congratulations!
- Well done! Way to go!
- Thank you.
- What I know to be true about you is . . .
- I love you just as you are.
- When I’m with you, I feel . . .
To be continued . . .
Second wedding vows from Elizabeth & Carroll
Below are the wedding vows from Elizabeth and her second husband, Carroll. These unique wedding vows show how different second marriages can be from first marriages for some couples.
Elizabeth Pavka & Carroll Thompson, December 28, 1991
In love, we two have become one that we may each nourish the independent expansiveness of the other;
We together seek that higher spirituality which is for all humans;
We acknowledge joy and laughter as the wings of life;
We caress the Earth as our beloved home in space;
We recognize the stars as relatives to the light in us;
We cherish our individuality and our separateness as the binding agents which drew us together as one, yet hold us apart as two;
We affirm all humans are one people, all life one life, all Spirit one Spirit;
We face the frontier of our personal spiritual development with joy;
We now unite our hearts, souls, bodies, energies, minds, senses, and emotions, that we each may more fruitfully serve the higher purposes we have accepted for ourselves;
God is Love. Love is Light. Light is God in us.
We came as two. We go as one. We are in Universal Union.
Podcast — Meet Shonnie Lavender & Bruce Mulkey
Whether you’re new to the I Do! I Do! blog or you’ve been visiting for awhile, you may be wondering about how we came to be “relationship experts.” Well, actually, we believe our true expertise is solely within OUR relationship. That being said, we have years of experience with dating, un-dating, finding one’s “ideal” partner, commitment, and marriage. We even know plenty about divorce from personal experience (Bruce as someone who has divorced and remarried. Shonnie as a person whose parents divorced and remarried.) So, that means our experience also covers a wide range of topics that affect most couples, including, yet definitely not limited to:
- couples and money issues
- sexuality and intimacy
- communication
- joint decision making
- making up and forgiveness
- sharing household and other duties
- extended family issues
- family transitions
Because our intention is to build a community at I Do! I Do! (Maybe we call that “We Do! We Do!”), we want to get to know one another. So, we’ll start the conversation with this podcast (Simply turn on your speakers and click the “audio mp3″ graphic or “Play Now” text to play the podcast file – 18 minutes.), where we tell you about:
- our backgrounds — can you say May-December?
- how we met — involves mildly crazy ideas, sweat, and lots of runners
- our wedding — it landed us in a Christian Science Monitor story titled, “Nutty Nuptials”
- our history writing marriage/wedding vows — we are one committed couple
- how we came to write I Do! I Do! The Marriage Vow Workbook — a winding path led us to this destination
- our intention with the book — can we change the world one relationship at a time?
Now it’s your turn. We want to meet you. So, leave a comment telling us a bit about yourself(selves), what you’re going for in your relationship, and any questions you’d like us to answer about love, marriage, wedding vows or anything else that would support you in creating and maintaining your ideal relationship.
Marriage advice offered on WCQS radio
On Tuesday, October 10 we were interviewed on WCQS, the public radio station based in Asheville, North Carolina. Host David Hurand talked with us for 30 minutes about
- what it takes to write your own wedding vows,
- the benefits of writing your wedding vows, and
- how the process we take you through in I Do! I Do! The Marriage Vow Workbook can help you build a strong foundation for marriage or improve the marriage you’ve already created.
We also answered questions from callers about relationships and wedding vows. Listen to the interview, then let us know what questions you have.
