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Finding a Good Counselor

A friend of mine asked me to put together a brief one-page document to give to couples at a marriage retreat about finding a good marriage counselor. I thought it might be helpful to share here.

Whatever your reason is for seeking counseling, there are a few guidelines that will help you and your spouse select one that will be a good fit for you both.

 

  • Give Yourself 2-3 Weeks to Research – Because the majority of people seek counseling out of a crisis or strong sense of urgency, taking time to find a counselor is usually not acceptable. The problem with this is that making a decision based on urgency can lead to less than desirable results. However, don’t take too much time, or you might risk more damage to your relationship.
  • Ask a Pastor, Friend, or Healthcare Professional for a Referral – Finding a good fit with a counselor is going to be easier when you can get a trusted source to make a referral. Counseling is built on trust, and it’s helpful to know if a friend has had a good experience with someone.
  • One Size Does Not Fit All – Counselors have different ideas and theories that sometimes don’t work with certain people. Because of this, ask the counselor questions, such as:
    • How long have you been practicing?
    • What do you specialize in?
    • Are you married, and have you been in your own counseling before?
    • What are your beliefs about Marriage, Separation, Divorce, Reconciliation?
    • Have you worked with (insert issue here) before?
    • Do you offer a free consultation?
    • How do you approach Marriage Counseling (methodology, goals, etc)?
    • What role does God/Religion/Spirituality play in your counseling?
  • Make Sure Both Partners Agree with Selecting the Counselor – Both husband and wife need a voice in selecting a counselor. If one partner has an existing relationship with the counselor, it’s usually best to find a completely different counselor for the marriage. An equal playing field is really important.

 

Once you’ve begun counseling together, here are a couple of guidelines to help both you and the counselor in the process.

 

  • No secrets. If you meet with you counselor one-on-one, which is a normal occurrence, divulge everything you believe to be hindering where you want to be with your spouse. Your counselor will need to challenge you to share these with your spouse, no matter how difficult or consequential they might be.
  • Tell the truth. If you’re uncomfortable with the setting, therapists choice of words or actions, etc, speak up and tell the truth. This is a vital part of trusting the process.
  • Trust the Process. Give the process at least 4 sessions before deciding about leaving/ending counseling. Don’t give up for good just because you had a poor experience with a counselor.
  • Keep your head up. Your situation will probably get worse before it gets better. Don’t be discouraged. Your counselor does not have a magic pill, nor does any other counselor. Staying with the process is key in making significant life and relationship changes. Growth is hard and takes time.
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A Year Ago on 5 Minute Sherpa

March, 2012

Seeing the Real You

It’s human nature to care what others think of us, but this nature can get us into trouble. If you care what others think, more than you think you ought to, then it’s a good chance you don’t know you. When we come to know ourselves, we come realize that we have flaws, dings, dents, and a beauty that is only possible because of those human things. Joseph Campbell says that we don’t love others because they are perfect, we love others because they are deeply flawed. Without flaws, there is nothing to love.     Continue Reading….

Run To, Not From

We’d just spent 14 of the past 15 waking hours at the baseball fields. The first two games rained out twice due to heavy storms of lightning and rain the previous evening. Instead of playing games over two days, we had one day to play at least 3 games. A lot to ask for of a group of 9 year olds. Nine and a half hours at the baseball fields on Sunday, and we didn’t sniff victory for one inning. I was deflated. So was my son.     Continue Reading…

March, 2011

The Ways We Love

Love is strong. Love is tender. Love is hard. Love is the nourishment of life. Of all the needs in life, none is more common or more core to us than love. We are all born into this world in dire and desperate need of love. In the early years of life, love was expressed to us through feedings, holding, rocking, and playing. As we grow up, we become more defined in our personalities and in who we are as individuals. And with each step of growth towards being independent, so too our need for the expressions of love we received as kids.     Continue Reading…

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Couples & Individual Intensives

I often get asked about making a referral for couples or individuals who are in need of attending an intensive counseling program. Intensives are a great way to get a jumpstart on issues that have been bottled up or that have been ignored for some time. My personal and professional opinion is that more need to experience what an intensive has to offer. Resources, mainly time and money, are often the reason folks don’t do these.

I’m offering both a couples and individual intensive program. Depending on the individual or couples need, I am available here in Nashville, or am willing to travel to your location. You can visit the intensive page on my website to learn more and see what a intensive program looks like. Please pass this on to anyone that you might know who would benefit or be interested in hearing more.

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It IS a Big Deal

A few weeks ago a friend asked me for a favor. He needed help sorting through some technology issues with his phone and computer. My first career, and current hobby, was in technology so it came as no surprise that he’d asked for my help. After I’d finished the project with him, he said thank you and for the third time in that setting apologized for inconveniencing me. “Don’t be sorry, it was no trouble at all,” was my response.

I was a bit surprised by how quickly these words came out of my mouth. One of my pet peeves is when people apologize for things that need no apology. It wasn’t true. I’d taken time out of my day to help him with an issue that didn’t concern me. The truth was, it was an inconvenience. But it was an inconvenience that I was willing to give because I care about my friend. I wanted to serve him and our friendship.

After realizing this wasn’t the truth, which wasn’t more than a couple of seconds later, I corrected myself.

“Actually,” I said, “it was an inconvenience.” I paused to let those words linger for a moment and continued. “Saying otherwise isn’t truth, nor is it honoring to you and our friendship for me to pretend it wasn’t a big deal. Me giving you some of me, my time and energy, is one way I’m able to show you that I value our friendship.”

This led to a different conversation about self-worth, value, and why it’s difficult to accept love/care from others. It was a conversation that never would have occurred had we both remained nice towards each other.

Our conversation highlights a challenge in relationships: telling the truth about the minor things in life is hard. “It’s no big deal…” is such a simple, polite, and well meaning statement that all of us have made to another person. Too often saying something isn’t a big deal sabotages giving the gift of love and acceptance.

Telling someone “you’re not bothering me,” or “It’s no trouble at all” communicates that the request they are making is easy for you to accomplish. Spoken in regards to a task or to-do list, perhaps “no trouble at all” has some truth to it (especially if the request of you is something you’re gifted at doing). The limitation of this statement is that we deny showing the other person their importance in our lives.

We’re selfish people by nature. We want what we want, when we want it. As we mature, it takes discipline and proaction to act contrary to this natural tendency. So when someone asks something of us, we have to sacrifice our selfish desires for the benefit of the other—this is love. It may be minor in the sacrifice, such as helping a friend with a technology problem, but it is still a sacrifice. In order for trust and relationships to grow, we need to know that someone is willing to sacrifice themselves on our behalf. Without this understanding and experience, and we’re left to wonder if the other really sacrifices anything for us.

Letting someone know that we’re willingly choosing to sacrifice, be inconvenienced, and not passively hold it over their heads deepens relational intimacy. Little things piled together makes a big thing. Be proactive in your relationship to intentionally build a big thing of trust by making mention of the little things.

(originally published at Start Marriage Right)

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5 Virtues of Marriage

Looking back over the past year is one of my favorite traditions. I get to remember the ups and downs, the growth that occurred, and see what themes continually show up. This is the first year that I’ve applied this to my professional life, probably because it’s the first full year I’ve had as a private practician (previously having split my time in a non-profit agency). In looking back over the past year, I’ve seen an emphasis on 5 different virtues about marriage.


1. Choosing marriage is choosing to give up control of your life.
I cannot emphasize this virtue any stronger: Marriage will cost you your life. If you value your own authority, singleness, or ego more than that of others, do not get married. Choosing marriage will require you to give up control of your life. You will make decisions that will affect at least two people (more later when you have kids), and this is a very difficult change from that of a single life. It might be the best gift ever given to a single person, and it’s the costliest.In a very real way, marriage is much like salvation. In accepting God’s plan and will for your life, you are setting aside your own to be submissive his his plan. This means that you’re an active participant in his plan, but your life is not about your happiness. Marriage is about giving up of ones life for the sake of the other, which translates to a giving up of control.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for another” (John 15:13).

“You complete me,” might be one of the most famous lines in the movie Jerry Maguire, and it might be the most misleading. Marriage will offer you the unique and unparalleled opportunity to grow. Marriage will not fill you, rather it  will make you more aware of your emptiness and need for God, and only God. Unfortunately there is no real way that Hollywood can show more than an infatuated love. So we don’t get a real picture as to what mature, longstanding love looks like. Instead we get a glimpse of the joy and warm fuzzy love that we all want to have. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s not a lasting version of love.

2. Couples that protect pain from happening are preventing intimacy (connections) from developing.
Its no secret that people don’t like pain. It’s also no secret that being in a close relationship is an inevitable date with pain. The challenge is viewing pain as though it is a gift, not the plague. Pain is not fun, but neither is numbness. I don’t know about you, but when I leave the dentist after getting a shot of Novocain, I cannot wait for it to wear off. The feeling of not controlling half of my face is miserable (not to mention the inability to know when I’m drooling). We were not made to be numb, we were made to feel.

The poet Mary Oliver penned this line, and it speaks well to the realities couples face: “I was once given a box full of darkness, it took me many years to realize that this too was a gift.” Pain shapes our lives either in our acceptance of it or our refusal to experience it. Creating a space for pain to be a welcomed guest in your marriage will serve you well. This is the task of every marriage: To create and develop a philosophy of dealing with pain. You will raise the next generation of people based on how you and your spouse engage each other in times of pain.

3. Marriage is a muscle: Use it or lose it.
Marriage takes work, and will not naturally grow on it’s own. It takes consistent time and energy much like your muscles. If you were to sit all day every day for a year, you would notice a significant amount of atrophy in your body. Your inability to function after that year of sitting would likely take you a more painful and greater amount of recovery to return to your previous abilities (if ever at all). Once you have lost muscle mass, it is very difficult to get it back.

Your months and years of dating and courtship are very much like a daily trip to the gym. You’re exercising the muscles of the relationship that cause it to grow. When you get married, continue your visits to the gym (literally and metaphorically). Read books together, attend marriage workshops, go on dates, spend intentional time together, take trips. Do all of these things regularly and your marriage will not atrophy.

4. One plus one equals three: Becoming one, requires two.
One of the more nuanced challenges of marriage is to become one together, but remain distinctly individual in the process. It will take both husband and wife bringing 100% each to the marriage to make the relationship work. This is not a 50-50% proposition, it’s a 100-100% arrangement. Only bringing 50% of yourself to the table means you’re not being fully you in the relationship.

When a husband or wife begin to lose their individuality, marriage problems will soon follow. Being an individual is not the same as being single, rather it’s being an individual who maintains their autonomy while being 100% committed to the growth and health of the other person for the sake of the marriage. M. Scott Peck in his bestselling book, The Road Less Travelled, said that Love is to tend to the spiritual and emotional growth in another person. This is the goal of marriage, to tend to and care for the spiritual and emotional health in our spouse. We have the best chance of doing this when we are operating out of our fully unique and individual lives.

5. Marriage is Redemptive.
I know no other way to describe marriage more simply than it’s capacity to enact redemption in life. This comes in unimaginable ways as past wounds, hurts, fears, and resentments are all confronted with the woman of our dreams. Surrendering ones life to another is hard, yes, but it is also glorious. I believe this is the hope that beckons us to get married in the first place. We might not know this is what we are signing up for, but the spirit in us all moves us towards a need for being saved from ourselves. Marriage offers us just that: An opportunity to be saved from ourselves.

(This article was originally published at StartMarriageRight.com)

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The Marriage Ascent

Tanya and Daniel had been married for 3 years when they returned to my office for some help on a few conflicts they were having. I wasn’t surprised to hear they were having some issues. Marriage is a struggle. However, with this particular couple, during pre-marriage counseling, I’d highlighted 3-4 key themes they would need to watch for that would likely cause some hefty conflict in marriage. They, like most couples in pre-marital counseling, couldn’t simulate the reality of marriage and thus couldn’t see the full effect of these areas of conflict.

One of the difficulties in pre-marriage counseling is that it’s nearly impossible to simulate what marriage will look like. The result is a challenge to arouse enough honesty from the individuals to fight about before their married. I suspect one big reason for this is due to the fear of rejection and losing the other person. Both acute and very real fears in relationships.

This was one of the challenges I experienced with Tanya and Daniel: Neither one was willing to risk opposing the other, which resulted in very clean, nice, and polite counseling sessions. I challenged them to speak up about offenses, hurts, or issues that felt too difficult to talk about. Each session was like the last, both explaining in different ways that everything between the two of them was perfect.

At our last of six session, I encouraged them (as I do with every pre-married couple): Don’t lose heart when your marriage doesn’t go according to plan. Keep your head up, stay engaged with each other, and call me if you run into something that feels hopeless or never-ending.

They returned for six months of really difficult, yet very fruitful marriage counseling. A number of different themes arouse through their time in my office, and I want to share these with you.

Marriage as a journey, not a Destination

A mistake that Tanya and Daniel admitted to making was their view about the status of “being married.” They thought marriage would be a place they could arrive at together, and this arrival would alleviate the problems they were facing separately as single people. They saw marriage as being the solution to their problems, not the incubator for more problems. Over the first 3 years of their lives together, they realized that the problems they had as single people were now intensified. His problems were with hiding shameful activities such as porn and the occasional pot use. Hers were mainly about body image and self-esteem issues.

Tanya and Daniel were right—Marriage intensifies existing problems, it does not alleviate them. This is a hard trap to not fall into as an engaged couple, and is very common. A change in perspective might help to keep this from happening in your marriage. Marriage is a journey, and on this journey there are high and low points, happy and sad times, finding and losing, and full of life. To consider this lifelong journey as anything other would be a disservice to the institution of marriage.

Training and preparing

If you’ve ever trained for a major sporting event such as a long-distance run, climbing a challenging mountain, a triathlon, or other event that requires preparation, then you understand that to perform well in crunch time, you have to practice and train well ahead of time. Culturally, Americans tend to believe that we ought to be able to do things on our own, without help. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work in marriage.

Marriage is the ultimate long-distance sport, and requires the necessary time and attention that one would give for such an event. To be successful in marriage, we need to train and prepare with input from outsiders. This comes in the form of counseling, reading books, attending retreats or seminars, and getting involved with community of others. Without a commitment to training, marriages will not flourish when tested.

Follow through.

One of the most hopeless moments in Tanya’s life came when Daniel calmly, yet detached, said: “I’m done with you and this relationship. I want a divorce.”

This event was the imputes in her seeking out help. The reality for Daniel was that he was done with how the relationship was functioning, not with Tanya and their marriage. At the time he spoke these words, he truly believed he was being honest with her. Unfortunately, these were words he’d uttered many times before in fits of rage as empty threats.

These words were used as partial truth. As we explored what Daniel meant, we found out that he was intensely disappointed in marriage and didn’t see a way out. He admitted to using the word “divorce” as a way to shut her up and get from her what he wanted. This manipulation was understood by Tanya, but never named as such. Early on in their counseling, I challenged them to never use the word divorce unless they were willing (together or separately) to follow through with such a statement.

The lesson here: If you say you’re going to do something, do it. The best gift you can give your spouse is trust. Trust is built on the foundation of follow through. This was a hard concept for Daniel to understand because he felt like I was giving him freedom to divorce Tanya if that’s what he wanted. The reality is that I was asking him to be accountable to the words and desires he had for their marriage. If divorce was what he wanted, he needed to follow through with it. This “freedom” that I gave him was a bind. He either needed to step up and file, or stop using that word as an escape from their problems. Both were difficult scenarios and both required him to engage honestly. He chose to re-engage with Tanya, and their marriage grew because of this.

Tanya and Daniel realized they were unprepared for marriage, just like 100% of other couples entering their first marriage. They admitted to each other that their vows towards each other were intended to bring happiness, but what they needed was to mature and grow up in their capacity for love and respect. Marriage is an ascent up and down rugged terrain that only promises to make you stronger and less self-centered if you stay the course. It’s not possible to serve two masters, serving the self and marriage cannot coexist—each spouse has to chose one. That is the challenge, and ascent, of marriage.

(authors note: This article was originally published at Start Marriage Right. Due to issues of confidentiality, names and identifying information in vignettes have been changed)

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2012 Most Read/Shared Posts

One of my goals for 2012 was to write more. Beyond writing weekly for the online publication Start Marriage Right, I was able to share some thoughts and writings here on my counseling site. Below are the top 5 shared and viewed posts from the past year.

Stop Trying to Be Normal, You’re Not 167

Normal is depressing. Normal is just plain vanilla, no toppings. Normal is the path of no resistance. Not least resistance, no resistance. Normal is normal, and more and more people are looking for the supposed feel-good nature of being normal. Let others define what normal is, then jump on the bandwagon to feel accepted, part of the team. But you’re not accepted or connected. You’re a drone that parrots what you think others want to hear, what you think others value as popular or normal. …Stop Trying to Be Normal, You’re Not

The Sexual Commodity of Beauty 92

There are two issues here. First is the need for women to transcend the message that to be sexy and hot is to be beautiful. To take it one step further, women need to reject the notion that beauty is synonymous with being sexual. Some of the most beautiful people in the world would never be selected to appear on the cover of a vanity magazine. Capturing and extending external beauty is a losing battle. It’s not just the women’s responsibility to reject this, it also requires men to engage beauty and sexuality in a mature and person-centered manner. …The Sexual Commodity of Beauty

Seeing the Real You 77

We care what others think because it’s easy. It’s easy to ask someone else to define you. To judge you. To tell you who or what you are (and in most cases, they will tell you what you are, not who you are). We want easy, because hard is painful. Hard is just that, hard. And not many of us like hard. … Seeing the Real You

Parenting Kids, Not Controlling Them 62

Parenting is the essence of training a child in how to relate to the world around them. There are hundreds of books to help you along this journey, but the most important piece that a book can never teach you is how to engage your child in who they are. When we control our kids, we ask them to be someone that they are not. It’s scarier to be in relationships with others, our kids included, where we are not in control. Control will crush a relationship, and your child’s spirit. You will do more harm than good by ushering them down the path of life that you want for them. … Parenting Kids, Not Controlling Them

Fear of Losing Her 57

I’m afraid I’ll lose him or her can be one of the most powerful motivators in a relationship. There are many stories that shape the foundation of this fear, but regardless of it’s origin, the way you behave out of this fear will either result in bondage or freedom. If we’re honest, we all have fears about doing or not doing something that will bring an end to an important relationship. This fear may not be consciously present for both partners, but it’s in there.

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Fear of Losing Her

I’m afraid I’ll lose him or her can be one of the most powerful motivators in a relationship. There are many stories that shape the foundation of this fear, but regardless of it’s origin, the way you behave out of this fear will either result in bondage or freedom. If we’re honest, we all have fears about doing or not doing something that will bring an end to an important relationship. This fear may not be consciously present for both partners, but it’s in there.

There are two ways we typically react to this fear:

  1. Grab on tightly and not let go (a natural and normal reaction)
  2. Hold with open arms and allow the other the freedom to choose (a more nuanced reaction).

Obviously the latter is more difficult, but it’s a promise we all hope to give and be given upon getting married. This is the reality of accepting that love is a choice.

In the infancy of a relationship, it’s impossible for couples to not behave and interact as though devastation is but a whisper away. Couples will spend countless hours together, spending energy they’d normally reserve for work and other relationships, and will be quite infatuated with each other. It’s the picture of the animals coming out in the spring in the movie, Bambi. Everyone is twitterpated, and nothing else matters. This infancy can last days, weeks or years and is the beginning grounds of every relationship.

If one person tries to break free (mature) from the immaturity of the relationship, it forces the other person to either increase their efforts at containing the relationship or to follow the others’ lead. Thus begins the dance of “I’m afraid I’ll lose the other person.”

When we’re afraid of losing someone close, our natural tendency is to hold on tighter so as to guarantee the person never gets away. Said another way, finding something of immeasurable value is rare and it’s easy to want to horde so as to never experience the loss. God has hardwired us for relationships, and this is the dilemma that faces marriage:

 How do I ensure I’ll never lose him/her?

The unfortunate answer is that we can never ensure our own safety, or closeness to another person. Because of this, our humanness takes charge and we squeeze tight, so we don’t experience loss. One of the quickest ways to erode trust with your spouse is to risk them feeling controlled. If this word pops up in your conversations, wisely heed the warning and address it.

The balloon analogy
What’s not understood in this dilemma is that when we squeeze something, we generally expel the air that resides inside; much like a balloon. Balloons are designed to hold air. When you commit your life to your spouse, you commit to caring for him/her the way you’d care for a balloon. Sometimes they’ll need you to put some air in them, sometimes they’ll need a string so they can fly in the wind but not get lost, and sometimes they’ll need to be left alone to dance on the floor to how the air moves them. If I’m afraid of losing my balloon, I might squeeze it so hard that all the air is expelled from the other person. “She’s safer in my pocket, than out on her own,” might be a phrase associated with this act or belief.

This dynamic plays an important part for the early stages of intimate relationships. This “holding on tightly” is usually given and received as a token of the pure love that couples have for one another. This can be experienced as love early on in a relationship, but as the individuals (and marriage) grows, so too does the need for a more matured expression of love.

Love takes energy and selfless behavior to care, respect, actively listen, attend, and honor our spouse. On the other hand, fear silences, manipulates, controls, and worries. Marriage is the choice to engage in spite of our fear. I liken it to the challenge of being given a rare flower that needs care, but room to breath and grow. Smother it, and it will slowly die; tend to it and it will thrive.

If we let the fear of loss control our actions and interactions with our spouse, it will result in a failure of love. Love is not static. It’s a dynamic process of growth both for the other and for ourselves.

 

(originally published at Start Marriage Right)

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Five Hours of Magic

Dr. John Gottman, revered marriage expert, has done extensive research in the field of marriage. One of his most helpful findings is what separates successful marriages to ones that fail. The answer: Those that spend an extra 5 hours per week investing in their spouse tend to live a more fulfilled marriage. He calls it the magic 5 hours. Below, I’ve adapted and commented on the 5 categories he uses in his book, The 7 Principals for Making Marriage Work.

1. Partings/Departures – 2 Minutes per day
Spend two minutes per day warmly and intentionally departing from your spouse for work, the gym, or social activity. This can include a brief description about the forthcoming appointments or activities that you will encounter during your day. Take a moment to do this without rushing and, as you depart, let your spouse know they are an important part of your day. Two minutes per weekday, 10 minutes per week.

2. Greetings/Arrivals – 20 Minutes per day
At some point shortly after your return home from work or daily activity, spend twenty minutes debriefing about the events of the day. Like the 15-Minute date, each take about ten minutes of this time to share your high and low points of the day. This is time to reconnect after spending the majority of the day living in separate worlds. Spending 20 minutes per weekday is 1 hour and 40 minutes per week.

3. Physical Affection – 5 Minutes per day
The more familiar and routine we become with our spouse, the less we take time to physically. Unfortunately, the physical proximity of each other in a home gets to be sufficient. For most marriages, the only intentional physical connection occurs during sex. Without non-sexual touch (touching that is not leading to sex), sex can become a chore and obligation. Gottman suggests spending 5 minutes per day, not necessarily in one setting, intentionally touching, hugging, kissing, and physically interacting with one another. These 5 minutes will likely be the easiest of this list to do with each other, and will likely enhance your sex life. Five minutes every day is 35 minutes per week.

4. Admiration, Affirmation, & Compliments – 5 Minutes per day
Those who are loved by touch have had their five minutes, now it’s time to spread some love with words of affirmation. Make mention about something you admire about your spouse or something they did. In his research, Gottman says that it takes 5 positive affirmations to counteract one negative interaction. Think of this category as your emotional bank account. Each time you find something enjoyable or affirming about your spouse, make a deposit. Five minutes every day is 35 minutes per week.

5. Weekly Dates – 2 Hours per week
Doing the previous four exercises will net you 3 hours of foundational time spent investing in your marriage. The cherry on top of this is the weekly date. Dating is the time that you and your wife leave the confines of the home, and live life together. Dates do not have to be dinner and a movie, nor do they have to be talking dates. My wife and I actually try to have dates together where we are not sitting face-to-face with each other for the entire evening. This can involve a movie, putt-putt golf, serving dinner at the local homeless shelter, or another activity that is not routine.

Dates are usually the first activity to go in marriage. A big reason is assuming the time spent together at home negates the need for an intentional date. The problem with this thinking is that your relationship was never built by staying at home. You went out, dated, and that usually ends pretty soon after marriage. Make it a point to protect your date night at all costs.

My guess is these 5 hours were present in your dating relationship, and you didn’t have to think about doing them. The good news with this: You’re able to do it.

The bad news: You’re going to need to work on it. Take the time to invest in your marriage in these 5 hours per week: You’ll reap the rewards.

 

(Originally published for Start Marriage Right)

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Growth from the Desert

In 2006 there was a study that showed the link between the Amazon rainforest and the Sahara desert. Evidently, the Amazon rainforest is not self-sustainable. It’s one of the richest ecosystems in the world, yet doesn’t natively contain enough minerals and nutrients it needs to thrive. These nutrients come from one of the most unlikely of places: The Bodele’ depression; a small dried up lake in the African Sahara.

The Bodele depression, about a third the size of Florida (roughly .05 percent the size of the Amazon) provides over half of the needed minerals and nutrients for the Amazon rainforest. Yes, that’s right: A patch of desert in Africa makes the Amazon, the Amazon. The nutrients in the Sahara that feed the Amazon rainforest don’t get transported overnight. It takes time. If this desert land did not exist, nor would the Amazon. It takes a suspension of disbelief to wrap your brain around this concept. The dusty, sandy, and arid land of the Sahara helps to create the habitat for one of the most rich and abundant natural habitats on earth. Metaphorically, this wonder of the natural world offers some wisdom for us.

Here’s a challenge about life and marriage: Couples don’t naturally grow together because everything in life is grand, wonderful, and dreamy. We, and relationships, grow because of adversity from a foreign land. This “foreign land” is your partner for life. They come from a strange, perhaps even hostile, environment. It’s normal to them, but different, adverse, to you. Paradoxically, this “otherness” of your partner is what brings you together in the first place.

This coming together of two different regions usually creates lots of growth and movement. We begin relationships in earnest, with excitement about the other person. We spend time with them, think about them when apart, create photo books, write letters, and lots of other romantically inclined actions. These are all what communicate love to the other person, and what knits hearts together. However, what provides nutrients to relationships in the early days often becomes laborious work in the long haul

A wife might say, I used to love his spontaneity and lack of planning, it was exciting and new. But now I’m really tired and exhausted from having no plan for our life.”

I’ve often heard husbands say that they fell in love with her self-reliance and independence, but over time they have come to resent her not having a place for him in her life. These parts we dislike about our spouse usually began as welcomed nutrients to the relationship but over time the focus is lost and what was once loved, is not resented.

Enter the Amazon/Sahara analogy. The fruits of love came from the acceptance and blessing of dusty, sandy, hot winds coming from across the seas. In the beginning, the experience of the other was new, fresh, and intoxicating. But as time goes on, the sand starts getting in your eyes and hair, it chaffs your legs when the wind blows hard, and ruins any food left uncovered. It’s difficult to accept these distant winds as blessings when they rub you raw.

Here’s the dilemma: Without the desert being the desert, the rainforest cannot be the rainforest. If given the choice, most of us would choose to spend the rest of our life in the Amazon as opposed to the Sahara. The essence of self love is the view that others are threatening to our happiness, not the source of it. A relationship cannot be the relationship without two people coming together from distant and different lands. Much like the personal growth that occurs from prolonged time in the desert, so too is the growth for a relationship. If we do not embrace discomfort, we will not flourish.

(This post was originally published as part of my writings for Start Marriage Right)