Once we got really serious, my boyfriend and I took a five-week parenting class together, attended a one-day remarriage seminar, and completed a ten-week financial course together. It really helped us evaluate our future.
Amanda
So far, all the lights are green. Now what do you do? How do you move past “I love you” to “I’m confident I want to spend the rest of my life with you”?
Amanda, quoted above, and her boyfriend are on to something. They intentionally engaged themselves in structured classes and activities that fostered constructive dialogue. After dating for a while, some couples allow their dating process to wander aimlessly. Brittney shared, “I was in a relationship that I thought had potential for marriage, but then we got in an unhealthy rut. No growth toward God, just the ho-hum of ‘How’s your day?’ After a year of going nowhere, I expressed my need for more but got no serious response from him. I had to make a decision to move on.”
Intentionally inserting structures, like attending seminars or reading a book together, helps to deepen a relationship. In Brittney’s case, it helped reveal that her level of want was greater than her boyfriend’s. This chapter will provide structures you can put in place and topics to discuss to deepen your relationship. But before we proceed, now that you’re serious, it’s important to remind yourself where you’re going.
Engaged to a Savior
In Matthew 22 there is an interesting dilemma presented to Jesus; his response is one you’ll never hear shared during a wedding. The Sadducees present a case study to Jesus about a woman who had been married and widowed seven times. “At the resurrection,” they asked, “whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?” (Matthew 22:28). Before hearing Jesus’ reply, let’s push Pause for a moment. Imagine how Hollywood or your favorite romance novelist would answer. “Well, the one she loved the most, of course,” they might reply. Or perhaps, “Only her true soul mate could spend eternity with her in heaven; otherwise it wouldn’t be heaven!” If you were asked that question, what would your answer be?
Now push Play to hear Jesus’ reply. “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:29–30).
What? There’s no marriage in heaven? But I thought (didn’t you, too?) that eternity with the one you love would be the ultimate ending to true romance. Well, it is—but not in the way we assume.
The Bible begins and ends with a wedding. In the beginning, because of the aloneness of man, God gives the first bride away, and on the last day when Christ comes back for his bride, the church, we will all be joined with him in heaven in perfect oneness. In light of that truth I guess you could say we’re all engaged to our Savior. And when he comes, implies Jesus’ response, we won’t need marriage to fill our aloneness because the power and presence of God will fulfill our every longing. We will experience ultimate oneness with the One who created us and live happily ever after.
Do you remember being in kindergarten and going on a field trip? The teacher probably paired you up with a friend and told you to hold hands and stick together. Or the teacher might have grouped a few students together with a chaperone so no one got lost. God has pretty much done the same thing for us.
We are on the field trip of life and we’ve left the safety of the classroom, but we haven’t arrived at the destination yet. When Jesus comes, we will have arrived, but until then, we’re still vulnerable. To help us not get lost, he’s created two groups to help us find our way. First, we’ve been put into a small group of people called the church. Here we look after one another and encourage one another as we see the day approaching (Hebrews 10:25). This is a place for singles as well as couples and families. Others of us find a buddy—a spiritual traveling buddy—to whom we are accountable. We help each other stay on the path and together strive to bring our children along with us on the journey to the ultimate destination.
Marriage to a person is not our ultimate destination; being wed to our Lord is. Single people need that perspective so they won’t overvalue getting married, and married people need that perspective so they won’t lose sight of their purpose in being together.[41] And dating people need that perspective so that they will date with the purpose of finding someone who can become their buddy during the field trip of life and ultimately usher them to the arms of their Savior.
Going deeper for any purpose other than this is a waste of time and could become an idol that detours your walk toward Christ. On the other hand, going deep in the spiritual disciplines, for example, will lead you toward Christ and have the added benefit of solidifying your hearts and empowering a healthy marriage. Therefore, make shared godliness a priority for your relationship (and if the other person is unable to join you there, consider that a yellow—and some would say red—light).
Pray Together
You can learn so much about a person just by listening to them pray. What do they pray about? For example, are they the center of their prayers or do they have a heart for the poor, underprivileged, and broken? What concerns them or fills their thoughts? How do they approach the Father—with legalistic fear or humble confidence in God’s grace? If they can’t pray openly with you, you take the lead and see if they can’t eventually get there. Many people find prayer an intimate activity (far more so than sex) that is intimidating. That should show us just how powerful it is—and how helpful it is to a relationship.
Study the Scriptures
Try to engage one another in learning from God’s Word, whether in a Bible study or small group with others, with your children, or just by yourselves. Talk about what God is teaching you and discuss how to live it out. And if you really want to go deep, share your temptations and confess sin to each other. A relationship that offers both accountability and encouragement about such things is one that can reach the destination.
Serve Beside Each Other
Turn your shared faith into shared service; get outside of yourself and help someone else in the name of Christ. This is primarily an act of love for those God loves, and yet it also feeds and informs your dating.
Define the Relationship
Before I share many other practical strategies for deepening your relationship and informing your decisions about marriage, remember to again openly define the relationship. As I shared earlier, couples should overtly discuss the status of their relationship at every phase. Before adding intentional structures to deepen your relationship, it would be advisable to have the “I’m ready for us to be very intentional” conversation. Assuming both of you agree that your level of want is moving you toward marriage, then implementation of the strategies in this chapter will be easy. If only one of you is ready to define the relationship as serious, then you’ll need to slow down. Either way, at least you’ll both know where you stand.
If both of you are seeking to deepen the relationship, it’s wise to share this with your children. They, too, need to know the status of your relationship. This can be accomplished with another “What if?” conversation. What if Jeremy and I were getting serious? What if we all started spending a lot more time together? What if I were to take his daughter out for lunch someday—how would you feel about that?
Each answer gives you information about how the kids are feeling and what their concerns might be. You might also discover that they already suspected you were serious (our kids can read us pretty well), but still, the conversation lets everyone know of your intentions. It also invites them to go with you to the next phase of coupleness and familyness.
Going Deeper Strategies
The following steps are not in any particular order, and not all of them will make sense for your relationship. Feel free to implement the ideas that make sense at this point in your relationship. If you’ve already found your way to doing some of these, you’re on the right track.
Explore Your “Fit” and Relationship Health
Throughout the book I have mentioned the online Couple Checkup inventory. Used by individual couples throughout the world and churches, the inventory is backed by thirty-five years of research and has been taken by millions of couples. The Couple Checkup is an assessment tool designed to identify the unique strengths and growth areas of your relationship. And because it tailors itself to your relationship type, you can take it at each season, whether dating, engaged, or married, in order to assess your strengths and where you need to grow if you are going to have a vibrant marriage.
Immediately after completing the assessment, couples receive a ten-page Couple Checkup Report assessing over twenty aspects of couple relationships, including expectations, communication, managing conflict, finances, affection and sexuality, spiritual beliefs, and dating issues (or if engaged, a scale that deals with marital preparation). You also receive an extensive discussion guide designed to help you learn proven relationship skills in these and other areas. Research has shown that this process improves relationships by stimulating honest dialogue, increasing understanding, and empowering couples.
In addition, couples who want to prepare specifically for the challenges of remarriage will want to get The Remarriage Checkup, the book written by the innovator of the Checkup, Dr. David Olson, and me. In that book we report on our research of what predicts healthy remarriages, and we walk couples through a process of using their couple report to enhance their relationship stability and trust.
Taking the Couple Checkup has two distinct advantages. First, it provides you and your partner an objective X ray of your relationship health. Lots of couples marry with a false confidence in the quality of their relationship; the fog of love or infatuation distorts their discernment, and they make decisions based on subjective feelings.
The Couple Checkup is not a pass/fail assessment, that is, it’s not a compatibility test and it’s not going to recommend whether you stay together or get married. That is for you to decide. But when taken by both partners it will clearly identify whether you have a strong relationship, a moderate one, or a fragile one. This creates the second advantage for dating couples. Learning about your weaknesses helps you as a couple target specific ways to improve. No more shooting in the dark. No more wondering what you need to talk about before deciding on marriage. The report will tell you what you need to discuss and what needs to improve, and the book The Remarriage Checkup (and small group discussion guide) will tell you how to do it.
There is one limitation, however, to the Checkup. It is a couple relationship profile, not a family profile. It will help you know whether you are on the same page about stepparenting, but it won’t assess the joys or fears of your children. It won’t let you know whether your ex is going to make your life miserable and it won’t predict how kids will receive a stepparent’s authority. You still have to attend to the familyness issues yourself.
Date the Kids
If you are the single parent, perhaps you have been a bit protective of your kids up to this point. Single parents often have legitimate concerns about exposing their children to would-be child molesters or a child bonding with someone only to have them step out of the child’s life after a breakup. Those are reasonable concerns, but now that you are actively trying to deepen your relationship, it’s time to start deepening the potential steprelationships, as well. This includes “dating” the other’s children and letting the children spend time together. Frequently this is already happening to a degree. But what I’m talking about is proactive, intentional “family dating.”
Kelsey and her fiancé shared their family dating best practice: “We have weekly meals together and we plan at least one event a month that is required attendance for all the children. We have also planned several weekend trips together.” This type of activity is on target for this phase of your dating. Essentially, time together is what fosters connection and a growing sense of family, which will, in turn, increase your confidence in a decision to marry. If the structured time backfires and kids get annoyed by it, back up a step and don’t force it down their throats. Closeness has to be chosen and can’t be forced upon them.
Likewise, when a dating partner dates a kid by spending focused time with them with or without the parent, they should gauge the child’s level of openness and mirror it. Some children are just waiting for you to walk into their world, and they gladly invite you in. Others will avoid a one-on-one outing like the plague. Try to meet them where they are and grow from there. It helps if you engage them around things they are already interested in. Study their preferences, desires, and wounds and try to enter each as allowed. Your basic goal as the outsider is to get to know them and build a basic level of respect and trust. Love may or may not occur; for now, just connect.
Mary, a single mom of two teenagers, offered some good insight when she suggested that couples in this period of dating include the kids in as many decisions as possible. Teens in particular need to feel some power over their lives, and bringing them into decisions is a good way to do that—and it shows them some respect. That, in turn, helps them have respect for your relationship.
Having some control in choices and the direction of the family is very much related to past losses. In an earlier chapter I suggested that for both adults and children, the deepening of a new relationship and the sense that marriage is approaching heightens both fear and sadness. Don’t be surprised if kids start talking about their deceased parent more as they sense you getting more serious. Or perhaps they’ll make sure that your boyfriend, for example, knows that their loyalty is to their biological dad and not him. These stake-in-the-ground statements feel needed when a child is feeling guilty over what is happening. Be sure to listen and affirm these emotions (see the next section), not dismiss or argue with them. Doing so only builds a wall to your relationship. Jerry told our ministry this is exactly why he went to family therapy with his kids. They needed a place to talk about their mother’s death and at the same time discuss their feelings about his girlfriend, Sonia. Giving his kids a trusted guide to help them sort through some things was wise.
Learn to Tune In and Turn Toward
Listening with empathy is an amazing skill in interpersonal relationships. Whether to a co-worker, friend, family member, or spouse, listening with the intent of seeing the world through the eyes of another facilitates emotional safety between the two parties and fosters shared understanding. This in turn invites each to share with more transparency. When this is understood and validated, both experience greater intimacy with each other.
There are some subtle but very important skills that people can develop to help them be more empathetic. They have been described as tuning in and turning toward your partner.[42] Partners who tune in are aware of what is going on in the inner world of the other and they attend to it. “I know you’ve been worried about your son lately. How did it go with Dylan today?” This invites a sharing of inner worlds and says, “I’m here for you.”
Turning toward the other, particularly when they are experiencing a negative emotion, requires a tolerance for anxiety, especially if the emotion is about you. Having this skill starts with believing that negative emotions aren’t bad, but are instead a normal part of life. People with a low tolerance for negativity try to squelch it as soon as possible. Have you ever tried to talk someone out of a negative feeling (especially one about you)? It doesn’t work—and it pushes them further away from you. Rather, enter the person’s world, turn toward them, to explore and understand the emotion. “It’s obvious you are feeling hurt. Help me understand.”
Now here’s what true masters are able to do: They listen beneath the other’s words to hear the desire embedded deep within. Their words may be “Yeah, I’m hurt. We make plans to be together and then you break them at the drop of a hat to accommodate your kids’ every beck and call.” A dismissing person will reply, “Now wait a minute. You know my kids are important to me. Don’t get between me and my kids.” With a message of “you can’t feel that way,” this argument is off to the races (and both people are going to feel more distant and less safe as a result). Rather, listen beneath the words to hear the desire, the request therein. What they really said was, “I’m missing you.” A master listener will turn toward that desire and validate the feeling (even if they don’t understand it). “What you’re telling me is that you enjoy being with me and feel disappointed when something interrupts our time together.” When hearts connect around desire, then and only then can the couple have a nondefensive, safe conversation about the delicacies of balancing their couple time with the needs of the children. Highly respected marital researcher John Gottman said, “There is a longing or a wish, and therefore a recipe, within every negative emotion.”[43] Can you find the longing . . . and follow the recipe? A master partner and companion can.
Now here’s the bonus. People who have the skills to tune in to emotion make better stepparents because they are not afraid of the emotions of children. In particular, they know what to do with negative emotions. For example, a stepmother with this skill is not dismissive of a child who displays sadness around Mother’s Day because they aren’t with their mother. Instead, she turns toward the child, acknowledges and labels the sadness (and pain), and invites the child to share it with her. A dismissive stepmother would feel personally attacked in this situation and get lost in how it made her feel instead of focusing on the child; she may even try to talk the child into feeling better (a strategy that never works). Again, a stepparent with a tolerance for negative emotions would be compassionate, patient with the child, and view the situation as an opportunity to help coach the child (learn more about emotional coaching in The Smart Stepmom and The Smart Stepdad ). Just as in a couple’s relationship, this response fosters emotional safety and a movement toward one another; it invites stepchildren to draw toward a stepparent. This in turn is a homerun for the family as a whole.
Topics to Discuss—REALLY Discuss
The Remarriage Checkup book and online Couple Checkup assessment and report will spur dialogue around a number of important topics related to your couple relationship. Topics like money management, how you expect to manage conflict (i.e., the rules for fighting fair), personal habits that concern you, and your expectations for sex in marriage need focused conversation and agreement should you decide to move forward together. Money management, for example, is not just about “Are you a spender or a saver?” or “Should we compile all our assets or keep them separate after we marry?” It is also about your values and your understanding of stewardship from a biblical standpoint. These conversations are vital to deepening your relationship.
Another critical topic to discuss is parenting. As you read that, you’re probably thinking, Well, duh. Of course that’s important—there are kids to raise (or if adults, to mentor or support). But apparently that isn’t as clear to most single parents as you’d think. Only about one-third of moms discuss with their dating partner before marriage some aspect of his future role as stepfather to her children (e.g., his behavior and affection toward the children, his role in child care, or discipline and behavioral management), and 19 percent never discuss anything![44] If you ask me, that’s evidence of big assumptions such as “He’s a great guy, he will be a great father” and “Because we get along so well, we will see eye to eye on parenting.” Such assumptions are extremely risky.
Likewise, I’ve noticed that many singles without children of their own have a strong hesitation to bring up parenting matters with their dating partner because they think I don’t have kids, what do I know about parenting? Others fear that it will appear as if they are being critical of the kids. So in an attempt not to create conflict, they just avoid the subject altogether. Bottom line: The couple does not process parenting styles, strategies, their knowledge of child development, or their preferences in discipline.
What’s at stake here is the children’s adjustment to the new family and the stepparent. Family conflict that begins with parenting issues quickly transitions to marital ones. As I shared earlier in the book, couple satisfaction before marriage is centered on the couple’s relationship, but after the wedding is increasingly tied to parental unity or conflict (as well as other third-party stressors like difficult ex-spouses). Being a couple and being unified parents are two different things; do not assume you will be a good team just because you love each other. It’s critical to thoroughly discuss:
The details of these matters are beyond the scope of this book, but all of these topics are specifically addressed in my books The Smart Stepdad and The Smart Stepmom (coauthored with Laura Petherbridge). In addition, each book contains two chapters for the biological parent detailing their unique and critical role in setting the stepparent up for success. I strongly recommend that you read one or, if appropriate, both of those books, discuss the concepts, and agree on which will govern your parenting should you marry. I can’t tell you how many people have read those books well into their marriage and reported to me, “We have made so many mistakes and now I understand what we did wrong. I wish I would have read this before we married.”
Find a Mentor and Learn All You Can About Stepfamily Living
Nearly twenty years of counseling, coaching, and training blended families has revealed a secret of successful blended family couples: They work harder at getting smarter about stepfamily living. Getting smarter means learning all you can about how stepfamilies function and operate best, and why they have the unique complexities that they do. You may know how to drive a car, but driving in snow and icy conditions requires a different knowledge and skill set. Nearly all blended families have inclement weather to manage as they drive, so adopt the attitude of a learner.
To do this you can read the books I’ve recommended or visit smartstepfamilies.com (with the largest bank of articles on stepfamily living available). But let me also recommend that you find a mentor couple to walk with you through your dating, decisions about marriage, and first two years after the wedding. Look for a couple who has been married at least ten years, take them to lunch, and ask them if they’d be willing to walk beside you. They don’t have to have all the answers—perhaps you could read The Smart Stepfamily or watch my Remarriage Success DVD together and let the content ignite insightful conversations—they just have to be willing to share some of their perspective.
One indirect way of being mentored is sitting in on your church’s class or small group for blended family couples. (If they don’t have one, ask them to begin one soon!) Listen to the couples discuss real-life matters and glean from their experience what is helpful and what isn’t. You will never regret the effort it takes to get smart.
Discussion Questions