Full Title: | Sustaining Love: Healing & Growth In the Passages of Marriage |
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Author(s): | David Augsburger From jacket flap: "David Augsberger is professor of pastoral care at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries in Elkhart, Indiana. He holds a Ph.D. in pastoral psychology and family therapy from the School of Theology at Claremont, California. Professor, psychologist, lecturer, therapist, husband and father, Augsburger is also the author of many books [...]" |
Publishing / Edition: | Regal Books, 1988 |
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MARRIAGE ONE | MARRIAGE TWO | MARRIAGE THREE | MARRIAGE FOUR | |
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GOALS | DREAM We marry to fulfill the Dream - personal, marital, career and communal dreams. |
DISILLUSIONMENT The Dream fails us. Or we sacrifice the marital to gain the career and so on. |
DISCOVERY We discover reality beyond the Dream, we discover each other. |
DEPTH We develop depth in our selves, our marriage, our life together. |
COMMUNICATION | EXPECTATION We communicate out of expectations of what is meant, needed, wanted, obligated, necessary. |
MANIPULATION We manipulate by persuading, seducing, coercing, evading and avoiding to get what we want. |
INVITATION We discover that true communication is invitation and work toward equality. |
DIALOGUE We develop dialogue with genuine mutuality and equality in our communication. |
FEELINGS | EXCUSE We are afraid of, embarrassed by, cautious with, concealed about or unaware of feelings. |
EXPLODE We risk sharing feelings, but find them painfully threatening, often uncontrolled, unfocused, confused and confusing. |
EXPRESS We own and express feelings with freedom and with both candor and caring. |
EXPERIENCE We flow with both our feelings and thoughts. |
DIFFERENCES | ACCOMMODATE We tolerate, accommodate, overlook differences to avoid conflict and obey the Dream. |
ELIMINATE We seek to eliminate the objectionable differences in the partner by demanding change. |
APPRECIATE We discover the differences are creative, necessary parts of each of us and our marriage. |
CELEBRATE We delight in our differences and develop them in each other. |
CONFLICT | AVOID We avoid conflict as disruptive and destructive of the Dream. |
ATTACK We explode with frustrated feelings, seek to eliminate differences through fighting, bargaining, pressuring. |
ADJUST We discover more fair ways of fighting; we seek mutually satisfactory solutions more quickly. |
ACCEPT We accept conflict as a healthy process and utilize it to work for mutual growth. |
INTIMACY | DEPENDENT Intimacy is dependent on romance, on the moment, on the other's responses, on his/her "acting as prescribed." |
INDEPENDENT Intimacy is touch and go, intense when things are going well, absent when there is tension or threat. |
INTERDEPENDENT Intimacy now becomes truly possible as autonomy is balanced with solidarity. |
INTIMATE Intimacy now develops freely in emotional, mental, social and spiritual levels. |
ROLES | COMPLEMENTARY Relationships are shaped by complementary "fitting" of partner's strengths and weaknesses. |
SYMMETRICAL Relationships are competitive, adversary, tit-for-tat struggles to claim personal identity. |
PARALLEL Relationships achieve balance, equal freedom and responsibility. Autonomy and intimacy are protected. |
INTERTWINED Relationships are mutual, with both partners secure and satisfied whether near or far. |
MEANING | HOPES Hope shaped by the Dream are largely false hopes which must eventually die for love to become truly alive. |
HOPELESSNESS Hopes fade, falter and fail us. Life together becomes empty and alienated. |
HOPEFUL Hope rises as we find that beneath the old hopes there is deeper, richer meaning to our life together. |
HOPE True hope has emerged and pushes us onward from healing in the past, pulls us forward with the promise of the future. |