Signs Your Marriage is Drifting

1. You think that the absence of conflict equals the presence of intimacy.

2. You find yourself keeping certain details of conversations or events from your spouse.

3. You say you forgive but you are really resentful.

4. You care more about being right than being one with your spouse.

5. When you get dressed in the morning, you are hoping that certain person at work notices you.

6. You look for opportunities to run errands, do chores, or work late so you can spend less time at home.

7. You say you’re sorry but you never change.

8. Sexual intimacy is rarely offered or pursued.

9. You are more emotionally connected to another person than you are your spouse.

10. You can’t remember the last time you had a conversation of substance that wasn’t an argument.

11. You haven’t gone on a date with just your spouse in over three months.

This list doesn’t mean that you’re marriage is over. This list means that your marriage is drifting. You don’t avoid these things by accident. You choose to avoid this list. You make a decision every day to walk in the other direction of this list. We are here to help you avoid this list. You don’t have to walk alone.

We’re here. More importantly, God is here. He is fighting for you today. Fight for your marriage.

This isn’t an exhaustive list. What else should we add to this list?

So many of you are faithful readers of our blog and such an encouragement to our ministry. I want update you on a project we are working on that could help many more marriages not just survive, but thrive. Let me give you a little background.

A little over a year ago, Trisha and I started offering marriage coaching via Skype for couples. We have coached 17 different couples (via Skype, additional couples in person) over the past year and we think it has been effective. We have learned a lot and we think that the format of coaching via the internet works.  The problem is, there are more people requesting marriage coaching than we have the capacity to serve. We want to help more people without putting our family and marriage at risk. We have people email us daily that aren’t getting the help they need. While we can’t be everything to everyone, we know there are more effective ways to do what we are doing.

This new format will also help set the foundation for training other couples to do coaching in addition to us.

We are considering a new format that would include a group video chat component; an online chat room to interact and ask questions and a follow up email to the content we discussed. We did our first beta test of the format on Monday night, and it was extremely helpful. We aren’t ready to go live with it yet, but feel like with some more research, code writing and planning it will really help a lot of people.

Here is where you come in. We’d love your help in the development of this tool to refine and restore marriages.

How you can help:

1. Pray that God would lead us as we seek to develop a more effective system to bring hope and healing to marriages.

2. Support our ministry: we will have some design and code writing expenses to get this new tool up and running.

3. Answer the three questions below. Totally confidential.

We can’t thank you guys enough for your continued support, your encouragement and your prayers. We had no clue two years ago when we started this blog all that God had in mind. We feel honored to use our story to share God’s power to redeem and to help others along the way.

There are times that you choose to do things and you know the outcome. You know that certain choices aren’t big risks. Then there are decisions that are so risky that they scare you to death, because failure is a huge possibility.

Almost a year ago, we made a decision that was a definite risk,  but we felt like God wad leading us to make.

We started our Marriage Coaching program with four couples. They varied in age; in area of the country; in stage of life; in condition of their relationship. We had no idea what we were getting into. We had no idea if this would even work. We had no idea if each couple would benefit from it.

We have been blown away at how God has shown up. The couples that we have coached and the way that God had lead in each of these relationships has been so awesome. We know that our Marriage Coaching Program isn’t for everyone. We know that we can’t reach every single couple that is hurting or in need of help, but it has been so wonderful to walk along side of a few couples and see the tremendous growth and healing that has taken place in their lives over the past year.

You can read about how our Marriage Coaching Program works on our resource web site: Refine Our Marriage. Our friend Jenny said this about her and her husband’s experience:

Justin and Trisha came along at a crucial time in our marriage and were a HUGE answer to prayer. The insight my husband and I gained from just one session gave us hope, courage, and focus in a way that weeks spent in therapy had not accomplished. There is something very powerful about coming together “in Christ’s name” to create stronger, healthier, more God-centered relationships and Justin and Trisha really get this.

We are opening registration for January 2011, today. If you are interested in our marriage-coaching program you can check out more info at Refine Our Marriage; you can leave a comment and we will follow up with you; or you can actually register by clicking HERE. (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

If you’d like to help us get the word out about our resource site for couples, feel free to tweet this post or share it on Facebook. Our ministry exists to renew hope and restore relationships. By God’s grace and with your help, we are honored to be doing that.

If you’d like more info about Marriage Coaching, just leave a comment.

Last night, I posted on Twitter a picture of the book we received Monday from the printer. Our friend Ali worked with us over the past few months to design this marriage conference resource. It isn’t as big of a deal as receiving your book from a publisher, but this little booklet is very special to us. This booklet represents a five year journey in our lives and marriage that can only be described as God-ordained.

Trisha and I had no vision for ministry. We had no idea that God would use something so destructive; something so painful and humiliating to provide hope and healing to others.

God in a miraculous way, took something that was meant for harm and hurt and brought about redemption and restoration.

Sharing our story for the first time in 2009 evolved to starting our blog. Our incredible RefineUs community (you) helped us see a vision for ministry again. We established RefineUs Ministries in June 2009. The response continued to grow and God continued to lead and that vision lead to RefineOurMarriage.com, in 2010.

We launched RefineOurMarriage.com in August in hopes of establishing a resource to help restore hope and renew relationships. Our desire is to reach and serve three audiences: spouses in crisis; marriages in process and pastors and churches in need.

We launched our Marriage Coaching program. We began to write content for Marriage Conferences. We opened our schedule up to pastors and spouses who were struggling and have no one to talk to, through OneDays. We agreed to speak at churches and church leadership conferences. God continues to lead in ways that blow our minds every single day.

This weekend we have the honor of partnering with SunCrest Christian Church and lead them in our Refine Our Marriage Retreat. Then on Sunday, we have the opportunity to share with Fox Valley Christian Church, in Batavia, IL. Trisha and I were on staff there in 1997 as their student pastor. We are so excited to be back with them on Sunday.

Why do I share this? Three reasons:

1. Thank you. Thank you to those of you that have been with us since February of 2009. We didn’t even know what a blog was when we started this deal. You have prayed for us. You have encouraged us. You have believed in what God was doing when we were doubting our ability to communicate. You have emailed our posts; retweeted us; shared on Facebook; become a fan of our ministry; been a partner with us through prayer. The couples that hear God’s story this weekend do so because of your faithfulness. Thank you!

2. We want to serve you. The reason we launched RefineOurMarriage.com was to provide resources. There are audio and video downloads. There are PDF downloads; there are several ways we are striving to restore hope and renew relationships. We want to be faithful to share what God has done and can do.

3. Be encouraged. Five years ago at this time, Trisha and I were separated. We didn’t live in the same house. We weren’t sure if our marriage would survive. God is bigger than our mistakes. He is bigger than our hurts. He is bigger than any destruction that may have wrecked your life. He has great plans for you. If He can restore our marriage and redeem us…he can do anything. Be encouraged. God is fighting for you even more than you are fighting for yourself. He has plans for you; plans to give you hope and a future. Live in that today.

We are so thankful for you. We are humbled to be on this journey with you. Please be praying for us this weekend as we share God’s desire and dream for marriage.

When we started blogging last year, we were surprised at the response. We thought that a lot of people might struggle in their marriage; might have some issues with pornography; might have gone through an affair; might have difficulty forgiving, trusting or not controlling. We had no idea that so many people were hurting.

Emails began to pour in. People…hurting people needing hope, encouragement, and help. We would return emails. We would have conversations with people on the phone. We would meet with people in our home, on some occasions. The question we kept asking was, “Who is walking with them through this season?” Who knows the journey? Who’s walked the path? Who’s willing to track with them? Our emails weren’t sufficient. Our phone calls were inconsistent at best. There had to be a better way.

That is where the vision of Marriage Coaching was born. We knew that we couldn’t fix all marriages…but we knew that the road we have traveled is one that would be helpful to share.

The goal that we have for our Marriage Coaching program isn’t that we give couples all the answers or fix their marriage. We aren’t counselors or therapists. Our goal is to come along side couples and help them take the next step in their journey with Christ, and with each other.

What we have found is that most people don’t need textbook answers, they need a partner in the journey. We have learned over the past five years in our restoration and redemptive process that the journey looks different for everyone, but there are similar routes along the way.

Our hope is to walk with couples for a season to help bring hope, clarity, renewal and vision to the season that they are experiencing.

So we opened 4 opportunities for couples to meet with us over Skype 1 time per month, with email follow up through out the remaining month. The program is a 4-month commitment. It has gone really well. We have been able to encourage and coach and counsel 4 couples and help navigate the challenge of marriage.

We want to invite 4 more couples into our Marriage Coaching Program. You can read more about it on our resource web site: RefineOurMarriage.com. You can also read a testimonial from a couple that has participated with us in Marriage Coaching.

The new season of coaching will start the third week of September and end in December. We’d love to have you.

Most people only communicate what they expect from a relationship after they have been disappointed or let down. We talk to people all the time that are unhappy in their marriage, unhappy in a relationship, dissatisfied with a friend, because the relationship isn’t what they thought it would be and isn’t what they expected it should be.

Our first question when a husband or wife expresses their frustration about an unmet expectation is, “Have you told your wife that you desire that?” “Have you told your husband you expect that?” Most of the time the answer is no.

When the answer is yes, the expectations people have are usually spewed out during an argument.

Arguments will never change someone’s heart. An argument might change how your wife acts or how your husband behaves for a day or two, but arguing will never turn a person’s heart closer to another. When an expectation is shared during an argument, its too late to do any good.

Can we share a secret with you that we have learned the hard way? This will apply to your friendships, to your work relationships, to your relationship with your kids, in your marriage…Unspoken expectations will always grow into unmet expectations.

If you are unhappy in your marriage right now. If you wonder how you and your spouse could have drifted so far apart; if you are constantly frustrated that your needs, your desires, your expectations aren’t being met…have you communicated them outside the context of an argument?

Maybe its going out for breakfast; maybe its staying up an extra hour; maybe its going out on a date and having a conversation about expectations. This conversation should probably start with, “I want you to know that I own half of this issue. Half of the disappointment I have is because I haven’t communicated well.”

When expectations are communicated in clearly, calmly and in a desire to grow the relationship and not just beat the other down…relationships flourish. Friendships deepen; dating relationships grow; marriages become stronger.

In the context of your relationships, do you struggle with unspoken expectations?