trust
OVERVIEW
Timing
Exercise 4 / 130min Total Exercise45 min Talk Part 1
10min Writing/explanation
10min Couple Sharing/explanation
40 min Talk Part 2
10 min Writing/explanation
10 min Couple Sharing/explanation
5 min Group Prayer/explanation
Objectives
- To examine the ways we hurt our spouse and limit the growth of our relationship through our attitudes and patterns of control and irresponsibility.
- To motivate participants to surrender feminine control and masculine irresponsibility and to grow closer as a couple.
- To motivate couples to reexamine the birth control issue in light of new insight into its negative impact on trust in marriage.
Key Teaching Points
- Irresponsibility and Control are major traps that affect virtually all marriages.
- Trust, especially in the area of sexuality, enables us to be more responsible and less controlling.
- The procreative and unitive dimensions of conjugal love are inextricably integrated.
Prayer
For the grace of trust.
- Trust in the love of my spouse.
- Trust that we both want to grow together.
Scripture
I Corinthians 7:3-5.
The wife has no rights over her own body...the husband has no rights over his body.
Living in Love – 2.0 Trust 6 Feb 2017 Overview 4 - 1
trust, the key to intimacy
By this time in the afternoon, theparticipants can grow physically tired and even sleepy. You may want to end the coffee break a bit early and fit in a lively wake up type experience. Husbands and wives can give each other back rubs or ask them to participate in some other activity that requires movement to get the juices flowing again.
We have a theory about attitudes. We think theyare a lot like the common cold. We do not always know where we picked them up; we do not think that they are very serious, but… they can make us miserable!
The good news is that like the common cold,which rarely needs professional attention, the remedies for our attitudes are usually pretty simple once we acknowledge their existence and do something to treat them.With a little medicine, we can prevent our relationship from dying a long slow death from a “hardening of the attitudes”.
Unfortunately, many of the attitudes that we have adopted from the culture, or from our home of origin, teach us to hold back, not to give too much, and certainly not to trust, but trust is the key to sexual intimacy and the essence of marriage. It’s what makes sexual love happen. It affirms, embraces, and empowers.
Without trust, there's no possibility of intimacy. With it, the potential is limitless.
Trust is at once fragile, and powerful.
Preparation for PRAYER
So, the grace we think we need right now is the grace of Trust, but let’s be very specific in terms of what we are praying for.
First, we want to be able to Trust in the love and devotion of our spouse. We also want to be able to Trust that we are both committed to and invested in our relationship and want to grow together.
Finally, we want to Trust in the inherent goodness of the other's masculinity or femininity. This can be really difficult because we are so different as men and women, and we often expect the other to act the way we would.
Both spouses may share
1-2 Minutes Total / Blocks to the Grace of Trust
Insert your sharing(s) here
PRAYER – for the grace of trust
Please, join us now in praying for the grace of Trust.
The prayer should be prepared but offered spontaneously and with genuine feeling.
Link hands with the whole group.
Pray to the Father. Pray not just for your individual good for your sake, but for the good and sake of the whole Body of Christ. Always close with a phrase such as, "Thru Christ our Lord," In Jesus' name," or "Through the intercession of our Lord, Jesus Christ."
Pray out loud first for yourself (30 seconds) and then for the group as a whole.
Husband or Wife.
Up to 1 minute / Prayer for the Grace of Trust
Insert your prayer here
Scripture : 1 Corintians 7:3-5
This Scripture passage MUST be read by the Team Wife
We would like to read from St Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 7, Verses 3-5. We give you chapter and verse because you are not going to believe this is actually in the Bible, and you will probably want to look it up later!
Read directly from the Bible. In this case, the preferred text is taken from the Jerusalem version. It is included in the Outline for use only if no Bible is available.
"The husband must give his wife what she has the right to expect, and so too the wife to the husband. The wife has no rights over her own body; it is the husband who has them. In the same way, the husband has no rights over his body; the wife has them."
This must be the most politically incorrect statement in Scripture; yet, what is it really saying?
The call here is to trust in a radically open way. We only cling to our "rights" when we don't trust that we'll be considered, treated well, or respected.
To accept that we have no rights over our own bodies is difficult. We tend to get defensive or self-protective. We fear loss of identity and independence, but didn't we trust that much on our Wedding Day? Weren't we anxious to give ourselves completely? Didn't we see our consecration to each other as a total gift?
Women will find it a comfort and men will find it a challenge to know that, in fact, St. Paul doesn't limit himself to the gift of just our physical bodies. The word he uses for "the Body" really encompasses the complete personhood of both husband and wife.
The Catholic concept of the human person is that mind, body, and soul are completely integrated, and the “Nuptial” meaning of the body is that we freely give ourselves as gift to one another. John Paul II calls this kind of trust “total mutual self donation”
This is a call to intimacy that depends on our ability to place ourselves completely in the other's hands, to trust implicitly.
COMMON TRAPS
Our lack of trust in each other manifests itself in two very damaging behavior patterns; they are Common Traps that are present to some degree in virtually every marriage.
These two traps are:
- Control, and
- Irresponsibility
These patterns are so embedded in our society and our lifestyles that we are often unaware of them. It can even be hard to see how harmful they can be. We applaud responsible behavior, and so it can be difficult to see when being responsible transitions to being controlling.
We love freedom, but when does letting someone do whatever they want enable irresponsibility and cause us to be uninvolved with each other.
Irresponsibility and control are two sides of the same coin. Where one controls, the other will be irresponsible. Where one is irresponsible, the other will control.
In the areas of family life and sexuality Women tend to control out of a sense of responsibility or insecurity, usually because the men in their lives are not taking responsibility, but, the more the wife controls, the more the husband will flee.
It absolutely destroys masculine self-esteem to be controlled or dominated. The more absent he is, the more she will control because she feels abandoned or unprotected. It is a vicious cycle.
Men control too, and women can be irresponsible. All relationships need to address both control and irresponsibility because they lead us away from intimacy and joy. They communicate disrespect, hurt the trust between us, and can cause real pain.
We are going to address these patterns of control and irresponsibility in detail, first in the general area of family life and then as they impact the atmosphere of being in love.
About half way through, we will have a brief break with a short couple exercise and sharing and then go on to address control and irresponsibility specifically in the marriage relationship. Obviously, the second half is deeper and more significant, and the final writing at the end will focus on what is most important.
masculine Irresponsibility and control:
The Team Husband MUST do this section.
So let’s talk about irresponsibility in family life
Irresponsibility is a symptom of distrust. It comes from not trusting that our competence will be respected or that our presence is valued. It also comes from a fear of getting too close, of being swallowed up, dominated, or trapped.
Irresponsibility tends to be a masculine curse.
Masculine irresponsibility is most often lived out in a man's emotional detachment and physical absence from his wife and family.
It can include making the job our primary interest, leaving family decisions and initiatives up to our wives, staying away from home as a means of preserving a measure of independence, withdrawing into a shell when there's a conflict, or insisting on being "right" all the time, but whether it's spending our time at home in front of the television, exercising, or working around the house, traveling on business, or working late, it all adds up to a diminished masculine presence in the home and in the family.
The difficult part of being a parent is not paying for the education, playing ball on the weekend, or checking out the first date. It's the emotional child rearing, the part that's too often left to Mom alone, all the day-to-day worries, concerns and personal investment.
Wives need and want their husbands to be involved, to be there to hug their kids when they cry, to talk to teachers, to pray for today's math test, to be aware of who their children’s friends are.
Most men just don't realize that when we absent ourselves from home, even for good reasons, we damage not only our wives but our children as well.
The Team Wife should present the following paragraphs down to the Husband’s sharing
A father really is irreplaceable.
To a growing child, Dad represents the outside world. Even if Mom has a huge career, she is still closely associated with birth and infancy. Dad tends to represents adulthood. What's important to Dad will be seen as important in life. If they, themselves, are not important to Dad, then they will see themselves as unimportant.
For this reason, the father becomes the most significant parent during the particularly difficult years of adolescence. It's the father who confirms the sexuality of both sons and daughters.
It's the day-to-day involvement and his emotional presence that's a Father's most precious gift to his children.
Women really have to help here. Men have to be welcomed back. They have to be allowed to fail, to break a few dishes, to rough house with the boys, even in the living room. They have to be allowed to father our children, to love the way a man loves.
The Team Husband resumes sharing here:
On the other hand, we husbands often think that we are being generous by allowing our wives to do as they please in the home, but our uninvolvement leaves them feeling burdened and taken for granted.
When what is important to her does not seem important to us, she feels unimportant.
If not shared in your personal sharing please include the following illustration:
For example, if your wife does the cooking and asks what would you like for dinner Dear, you might answer, “I don’t care,” and think you are being nice, but she will literally hear, “I do not care! I do not care about what you care about.”
Obviously, this can be true in reverse if the husband does most of the cooking. The point is that when we do not even offer so much as the courtesy of an opinion we leave the other feeling alone and often like the hired help. Also, if we have never had to put a meal on the table, we cannot appreciate how much thought and effort it takes.
We are going to invite you to examine your life in terms of where you may have fallen into patterns of uninvolvement and irresponsibility in family life. When I looked at my behavior and attitudes this is what I found:
shaRING 4C:Team Husband
3-4 Minutes / Husband’s irresponsibility in marriage and family life
Insert your sharing(s) here
In addition to looking at how I can be irresponsible, I have also looked at how I can be controlling.
shaRING 4E:Team Husband
1-2 Minutes / Husband’s control in marriage and family life
Insert your sharing(s) here
Transition
It can be helpful at this point to remember some of the insights about masculinity and femininity that we shared this morning. It will help us to understand and have compassion for our spouse’s experience.
We said that at the center of Femininity is an appreciation of beauty, and beauty responds to attention. Irresponsibility makes a woman feel abandoned. If she is left holding the bag with the kids, and the house, or family responsibilities she feels abandoned, unprotected, alone and even betrayed. It’s like feeling ugly or ashamed.
Remember that at the core of masculinity is strength or power. It’s a go forward energy. Power needs freedom to initiate, and control stifles, and emasculates. It leaves a man feeling irrelevant, insignificant and demeaned. When a man feels powerless, he can feel trapped and swallowed up, or even caged.
feminine irresponsibility and control:
The Team wife MUST do this section
We are going to address feminine irresponsibility first, and frankly, we will make short work of it. Not because women are never irresponsible, that certainly is not true, and not because it doesn’t leave our men lonely and burdened. It is simply not our worst sin. In family life, it is typically not as all-pervasive as our control, nor is it as painful and damaging to our men.
Still, each of us wives could use a good long examination of conscience in the areas where we are irresponsible, in other words, where we take our husbands for granted, are uninvolved with or do not seem to care about what he cares about.
The following two paragraphs should be omitted if addressed in your personal sharing.
In general, most women tend to be irresponsible about their husband’s jobs. We take it for granted that he will haul his bones out to work everyday, and we seldom express appreciation, support, or offer help.
In our culture, there is a real pressure to perform financially that is as dehumanizing for men as it is for women to be seen as sex objects. We don’t tolerate a man being out of work for long;yet, wedo little to prevent it. Too often, we see it ashis problem and he is left alone to handle it.
shaRING 4F:Team Wife
1-2 Minutes / Wife’s irresponsibility in family life
Insert your sharing(s) here
CONTROL
The biggest sign of distrust for women is control. It's a statement that says, "I don't trust you to do what's good for me." Control destroys love. It’s not a particular style. Itcan be domineering and pushy, or it can be coy and manipulative, fire or ice. Women can use criticism, sarcasm, guilt or a myriad of other tactics to control, not just circumstances but people, people they claim to love.
Control comes from an attitude of superiority.
We women think we know what's right, because our culture teaches us very convincingly that what is feminine - verbal communication, feelings, mothering, nesting, cleanliness, beauty - is virtuous and what is masculine is not, or at least not as much so.
We are taught to believe that we know best. We know how you should be a husband, how our children should behave, dress, and eat, what schools they should go to, what activities they should be involved in and certainly how our husbands should father. Whenever we have an attitude of superiority, we cannot listen. We become critical which kills the other’s self-esteem, and we fail to appreciate the gift of the other.
One of the ways women control is through their moods. This is so widespread in our culture that we even laugh about it. There are framed needle points that read, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!”
Now, if Dad comes home in a bad mood, we just isolate him, but if a woman is upset,she wants everyone to be upset.
shaRING 4G:Team Wife
3-4 Minutes / Wife’s control in family life
Insert your sharing(s) here
It is very difficult for women to see this because it is so endemic. If you sincerely want to begin to see where you control and how it stifles your husband’s ability to love and to be involved with you and the family, ask him what he thinks he has to ask “permission” for.
Husbands if you want to see where you are irresponsible or uninvolved simply ask yourself,“What do I have to be asked to do? What would I never step up and initiate on my own.”
fIRST QuestionS for REFLECTION:
At this point, we are going to take a quick break in order to give you a chance to reflect in writing for just a few minutes and then to share as a couple, get a cup of coffee, or hit the bathroom before we move on to the second area of Trust.