I went to Jennifer Finlayson-Fife’s marriage retreat with my husband, and was blown away by the material.  

I don't say this lightly when I say, life-changing.

The crazy thing is, a lot of it is so similar to what I teach with parenting (especially in my newer RISE series) but I needed this to really click it all together. and UP LEVEL. 

I don't have enough time, space or expertise to share all the things I learned in three full days for Jennifer Finlayson-Fife. But I do, want to share a few ideas.

We cannot love someone when we need them.

We cannot be in a mature marriage if we are depending on someone else to meet our needs. Love languages are great and all, but throw them out the window if you are expecting someone else to meet yours to find true love. 

Own Your Part

We have to OWN OUR PART. Own our part with conflict/habits and our defense mechanisms. Are you a yeller or do you withdraw? Are you someone who is the "fixer" or do you withdraw?

For example, If my husband constantly yelled at me, of course I'd withdraw (This is not our true scenario fyi lol). If my husband, owned is part it would look like, “hey I know I'm usually pretty intense when I bring this up and that probably makes you want to withdraw, I'm gonna try to address this differently”

or if me as the withdraw person owned her part, “hey I know I usually withdraw, but I am really wanting to connect in a more calm, peaceful way, can we try to talk about this…"

So why am I telling you this?

Because I see so many parallels between this information and emotionally healthy parenting.

It's a lifestyle and family culture.

We cannot love our children when we need them to be a certain way...

We cannot expect our child to act a certain way to feel valuable about ourselves as parents. They are individual beings. I can only manage what's mine.

What’s my role in this behavior?

We have to own our part. If we see our kids constantly reacting and fighting. Are we constantly reacting to them reacting???? Are we feeding a pattern?

In parenting our role is different than in marriage, obviously. But there are still ways to make it more emotionally healthy, solution-oriented, allowing each person in this relationship to be themselves and loving them where they are at.

Those are just two ideas, and I might've gotten a bit DEEP here, if you want to listen to more, check out my podcast on the parallels.