Marriage Course Week 1 – Foundation Studies

The Accountant and I have a marriage built on sarcasm, Jesus, a similar level of emotional investment in The Bachelor New Zealand, and a mutual desire to keep our child alive. It is, in my opinion, a rock solid foundation.

However, there is always room for improvement, and that’s what this week was all about - building the foundations for a strong marriage.

What follows are the exercises we did as part of our marriage course this week. Feel free to play along at home.

Exercise 1 – Tell each other your strongest memory of the first time you met and what first attracted you to one another.

Kate: *Recounts in significant detail the very first time she saw The Accountant and how she just knew she was going to marry him one day*.

Accountant: “Well, I remember trying to teach you to play 500 and you being absolutely useless. I remember you not watching where you were going and taking out someone’s car mirror on the way in to the ball. I remember I called you short and you hit me in the stomach…”

Kate: “So, why exactly were you attracted to me?”

Accountant: “I really have no idea.”

We are off to a flying start.

Exercise 2 – Talk about the pressures you’ve worked through until now in your relationship, and the pressures you’re currently facing.

Kate: *Reflects in significant detail on the biggest pressure she has felt so far, which involved going through a traumatic and distressing childbirth experience, the depression and anxiety that came with looking after an unwell baby, and the stress of having to watch him go through surgery*.

Accountant: *succinctly summarises his biggest pressure* “After Conrad was born you were so sad and I didn’t know how to help you.”

Slow start, but gaining momentum now.

Exercise 3 – Taking stock of you marriage.

For this exercise we were given a series of statements that looked at our friendship, communication, physical relationship, and future. We then had to score our partner from 0 (never true) to 4 (always true). For example…

My partner listens to my point of view even when we disagree.

I gave The Accountant a 4 for this statement. I was given a 3. “You do listen, but not when you’re angry. When you’re angry I have to wait half an hour before you’ll listen to me.”

The 3 was a fair call.

There were 20 statements in total, so we were given 5 minutes to rate our partner, then we swapped books to see what the other person had said. This is how it went down.

Kate: *loud enough for the rest of the couples to hear* “A zero! Really! YOU GAVE ME A ZERO FOR THAT!?!?”

Accountant: “Sssshhhhhhhh!! You don’t have to be so loud!”

*Five minute intense whisper discussion on the statements we scored each other poorly on, eventually followed by joking and agreement and the mutual understanding that I will be holding that zero against him for the rest of his life.*

Exercise 5 – Knowing me knowing you

Once I’d finished singing the classic Abba banger in my head, we were given a list of relationship needs. We were asked to tick the three that mattered most to us, and the three that we thought mattered most to our partner. We then had to compare lists to see if we were right.

I was correct in assuming, as I’m sure all other women in the room were as well, that ‘sexual intimacy’ was important to my husband. I was surprised by his other two choices which were ‘conversation’ and ‘undivided attention’.

The Accountant correctly ticked that one of my biggest needs is ‘practical help’. He didn’t guess my other two which were ‘openness’ and ‘sexual intimacy’.  Needless to say he was pleasantly surprised by the sex one. When asked why, his response was “I don’t know really, I just didn’t think you’d tick that.” Evidence that even men as  wise as The Accountant aren’t immune to society’s consistent message that sex is only truly enjoyed by porn stars and The Kardashian sisters, and that all other women only participate to prevent our husbands from leaving us for the above.

I’ve gone off on a sex tangent already, and it’s not even week six yet.

What I learnt.

The thing that stood out for me the most this week was a short talk from some big wig family counsellor in the UK. He said that eventually all marriages will get to the point where one or both parties fall out of love and don’t want to be there anymore. It is important your marriage has a solid foundation, but in those times it is even more important to possess a fierce commitment to making it work, even when you don’t want to.

I have no doubt that we will go through seasons where our marriage will be tested. There may even come a day when we look at each other and see only zeros.

But, even if it gets to that point, I won’t walk away. Because there was a time, on the 19^th of April 2016, when our marriage was happy, and mostly fours. And that time is worth fighting for, with everything we’ve got.