RESOURCES BY SUBJECT l FTF LIBRARY

Healthy Marriage Tips By The National Healthy Marriage Institute LLC

The tip this week is to learn to drop hot coals.

If someone were to put a hot coal in your hand how long would you hold it? All of us would drop it immediately. Why? Because it hurts!

How many of us would give the hot coal to our spouse to hold? Obviously the answer is none of us. Why? Because we just experienced the pain from holding the hot coal and we wouldn't want our spouse to feel the same pain.

Everyday we are handed hot coals called anger and frustration. We don't always have control over whether or not we are handed the hot coals. We do have complete control over how long we hold the hot coals. We also have control over whether or not we hand the hot coal to our spouse or someone else.

Why is it so difficult to drop these hot coals that are causing us so much pain? And why do we pass the hot coals to the people we love the most? Take a few minutes to see if you can come up with some answers with your spouse.

Once you think you understand why it happens the next step is to figure out what you can do about it.

Create an action plan that you can implement to immediately drop hot coals and not pass them on to those you love.

The most important step is simply recognizing that you have the power within you to immediately drop the hot coals.

The next step is to brainstorm skills you can develop and tools you can use to drop the hot coals. To get you started here are a couple of ideas: exercise, meditation, a nap, listening to music, reading a book or a joke book, calling a friend, prayer, singing a song in your head, writing a letter, etc.

You may think that some of the suggestions you come up with will take too much time. Ask yourself what is going to take more time. Dealing with the consequences of holding onto hot coals and passing them onto others or taking the time to do the activity that will help you drop the hot coals.

The last step is to write down your action plan and review it on a daily basis. You can choose to skip this step but by doing so you will have significantly decreased your chances of successfully learning to immediately drop hot coals.

Set aside some time tonight or in the next couple of days to review this tip with your spouse and develop your action plans. If your spouse chooses not to participate respect his or her decision. Ghandi said “Be the change you want to see in the world” In your case you are going to need to “Be the change you want to see in your relationship”

No one is perfect including you. Even if you become highly skilled at immediately dropping hot coals there will be times when you hang on too long and pass the hot coals along to your spouse. Each time this happens it will make another withdrawal from your marital checking account. To prevent marital bankruptcy make more deposits than withdrawals. The deposits you make to your marital checking account will yield far greater returns in the long run then any financial investment out there. So get into the habit of making extra deposits each day.