• When only hurtful words are expressed and falsely interpreting the words of the other with minimal effort to agree.
• When you want to hold the most dubious propositions as fundamental truths.
• When you are being proud, superior and intolerant, and prefer to continue to live in contaminated cesspools instead of looking for sources of living crystalline water.
• When acknowledgements and gratitude are expected, and one receives only accusations.
• When the ideas that one is willing to defend to the death, the other combats with silliness.
When all this happens in a marriage, it builds a living hell, but very cold hell.
Building dialogue, “listening with love”, is to solidify the conjugal harmony.
To talk in couples
1. Are we willing to “listen with love”?
2. What feelings were produced in us while discussing this chapter?
To pray together
Lord,
How many lost the opportunity,
How many are still in darkness,
by not listening to your Word
with an open heart.
We don't want that in our marriage.
When the same thing happens,
each one is left in darkness,
by not growing the light,
by not getting to know each other better.
Lord,
We want to know each other more deeply,
through a dialogue guaranteed
by a manifest ability to listen,
so, not only to receive the word of the other,
but also Himself.
Help us, to “listen with love”.
Amen.
Not verbal Dialogue
Jesus performed many other signs
(John 20: 30).
Touching your body, I have your whole being.
God came to us to reveal, show, discuss. He became human through others, or, in His own Son, to talk to us about who He was. Curiously, He did everything in our way, using signs and words so that we can understand.
He knows that man communicates with words and signs. We need to discover that we are able to construct verbal and nonverbal dialogues.
The verbal dialogue is where we use words, which we discussed in the two previous chapters. We will reflect here on the non-verbal dialog. This is made with gestures, glances, caresses, etc.
When a couple is in their early stages of falling in love, they think that they will be always together, and that with the passing of time the relationship will be equal or better.
While they are a couple, and early in the marriage, the couple is always caressing. They experience something as beautiful as holding hands. It never crosses their mind that later they will not caress with the same frequency and sensitivity.
A few years after being married some changes begin to emerge. The idea of caressing no longer occurs to them. Perhaps their hands are always occupied with a newspaper, a cigarette, a book, a tool or any household task? When one arrives at a restaurant you realize quickly just which couples are married and which are dating. Or the difference that is noticed when taking a stroll or riding a car, between a pair of young lovers and the other couple who are married a while. The young couple shares everything: they embrace, they look together through the stained glass window, they are never physically separated. On the other hand, the older couple lives their life differently: she looking through the stained glass, he standing on the curb (the stained glass is boring or is he afraid it will be expensive to consent). In the car: the lovers, how many are in the car? One or two? The married couple: thank goodness that the door has armrests for support. Or when the grown child instruct the mother to sit in the back seat.
Someone told me one day that being romantic is a matter for teenagers in love, immature. In short, things of children. I simply replied: “your poor marriage!”
A couple is perceived mutually when they are caressing. It is different from only verbal dialogue. There is a definite link when you are caressing or are being caressed. Also, a distance is created when there is no physical contact. Not being together, but separate, produces a distant, impersonal relationship. A special element of unity is not present when you are not together for a long period with some physical contact. A marriage does not need to be caressing all the time, but when the caresses are less frequent, a certain tenderness and sweetness disappears from the relationship.
It is more difficult to listen and concentrate to the other person only with the eyes and ears. They also need their hands. This is easily proven when one is not concentrating on the other. But the use of hands will remedy this.
A decrease in the caresses is a sign of a cooling of the relationship, of a higher concentration of the person in their own interests, and an increased sensitivity to be hurt. It often starts with a feeling of being isolated, misunderstood, and used. Marriage can be turned into a chore. They think that the romance is gone and this does not necessarily mean that they are upset with the other, or reject the marriage responsibility. But what a pity. They lost the “spark” which should be something new every day with your life partner. Life becomes all tasteless, monotonous. And your attention is dominated by other things, not the spouse. You are not in sync with your spouse. The inside of the body needs to express itself. When a couple touches they come to fully own each other.
To talk in couples
1. How much do we caress? What effects do we discover when we caress less?
2. Why do we caress less?
3. Which of the two of us caresses more frequently?
4. What do we say when we take the hand of the other?
5. Do we know how to listen to the non-verbal language?
To pray together
Lord,
you acted according to
communication modes of man, making us discover
the best way to reach the other
is by your own way.
Help us not to waste
the myriad of ways that we have
to communicate loving,
to always be synchronized
with each other
so our verbal and non-verbal dialogue
does not have interference
of any kind.
That we never stop using
our language
to warm our marital relationship.
Amen.
We love and know us also with our body
Adam knew his wife Eve...
(Gen 4, 1).
Sex is no longer taboo in talks on the street, among adolescents and young people and in all the dialogues in which sex, concerned in its generality, does not affect the privacy of the partners.
But it is still taboo to discuss the issue between husband and wife because it touches on intimacy. Do you speak of sexuality with whom you share and live? Experience tells us that husbands do not discuss their sexuality. They “make love” but they do not speak it because “they are embarrassed”. They give of themselves, and are physically delivered to the other. And that is where it ends.