We are an unusual couple, are not we all? Born the other side of WWII, and teenagers in a respectable suburb north of Nottingham in the 1950s, just before the swinging sixties. Picking each out from among the teenage crowd at the youth club, especially by the way we waltzed together, then to discover that what we mutually thought about the world was the basis of a strong bond that led us into marriage at the tender age of 22.
That naivety seems a million miles away from our relationship today, informed as it is from attending a marriage enrichment weekend (“ME”) in 1982, and 25 years of being involved in leading other couples into the wonders of the process, subsequently.
We discovered that the person we married is in fact very different from us, in fact in many areas having quite different preferences. ME’s great emphasis on listening to our partner to understand these differences turned us from grating against these edges, and into really appreciating the colour and interest these differences were bringing into our mutual lives. ME taught us to approach Conflict with due caution, but also to value it as the ground out of which new understandings could grow, and new and satisfying directions open up.
Our marriage since getting into ME has become increasingly intentional. It goes forward in ways that we tend to choose, rather than being driven by the winds of chance or of misunderstandings compounded upon the shoulders of miscommunication.
Now at that time in our lives of full age, 70, we marvel at our good fortune in finding ME at least half way through our married life. What possibilities we missed by not finding it sooner!