Living Together, Loving Together: A Spiritual Guide to Marriage

By Philip St. Romain

Here is a book for Christian couples who want to grow in their relationship with one another and with God. Topics covered include communication skills, spirituality, understanding personality types, sexuality issues, and dealing with practical matters like finances and raising children. Couples can read this book together, or separately, then pause, discuss, and pray together. Wherever you are in your marriage (or if you and your partner are planning to marry), this rare blend of faith-building spiritual counsel and problem-solving practical advice is an aid to finding (or keeping) that close bond you have always wanted with your spouse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip St. Romain
• Release date: Jun 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458102935

Philip St. Romain

Philip St. Romain, M.S., D. Min., has published over 20 books on spirituality and theology. He has served as a spiritual director for many people during the past 25 years, and currently ministers at Heartland Center for Spirituality in Great Bend, KS.

Book preview

LIVING TOGETHER, LOVING TOGETHER

A SPIRITUAL GUIDE TO MARRIAGE

Philip St. Romain & Lisa Bellecci-st.romain

Copyright, Philip St. Romain and Lisa Bellecci St. Romain, 2011

Published by Contemplative Ministries, Inc., at Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: HEALTHY COMMUNICATION

1. Listening With Your Heart

2. Affirming the Good

3. Feelings and Intimacy

4. Asking for Your Wants and Needs

5. Reaching Agreement

Part Two: UNDERSTANDING OUR PERSONALITIES

6. Starting Off—The Two Attitudes

7. What's Next?—The Four Functions

8. And Now—The Eight Basic Types

9. Loving Our Differences

Part Three: CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE IS A SACRAMENT

10. Marriage as Sacrament

11. I Take Thee...

12. Sexual Lovemaking

13. Bonders: I, Thou, and We

14. Sent Two by Two

15. Marriage Is a Vocation

Part Four: LIVING TOGETHER

16. Money Matters

17. Marriage, with Children

18. Handling Stress

19. Work and Play

20. Putting God First

APPENDIX ONE: Descriptions of the Types

APPENDIX TWO: Budget Work Sheet

SUGGESTED READING

About the Authors

Introduction

This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.

John 15:12

The primary vocation for all Christians is to love. In married life, we are invited to love another person so completely and intimately that our lives become one. No other kind of human relationship has the possibility of such a profound union. Paradoxically, a healthy, loving union also empowers each partner to develop his or her individual personality to the fullest. Marriage provides the ideal situation for living and growing in the deepest of all human loves.

This is the ideal and some experience its reality. Many, however, do not. Instead of being united in love, couples are enmeshed codependently. Instead of becoming more whole in marriage, they experience despair, loneliness, low self-esteem, and dashed hopes. Their commitment is eroded. When marriage goes well, there is perhaps no greater human happiness; when it goes poorly, there may be no greater misery!

In writing this book together, we want to assure our readers that we know both the joyful and painful sides of married life. We have been married over eighteen years and have learned many important lessons along the way. In our work of counseling, lay ministry, writing, and public speaking, we have been fortunate to meet many people who have taught and supported us in our relationship. From these experiences, we have come to base our marriage on three important convictions:

God's love is always present, ready to bless our marital relationship.

We both must be committed to making our marriage our most important human relationship.

Loving one another in a healthy manner requires more than just an act of will. We need specific skills and knowledge if love is to flow freely.

When we married, we had an abundance of faith in and commitment to each other. Faith and commitment kept us together when pride, hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and miscommunication tempted us to throw in the towel. We lacked the knowledge and skills we needed to enable our love to flow freely. Once we learned to communicate effectively and accept each other's personality type, our love came alive and stayed alive!

In this book, we will share with you our experience and understanding of skills which enable love to thrive within a marriage. Without a personal commitment to each other, these skills will have little value. But a couple with commitment and even a small amount of faith will discover that these skills will help them begin to feel love for each other again or deepen the love they already share.

How To Use This Book

Knowing about a skill and possessing it are two different things. To possess a skill, you must understand what it is, you must want to use it, and you must practice, practice, practice. When practicing, you will make many mistakes; don't get discouraged. Keep on practicing. Sooner than you imagine, the skill will become habitual.

To give you an opportunity to practice together, we provide opportunities for you to reflect separately and together on how you experience the various lessons discussed in each chapter. We also provide practical suggestions on how to use these skills in everyday life.

We invite you to make a commitment to read the first three chapters together and practice the suggested exercises before you decide whether this book will make a difference in your marriage. Complete the first three chapters within a week; if you decide to continue, try to do at least one chapter each week. Give yourself at least one hour per chapter and come together when you will not be disturbed by children or the phone.

If you decide to go through the book together, we encourage you to pray for each other in a special way. Let this be a time of growth and renewal for your marriage; ask God to bless your efforts. This is prayer according to God's will. God wants your marriage to be a living sign of love for all to see. This is what we mean when we say that marriage is a sacrament.

Part One: HEALTHY COMMUNICATION

1. Listening With Your Heart

I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you.

Ezekiel 36:26

We begin this book with a section on communication because these skills play a pivotal role in fostering a healthy relationship. In married life, there are good times and bad. The hard times test a relationship. Couples who know how to listen to each other, to share feelings appropriately, and to renegotiate their expectations of each other not only survive the troubling times but grow closer together. Those who do not know how to communicate make things worse with their tongues; they become more hurt and distant from each other.

In Part One, we will emphasize four basic communication skills: listening, affirming, sharing feelings, and asserting. With these four skills, you can at least talk about any problem without making things worse. More positively, these skills can help you more fully enjoy conversing with each other. The fruit of healthy communication is intimacy. When a couple experiences intimacy, happiness is not far behind.

PHIL

When I first began dating Lisa, I enjoyed listening to almost everything she talked about. I liked the tones of her voice and her expressiveness as she enthusiastically related the happenings of her day. In addition, I had read enough from Fr. John Powell's books on relationships to know the importance of listening. So I made it a point to give her my full attention when she had something important to tell me.

But after we married and began to experience the stresses that come with keeping a job, doing daily chores, adjusting to each other's needs, parenting, and keeping social obligations, listening became a struggle for me.

I was frequently too tired or preoccupied to give her my full attention. There were times when she tried to confront me about something I did