by Susanne M. Alexander, Marriage Educator (www.MarriageTransformation.com)
Susanne M. Alexander is speaking at the Better Marriages Conference July 11-14, 2013 in Raleigh, NC
The survival of your marriage and your health depend upon maintaining a high level of unity. Think about how you feel when you are not getting along with your spouse. Your stomach hurts, your head aches, and you might have difficulty concentrating or sleeping. Disagreements, arguments, and strife cause physical and emotional distress. The more you create togetherness, reconciliation, and oneness, the greater the strength of your marriage…especially when that is the focused outcome for making decisions.
When you have a problem to solve or decision to make, your commitment to unity helps to prevent destructive conflict from arising and distracting you from your purpose. Unity involves finding points of harmony with each other, even though you begin with differing opinions and viewpoints. Your opinions may clash to determine the truth, but the two of you are working cooperatively toward a solution.
To visualize unity, think of a garden of flowers, where each one may differ in color and fragrance, but together they blend into a beautiful whole. Consider a choir, where different voices achieve harmony. See a bird that requires two different wings to fly in the sky. If you honestly, respectfully, and kindly share your thoughts and feelings in ways that do not harm one another, and don’t withhold what is important to say, you can work together to come to a peaceful agreement.
Maintaining unity requires fairness, an aspect of justice. If either of you feels a sense of injustice about what is happening in your marriage or the decision-making, resentment will begin to simmer. You are both equal partners in the relationship. Losing that feeling of equality clearly indicates you have some re-balancing to do to maintain unity.
Unified married couples serve as the foundation for unified families, communities, and a global society. For this reason, significant disharmony among family members can be very harmful. When there is unity, families are more likely to experience prosperity, emotional comfort, security, tranquility, and happiness. Committing to unity has power in your marriage, enabling you to reconcile your differences, not magnify them. It helps you make and carry out choices in agreement together.
Susanne will be presenting a workshop at the Better Marriages Conference, helping couples and professionals learn the skill of “consultation”, a form of unified decision-making. Read more about her work at www.MarriageTransformation.com.
