HEALING THE HURT in your MARRIAGE

Marriage Conference

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION:
Most young people around the world look forward to getting married, expecting to raise a family and find belonging and happiness. But sooner or later married couples all experience conflict and hurt. For some couples the conflict and hurt become too great, so they divorce. Others find fulfillment and maybe happiness in raising children or in business relationships. For many couples, marriage becomes simply an economic arrangement and couples find ways of keeping a safe distance from each other to avoid conflict and hurt.

But marriage can be a life of joy and intimacy and a source of vitality for husbands and wives. Couples can learn to heal the hurts in their marriage. This conference will provide the tools needed to heal the hurts in your marriage, redeem what has been destroyed, and build a lasting relationship of multidimensional intimacy and joy. And children who experience this kind of marriage as they watch their parents have a model for their own marriages when they are old enough to marry.

TITLES OF SESSIONS & TIMETABLE:

Session 1: Marital Conflict and Why it Gets Ugly
With all the reasons people give for getting married, there are three foundational, often unknown and unmentioned, expectations that when not met generate disappointment, mistrust, conflict and hurt. The worst marital conflicts can all be traced to these three primary expectations. Understanding these expectations and meeting them creates a safe environment for personal and relational growth.

Session 2: Crashing Demon Dialogues
Conflict content can be about anything. Conflict process gets predictable and increasingly destructive to intimacy in “Demon Dialogues.” These quarrels are two people attacking each other, demeaning each other, calling each other names, swearing and trying to hurt each other verbally. We’ll show you how couples can stop the process.

Session 3:Crashing Discs
Conflicted couples can fight about anything and eventually everything. But it is the process of conflict that hurts more than the topics. Discs are things like frisbees that go around and around, or dance steps that are repeated until the music stops. When couples are caught up in a Disc, eventually every conflict spirals down to hopelessness. Crashing Discs is the art of changing a Disc together, and eventually discovering upward spiraling positive Discs.

Session 4: Resolving Intuitive Emotional Impulses
Intuitive Emotional Impulses are almost always at the bottom of marital conflicts. I will define and describe some of them, and show how to resolve them and how resolving paves the way for new intimacy in marriage.

Session 5: Healing Dialogues, Discs & IEIs
It is one thing to understand the dynamics of conflict, hurt and resolution. It is another thing to apply the dynamics to your own conflicts. So to break through the Demon Dialogues, Discs and Intuitive Emotional Impulse conflicts, I will lead you through a Guided Conversation with your mate to bring healing to you both and to your marriage.

Session 6: Forgiving Injuries
Most couples know that we should forgive, but few couples actually forgive. After explaining true and false forgiveness, I will lead you through two Guided Conversations with your mate to receive and give needed forgiveness.

Evening Sessions:
1st: The speaker will read you one of his short stories then demonstrate how to guide a discussion that will help your children or grandchildren learn Biblical, spiritual truths that are in the story. Then we will explore how narrative captures imagination and makes truth meaningful.
2nd: Another short story for kids, and one for older kids, family discussions and tips for writing ministry stories.