Archive for the ‘Marraige’ Category

Today celebrates the day of 7 years of marriage to my beautiful bride Stephanie. As a memory of what brought our hearts together, today’s post is a story that we wrote for our wedding day. Stephanie, let’s continue to live intentionally!

Bryan and Stephanie Vignery's Engagement Picture

When God creates two people who are destined for each other, sometimes its many years before their paths actually cross and the introduction is made. Our paths were definitely destined to cross, and this is a story about the journey leading up to the start of two lives together.

Bryan’s Journey

I was living a life of uncertainty for many years spiritually. I found myself in and out of relationships with surface level connection that I unconsciously new was not right. As I continued to grow Spiritually, I found the more that I let God’s love in and the more I was obedient to the words that are given to each and everyone of us from the Bible, my life continued to become filled with more and more peace and joy.

In October of 2001 I was feeling a similar anxiousness that was familiar to me during another chapter of my life. The anxiousness was a sense of change brewing inside of me. Something was about to change and I felt the change was going to take place at the first of 2002. Little did I know just how much my life was actually going to change!

On January 2^nd, 2002, I found myself like many others, out of a job. I knew at this point the change that I felt just a few months before was coming to fruition. God was bringing in front of me a “new chapter” of my life’s journey. I was physically holding on to a relationship that I had been emotionally detached from for quite some time. People had told me many times that God was not going to bring me the right woman to marry until I get out of the relationship that I was in. With this on my heart and the loss of my job, I needed to get away and clear my mind. I was invited to go on a trip to Miami with my mentor and friend, Gary Kuzmich. It was a business trip for Gary and a soul searching trip for me. God had always seemed to use Gary to wake me up in the past and I believed God was now looking at the situation and saying, why stop a good thing?

On this trip I met a man that I will refer to as a messenger. We got to know each other in a short amount of time and talked about where my life was and all of the changes that had been taking place. I also talked about how my relationship with my girlfriend was just not working. He told me that he felt I was going to meet my future wife through this thing called Focus Seminars. He also affirmed that until I got out the relationship that I was in, it wasn’t going to happen.

After returning from Miami I met Gary for lunch and we talked about where I was at with life. I told him that I was just not happy and he directly said to me, “when are you going to get out of the relationship you are in? It’s not working and you are just hurting yourself and the other person.” I had heard these words many times but this time they hit home and I decided that I was going to move forward in my life without the current relationship.

The next morning, I volunteered to help out with the Focus Seminar that was already in process. I walked in the room where the seminar was being held and noticed a beautiful woman that caught my attention. I never had any conversations with her until the end of Focus II when I spotted Gary, of all people, talking with this beautiful woman. Her name happened to be Stephanie. That was the day that my life was changed forever.

Stephanie’s Journey

In December of 2001, I knew God was preparing me for a new chapter in my life, a plan that God only saw and desired for me. I was at a point in my life where nothing was working for me in my relationship. I was in a relationship of four years that was not going anywhere. It was draining me of my personal happiness as well as the relationship. I felt stuck. I was doing everything humanly possible to keep it going and could not. I had always desired to have that spiritual connectedness with a spouse, and it just was not happening.

After we broke up, I was searching for peace and joy that I knew God can only give.  I decided that the best thing for me to do during this time was to pray and go on a spiritual fast. During my spiritual fast my Aunt Carol confirmed to me that fasting was a way to show obedience to God and to find peace in life’s problems. She said that a 21 day fast was to break a habit and a 40 day fast was for new beginnings. I was definitely in need for a new beginning, so I turned my 21 day fast into a 40 day fast!

During this time, I was starting to feel more at peace within myself as well as with the trials I was experiencing. I found out about a personal growth seminar called Focus Seminars. A client had shared it with me, and I thought that it might be an answer to some of the things I had been praying about. Little did I know that I would eventually go through the seminar and it would help me heal from my broken relationship, not mend it. I was supposed to go to this seminar for myself and no one else. I truly believe that God works in ways we can’t see.

In January of 2002 my friend MaryAnn and I attended the seminar without knowing what was to come of it. During the first Focus I portion of the seminar, I began to write down characteristics of what I wanted in life and a husband. I found out that the relationship that I was in would not fulfill the things that I wanted and prayed for. I completed Focus I and felt a new energy in my life. I was seeing things more clearly and heard God tell me that I should not make any decisions before the end of January. I took those words to heart and continued to look forward to Focus II.

In Focus II God revealed a messenger to me.  He was a man in my focus group that represented a lot of what I wanted in a man when I saw his heart towards God and his wife. It gave me hope that I would meet someone with those similar qualities. It encouraged me to see that there are men out there that believe the way I do and I don’t have to settle for anything less than all that God desires for me.

Not only was Focus the greatest thing I have ever done for myself, but the icing on the cake was on Thursday January 24^th, 2002 the man of my dreams walked in the door of Focus and I asked myself, Oh my gosh, where did he come from? I also mentioned that I would love to marry a man like that.  He was incredibly HOT and his whole demeanor was full of life and energy. I figured he was taken and didn’t think anymore about it. His name was Bryan and I felt a place in my heart was reserved just for him.

The Meeting of Soul Mates

Our eyes connected during that day during Focus Seminars and it sparked a journey of personal change for both of us. It was the beginning of two hearts that were ready and willing to demand more out of life and to find out what unconditional love truly means. Due to our commitment to the Focus process, Stephanie and I agreed to wait 30 days before we went on our first date. As we counted down the days till our first date, we both had time to process and plan the journey we were about to start.

The first date happened on a snowy January Monday night in a restaurant in Westport. As we looked across the table at each other, we expressed the character traits that we desired in a significant other. I looked at Stephanie and asked her if she believed in love at first site, because that was what I was experiencing. It was so powerful to look in each others eyes and know, on the first date, that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.

Here we are today continuing to grow individually in our relationship with God and as a couple. We are excited to begin the journey of becoming one in God’s name and to influence those around us to look at the potential that is within each of us. We are two people coming together willing to take on the challenges of life and to live a life being 100% according to God’s words as written in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13:

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. ⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. ¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The rear view mirror of our life holds many things. Looking into the rear view mirror of life can be motivating and awakening if there have been intentional steps taken on our journey! As I approach a milestone birthday in life I believe now is as good as any time to look into the rear view of life at the intentional steps that have positioned me right here, right now!

From the time I was 10 years old I was searching for something significant in my life. I searched many places high and low and got hung up in many behaviors that were potentially destructive. I thought that I had found significance a few times along the way, only to find out that it was selfish desires that were getting in the way. I kept plugging through life knowing there was something greater that I was created for; although I didn’t really have an understanding of what that was or how to attain it. Why out of all people should I have purpose? The REAL question was……WHY NOT?!?

The past doesn’t define me but it did allow me to be molded into who I am today. Molded into a man that can be used for the greater good. I can write this article, safe from the destruction that could have been, and in an awesome place in life because I have a purpose. There was a plan for my life even when I didn’t understand that plan. All of the years of searching for something greater paid off. That something greater for me has been understanding and embracing a relationship with God. He created me and He created you for a purpose greater than our human understanding. He is enough! I am enough!

Embrace your rear view mirror today and allow it to propel you into embracing what He created you for….You are enough!

I was reading Seth Godin’s post titled “Who is easily manipulated?” from his blog the other day and it struck me in a powerful way. The post discusses manipulation in a way that I believe everyone can learn something about themselves whether they feel manipulated or not.  Seth states “I define manipulation as working to spread an idea or generate an action that is not in a person’s long-term best interest.”

I know there have been many situations in my life where my best interest was not in the other person’s mind. I know there have been situations in my life where I didn’t have the other person’s best interest in mind. What would it look like if our desire was to spread an idea or generate an action with a person’s long-term best interest in mind?

As I read about manipulation, I was prompted to think about people who are in desperate situations in life. I have always said that “desperate people do desperate things”, and most of the time the desperate things result in not having someone’s best interest in mind. It is difficult to be on that end of a person’s desperate situation. Although, with some awareness through past experiences, it is possible to see the manipulation coming down the line.

He also states:

The easiest people to manipulate are those that don’t demand a lot of information, are open to messages from authority figures and are willing to make decisions on a hunch, particularly if there’s a promise of short-term gains.

In our media driven world it is easy to get hung up in this kind of manipulation! A good number of teens that I see in my practice are buying into the promise of short-term gains. Many individuals in marriage are buying into the promise of short-term gains. A lot of the hurts that we experience have been because in some way we have bought into the lie that we don’t need a lot of information to make our choices. We can make them on a whim and everything will work out. No matter if it is financial, emotional, spiritual or physical gain we need to be aware of what we are being sold so we don’t get knocked off track!

We learn how to be a mom or a dad by the way we were parented. We learn how to treat our sons and daughters by the way we were treated by our parents. We learn how to be husbands and wives by the way our dads treated our moms and how our moms treated our dads.

Our children are learning in the same fashion that we did!

Some of had great modeling growing up and some of us had less than desirable modeling growing up. What are you going to do about the way you learned about marriage and parenting today?

Investing in oursleves by looking at where we came from can be just the ticket we have been looking for. Since we cannot change or heal what we don’t first acknowledge, it is imparative that we examine our lives if we anticipate to correct our “out of line” ways of doing things. It’s not about blaming our parents in any way; it’s about assuming accountability for what we are doing present day.
What are you going to change today?

Over the past four years the word intention has been a buzz word for me. I decided to look up the word intention today on Websters I was struck by one of the definitions:

“A determination to act in a certain way”.

After reading that I was lead to see what Websters said about determination!

“The act of deciding definitely and firmly. The result of such an act of decision. Firm or fixed intention to achieve a desired end. The resolving of a question by argument or reasoning.”

I believe many people have good intentions and many people with good intentions lack the determination to bring them to fruition. Intention needs result and we get to result through determination. Without result we stay stagnant and limit growth in our lives.

As I hold my son and write this post, I am reminded about the amount of determination and intention that is required to be a parent and a husband. I am determined to commit intentionally to see the results desired in these two areas of my life. What areas of your life are needing intention today?

Bryan,

I can’t tell you how much Gary and I loved meeting with you last Saturday. Thank you so much for making time for us. With the odds stacked against our marriage, we knew we wanted to do everything we could to start things off on the right foot. Knowing in advance which areas of our relationship could be problematic is helping us to work on those things before they become a problem. The process also reminds us how important communication is to a healthy relationship.

Many thanks for your wisdom and insight.

Re and Gary

The Four Horsemen occasionally take their ride through most relationships. When the horsemen are running rampant, couples begin to believe that there is no way they can work out their problems. Couples start to separate themselves emotionally, spiritually, physically, and financially hoping they can resolve their relationship problems somehow outside their marriage. There becomes drastic and detrimental changes in how we see our spouses positive and negative behaviors. I believe this is partly caused by couples believing the lie that society tells us that marriage is based on happiness and not on the foundational commitments that were made on the wedding day. If my spouse is not making me happy then I’m outta here! That statement is a whole other post waiting to happen that I will get to in the future.

When the relationship reaches this point of disconnectedness and isolation, it can involve what Dr. Gottman calls “flooding”. Dr. Gottman refers to flooding as when “you feel overwhelmed and disorganized by the way your partner expresses negativity. Couples can feel flooded by one another by the ways they express complaints. They get hypervigilant about negative things. The body of someone who feels flooded is a confused jumble of signals. It may be hard to breathe. Muscles tense and stay tensed. The heart beats fast and seems to beat harder.”

The thing is that once the heart-rate reaches 95-100 BPM adrenaline goes into action and the ability to listen and understand at a level needed to heal the relationship goes out the window. The term “fight or flight” is often used to characterize the circumstances under which adrenaline is released into the body.

So how do we break the cycle of these four horsemen so they don’t take our marriage down a path we don’t want to go? Dr. Gottman believes that repair attempts are a way to break the cycle of the four horsemen. Repair attempts involve talking about your communication styles and the negativity in the relationship. It requires making “I” statements that include variations of the structure, “I feel _______ when _______.” These blanks can be filled in with anything because they are your feelings and other cannot make us feel a certain way. We are in control of what we feel. The “I” statements takes the relationship out of attack mode and allows the couple to minimize the four horsemen. If I’m not blaming, then my criticisms are less, my spouse isn’t as defensive, contempt doesn’t creep in, and there is no need for the stonewalling. In all relationships, learning to accept rather that expect will help to create fewer disappointments and assist in lessening the negativity.

What Dr. Gottman and his colleagues found is that couples who maintain a ratio of five positive moments (interactions) to each negative moment have relationships that last. Marriages that fall below a one to one ratio (.8) usually fail. If we want to get the horsemen out of our marriage, we need to jump on a positive horse and get riding! I challenge you to take on the 5:1 ratio for one week in your marriage and see what happens. You might just be surprised and what changes you see happen when you get intentional in your marriage.

Dr. John Gottman, a psychologist at the University of Washington says there are four attitudes which he has found to predict relationship failure. These are criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. When these attitudes are present in a relationship, especially when more than one is present, then there is a very good chance that the relationship will not survive. Here is a breakdown of those attitudes, give yourself an honest look at which one you have a tendency to play in your relationships (either married or dating).

1. Criticism: Criticism is the fault finder or the one who judges unfavorably. When you criticize your partner, you attack your partner’s personality or character, usually with the intent of making yourself right and your partner wrong. I refer to this as “Character Assassination”. When we criticize we use generalizations such as “you always…”, “you never…” and “you’re the type of person who …”
2. Contempt: Contempt is a feeling of disdain or scorn. Contempt attacks your partner’s sense of self with the intention to insult or psychologically abuse him/her. Typical contemptuous comments made by partners include insults and name calling, hostile humor, sarcasm or mockery as well as contemptuous body language and tone of voice: sneering, rolling your eyes, curling your upper lip.
3. Defensiveness: Defensiveness is seeing yourself as the victim and warding off a perceived attack. When partners are defensive they are not open to learning and are also not able to access the vulnerable feelings underneath. Some typical defensive responses are:
   • Making excuses (e.g., external circumstances beyond your control forced you to act in a certain way) “It’s not my fault…”, “I didn’t…”
   • Cross-complaining: meeting your partner’s complaint, or criticism with a complaint of your own, ignoring what your partner said.
   • Disagreeing and then cross-complaining “That’s not true, you’re the one who …”
   • Yes-butting: start off agreeing but end up disagreeing.
   • Repeating yourself without paying attention to what the other person is saying.
   • Whining “It’s not fair.”
4. Stonewalling: Stonewalling is withdrawing from the relationship as a way to avoid conflict. In the counseling setting I find that men are more prone to stonewall than women are, yet women can also stonewall in their own way. Partners may think they are trying to be “neutral” but stonewalling conveys disapproval, icy distance, separation, disconnection, and/or smugness. Some typical stonewall responses are stony silence, monosyllabic mutterings, changing the subject and removing yourself physically. Stonewalling is considered to be the most “dangerous” of the four horsemen.

After taking a look at these attitudes, it is easy to see that they can be detrimental to the marriage relationship. If you are struggling with one or more of the above relationship attitudes, it is time to do something about it and get your relationships on a course for success.

Okay, so we all have expectations. Some are realistic and some are not. My wife should be this. My husband should be this. My children should be behaving differently. I should be farther along in my career by now. People who drive slow should stay out of the fast lane. Do any of these sound familiar?

In the book titled, The Knight in Rusty Armor by Robert Fisher, there is a statement that has been helpful to me for years about the expectations that I have set in my life. The statement is “When you learn to accept instead of expect, you’ll have fewer disappointments.” So many times I have referred back to this quote with much growth and understanding to follow.

Today, I heard another perspective on expectations. The perspective is a formula that says Expectations – Reality = Frustration. I started thinking about all of the times that I get frustrated for one reason or another and started to find this formula to be extremely accurate.

Frustrations in my marriage, in my business, in friendships and with my family have all been rooted in expectations that have not been upheld to my standards. I am the only person that can be accountable for my expectations and for my emotional responses or reactions to the standards not being met.

There is a freedom in setting healthy expectations in relationships. Make this a year of expecting realistically and accepting the reality of the situation. I believe it will add quality to your relationships!

A mentor told me this phrase a long time ago and I have referred to it in many situations that I have found myself in throughout my life. This phrase is “Talent and Charisma will get you to the top, Character will keep you there.”

In the midst of the Tiger scandal this phrase has been brought back to my attention. There is an intense lack of people looking at their character because it involves accountability. It may not always be comfortable to take off the mask and ask ourselves; what the heck am I doing? This lack of taking off the mask has resulted in a society that will continue embracing a tolerance that is extremely unhealthy.

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, we each have a desire inside of us for greatness. The more human greatness that is achieved by an individual results in a greater level of negative pull if that person is not grounded in something solid!

Have you taken a look at your moral values lately? It’s always good to take a look at where we are at in that area if we want to continue to grow in a healthy direction. Remember, we are always growing, we are either growing in a positive direction or a negative direction.