The small things that hold a marriageStep 1 of 8

Before you read on

Before anything else. If any of these is true for you, this course is not the right one and you should not use what it teaches. You are afraid of your spouse. You change what you say to avoid a reaction. You have been hurt physically, even once. You are not allowed to see people, hold money, or go out alone. Your phone or your movements are checked. You have been threatened. Sex happens when you do not want it. Nothing is scored here and nobody is being told what is happening to them. But repair skills are not safe where one person is controlling the other, because technique in that situation becomes another tool for the person doing the harm. Go to the course called When home is not safe instead.

Lesson 3 of 6

Notice who gets told to be patient

In most families the advice is not evenly distributed. One person gets told about mercy, forbearance and the reward for patience. The other gets told that marriage is hard.

That is a family habit, not a religious position. And it does a specific damage, which is that it makes one person responsible for absorbing whatever the household produces, and then calls the absorbing a virtue.

Sabr is a real quality and a serious one. It is endurance in obedience, in hardship, and in restraint from wrong. It is not a job description, and it is not silence.