emotional safety Archives ⋆ Mike and Susan Dawson

Oneness With Your Spouse Doesn’t Mean Becoming the Same

michaeldawsonlpc@gmail.com2024-01-08T01:12:53+00:00Connection|

I wanted to open this week’s blog post with this passage from the Book of Genesis about oneness. It says: “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” This passage is about oneness and being united in marriage, but we often misunderstand the message and think that we must also be the same. In other words, there shouldn’t be any differences allowed if we are one and the same. As we continue our conversation about our differences and not allowing them to [...]

Putting good things into your marriage: Love and Respect, Appreciation and Gratitude, Treasure and Serve

michaeldawsonlpc@gmail.com2024-01-08T01:14:04+00:00Love, Respect|

Have you ever heard the term, stagnant marriage? It’s when things in your relationship no longer feel exciting and fresh. It’s not that you don’t love one another. But, you’re both kinda just … there. This is normal, by the way — we just need to find a way to snap out of it. But how do we do that? As we learned last week, you have to keep putting good things into your marriage. Whether that be small acts of kindness like texting, “I love you,” speaking each other’s love language, or doing something fun like reenacting your first date, we have to constantly show how important we are [...]

Communication: It’s the WORDS & the HOW

michaeldawsonlpc@gmail.com2024-01-08T01:15:05+00:00Attitude, Communication|

If you are like most couples, when you are having difficulties you say “We just aren’t communicating. Guess what? That is almost true. It is not that you’re not communicating. It is that the words you use toward each other, or don’t use, and how you use them that is the real culprit. Susan and I recently led a pre-marital class at our church. One week we had been asked to discuss communication. And it ends up people really are interested and feel that it is a real problem. But what ended up as the focus of discussion in the class was not about the same old techniques, like [...]