 Hi, welcome to today's Healthy Marriage. I'm your host, Charlene Lamers, executive director for Great Marriages for Shboygan County. Today our guest are Tom and Sue Rice. They are certified and trained marriage mentors for Great Marriages. Hi and welcome, Tom and Sue. Hi. Nice to be here. Great. So, just to start off, how long have you two been married? We'll be married 45 years in June. So you're newlyweds. Yeah. How did you find out about Great Marriages? One of our pastors invited us to a meeting to do some training and it was at Great Marriages and as we went through the training, Sue and I had been looking for some kind of a ministry that we could get involved in after I retired and it just seemed that this is something we feel very passionate about and that is preserving marriages. And so, and especially with the Christian emphasis of great marriages, we felt it was a match and that's how we got into it. I think before that even we'd seen the great posters all over and wondered what Great Marriages was. That's probably how we're known best is for our billboards, everybody notices those. So, that was the first time that you were introduced to Great Marriages. They invited you to come to the training. Right. Okay. So, what positive things had you heard about the organization that even made you want to come to the training? You said that your success rate was very high and also that a very large percentage was faith-based. Right. Probably 80% of our programming up to 80% is faith-based. We also offer secular programming for those who do not want any faith-based. They can also come and get help obviously for their marriages. So what made you start to think about possibly being marriage mentors? I mean, you know you were coming for the training but you had to have considered, what does that mean to be a marriage mentor? Can I do it? What made you want to think positively about it? God's Word talks about the older teaching the younger and we feel passionately about the fact that we want to share our experience and, you know, the things that we've gone through in our marriage with younger couples who may be struggling or may just have questions or want to know some of the tricks of raising children or how do I get along with my spouse and what do you do in these situations? There were older people that mentored us as we were going through our younger years with our kids and our marriage and that was so valuable to us because, you know, we found out that we weren't the only ones in that boat and that the struggles we were having everybody else was having at the same time so and the fact that it's based upon God's Word and based in Scripture I think is critical because without God our marriage would never have lasted 44 years. I think the thing that it really attracted me or convinced me while we were doing the training and after were the great skills that were offered to teach the people that were mentoring and I thought that was really we're not marriage counselors but those skills were something we thought we could see how practical they were. You know we're always emphasizing the fact that great marriages were not counselors were not therapists were mentors and educators right who are trained in the programs so basically what we're doing is we're offering the skills and communication and conflict resolution that can be used with co-workers, friends, family members, children, anybody the skills are pretty basic we just apply them to marriage and I think that's why we have such a successful rate of success because we teach those skills that can be utilized anywhere. The training that you went through can you talk a little bit about what you learned or what you felt that day as you were being trained it's a pretty intensive day of training. I think as we walked out of there we realized it was only a beginning and it touched the surface as we spent time with couples mentoring them we we've gone on to re look at all of those videos again to to apply the things that were there in the videos to the couples that we've we've already been mentoring with in addition to that the skills make sense they're logically they follow a form and a format and one builds upon the other and I think that's the important part of what we're seeing when we talk to couples you know when you're talking about communication that's the foundation and then you build upon that foundation but you got to get the foundation right first and so that's where you practice with them and those kinds of things. You talked about how when you you've been married 44 years and you've admitted it's not perfect every day marriages sometimes hard it's a hard job right we teach there are seven stages of marriage not all are great I can promise every married couple that they will go through some of the tough times right so how do we get through those tough times we use the marriage mentoring or examples some people don't have examples or role models in their life of a healthy marriage you know of a long-term marriage you said that you utilized people throughout your 44 years to help you when you were having tough times can you speak to some of what those tough times may have been or how you utilized others as marriage mentors even though they weren't in a program such as we're speaking about today it's still a form of marriage mentoring turning to someone who has made it who is doing it. Sure to begin with even when our children are young and we'd have difficult days but we we met with just a small group of people that were all ages and when we started you know somebody to say boy I had a really rough day and just talk about a problem with one of the kids and somebody else would say you know I've had that problem and this worked really well or somebody else would pipe in and say you know try this that might work or it's just a good way to exchange that information also some of the older ones that we liked the way we saw them raising their children and so we very much wanted to follow after their pattern. It gave us a form to ask questions in a pretty non-threatening environment and people shared you know some of the the things that they did you know in disciplining our kids is it always spanking no you know it's it's other things it's finding the the thing that that child may dislike the most and using that as a form of punishment or correction it's setting rules and setting boundaries for the kids and and we learned those kinds of things as we were raising children as far as our marriage is concerned it was communicating talking to one another it's being absolutely honest it's it's those kinds of things that these people would share with us through their examples and through you know just going back into God's Word and talking about what does it say about a relationship between a man and a woman so all of that was kind of the pulporee that got us to where we are today. So you're kind of talking about perhaps some of the challenging times that you faced and one is during those child-rearing years when the children are little probably between five and ten years of marriage a lot of people struggle the next time would be when the kids are getting ready to leave the house you know if you've not made your marriage a priority and everything's revolved around the children that can be difficult for some couples. Can you talk about what that was like for you and did you use other couples as mentors during that time in your life? We'd heard that since our kids were little. We'd been cautioned to build into our marriage times for each other and not to lose that that love for each other and I think for us we had done enough of that and our kids left one at a time not all at once so that it's been pretty smooth going I'd say so far. Her daughter said to us one day she said how long did it take you to adjust to the emptiness syndrome? We said about three minutes you know and I think part of that's because we just love being together love spending time together and you know we have a lot of interests in the common we have a lot of separate interests and it just gives you a chance to remember why you married that person and to enjoy how they've how we've grown together so the friendship just deepens and gets better. One of the things we do at great marriages you know by providing the mentors is helping young couples especially who may not come from a home or mom and dad are still together they may be married to somebody else or not married at all you know trying to show them a role model that yes you can definitely have a lifetime happy loving marriage you may be married 50 years and maybe five or six were not so good you had some hard times when you're in the middle of the five or six hard years it seems like forever and you just want it to end but if you're married if you stick with it and you're married 50 years you look back and you say it was only five years I had 45 good years it was worth it how do you help couples when you're mentoring to give them that perspective you know that yeah it is hard right now and you're fighting a lot and you're not liking each other and maybe you think you're not in love anymore but how can you show them the hope that there's better things yet to come? I think one of the things that we're experiencing is that a lot of couples don't have a lot of time to spend with each other they're both working they may be working different shifts and those kinds of things but I think the key to do it to to your personal relationship between you and your wife or your husband is to spend time together you you have to be intentional in carving out time we did you know and whether it was taking it one night a week for a Bible study or a small group meeting or one night a week to go out for dinner or what have you as the kids were growing up we made those times where we spent time just together and I think that was what tended to make our friendship grow and our love grow between us you know and then there were times when we were together as a family but if you don't have those special times between you and your spouse you know you're gonna get to the point where you just drift apart because just of the busyness of schedules and family matters and everything else it doesn't even have to be a night out or spending spending money but I got into the habit early on of when Tom came home from work when he went back to the bedroom to change clothes I'd go with them and I just sit and talk to him while he changed and we kind of caught each other up on our days and what was happening and we found that that even sometimes that was only five ten minutes but it was five or ten minutes and the before he dived into what was going on with the family and I had to go back and fix dinner but it was just a good time to connect to stay connected well our mentoring program shows that if couples spend as little as three to seven minutes a day talking about their relationship and and what they can do to make it better or what you know they're having problems with that they'd like to work on that can make a marriage better as little as three to seven minutes people come in and say I don't have time it's not your priority how many times a day how many hours a day are you watching TV or talking to your friends or whatever everybody has three to seven minutes a day for their spouse and what you're talking about is that us time right catching up on the day not talking about problems with kids or finances but talking about us you know and just relating to each other you're working with all different kinds of couples right and so what can you tell me maybe a common denominator between some of these couples maybe contributing to some of the problems that we see I'd say what one thing is what you mentioned earlier they haven't come from backgrounds where there's been a happy marriage I think that pretty much is a common denominator so far and most of the couples we've seen as they come from split homes and so it's been not a real secure or just to have a good marriage relationship modeled they haven't had that I think I can mentioned earlier Sharra it's also the time that they spend with each other when when Sue and I were raising our family I worked all the time and Sue stayed home with the kids we made that decision today you have working moms and dads you have different shifts that people work and so forth and so just as a matter of trying to connect with one another for a period of time during the day seems to be problematic so that's those are the two things I think that probably go through every couple we're working with now you know one of the things that great marriage is we never have enough mentors right no matter how many I get I can double the number from the year before we never have enough because we always have a waiting list of couples needing help so what would you say to couples who you know been married over 20 years because that's one of our requirements is that you have to bend through most of the seven stages of marriage before you can considering mentoring someone else they've been married 20 years or more and they're like I can't be a mentor because we don't have a perfect marriage did you two think that you would be the perfect mentors and that you had a perfect marriage what could you say to those couples who may be tossing around that idea I think a perfect marriage would be intimidating I really think the more you can bring into this an experience from your marriage the the more you have to offer these people and it's just such a good way to spend that little extra time and Tom and I found that it even it's brought us closer together doing it I would say that anyone who has some fear or concern we rely very heavily upon the fact that we're not counselors all we're doing is mentoring and and really two things sharing our experiences what we've gone through and how we got through those situations and secondly the fact that we're just teaching couples skills and helping them practice those skills so that they become better at it and I think anyone who who has a good marriage and has over 20 years and those kinds of things can be a wonderful mentor the important thing is you really draw close to these couples you really you know the couples we work with are like our kids and so you want to see them succeed and you want to see them work things out and so that's I think that's the challenge of it one of our girls said I just want to be able to to talk about a problem without a yelling match or to be able to talk through something and in the end be happy about it and the first thing that came to my mind was the conflict resolution we can do that you can teach them we can teach them that and it's been fun to watch couples go through that with sometimes very volatile issues and when they actually could sit down and do the brainstorming and come find that they could come to an agreement together and both be happy and not have had to shout or get upset it's been really fulfilling we find that with so many couples they have the same arguments over and over never resolving them or they've had them so many times they stop talking about it and they just give up so like you said we can teach them those skills and how to help resolve conflict in a healthy means what have you learned the most what has been the one thing you've taken away from your mentoring experience your training and you're working with couples what is the one thing that you really have learned from my perspective it's the importance of listening effective listening I think it's so easy to tune out because when your spouse within the first five words talks about whatever it might be immediately you just tune out because it's the same old same old and as we teach couples how to listen effectively it's kind of fun to watch the light bulb go on and say so that's what it means to communicate so that's been kind of fun for for me I would say the same same thing it would be the communication just becoming a better communicator and so often when we think of communication we do think of talking and making ourselves understood and we don't think of the part where you need to listen and not being not waiting thinking about what you want to say next while the other person is talking but actually listening so that you can repeat back what you heard that is the I mean the effective communication right is active listening and that is the hardest probably skill that we teach not interrupting when other people are talking and listening to what is being said instead of what your interpretation of being said is right I had one couple and they had this argument ongoing and they were practicing this skill and he said he was supposed to be telling a want need or desire and he said I wish that you would help me with my finance help me with the finances and she said oh so you want me to get a job is that it we all already had this fight I said hold on once is that what he said and I said can you repeat back the exact words he said and she couldn't because she didn't hear the words he said she just heard what she thought he was saying because she already had a preconceived notion right so I said where was the fault in that communication the breakdown in that communication well perhaps he wasn't clear right so I said restate it so he did I want you to help me with the finances and she said well what what does that mean I said exactly what does that mean so sometimes when we communicate we're too vague we're too general we're not specific enough he said I want you to sit down and go through the checkbook with me see what expenses and income we have and where we need to cut so that we can balance checkbook she said why didn't you say so I can do that I mean sometimes it's just that simple they've been fight having the same fight forever and never really got down to what it meant and when they did it was like oh that's actually I can do that it's not that hard have you found a situation like that where there was just such a huge miscommunication or non-understanding of what the other person was wanting that was just seems simple to us but they were fighting over it a lot of times couples will use language or words that the two of them understand but sewer I don't and occasionally I'll ask well now what does that mean what do you mean by that word and then go on to talk about the fact that communication effective communication is understanding completely what the other person is either saying asking for needing or what have you and how they feel about that so just you know I think too often and too many times we make assumptions that well those two because it's words that they are familiar with they understand them and so we've run into some of those situations where we just have to ask questions so we understand right have you run into well if they loved me they would know you know we get that a lot right and and no we don't know because we can't read each other's minds no matter how I've been married 30 years and you still you've been married 44 can you read each other's mind all the time no no one of the great resource well you know great marriages has a lot of resources available we've gone through a couple of the DVD series and that has just been eye-opening to us you know in terms of things that are unique to men and things that are unique to women about communication and so forth and I found that's extremely helpful and we've recommended those two were couples because it puts a different perspective when you're talking you know one of the things that that we've talked about back and forth you know men have a nothing box you know and she looked at me and she said well is that true and I said absolutely it's true you know and so we've had some fun with that as well you'll have to describe the nothing box to the audience because they might be going what is he talking about men have a nothing box one of the speakers talks about the man's brain and in the man's brain there are a whole bunch of boxes and he has a nothing box and a nothing box is exactly what it means he can sit and think about nothing you know and every guy I talked to says yep that's right I can connect with that and Sue looked at me and she said is that true and he talks about the women's box or women's brain and it's always connected everything that's connected we can't think of nothing so we can't understand that they can I can't so how many women are going what are you thinking what do you think and he's like nothing and they're like come on you just don't want to tell me but they really are thinking of exactly Mark you're referencing Mark Gunger and he's talking about when a man can sit there with a remote and click click click and and she says how can you be watching anything and he says I'm not you know it's just clicking right and we don't get it or fishing how can you sit for hours and just fish well as women would be talking talking talking and driving the men crazy so yep that's what you're right it's been one of the learning things that you know as we've gone through some of the extra material and it's been fun to do those things because you've learned a little bit more about each other as well I always know now that if I ask her what are you thinking about I'll get an answer and she knows if she asks me what are you am I thinking about and I say nothing well that's okay that's okay and you know some of the things that we talk about the differences that couples have when they're arguing and fighting are not unique to them some of the things are just basic men women differences and it doesn't matter if you marry to him her whatever you're gonna have some of the same issues so if we get divorced from this one and we get into the next marriage we're likely to have some very similar problems we're going to go through the same stages of marriage as a matter of fact we go through the seven stages quicker and the negative ones may last longer so the likeliness of divorce for a second marriage actually increases people say well with a second marriage I'll be smarter I'll make better choices but what we actually find out is that instead of it decreasing the divorce rate increases so how can we make whatever marriage these couples are in last you know we didn't really talk about your mentoring perhaps a engaged couple why is that important to have a mentor for an engaged couple I think expectations I think instead of just you know thinking this Prince Prince Charming is coming in we're gonna live happily ever after but her happily ever after and his happily ever after are gonna be way different mm-hmm and if those aren't discussed ahead of time that's those are the ones we end up seeing because they're not living happily ever after and and they want to so it's knowing ahead of time what what you're expecting and that your mate knows what you're expecting I think it's a big a big part right there you know what you're talking about are those unrealistic expectations that can't be met so we get disappointed with these expectations that were met but really they're unrealistic and they for instance they come in I'm not in love anymore yes well that's about right sometimes you're not going to be in love nobody ever said you'd be in love every day except on TV which they're watching this on TV right the soulmate I find my perfect soulmate I'll be happy forever that's Hollywood that's not real life we find a person we fall in love and then we figure out how to make it work and sometimes it's hard and how do we make it work so the mentoring that you guys are doing for these engaged couples may be presenting that picture that you've been married 44 years and it's not all been wonderful in love periods well we dated for four years before we were married mm-hmm and thought we knew everything about each other and there were still things that we needed to learn and work through in terms of simple things like holidays where are we going to go we're going to spend it with finances mm-hmm those kinds of things that we really hadn't spent any time talking about before we got married and as we look at the the curriculum for great marriages every parent and second one anyway it's set up in a way where you get into the various areas of a couple's life and so when you're talking through those kinds of things with premarital counseling it's saying hey you know have you thought about this and have you thought about where you're going to live or how you're going to celebrate holidays and whose family are you going to go to and those kinds of things and it forces them to take a look deeper into their relationship than just we're in love you know and that'll take care of everything else who would you say that marriage mentoring could benefit anyone why anyone and why well just I mean I and I think if they if they would come when they're just things might be getting a little rocky or just big things could be solved so much quickly we had one couple that if they had come four years earlier it would have been so easy just to go through the communication and there were some stepchildren discipline problems if those have been dealt with right away it would have just made all the difference in the world instead of waiting until you've seen every counselor you can think of and then this is a last-ditch effort and it's a lot more work it still can be we can help but it's a lot more work at that point and you've had a lot more years of unhappiness it's true many people do wait till and you know somebody's threatening to walk out the door they're considering separation force before they come right the enrichment portion is good everybody can use enrichment everyone can use that like I said we've grown just doing this together we've really grown well that is great and I just thank you so much for being with us today I think that you're a good example to others at mentoring anybody can do it they put their heart to it and want to help others so I thank you for being with us today Tom and Sue and that's our show for today I thank you for joining us on healthy marriages and I would encourage you to go to our website to learn more information about upcoming programs and ways that we can help your marriage or you can enrich your own marriage or the family members around you thanks for joining us today remember marriage it does matter