Secrets To Lasting Love : Uncovering The Keys To Lifelong Intimacy - Softcover

Smalley, Gary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684850516 ISBN 13: 9780684850511

Publisher: Free Press, 2001

Synopsis

Gary Smalley is one of the world's foremost speakers and experts on love and relationships. His gift for helping couples create more meaningful communication and deeper understanding so that they can establish an unwavering bond is the inspiration behind Secrets to Lasting Love, the culmination of Smalley's decades of work. In it he outlines the three essential skills that move couples to the highest levels of intimacy:

1. Respect your spouse for all of his or her individual qualities and differences from you.
2. Communicate with each other in a way that moves conversations into deeper realms of understanding.
3. Renew and recharge your spouse emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually -- constantly.

It is not easy to recognize and then apply these skills. But Secrets to Lasting Love shows everyone how to do just that, so they can reach what Smalley calls the fifth, or ultimate, level of intimacy -- where there's a marital bond strong enough to withstand the inevitable highs and lows of life. With Gary Smalley, you will have the tools to create a heightened sense of commitment that will allow you to reach your spouse's heart and spirit.

About this title

About the Author:

Gary Smalley is one of the country's best-known authors and speakers on family relationships. He is the coauthor of sixteen bestselling, award-winning books, which have collectively sold nearly 6 million copies. He lives with his wife in Branson, Missouri.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One: Deeper: The Direction Toward the Ultimate Relationship
Every fully realized relationship is a trip from surface emotions down into the depths, descending through five distinct levels of intimate communication that move from the shallow levels to the fifth and deepest level. At this fifth level, a couple feels absolutely safe and accepted for what they feel and need as unique individuals. Throughout this book I am going to show you how to accelerate your journey through these levels, arriving at the deepest level in the shortest, most effective amount of time. For now, let's discuss the five levels, so you'll understand what your journey is going to entail.
These five levels of intimate communication were first introduced in John Powell's book, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? But later, Dr. Gary Oliver, head of the Center for Marriage and Family at John Brown University, helped me understand that my entire life's work could be grouped within these five levels. All couples will move in and out of one or more of these five levels of intimate communication every day. This book will help you understand the five levels of intimate communication and how to use three powerful relationship skills to move in and out of all five levels anytime you wish. These levels are the outline of this book. Now I realize just how powerful they are:

The Five Levels of Intimate Communication
1. Speaking in clichés
2. Sharing facts
3. Sharing opinions
4. Sharing feelings
5. Sharing needs

The first two levels are natural, easy, almost effortless. I've discovered that a majority of couples, sadly, can remain in these levels throughout their relationship.
When you embark on a journey toward intimacy, in a sense you are "diving into" your relationship. Perhaps you and your mate have spent years climbing through the mountains, the ups and downs of your relationship. But now you've reached an awesome sight: the ocean. You don't want to remain stranded on the shore or stay stuck at the surface. You want to dive in deeply, to leave the shallow waters of superficiality and delve into, and revel in, the depths of intimacy. If you've ever experienced scuba diving, you know the feeling: it will be a long and frequently tough dive, but you will be amazed at the wonders you will find under the surface!
As you and your mate communicate with each other in the course of your daily routines, you are unconsciously always moving in and out of one of the five levels. Here is an explanation of each one:

LEVEL ONE: Sharing clichés with each other. This is surface talk, down only just below the water's surface, perhaps four or five feet. You're engaged in almost meaningless chatter. "Hey, how are you, how are you doing?" asks one spouse. "Okay, great, no problem," replies the other.

LEVEL TWO: Sharing facts with each other. You're talking about the weather, the office, what's going on with your friends. You're down deeper, but just barely, perhaps four or seven feet down. It's a safe level, requiring no deep breathing, thinking, or feeling.

LEVEL THREE: Sharing opinions with each other. This includes discussing individual opinions, concerns, and expectations, including personal goals, dreams, and desires. Now you're finally getting into the depths, and your initial reaction, as when scuba diving, is most likely fear. Your oxygen is dissipating and your ears are suffering the pressure. Sharing opinions is like diving to the eight- to fifteen-foot range; you may instinctively want to retreat to the shallower levels.
Most people can learn to dive down ten feet, pick up a seashell or two, and then retreat to the surface. But to reap the treasures in your relationships, you must learn to stay in the depths. As in diving, you must have the skills to give you the confidence to stay at this level -- and also to go deeper. Nobody in his right mind begins a session in scuba diving without training. But couples all over the world begin relationships without even the slightest guidance, which is why they often remain at the shallowest levels of intimacy.

Speaking in clichés and sharing facts are safe harbors from conflict. But opinions are something else entirely. Opinions cause conflict, and conflict is extremely scary to most people. If a couple uses Level 3 -- the sharing of opinions -- as a wrestling ring or a jousting court, if they're forever trying to "get" each other, to prove their respective views, concerns, and needs as superior to the other's, they're headed toward trouble. This type of slowly escalating jousting creates fertile soil for the seeds that can grow into divorce. But if each party attempts to refocus his or her thinking on trying to understand the mate, instead of trying to "convince" the other that a particular opinion is superior, then they can become a team.
That's usually easier said than done, because when couples move from Level 2 to Level 3, from sharing facts to sharing opinions, they hit a barrier: conflict. This conflict can be compared to a doorway that takes tremendous time and work to pass through before the couple can move down to Levels 4 and 5, which, in our scuba diving analogy, are the deepest and safest levels to which a couple can "dive."
But conflict can work two ways: Most often, it breaks couples apart. But it also delivers them to the deeper levels. Yes, conflict is the doorway to intimacy, but for most couples it remains an immovable roadblock. Clichés are a cakewalk and facts are usually benign, but sharing opinions, concerns, and expectations? Opinions are the Pandora's box; they create conflict. So one or both partners will tend to become "infected" with one or more of four main "relational germs" -- withdrawal, escalation, belittling, or developing false beliefs about each other -- and will never get to the deepest, most fulfilling levels. Most couples in conflict can't see that the very force that is battering them is essential to reaching a deeper relationship. They're too busy with the struggle of daily existence to search for the depth beyond the conflict.

LEVEL FOUR: Sharing your deepest and truest feelings with each other. At this level, you help each other feel safe to share your deepest emotions. You each know that you will both do your very best to listen and value what the other is sharing. Each of you can accept the other as unique and special, a creation made up of all your history, personality, and family background. It's as if each of you represents a different combination of "colors," and you can both treasure each other's individual "color" combination. What's so exciting is this: as you walk through the door of conflict to reach the deeper levels of intimacy, you are simultaneously eliminating all four of the "divorce germs."

LEVEL FIVE: Sharing your most important relational needs. This is the deepest level of love and marital satisfaction. You've been together long enough and you feel safe enough to share your deepest needs with one another. I have discovered from thousands of couples that seven needs keep surfacing as the most important to both men and women. But the most intimate part of loving communication is when both of you feel safe to reveal your unique needs to one another. This shows that you know you will be accepted and valued by your mate for who you are.

Guess how long it takes for the average individual to begin sharing his or her feelings and needs? Six years. Again, the average time for divorce? Five and a half years. Why? Because once you hit the third level of intimacy -- sharing opinions -- you're at the greatest risk for conflict. Without some training, you could stay conflicted at this level for some time. People have an intuitive sense that danger lurks behind the door of conflict. They don't realize that true love exists there, too. Most people retreat from conflict, from the prospect of deeper levels of intimacy, returning instead to the safer levels of sharing clichés and facts, never breaking through, never becoming fulfilled, only becoming increasingly frustrated. Gradually, these unaware couples creep into these four ineffective, destructive patterns, or "relational germs," leading to divorce.
They begin the "dance of conflict," the dance of disharmony, traveling among the three elementary levels, back and forth, back and forth, until their years of marriage take them no deeper -- merely back to the superficial levels where they've already been. Fearing conflict, they play out the same year of marriage over and over again. They never get to the levels of fulfillment, Levels 4 and 5, because they're too busy doing the dance of conflict. I've known couples married for years, couples celebrating their twentieth anniversary. Each year, they do the dance of conflict all over again. Only the issues change -- finances, vacations, retirement -- the dance is always the same. They don't have twenty years of marriage, they have one year of marriage twenty times. Their relationship never deepens; it merely stretches forward in a straight, unemotional line.
Maybe you recognize yourself presently engaged in this dance of conflict. If not, you've certainly watched couples doing the dance -- and it's not a pretty sight. Several years ago, my wife and I went on a vacation with a friend who absolutely will not allow his wife to discuss her feelings, much less her needs. That type of discussion is much too deep, too dangerous, especially for a vacation! He's in such control, in such denial, that he's even instituted a rule against discussions of these basic aspects of any relationship. His wife, forbidden to express her needs and feelings, has become a walking time bomb. The couple remains locked in what I call the rut of roles -- a rut being a grave with both ends kicked out -- each partner playing a designated part, acting out his or her life instead of truly experiencing it. She is eventually going to blow, taking whatever remains of that relationship. Remember the movie Ordinary People? Mary Tyler Moore played a character whose oldest son had died; she had one hard-and-fast unspoken rule: she spoke only in facts, never opinions, until eventually she imploded. Unable to share facts or opinions, she simply walked out on her family. Her fear of opening the door to reach the deeper levels was just too painful.
Avoiding conflict is far more dangerous than confronting it. Arguing, is like starting a fire. You have to learn how to harness it properly, or it can tear you and your mate apart. Reaching these deepest levels of intimacy takes more than hard work and a willingness to delve deep; it takes a set of three simple, yet highly effective, skills that every successful relationship employs. These three skills represent my years of study, experience, and counseling and have revolutionized infinite relationships. If properly and consistently practiced, these skills have the ability to take your relationship to the deepest levels of intimacy.
Let's examine each of the three skills:

The Skill of Honoring
This is the lighthouse, the beacon, the mighty rock on which every fulfilling relationship is built and without which every shaky relationship is destroyed. When honor is present in a relationship, a couple can withstand the roughest storms. When honor has been destroyed in a relationship, the couple is destined for disaster. The best definition of honor that I've found is as any time we "confer distinction" upon someone. When a college bestows upon someone an honorary doctorate degree, the school is conferring distinction. When an audience applauds or an individual bows before someone, distinction is being conferred. Honor is not judgmental. Honor does not involve the belief that your opinions, concerns, and desires are somehow superior to your partner's. Honor does not involve getting your mate to see things your way.
Conveying a superior attitude is the biggest killer of marriage and produces the most frustration, hurt, and fear within a marriage. Honor is a "lifting up," a holding up of your mate with reverence. It's the selfless process of proclamation: in honoring you are telling your mate that he or she is paramount in your life and his or her status in your hierarchy of values is above all petty arguments, disagreements, and opinions. Honor is permanent, unmovable, forever. Therefore, the first act in cultivating honor in your relationship is to decide that your mate is worthy of honor; you must confer distinction upon that individual. This is the most important skill you can master; the others can't and won't work without honor. One marriage expert says that without honor, all the other marriage skills won't work; another expert, Dr. Scott Stanley, has said that honor is the fuel that keeps the lifelong marriage loving and functioning. If honor is nonexistent in one partner, there is a high probability that the marriage is over. But if even only a spark of respect or adoration remains, that spark can be turned into a flame in a short time. I'll show you how to build honor in your relationship, erecting a firewall to protect you and your spouse from the flames that will certainly come.
Honor is the key that unlocks the door of conflict that leads to deeper intimacy. It's also the physical act of grabbing the knob and opening that door.

The Skill of Drive-Through Listening
This is the almighty skill of communication, an ingredient in every fulfilling relationship. This skill allows you to take the first few steps through the doorway of conflict down to the two deepest levels of intimacy. I'm talking about the most powerful communications skill known to mankind: drive-through listening. The method will allow you and your mate to feel listened to, understood, and validated, especially in times of conflict. You've probably already practiced drive-through listening, whether you realized it or not. Every time you use a drive-through window at McDonald's or Burger King, you've engaged in drive-through listening. You place your order, then the drive-through attendant repeats your order back to you.
Like the fast-food clerk who repeats the customer's order, a mate usingdrive-through listening repeats what his or her mate has said. This communication method not only clarifies the conversation and prevents misunderstanding, it allows the couple to discover the deeper meanings behind their words. Just imagine how many millions of dollars these fast-foodrestaurants have spent to find the best communication method to stay "married" to their customers. We can use the same method for free to stay married to our mates.

Constantly Recharging Your Mate's "Needs Battery" through Love
Human beings have an internal "needs battery," and our actions produce either positive or negative "charges" to our mate's battery. Loving attention given to each other's needs undoubtedly has a positive effect, while selfish, draining charges have a negative effect. It's been determined that couples literally throw hundreds of positive and negative charges at each other in a typical day of interaction. In Chapter 7, I'll share the top seven relationship needs with you and show you how to discover your own needs, as well as your mate's needs, so you can begin the process of meeting those needs and regularly recharging each other. The great thing about discovering the top needs of your mate is that it can help you understand conflict, as most arguments come from perceived unmet needs. That's right. Most arguments can be avoided if you care for the top needs of your mate. That's because surface arguments usually come from deeper unmet relational needs.
Dr. John Gottman, the father of many recent relationship breakthroughs, has shown that couples ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0684850516
• ISBN 13: 9780684850511
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256