Survey Says ...

There are two things I remember from Hubby's and my pre-marital counseling. 1.) the stress of organizing the sessions while we lived in two different states, and the counseling session was held in a third location. 2) we took a personality test and it deemed both of us as "anti-social."

My apologies to all those hardworking pastors and therapists who conduct premarital counseling sessions. They are important, I was just too stressed to register what was being said, see number 1.

We kept those personality tests, the Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis Profile. This is the description of the test, found on their website:

The Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis® is one of the most widely used assessments for individual, premarital, marital, and family counseling. The T-JTA® measures 18 dimensions of personality (9 bipolar traits) that are important components of individual adjustment and interpersonal relationships. The T-JTA® has been used for more than 40 years by thousands of counseling professionals in a wide array of settings in the U.S. and around the world to help people understand themselves and significant others in their lives.

I don't know about you, but defining anything as "bipolar" makes me have second thoughts about using it.

When you take the test you analyze yourself and your significant other. The scores are then charted, on an Excellent to Improvement Needed scale, comparisons are made in reference to yourself and what you scored for your significant other, and percentiles are given. Looking over these pages I'm still trying to figure out what the percentiles mean; 95% of the population is nervous, or 95% of those emotions place you in the nervous personality trait, or ...?

There are a lot of "Improvement Needed" marks on our charts, hence the anti-social diagnosis.

It is funny looking over the scores, 13 1/2 years later, and how we saw each other, and saw ourselves.

• Let's see, I saw myself as rather "Nervous" (as opposed to "Composed") and placed him closer to the middle of the two. Where as Hubby placed me in the middle and saw himself as "Nervous."
• I rated myself as "Depressive" and rated Hubby more "Light-Hearted." Hubby placed both of us rather high under "Depressive."
• I placed both of us highly "Active-Social" and Hubby placed us highly under the opposite personality, "Quiet."
• I saw both of us as "Inhibited" and Hubby saw himself as "Inhibited" and me in the middle of "Inhibited" and "Expressive-Responsive."
• I rated Hubby highly "Sympathetic" and me more "Indifferent." Hubby saw both of us as "Sympathetic."
• Both of us saw ourselves as "Subjective" (emotional, illogical, self-absorbed) as opposed to "Objective" (fair-minded, reasonable and logical.)
• I rated Hubby as highly "Dominant" and myself more "Submissive" ... stop laughing ... Hubby saw both of us as "Submissive."
• At the same time we both saw ourselves as highly "Hostile."
• I placed us near the middle between "Self-disciplined" and "Impulsive", while Hubby placed me high under "Self-Disciplined" and rated himself more "Impulsive".

Lord have mercy, how have we survived 13 1/2 years of marriage?

If we took it now I wonder where we would place ourselves, and each other?

And I confess, I was more concerned about my dress ... or the lack of a dress one month before our wedding, then I was of our per-marital counseling sessions. But, that is another story for another day.

What do you remember from your pre-marital counseling days. Please say you felt counseled and enlightened from those sessions, give all the therapists out there a little hope.

Tiny Talk Tuesday

Welcome to Tiny Talk Tuesday, where we share the crazy things our kids say.

On anatomy:

EM was looking over her arms and legs and said: I need my skin

Me: What would you look like if you didn't have your skin?

EM: A bobo girl.

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You know you have boys when:

One of the boys was in the bathroom taking care of business when the other son (who was standing on the other side of the bathroom door calls out: JT it sounds like you are making music!

Hubby and I were doubled over with laughter.

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On what makes a successful marriage:

Hubby: (looking in the refrigerator) You know what I haven't had for a while, cottage cheese and applesauce.

Me: If I buy cottage cheese will you eat it?

Thinking back on the last time I bought cottage cheese, many moons ago, and it sat in the fridge.

Hubby: If I know it is in the refrigerator I'll eat it.

Me: Hmmmm. That would help in having it eaten.

Again, I rarely buy the stuff, so Hubby has to ask for it and obviously is not expecting to find it in our fridge when he goes looking for a snack.

For more Tiny Talk head over to Mary's at Not Before 7.

The Secret

Hubby and I have figured out the secret to a successful marriage. Wanna hear?

S P A C E

4 years ago, while pregnant with #3, we bought a king size mattress. Just heavenly. More for Hubby, because even on a king size mattress I still take up 3/4th's of the mattress. And no, I am not that big.

Our sectional sofa came this week. Oh my, the luxury. He sits on one end, and stretches out. I sit at the other end, stretch out, lay out my work, and yes end up taking 3/4th's of the sofa. But we both have room to stretch out. While watching a movie with the kids we can all pile on, comfortably.

Maybe we also found the success to a happy family.

So How Did That Work for Ya?

This Saturday Hubby and I attended a marriage seminar.

Our first in, oh, I don't know how many years, so very overdue. In college a professor suggested couples should seek counseling after one year of marriage, at 7 years, at the birth of a child, when those children are teenagers, and like every 5 years in between that. Ooops.

Anywho, it was very interesting. The seminar leader has been trained in Emotion Focused Therapy, which uses attachment theory as its framework.

Confused? Yeah, so was I. The new terminology made it hard to follow at times. Once I got past that the basic theory was simple and made sense. Simple, yes, but my describing it may not be so simple. Sorry. The premise of the seminar moved beyond the usual "for a good marriage do this and not this, now go and be happy." The seminar was designed to give us tools to break certain cycles. It helped us to look at how we interact, how we fight, and what we fight about, and then map out plans to break those cycles.

It was good. And I would love to sit in one again, if nothing else so I can fully grasp the theory.

Today, friends asked about the seminar. My immediate answer was good.

Then I looked at Hubby and realized we never had a chance to talk about our reflections on the seminar.

Why did we not have a chance to talk about the seminar?

Because on the drive home we were too busy arguing. :::sigh:::

Make An Appointment

My husband and I were talking on the phone yesterday afternoon, he reminded me we need to start planning for our two summer vacations; finding hotels, planning meals, prepare packing lists, .... I told him he needed to make an appointment. "Is this what our relationship has become, we need to make appointments?" He asked. "Yes," I replied, "we have 3 young children, at this time in our life we need to schedule our time." Having three young children also means we have short memories, and tire easily. Neither of us wrote down what we wanted to talk about, so last night as we collapsed on the couch and turned on the TV do you think either one of us could remember what we wanted to talk about? NO! Make an appointment, and take notes.