Here’s How to Chart Your Marriage Lifeline

Published January 28, 1982. A new book has recently been published and is titled “I Need to Have You Know Me.” It is authored by Roland and Doris Larson form Minneapolis, Minnesota and is a guide on how to have a better marriage. I am continually impressed with many of the materials coming out to help married couples have better relationships.

One of the exercises in their book is called “A Marriage Lifeline.” Perhaps you and your marriage partner would like to try it. Following are the instructions each would complete individually. Then the couple should share their responses with each other.

1. On a sheet of paper draw a straight horizontal line about six to eight inches long. This represents your marriage lifeline. At the left end of the line write the year you were married.
2. At the right end of the line, write a date when your relationship might terminate through the death of one partner. The year would be a guess, but it should be a realistic one in terms of what you know about the two of you. Most men are living until their late sixties or early seventies, and women are living well into their seventies or early eighties.
3. Place an X on your marriage lifeline that represents the present year.
4. Now look at the left side of the line from the time of your marriage up until the present. What feelings and thoughts do those years represent? For each of the following events locate the approximate year on the lifeline and indicate it with appropriate letter:
1. H= a very Happy experience you had together
2. T= an experience that brought you closer Together
3. S= a period of Stress
4. C= the year your first Child (or children) arrived, or the year you plan to have a child.
5. Now look at the X on the marriage lifeline (present year) and move your eyes toward the future. What is in your future five or 10 years from now that is fairly predictable? A job change? Children leaving home? Paying off a debt or mortgage? Buying a new home? 

Substantial changes in your lifestyle? Record these events somewhere near the appropriate spot on your future marital lifeline.

Now share items 1-5 with your partner. As you do, the Larsons believe you will learn somewhat about each other and your marriage. But to learn you need to listen to each other and encourage the other to talk about what they have written. One way to do this is to ask clarifying questions such as “How do you feel about that now?” Invent your own questions by trying to focus on the other person, so he or she will want to respond to your questions.

It is wise on occasion for husbands and wives to look back in retrospect to what they have experienced, encountered, and perhaps endured in marriage over the years. More importantly, however, couples should also look toward the future and not only anticipate, but also plan for some fulfilling and good times together.

Perhaps some of us have been in a marriage that has been less than fulfilling in the past. But the past must no longer be used as an anvil for beating out the present and future. Regardless of our previous experiences, each couple has time left together in their marriage. Some have decades, while others may have years, months, or only weeks. The point is that all married couples presently have some time left to plan and share. And if we make the most of that time, then the amount or length really does not matter.

Albert Schweitzer once wrote, “The tragedy of man is not that man dies, but what dies within man while he is living.” If we work hard at our marriage and family relationships, the present can become the good old days that the next generation will hear so much about in the future.