The Four Agreements Book - Marriage

I want to share this book with you all. I have found it to be very helpful for me as I grow and develop as a person. don Miguel Ruiz is a wonderful person whose words have had a tremendous impact on my consciousness.

"Everything we do is based on agreements we have made - agreements with ourselves, with other people, with God, with life. But the most important agreements are the ones we make with ourselves. In these agreements we tell ourselves who we are, how to behave, what is possible, what is impossible. One single agreement is not such a problem, but we have many agreements that come from fear, deplete our energy, and diminish our self-worth."

"In these agreements we tell ourselves who we are, how to behave, what is possible, what is impossible."
From his website:
In this powerful book that has remained on The New York Times Bestseller List for over five years, don Miguel reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. When we are ready to change these agreements, there are four deceptively simple, yet powerful agreements that we can adopt as guiding principles. The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don't Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.
http://www.miguelruiz.com/fouragreements.html

I am not saying any of these things are easy to do...on the contrary I struggle all the time with doing these things. But just trying to live my life by the four agreements, even when I fall short, has improved my life in a profound way. and trying to live by them has eased my suffering and sensitivity to life and other people enormously.

One example: the other night my husband got out of bed and opened the window, as it was stuffy. It was a warm night so I didn't mind that he opened the window, but he didn't pull the curtain all the way back so that even though no one from the street could see directly into our room, if our neighbors across the way looked out their window they could see right into our bedroom from that angle. I got all upset and ready to huff and puff, because my husband has been careless about this before (he truly does not care if people see him sleeping or laying there naked) and I have spoken sharply to him about it before because I do care about people seeing me sleeping and stuff. So when he did this I immediately took it as him not caring if I was on display and completely ignoring and disrespecting my feelings.

Then I remembered the 4 agreements, and immediately relaxed. Why? because I chose not to assume my husband did it on purpose or just to mess with me or disrespect me, and I chose to not take it personally whether he did it by accident or on purpose. So I was able to calmly and nicely say Brian, would you pull the curtain across? and he said Oh man, I didn't even realize it was open like that, I'm sorry Trula. And he jumped right up and pulled it across and we cuddled a bit and had a pleasant night sleeping.

There was a time when I would have screeched OMG! Close the damn curtain WTF is WRONG with you? How dare you put me on DISPLAY you know I'm laying here NAKED you are such an ASSHOLE! and so on. He then would have responded angrily I didn't MEAN to do it, it's LATE and I'm TIRED so SHUT up getting on me about the DAMN curtain! You are INSANE picking a fight with me over this! and then it would have been on, we would have argued bitterly into the night and then tossed and turned and neither of us getting a good night's rest. Over what? a simple curtain being slightly askew.

That's just one example of how applying the four agreements helped us. Perhaps you are nowhere near as sensitive as I am/was, but just imagine how applying the four agreements can help you with people that are important to you and major in your life such as your spouse. I have found this to be helpful in everything I do and everyone I choose to communicate with.

Brian & Trula April 1996

Here I am with Brian in 1996. Sometimes it is hard for me to see how we have changed (gotten older) but in this photo I can see it clearly, especially with him. Look how young he is! My sweetie.

More Thoughts on Interracial Marriage Blogs

Did you get a chance to read my prior post Thoughts on Interracial Marriage Blogs? If not, please check it out.

It appears Black Female Interracial Marriage closed her blog to public view in response to my post. Perhaps I am wrong in that assumption, but the timing seems awfully close. If so, while I don't regret my post, I want to make it clear that my intention was not to shut any body's blog down from public view or hurt anyone's feelings. My intention was to make it clear how these blogs made me feel. While I was startled to see that Black Female Interracial Marriage set her blog to private, it did confirm my feelings about her blog. Because if your stuff is not foul, why block it off? She already had public comments off so it's not like anybody could post a bunch of nasty comments on it. I wouldn't do that anyway, and I highly doubt any readers of my blog would either.

Edited to add: the blog is back open to the public, looks like she closed it off not out of response to anything I wrote but rather to block off portions to be read for free and portions you have to pay to read.

I responded to a comment left on my blog by someone who wanted to clarify for me what the intention of these blogs were...I am re-posting my response here as I feel it deserves it's own post:

Surely there is a way to express interracial dating as an option without putting down black men and without holding up white men as the solution to the dating and marrying woes of black women. Because they are not. They are just men...these black women act like white men are princes come to rescue us or something. Marriage with a white man is not a fairytale and they are not any better than black men at being husbands. They are not any better at black men than being fathers. If anybody thinks they are, all you have to do is check out some majority white message boards for mothers to see tons of white women who were lied to, cheated on, beat up, and left destitute to raise children alone by their white husbands and white boyfriends.

On top that, in a racist culture such as exists in the United States, it goes without saying that some white people are racists or prejudiced. Not all, by any means, but racism still exists. So I think it's very off to suggest to black women that white men are a solution to our low rates of marriage. I am not saying it can't happen, obviously it happened to me, but I think it is probably easier to find a compatible black man than to find a compatible white man free of race prejudice regarding black people. Why aren't these women talking about that? Maybe they are happy or feel validated being their husband's 'chocolate fantasy'...but I truly don't think that most black women want to fulfill any body's racial fetish in order to be married. As a whole we aren't that desperate, LOL.

I also think that for black women who consistently choose black men who treat them bad and who are not father and/or husband material, a better solution would be to suggest that they look at the character of the men they are choosing...and not the color of his skin. Because there ARE black men who are kind, gentle, intelligent, educated, good providers, good fathers, faithful, loyal, spiritual, and want to marry. Just like there are white men with these qualities. And there ARE white men who are liars, mean, crazy, cheaters, abusive, stupid, bad fathers, terrible providers, and who don't want to marry. To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it's downright delusional...and any black woman, listening to the women on these websites, is gonna get the shock of her life when Prince Charming punches her in the face or sleeps with her best friend or whatever nightmare she believes all black men will do to her.

Thoughts on Interracial Marriage Blogs

I've been surfing around the net reading some BW/WM IR blogs. That's black woman/white man interracial for those of you not in the know, LOL. Something about these blogs rub me the wrong way and I am not sure why...surely it is ok for people in mixed marriages to celebrate their marriages like any other couple? But I guess that's part of the irritation; most are not celebrating their marriage like any other couple. While many of them do celebrate their relationship, the focal point seems to be about race and how everyone is against them and how unique and special they are. Rather than being an aspect of their relationship, race seems to be the focal point of what their marriage is about. How sad is that?

There is are a few in particular that even kinda offended me, and it takes a lot to offend me these days as I am all about positivity. On Black Female Interracial Marriage, the blog author actually is trying to sell tees and bags and stuff with some sort of secret logo that single black women and white men can wear to signal to each other that they are interested in interracial dating. What in the underworld? Seriously, what kind of foolishness is that? Forget color, what woman wants a man who is too punk to come up and ask her out without a secret signal? You have got to be kidding me. She also appears to be running some kind of dating service or something on the blog; she has stuff like 'Miss October' featuring a new black woman every month interested in dating white men. Judge for yourself, but be warned. I found it to be nauseating. Not quite as nauseating as Black Women's IR Circle, whose tagline is "The Underground Railroad to Relationship Freedom for Black Women" (Seriously! I am not making this up!) which made me feel physically sick. That is just plain wrong on so many levels.

I just wish these blogs and websites didn't overwhelmingly say or imply that dating and marrying outside of your race or cultural group is 'broadening' or 'freeing' and that dating and marrying within your race or cultural group is 'limiting' or 'narrow-minded'. There is nothing wrong with dating and marrying within your racial and/or cultural group! They also seem to overwhelmingly feel that interracial mixing is going to be the end cause of racism. While I do feel that the acceptance of interracial mixing will increase in the United States and worldwide, I don't feel that the rise of interracial mixing will cause or even contribute greatly to the ending of racism in this country or anywhere else. To think otherwise suggests a great ignorance of history not only of the United States but of other countries.

For example, interracial mixing has been fairly common in this country since it began as a colony of England. Did such mixing stop slavery, did it then stop segregation, did it cause the civil rights movement? No, the ending of racism will be caused by white people who overwhelmingly choose to not be racist, to choose to end a system of skin color privilege and oppression, and they will come to this decision not because the majority of them will be married to black people. For one thing, as we are 12-13% of the population in the United States there are simply not enough black people for this to happen. For another thing, there have always been white people in this country who have been against racism and staunch defenders of citizenship rights being available and applied to all people born in the United States regardless of color. I do feel that these sort of white people will increase and I do feel that eventually racism will end in this country. I just feel that race-mixing will be a minimal part of this happening.

What I'd like to see on these blogs is a less one-dimensional view of their marriages.

Choosing & Following Marital Advice Here: Take it With a Grain of Salt

I want to tell you, to take advice on here with a grain of salt. The only people who really know what's going on in a marriage are the two people involved in it. There are many sources of conflict in marriages, for example money is the #1 cause of divorce in the United States, I've read. It doesn't have to be a reason to break up if people are willing to work it out.

Brian and I have had our share of problems and there are things we still struggle with. My intention with this blog is to share how we have overcome some problems and how we're working through others (as well as keep a journal about planning and having our marriage renewal vows ceremony in 2009). However I am not a trained or licensed marriage counselor and that I what I recommend to people struggling in their marriage. Have you ever considered counseling? Sometimes you need an objective 3rd party to lend an ear and give advice. Our marriage counselor could listen to my husband and then explain what he meant (about money or whatever) without it seeming wacky like it did when I tried to hear him directly, and vice versa. She also gave us many communication techniques that helped us to change the language/manner of speaking we used with each other.

The ways that Brian and I have worked through problems in our marriage are just that...Our ways. While I am happy to share what worked for us, I want to stress that no one way is set in stone or the ultimate 'right' way to handle problems in a marriage. You can choose what will work best for your marriage and that will be right for you.

You Are the Expert on Your Life, Even While Married

Sometimes I used to get in a mood and demand of my husband to tell me what I should do about a particular work problem or changes I should make to improve my personality. This happened when I felt stressed with work or frustrated with my writing and business. I was reading through old journals recently and was struck by how often this used to come up. Last night I was skimming through my planner and saw a quote I had taped in there:

Only You Can Be the Expert on Your Life

"A person who is alive is constantly getting lost. The big thing...is to realize that this is your own adventure, and that all the field guides and oracles and shamans...holding up the mirrors can only flash you a glimpse of your own story. It's yours to savor. It belongs to no one else."
-The Thief of Happiness: The Story of an Extraordinary Psychotherapy by Bonnie Friedman

This is so true! In a marriage sometimes it is so easy to think in 'we' terms. But even within a marriage we are still individual people in charge of our own lives and destiny. Brian's silence and puzzled expressions when I demanded solutions from him regarding what should I do with this, what should I do about that used to make me angry. Now I am glad he chose to express to me that I have to make my own decisions regarding work, writing, my life. I doubt I would have undergone the level of growth I've experienced in the past 11 years without his encouragement in this.

About Trula & Brian

My name is Trula Breckenridge and I'm a happily married woman who lives in northeast Ohio, USA, with my husband Brian. I am a writer and Brian is a teacher.

Everyone always asks us, How did you two meet? with great puzzlement. It's no big mystery, we met like many other couples: in college, we were introduced by a mutual friend. We met in December 1994 and were just friends for a while. I had just had my son S-bop in November 1994 and was involved with his bio father, and Brian had a girlfriend as well. He was friends with a girl I knew and she introduced us on a day I came back to school to drop most of my classes for the quarter (S-bop was a preemie).

Over time our friendship deepened and he became one of my very best friends. Then romantic feelings blossomed between us and after breaking off our former relationships we began dating Valentine's Day 1996 and have been together ever since. We got married May 1999. It hasn't been an easy marriage; we almost divorced in 2002 but decided to stay together and work things out. I am so glad we did...finding our way back to each other and re-discovering our love for one another has been one of the most beautiful things to ever happen to me. Counseling helped us both choose to grow up and behave in a responsible and mature way to each other and our family.

And yes, we both finished college, although it took us a while. Brian finished his degree he started in 1993 in 2000 and I finished mine started in 1989 in 2004. Brian also has a Master's degree he finished in 2006. He is a special education teacher. We have been blessed to find work that we love to do.

We have 3 kids, a daughter age 19 and two sons ages 13 and 10. Brian is technically a step-father to our two older kids but he has taken care of both of them throughout our relationship and treats them as he treats our youngest; the son we had together. He is a great father and that is one of the things I love and respect about him. When I decided to be in a committed relationship finding a family man was high on my list, as I had had enough of being a single mother and dealing with men who did not want to be involved with their children or mine. We have a blended family but it feels whole.

Obviously we are an interracial couple. I will talk about that aspect of our marriage a little but it has not been a big deal in our relationship. I want to clarify the purpose of this blog is about marriage stuff that is applicable to anyone interested in improving their marriage and is committed to their marriage whatever the racial or cultural group of their spouse. I have found that the good things in our marriage are things all couples experience and the problems we have had are typical of most marriages. Let me be clear: race issues have come up and I will share them on this blog, however they have been minimal in our marriage. The focus of our marriage is our love, commitment and respect for one another and our children and that is something irrespective to our skin color. The point of our marriage is to improve and grow as individuals while sustaining our relationship, providing a strong framework to raise children in, and developing a strong partnership for life after the children are grown. I will link to a few positive interracial marriage blogs so if that is what you are looking for please check my blogroll. I will not link to any negative interracial marriage or relationship blogs, period. By negative I mean any blog that puts down any racial group, be it asian men, black men, latino men, white men, asian women, black women, latino women,white women, or any other group. You know who you are.

I am the primary poster though I will ask for Brian's input. He may even pop in to post one of these days, LOL. You can subscribe to this blog or bookmark to visit again. You can also check out the Brian & Trula photo gallery and see pics of our family. Thank you for visiting!

Take the Long-range View of Marriage

I will share some things that helped us. When Brian and I were going to get divorced a couple of years ago but decided to stay together we got a lot of feedback from others and a lot of helpful advice. One of the best things I was told and I learned to apply to my marriage was that I should always understand that my husband's perception is valid for him. He may be dead wrong or he may be half-right, whatever, but his feelings and his viewpoint is valid. I shouldn't dismiss it out of hand or feel that my feelings trump his, and vice versa. I should listen to his viewpoint and ask him, what can I do to help change things? This really helps and it brought us closer together, talking and listening to each other's viewpoint and then sitting down together to make a plan that addressed whatever the problem was.

Another thing that we learned that helped was that couples tend to mirror each other. So if I was acting funky Brian would pick up on that and start acting funky, then I would respond to that with more anger/acting out, then he would start acting out, and so on so forth. Now we try to nip this in the bud. For instance if Brian is upset I try not to take it personally even if it's directed toward me; I smile and cuddle him up and ask him if hes ok and that usually mellows him out. Or if I'm upset at something he said or did and get to acting irate, instead of getting defensive or shutting down emotionally like he used to he pulls me close and apologizes and gets me to laugh. Frequently touching and smiling at your partner works wonders.

A friend of mine who has been married for 40 years told me this: Brian is my closest relation now under law so when I am pissed with him I should remember that. Sometimes my parents or sisters or brothers or cousins and even my kids piss me off, but I would never consider leaving them or no longer having them in my life. So when I am upset with Brian I should think about that and understand that I married him for life; divorce isn't even an option unless it's a dire, extreme circumstance. I was/am so glad she told me this because it really helped me to apply the long-range view to my marriage: If I get upset with him tomorrow, for example, that doesn't mean I'll still be mad with him the day after tomorrow. And certainly in 30, 40 years I won't be mad at him about it. This really puts things in perspective for me and helped to let go of petty stuff and not nurse feelings of hurt and rancor towards my husband.

Marriage has it's ups and downs. Changing your pattern of interaction with your husband is going to be very tough but you can do it! and it's ok if you mess up. He will also mess up and he will also have a hard time changing his pattern of interaction with you...whether or not he realizes this he will be forced to change as you change; if you are no longer bossing him around that shifts the dynamic of your relationship quite a bit. Change is hard, but if you two both stay comitted and talking to each other you will make it.

New Comforter

Our new comforter set; I love it because it’s so gold and shiny, it cracks me up! the non-shiny side is very plush and soft and comfy against the skin, too. Next step to improving our sleeping space: the walls

See more progress on: Create a nurturing love nest with my partner

The Marriage Blog Blogroll

Here are some other marriage-related blogs or websites. I will add to this list regularly so check back soon!

A Perfect Marriage
Brian & Ruby
Save the Marriage
Wedding Bee

Blogs on Interracial Marriage

Angry Black Cat
Beautiful Black Women, Happily Interracially Married

Simple is Best

Ok! I just decided to call this blog the marriage blog, LOL.