Just as an athlete performs his best in front of enthusiastic fans, your marriage can be its best when surrounded by folks who want to see you succeed.
At Focus on the Family, we encourage couples to cultivate a community of support to cheer them on in their marriage. Such a supportive "community" can be found in strong family relationships, in friendships and even in formal counseling settings. Mentoring — or more specifically, marriage mentoring — is another excellent way to strengthen your marriage through community.
Whether you're interested in finding a mentor or becoming one yourself, this collection of articles is for you.
Tom and Wendy were the typical newly married couple. In their mid-20s, they had dated for nearly two years before getting engaged. They had the blessing of their parents, attended premarital counseling, and were on their way to living happily ever after -- or so everyone thought.
But marriage for Tom and Wendy, like the majority of newlyweds, wasn't all they hoped for. Each of them, for different reasons, felt let down. Unlike the majority of couples, however, Tom and Wendy talked openly about their feelings. Their expectations of marriage were not being met, and they were determined to do something about it.
So on a cold January day four months after their wedding, Tom and Wendy asked for help. Bundled up against the cold, they came into our office and began to shed their coats. As Wendy sipped hot coffee to thaw out, she said, "We have talked to friends and family about what is going on, but we both decided we need more objectivity."
Tom joined in: "Yeah, everybody who knows us just says 'Give it time' or something like that." Tom went on to say that their marriage was not on the rocks and no major overhaul was needed. "I just think we need a little realignment," he said.
We met with him and Wendy for nearly an hour, listening to their experiences. We gave them several exercises to help them explore their misconceptions of marriage and then recommended a few resources. Then we introduced the idea of linking up with a marriage mentor couple.
"What's that?" Wendy asked.
We told them how meeting from time to time with a seasoned married couple could give them a sounding board and a safe place to explore some of their questions about marriage. Like most newly married couples we talked to, Tom and Wendy were very eager to find such a couple. After a bit of discussion, they suggested a married couple in their church.
Neither of them knew this other couple very well, but they respected their marriage from afar and thought they would fit the bill. After a few phone calls and a little more exploration, we made the connection for Tom and Wendy. Over the course of several months, they met three times with their mentors, Nate and Sharon.
Tom and Wendy have been married for more than five years now. They are madly in love and happier than they ever imagined. Here is a portion of a letter they recently sent us:
Dear Les and Leslie, How can we ever thank you for helping us find a marriage mentor couple? Our mentoring relationship with Nate and Sharon ended up being the most important thing we have ever done to build up our marriage. It was nice to have another couple know what we were going through and remain objective at the same time. Someday we hope to give back the gift that Nate and Sharon gave to us by mentoring some newly married couples. We think every couple just starting out should have a mentor.
Dear Les and Leslie,
How can we ever thank you for helping us find a marriage mentor couple? Our mentoring relationship with Nate and Sharon ended up being the most important thing we have ever done to build up our marriage. It was nice to have another couple know what we were going through and remain objective at the same time.
Someday we hope to give back the gift that Nate and Sharon gave to us by mentoring some newly married couples. We think every couple just starting out should have a mentor.
That's not a bad idea. Throughout human history mentoring has been the primary means of passing on knowledge and skills. In the Greek epic The Odyssey, the hero Odysseus had an elderly friend and adviser named Mentor. Before Odysseus went to fight in the Trojan War, he made Mentor the guardian of his son, Telemachus. The Bible is also filled with examples of mentoring (Eli and Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, Moses and Joshua, Naomi and Ruth, Elizabeth and Mary, Barnabas and Paul, Paul and Timothy).
Today, we have a dream that a network of mentors will rise up to become guardians of the next generation of marriages.
But mentoring is in short supply these days. In our modern age, the learning process has shifted. It now relies primarily on computers, classrooms, books and videos. In most cases today the relational connection between the knowledgeable and experienced giver and the receiver of that wisdom has weakened or is nonexistent — especially in the early years of marriage.
"What I need is someone to talk to who has walked down the path I'm just beginning," said Lisa a few weeks into her new marriage. "Whenever I go to my mom or dad with a situation, they end up being a parent or teaching me something I don't really need to learn."
While a mother and father can certainly serve a helpful function in the life of a new bride or groom, they usually cannot offer the distance and objectivity that a mentor gives. For this reason, it is important first to realize exactly what a mentor is not:
In addition, the relationship between a mentor couple and newlyweds has a natural cycle of its own, which is not always predictable. Each mentoring relationship takes on its own style and personality. The amount of time couples spend together and the content they discuss can rarely be prescribed. However, we recommend a minimum of three meetings throughout the newlyweds' first year together: at three months, seven months, and one year after the wedding. These times provide the basic structure upon which additional meetings, meals and phone calls can rest.
An interesting aspect about marriage mentoring is that it can actually help the mentor couple.
"I don't know how much we helped Doug and Sarah," Joan told us, "but we sure got a lot out of it." Joan laughed as she was telling us about being a marriage mentor couple along with Larry, her husband of 18 years.
"Helping a young couple seemed to spark a lot of things in our own marriage that we had neglected," Larry added.
Something wonderful happens when a more mature couple reaches out to a new couple. We call it the boomerang effect. By helping another couple form and live out their dreams, one's own dreams for marriage are reawakened and fulfilled.
Once you take the time to listen to a questioning couple, your own "answers" become clearer. You will also be refreshed by this relationship. Almost by osmosis, the vim and vigor for marriage that a new couple enjoys will begin to rub off on you. Simply being around their energetic spirits will revive and rejuvenate your marriage. There is also an overwhelming sense of having done good, of helping a new couple build a love that will last a lifetime.
Pre-marital training helps couples stay together. In fact, couples who participate in premarital programs experience a 30% increase in marital success over those who do not participate. Focus on the Family has been able to provide this article because of the support of great partners like you.
One of the most common misconceptions about mentoring involves age. Many people assume that in order to be wise enough and mature enough to be a mentor, you have to be at least 83 years old. They assume the only appropriate protégés are 16-year-olds receiving their tutelage on a stuffed leather bench at a grand piano. This is simply not the case.
I'd advise you to ignore age when selecting a mentor. Just look for a person whom you respect and like a lot, and from whom you want to learn.
Younger protégés look at mentors as "older," but mentors look at protégés over 30 simply as "adult." As a protégé, you may be constantly aware of the age difference. If you are over 30, your mentor probably sees you as a young adult friend. The relationship is adult to adult, not adult to child.
This misconception causes qualified people to hesitate about becoming mentors. The fact is, protégés don't expect a mentor to be perfect.
I once spoke at a conference where I asked how many of the attendees expected their mentors to be perfect. Not one hand went up. Then I asked, "How many of you have procrastinated about becoming a mentor because you assumed that you had to be perfect as a mentor?" Probably 95 percent of the hands in the room went up. The bottom line is, mentors are not perfect, and they don't need to be.
This misconception is obviously related to the one before it. The same logic applies. Mentors are human. They do not have all the answers. They never will have all the answers. Their role is sometimes to be the answer, sometimes to have the answer, but most of the time to know where to find the answer.
Fundamentally, a mentor connects a protégé to resources: his personal network, appropriate seminars, libraries, helpful videos, audio tapes and books, and even support groups. The mentor is never required to have all the answers or all the resources. S/he is simply a connector to many resources that the protégé needs during the growth process.
As a mentor, your attitude should be, "I'm here to help you, and I'll do what I can."
Believe me, no such curriculum exists. The mentoring process is unique to each protégé. Learning is based on the protégé's agenda, priorities, questions, and needs — not on the mentor's preset program.
Within a trust relationship, protégés are able to ask questions they would never feel comfortable asking most people. They learn best when their need to know is greatest. Therefore, the single most teachable moment of any protégé's life is the few seconds immediately following a sincere question. No curriculum, checklist or theory could replace a mentor's life experience and compassion in such a teachable moment.
My observation is that many people focus on accountability for one of two reasons: they enjoy holding other people accountable but do not particularly want to be held accountable, or they lack self-control and try to put that responsibility in someone else's hands. Obviously, both of these motivations are unhealthy and would be detrimental to a mentoring relationship. Accountability should not be the focus of the mentoring relationship. The focus should be supporting, strengthening, and encouraging.
Of course, in the natural process of helping the protégés grow to maturity, you will use an element of accountability. For instance, you can hold your protégé accountable for following through on something if a little accountability support helps to form a new habit, reach a new goal, or resist some temptation. But do not feel that, as a mentor, you are supposed to hold your protégés accountable every step of the way. Their accountability needs to be developed in terms of responsibility to god, government and other legitimate authorities, not to you.
The following checklist is a rather detailed, point-by-point academic exercise to help you find the ideal mentor for you. This checklist is only an attempt to help bring clarity in defining the kind of person for whom you are looking.
But even before you start reading this checklist, let me suggest that what you're really looking for is a person that you know cares for you, believes in you, and naturally encourages you. A good mentor is a person you enjoy being with, who has more experience than you have, and who would be happy to help you win in life. If you already have that person in mind, this checklist will only confirm your intuitive guess that this person would make a great mentor.
The checklist is also helpful if you have two or three mentors to consider, but cannot determine which one you will ask. The mentoring checklist can bring out a few fine points that may help you make your final decision.
Your Ideal Mentor Is…
Honest With You
For example, one of my male protégés was very much a man but he had effeminate gestures. When the time was right, after several hours of talking about a wide variety of topics, I decided the time had come to be dangerously candid. I actually had to teach this friend how to use his hands and his head. That's an example of raw honesty that was objective enough to help the protégé see clearly his potential and also the roadblocks keeping him from that potential. It's a little like being a loving uncle or aunt, someone who will take you aside on occasion and tell you things you need to hear but frankly don't necessarily want to hear.
A Model for You
Thomas Carlyle's words are worth repeating: "Be what you would have your pupils to be." When I take my associate team along for client consultations I ask them, "What did you learn by watching me as well as by listening to me?" Part of your mentor's role is teaching you by letting you watch her/him, in addition to telling you things.
Deeply Committed to You
It may be a little difficult to see a mentor or a protégé as family. The Apostle Paul, when writing to his young protégé, Timothy, captures this thought when he said, "Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity" (1 Timothy 5;1). Even though they are probably not blood relatives, see both your mentor and your protégé with a family level of commitment.
Open and Transparent
Cheryl, my wife, often encourages me, "Your associate team only hears about your successes. Let them hear also about your failures." I have to watch very carefully that I tell my associate team not only when I have won, but also when I have lost and feel like a failure. For example, my associates often get the false impression that I am always "feeling like I'm on top of the world" because I am typically "up" when I'm with them. When they learned I have several days a year when I am deeply discouraged and feel depressed, they realized that being a consultant wasn't only for "super positive" people, but regular human beings.
Every mentor has struggles that the protégé never sees. The protégé might say with some hesitation, "My mentor can do this, but I don't know if I'll ever make it because I have problems with discipline (or doubt, or self-worth, or fatigue)." Ask your mentor to share her/his struggles, along with the success stories they re trying to teach.
A Teacher
Many people do things well, but don't know how to tell another person how they did it. At one time they learned how to do a given exercise (an accounting practice, a writing style, a trick of the trade) but have long since forgotten how they do it. Look for a mentor who can tell you how and why s/he did, or didn't, do something.
One Who Believes in Your Potential
My father-in-law, Joe Kimbel, is one of my life mentors. Once he introduced me to his friends by saying, "I'd like to have you meet my son-in-law, Bobb Biehl." Then he added, "Some day they'll say, 'I'd like to have you meet Joe Kimbel, Bobb Biehl's father-in-law.'" That very thing happened 20 years later in Orlando, Fla., and I was humbled when I recalled his gracious prediction.
Your ideal mentor needs to be the kind of person who looks at you and says, "Yes, I think this person has tremendous potential. I think if I invest some of my life in this person, she/he has what it takes to make a real difference." Surprisingly, most Christian leaders with whom I have worked say they have never had a single person say to them, "You are a leader!"
One Who Can Help You Define Your Dream and a Plan to Turn Your Dream into Reality
Ideally, you are looking for a mentor who can help you clarify things that are in your head and in your heart. The mentor helps you answer the "dream question": "How can I make the most significant difference for God in my lifetime?"
Once clear, the ideal mentor can help you decide which of these dreams seem realistic and which do not.
Note: Just because your mentor says you can or cannot achieve something doesn't necessarily make it so. Your mentor is simply a human being trying her/his best to help you. Take their input seriously. The final decision, and responsibility, of the direction of your life obviously rests with you. Mentors are just there to help.
Once the realism factor has been established, she/he can help you develop a plan to move from where you are to where you ultimately dream of being.
Successful in Your Eyes
You must feel that your mentor is the kind of person you would like to be like some day, in some ways.
Open to Learning From You, As Well As Teaching You
This might sound odd as a prerequisite for being a good mentor because it seems like the mentor's job is to teach and the protégé's job is to learn. But I have found that if I remain teachable, then I am modeling the teachability that I want my protégé to have. You can learn from everyone. What's more, I have found that as a mentor pours himself into a person and gives and gives and gives, sooner or later that person in whom he has invested so much will want to give something back.
Let's say I, as your mentor, have a whole sack of oranges. You're thirsty and I give you some of my oranges. Sooner or later you'll want to give something back to me. You might say, "How about a tangerine from me?" If I say "No, thank you," that makes it seem as though what I give is valuable but what you give is not. It shuts off the chemistry. If I the mentor can learn from you, then suddenly mentoring becomes a two-way street. You think to yourself, "Hey, my mentor respects me" (and vice versa).
Willing to Stay Primarily on Your Agenda, Not Her/His Own
This is part of the definition of the mentoring relationship.
In all of your analysis, be careful not to forget the simple truth that what you're really looking for is a person who you know cares for you, believes in you, and encourages you. A good mentor is a person who you naturally enjoy being with, who has more experience than you have, who would be happy to help you win in life, to help you grow in sensitive areas most other friends simply "put up with" on a day to day basis. If you have found this person you have found a mentor.
Do you wonder how you can help friends and family members who are struggling in marriage? Here are some time-tested tips and resources to move them away from divorce court and toward reconciliation.
"I know you were trying to help," she said, her voice trembling. "But you didn't. In fact, you made things much worse. Trying to save a marriage is hard enough without having to battle the church leadership committee at the same time." The woman sitting before us could not stem the tide of tears streaming down her face. Neither could we.
When we agreed to serve a term on the church leadership committee, none of us suspected we would have to sit through meetings like this. Ordinary people composed our group – a contractor, a housewife, an investment strategist – all baby boomers like myself. We expected nothing more difficult than planning Pastor Appreciation Sunday.
Eighteen months before, this woman had moved away from her husband. After 17 years of marriage, she said she needed space to work on the overwhelming anger she felt toward her spouse. Her husband, a doctor, readily admitted to being a classic workaholic, spending more than 70 hours a week on his business. He refused to change his work habits. Their conflict had been brewing for years, finally boiling to the crisis point.
They worked with a well-respected and highly trained Christian counselor. Both worked hard to grow as individuals and continued their participation in small groups. Both were actively involved in church ministry. In the face of their deteriorating relationship, they did all the right things. Neither partner had an interest in another person. They seemed to want healing.
But when months passed without apparent resolution, and members of our congregation expressed concern, we took matters into our own hands. With our pastor's help, we did our best. We asked them to meet with our committee. What began as an effort to inquire about their progress digressed into a tearful four-hour counseling session. The net effect was that of a Senate inquiry. Our members offered "helpful suggestions" that we were not qualified to give. She told us she felt singled out and humiliated, having 12 strangers listen while her husband complained publicly about her performance as a wife.
The separation continued.
Our next strategy was to ask them to pray weekly with a couple on the committee. This wife refused. "My husband doesn't need another excuse to stay away from home." We threatened to remove them from ministry. As a keyboard player, she reminded us that ministry was her most important connection to the body of Christ. Did we really want to sever her closes relationships? In all, she viewed our efforts as both judgmental and malicious, effectively turning them against each other and away from the very support systems they needed. We nearly drove them from our church.
As leadership, we gave in to the pressure of outward appearance. When this couple was doing the best they could, we pushed them harder. While they concentrated on healing, we added another burden, sapping vital energy needed for the work they faced.
In spite of our clumsy efforts to "help," the woman eventually returned home. Remarkably, she had the courage to meet with our committee again. She told us what she'd been through. And she did more. She handed each of us a copy of a list she'd carefully prepared under the headline, "Helping Couples in Trouble."
Her suggestions made sense. One of our members said, "I wish I'd had this list while you were hurting. I wanted to help, I just didn't know how." Perhaps your church and even you could benefit from the simple suggestions she offered:
Her list made a great deal of sense to us. After all, when a brother or sister faces illness or injury we remember to do the practical things. Why shouldn't we do as much for those in emotional difficulty as well? I agree with my other committee member; I wish I'd had the list. But now that I do, I have tools to help couples struggling through a painful season in their marriage. Rather than hope for the best, I'm going to do what I can to help them through and refrain from that which I'm not qualified for.