By Lavern Nissley, Tuesday@10:10 blog post

Have you ever heard of the Vector Principle? It is based upon 360 degrees in a compass where North is 0 or 360, East is 90, South is 180 and West is 270. Airport runways are named according to their directional orientation, like "Runway 18" pointing south (180 degrees).

So what does that have to do with making small positive changes in relationships?

A small heading, or directional, change of say 3 degrees may not appear like much at the start. But following those headings will lead to a huge difference over time and distance.

The picture at right has an airplane bound for Paris making a slight heading deviation of several degrees and ending up in Egypt. Quite a difference!

The vector principle gives hope to those facing marriage and relationship challenges. Even small positive changes now, sustained over time, will lead to a much different outcome than no changes at all.

Our RINGS Experience classes are based upon making small, manageable changes that, over time, make a huge difference. For Ronda and me, the RINGS Chat on a daily basis has us at a much healthier place than if we had never made this small change years ago.

What small positive changes could you make today?

By Lavern Nissley for Tuesday@10:10 blogpost

One of the questions we often ask couples is, "What kind of examples did you have of a healthy marriage?"

Unfortunately, not many couples refer to their own parents as an example to follow. In a room full of 12-15 couples, perhaps 1 or 2 people raise their hands to affirm their own parents' marriage example. Likely the "chilling effect" for many millennials whose parents didn't leave them a healthy marriage legacy is to shy away from marriage altogether.

While no marriage is perfect, wouldn't it be great to see more and more children quickly identifying their own parents as models of healthy marriages? Instead of behaviors to be avoided ("I'll never have a marriage like my parents!"), how refreshing it would be to hear, "My parents gave me a blueprint for what a good/great marriage looks like. I won't settle for anything else."

Think about what your own children would say about your marriage. "Their marriage was characterized by . . ." What words will they use to describe it?

We love working with couples who really want to maximize their marriage health. What a breath of fresh air! They seem motivated NOT to get stuck in a generational rut that leaves both partners damaged and children clueless on how to communicate and resolve conflicts productively.

Often it requires some education, or re-education. Those couples who go through The RINGS Experience (a class we offer for couples) walk away with tangible tools to leave a healthy marriage legacy. Spending time with a healthy couple or two can provide inspiration and motivation to settle for nothing but a beautiful marriage.

If that's your dream, we would love to hear about it and how your own marriage journey is progressing toward it. If you're needing help getting to marriage health, we are glad to help.

By Lavern Nissley for Tuesday@10:10 blogpost

Our 37th anniversary dinner on December 29 kind of ended in a train wreck. Somehow we got into a tangle about expectations surrounding finances. Emotion. Escalation. Exasperation. Things said that we regretted. If you've been married any length of time, you get the picture. More on how it worked out later.

February 7-14 is National Marriage Week, timed to coincide with Valentine's Day. "Love" is a big thing this time of year with all kinds of nice flowers, hearts, candies and items that say "love is in the air". And marriage, of all human relationships, should reflect the presence of love, right?

But is love ALL we need?

No.

Love IS an important ingredient in any human relationship. But, talking marriages now . . . it sure isn't the ONLY thing we need. We also need SKILLS on how to communicate and how to resolve conflicts productively. Without those skills love has a way of "cooling off" and damaging relationships.

The 8 hour RINGS Experience for couples is a way to learn, practice and implement habits and skills that really keep the love "hot". Here's what several people had to say about the class:

• "This class brought us an intimacy level that we had been lacking for about a year."
• "Thank you so much! I had a very negative opinion of this course and marriage prior to today, but WOW, what 8 hours will do!"
• "Great experience! I now feel if we use these tools, our marriage can be saved."

Back to our ill-fated anniversary dinner. We still struggle and have to work hard in our marriage, even after 37 years. But we're so glad for the tools/skills we've acquired along the way to help us navigate the inevitable train wrecks. We were able to talk through our conflict productively in about 30 minutes and end our 37th anniversary on a positive note.

​Love wasn't the only thing we needed. Several simple relationship skills quickly got us back on track after the derailment.

By Lavern and Ronda Nissley
How we were forever affected by a marriage retreat and home invasion in March, 1990 - 11 years into our marriage.
 
In March of 1990 we were invited to attend a weekend Marriage Seminar by a friend of ours. At that time, we had been married for 11 years, had 3 kids (1, 7 and 10 years of age) and were well immersed in our respective careers – Lavern as a Pastor, Ronda as a Financial Analyst. We didn’t really feel like OUR marriage needed help, but we agreed to go to find resources for “the other couples” in our church.

That weekend changed the course of our marriage in two important ways. (1) We made a commitment to pray together on a daily basis;  (2) We became intentional about developing a “one-flesh” marriage where we worked side-by-side – completing each other instead of competing with each other.

That weekend also birthed within us a calling and heart passion for marriage ministry. We envisioned the rest of our lives invested in other marriages as we ourselves lived out God’s original blueprint for marriages from Genesis 2:21-25.
At the end of the weekend we gathered our children around us and let them know that things would be different – that we were committing to pray with each other and for our family on a daily basis. Little did we know how important that commitment would become in the days and weeks ahead.

Two days later we woke up to discover the incomprehensible. While we were sleeping, our home was invaded and an unknown male entered through a basement window and victimized our 10-year old daughter.  Ronda found our daughter in her bedroom – pale and trembling uncontrollably.  It took us days to comprehend fully what had happened.

In the aftermath – the trip to the ER, the interviews, the detectives, the counselors, the reactions of family and friends, the investigation, the suspects – we sought to make sense of the senseless. We were scared. We were angry – angry at God; angry at the offender (whoever he was); angry at the police; angry at insensitive comments. The next night we all slept in one room with the door barricaded and a baseball bat nearby – the man had threatened to come back and kill her if she told anyone. A friend offered us a handgun. We were ready to do anything to protect our family.

Out of our hurt, we prayed. Within a month we launched a marriage group in our living room. We taught our first marriage class, and we shared openly about our journey while attempting to practice what we were teaching. In hindsight, we believe the principles and skills we learned kept our marriage from blowing apart during that traumatic and stressful time in our lives. Gradually, the healing came, and we began to put our lives back together. The offender was apprehended 18 months later in Florida.

We continued to lead marriage groups and retreats within our church and around the country, while continuing with our “day jobs” – dreaming about some day working together exclusively in marriage ministry. That “some day” opportunity arrived in 2005 with an invitation to assume directorship of the fledgling Marriage Savers of Clark County – the predecessor of Marriage Resource Center of Miami Valley.
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We believe there is another type of home invasion experienced all too often by far too many families across this country – DIVORCE. It tears apart families and destroys the innocence of children.  We commit ourselves with the same intensity with which we defend our own family to supporting other marriages and equipping couples with the tools to go the distance. We commit to walking the journey with couples - not having arrived ourselves, but always learning. We commit to encourage, inspire, support and raise up other champions for the cause of healthy marriages.
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What we do is not just a job….it’s our life.

By Lavern Nissley, Tuesday@10:10 blog post

​Ronda and I have intersected with hundreds of married couples over the past 25 years. We've noticed the following:

• Healthy married couples almost always have a DAILY point of connection that enables them to share information, appreciations, dreams, needs and how they are feeling.
• Struggling married couples almost never have such a point of connection.
• Hmmmm . . .

So, the RINGS Chat from our RINGS Experience class for couples was designed to help ALL couples experience a DAILY point of connection that could be refreshing, non-threatening and fun. And able to be done in a compressed or expanded time frame. For us it's usually 10-15 minutes every day.

Does it prevent all conflicts and disagreements? No. We're still human and prone to selfishness. The point of the RINGS Chat is NOT to sprinkle magical fairy dust over ourselves and have a "lived happily ever after" relationship. But the RINGS Chat, over time, does build closeness and intimacy. Isn't that worth 10-15 minutes a day?

If you have been through The RINGS Experience, you already know the basic layout of the RINGS Chat; if not, then we would love to have you take a peek at it in the video demo at right. Then try it out yourselves.

For RINGS Experience alumni, we invite you to weigh in on social media about your own journey with the RINGS Chat. Let us know how it has worked for you, what adaptations you've made and any encouragement to "newbies".

Disclaimer: Not all couples will benefit from the RINGS Chat. Where the 3 A's exist (abuse, affairs, addictions), professional resources like counseling/intervention should be sought.

​Enjoy!

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