One of the first things I did for myself when I started studying about marriage and the Bible was to draw a column chart of 24 hours over 7 days. This allowed me to analyze my emotions for a week at a time. I colored the boxes yellow for positive thoughts and black for negative emotions. I titled the chart, “Are You Fun to Live With?”
My results for the first week shocked me. I couldn’t believe all the black squares even though I thought I was a very positive person.
Then when I started teaching classes, I reproduced the chart for my students. They were as surprised at their responses as I had been with mine. We all agreed that being able to visualize how our moods varied helped us identify attitudes we needed to change.
Plus, the charts motivated us to recognize triggers and catch negative thoughts on the fly before we had to color a box black. We liked becoming more fun to live with because it was also more fun to live in our own skins. It became a healthy way to love ourselves so we could love our families more. Unfortunately, adding the chart to my books wasn’t an option in those early pre-computer days, so the activity fell into disuse.
The New “Are You Fun to Live With?” Chart
I started this year with an expanded version of the original chart to help an older couple in my Personality and Sexuality Breakthrough Coaching program. They were battling decades of deeply engrained negative attitudes and needed extra help.
The #1 point I stress in my books and coaching is that lovemaking is all about attitudes. The better your attitudes, the more you will enjoy ecstasy and sensations you didn’t know were possible. But if you miss it in your daytime attitudes, you will miss it in your nighttime lovemaking.
After all, the theme of the Song of Solomon is that lovemaking is about attitudes. Take care of your thoughts, and your body will take care of itself. If you don’t believe it, review the science in God’s 11 Secrets of Sex for a Lifetime of Passion, Embrace The Song of Solomon’s Soulmating and Lovemaking Guide.
Dr. Marie N. Robinson emphasizes in The Power of Sexual Surrender for Christians to overcome sexual inhibitions, you must develop positive, loving attitudes toward:
- Your mate
- Yourself
- Lovemaking
The older couple had good attitudes toward God and the scriptures, and they worked hard on the homework I assigned. But they needed something more to break their unproductive thinking patterns.
I introduced the chart to them during Week 4 of my 8-week program. They continued to turn in their charts throughout the remaining four weeks. The husband and wife benefitted so much from the exercise that they recommended I begin using the chart with the first week of coaching and carry it through all eight weeks. I followed their advice and made the chart a weekly assignment for subsequent clients.
You Can Download the “Are You Fun to Live With?” Chart
The “Are You Fun to Live With?” chart turned out to be such a powerful tool for giving insights and promoting change in both withholding spouses and loving mates that I decided to share it with you. You can download the chart here.
It helps you analyze at least 10 emotions with room for more:
Yellow—Happy
Pink—Loving
Green—Thankful
Orange—Prayerful
Purple—Productive
Light Blue—Anxious
Red—Exhausted
Dark Blue—Bitter
Gray—Negative
Black—Angry
Case Histories on Using the Chart
A husband’s charts showed that he was stressed at work. By the time he made it home through traffic, he was emotionally and physically exhausted. Instead of interacting with his wife and children, he hunkered down in alone time to recover from his day.
However, he found an easy solution by scheduling 5- to 10-minute breaks throughout the day on his work calendar. He got up from his desk and out of his office for brief walks. Then when he got home, he spent a few minutes in his car destressing from the rush hour traffic before going inside. Taking time to regroup at work and home helped him greet his family with a smile. Over the next several weeks, his charts continued to show more positive squares.
Notice how the colors changed over a 6-week period. His anxiousness, exhaustion, and negativity gave way to more loving and happy emotions:
Week 1
Week 4
Week 6
Two wives’ charts showed that they needed to do the same thing this husband did. They needed to take breaks during the day to re-energize. The breaks enabled them to color more squares with positive colors. Their children also responded to their mothers becoming more fun to live with.
One of the participants said, “Because of the chart, I am trying to catch myself before I spiral and take a break to breathe.”
Another husband filled out the chart while he was gone to a weeklong work conference. His chart was positive throughout the week, but it turned dark the day before he was to fly home. By the time he got home, he was in a bad mood that took him a week to work through it.
When he asked himself what was going on, he realized the same scenario had been happening for decades. While he was gone and working around interesting and enthusiastic people, he was happy. But when he started packing to go home, he subconsciously dreaded seeing his wife, knowing she would continue complaining and rejecting him sexually.
Realizing how his marriage affected his moods, the husband determined to work harder at learning how to fight fair. He knew he had to deal with the core problems in his marriage. He acknowledged that just as his wife needed to work on her distorted anger, blame, and rejection, he had his own hurt and anger issues to address.
Another husband had the opposite response on going home after a week-long sales seminar. He was also in a decades-long sexless marriage. But instead of feeling depressed, he allowed himself to look forward to seeing his wife. He dared to dream that she would have missed him and would initiate lovemaking. It never happened, and he was overwhelmed with hurt feelings.
When his wife asked what was wrong, he told her he was devastated that she didn’t miss him enough to want to have passionate sex soon after he got home.
She indignantly replied that she had no way of knowing what his expectations were as she launched into a tirade of distorted, inhibited blame. Unvoiced expectations create the perfect opportunity to be hurt and disappointed. Sexless marriages don’t resolve on their own no matter how long the loving mate is gone from home. The last thing the depriver is looking forward to is sex when the mate returns.
The more weeks my clients filled out their happiness charts, the more squares they colored pink for love and yellow for happiness. The insights the charts gave them into their mental habits were invaluable. It showed that they were in more control of their attitudes than they previously thought.
Plus, the charts served as report cards for each week. The couples could see in their kaleidoscope of emotions how they were transforming into more loving persons who were fun to live with. They took charge of experiencing what the Apostle Paul admonished the Philippians to do:
Philippians 4:8-9: "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”
We Can Change Only Ourselves
We cannot change anyone else. But we can change how we react to other people. We can set boundaries with them. And we can renew our resolve to challenge the sin that is trying to thrive in our homes.
If you are the loving, deprived mate, the purpose of the “Are You Fun to Live With:” chart is not to gloss over your sexless spouse’s sins against you. It is to give you strength and insights to help you stop blaming yourself for your spouse’s inhibitions. You must still study and work to set loving boundaries to let your spouse know, “It is not okay for you to treat me the way you do.”
Bitterness Leads to Distorted Thinking and Moods
Bitterness destroys a person’s ability to think clearly and to make wise decisions for themselves and their families.
Hebrews 12:15: “See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled….”
“Defiled” means “1. To dye with another color, to stain. 2. To defile, pollute, sully, contaminate, soil in a physical and a moral sense” (Thayer G3392).
Paul uses the analogy of the root of a poisonous weed springing up and rapidly growing to cause trouble with its bitter fruit. Being defiled carries the idea of being dipped into a large vat of dye so that the person is no longer recognizable.
Bitterness so warps a person’s thinking that they lose touch with reality. Paul tells us to fear letting bitterness into our hearts.
Dr. Robinson emphasizes how the inhibited spouses’ distorted thinking causes them to give in to bitterness and anger. Because they cannot think soundly, they quickly blame their loving mates for their own hateful attitudes. (See Chapter 6: “Sexual Inhibitions Linked to Cognitive Distortions” in The Power of Sexual Surrender for Christians.)
Protecting our hearts from bitterness helps keep us from fighting sin with sin. Many participants in the Sexless Marriages Survey: With Self-Assessment Checklists were dismayed to discover that they had been fighting sin with sin. They were trying to show their withholding spouses how it felt to be rejected. However, fighting sin with sin seldom works as it only increases the abuses in our homes.
Case History on Drawing Boundaries
One husband realized that everyone’s mood changed during supper time, which was dominated by his wife’s angry tirades to a captive audience. He drew a boundary and told her that the children and he were no longer going to eat while listening to her verbal abuse. If she could not control her tongue, the children and he would start going out to eat without her. He made it clear that silent anger at the dinner table wouldn’t be an acceptable substitute for her open rage.
Although this boundary did not transform his depriving wife, it held her accountable for her dinner-time sins against the family. His wife chose to be pleasant. He continued to teach her how to fight fair, so they could begin to solve the core issues.
I Don't Use the Chart as a Standalone
In all instances of using the chart for myself and with my students and clients, I always coupled it with studying God’s word regarding marriage and with interview-type prayer of being honest with God regarding our attitudes. I never used the chart for myself or assigned it to others as a standalone assignment. We can’t take negative thoughts out of our minds without replacing them with something positive, wholesome, and true to God’s word.
When you look at the chart, you’ll see that it begins and ends with “thankfulness.” In God’s formula for solving all marriage problems in 1 Timothy 4:1-5, Paul emphasizes three steps:
- Thankfulness
- God’s word
- Prayer
Paul explains how God’s word plays an important part in overcoming marriage problems:
2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (NIV)
The “Are You Fun to Live With? chart is a tool to use alongside the scriptures to help us become more self-aware so we can see areas in our daily lives where we need to make changes according to God’s instructions. It also reveals attitudes that we need to ask forgiveness for to make corrections.
Over 50 years ago, my original students and I filled out our charts while we worked through the first edition of Male and Female: God’s Genius. We fine-tuned our understanding of the creation and God’s plan for husbands and wives to be guardians of love. That helped us change our attitudes from the inside out toward our spouses, ourselves, and God’s design for lovemaking.
The most common remark I heard from those women was, “I’m falling in love all over again!” The chart is about replacing negative moods with genuine love according to God’s word.
Your Assignment
If you are in a sexless marriage, whether you are the withholding spouse or the deprived mate, you will probably be shocked at how black your thoughts are toward your companion, yourself, and God’s design for sexual love. Doing this activity can help you become more self-aware and self-accountable to accelerate your journey to become the loving person God created you to be.
If you allow bitterness to reign in your heart, you cannot think clearly enough to make healthy decisions for yourself, your spouse, and your children. I recommend that in addition to the “Are You Fun to Live With?” chart, you read The Power of Sexual Surrender for Christians and Male and Female: God’s Genius to help revise your thinking.
I challenge you to print at least 4 charts for 4 weeks and see what you can learn about yourself, the environment you live in, and the home you create for your family. If you profited from this self-examination, print out charts for 4 more weeks. Keep reading and studying to let God’s word replace the dysfunctional childhood habits you carried into your marriage with God’s love.
May God bless us all on our journeys of love,
To God be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Patsy Rae
As a Certified Advanced Personality Trainer Patsy Rae Dawson developed a process to put individuals and couples on a fast-track to true intimacy by first taking off their survival mask to free up their God-given genetic passions. Are you in a sexless marriage? Take Patsy's free Sexless Marriages Survey with Self-Assessment Checklists. Six checklists of intensely personal, simple questions help you analyze the true state of your relationship so you can start solving the core problems.
The Marriage: A Taste of Heaven Series
Amazing Resources for
Speaking God’s Beautiful Language of Love
The Marriage: A Taste of Heaven series challenges you to see the Bible in a new light as God's soulmating and lovemaking guide for a lifetime of passionate sex. The books bring the Bible to life to offer hope for solving the #1 googled marriage problem: "sexless marriages" and "dead bedrooms." For those in good marriages, the series shows how to take their love life to a whole new level of ecstasy.
Growing in love is a lifetime duty of marriage.
Male and Female: God’s Genius—Soulmate to Fall in Love All Over Again: This book develops the fine points of soulmating attitudes that lead to a lifetime of ecstasy. Beginning with the creation, it promotes love and admiration for the opposite sex and oneself.
The Power of Sexual Surrender for Christians—Awaken Orgasmic Attitudes to Overcome Inhibited Sexual Desire and Pleasure: Learn the formula for changing your mindset to release your body for sexual ecstasy by overcoming childhood myths, trauma, and inhibitions.
God’s 11 Secrets of Sex for a Lifetime of Passion—Embrace the Song of Solomon’s Soulmating and Lovemaking Guide: This verse-by-verse study serves as the foundation of marriage as it portrays the 4-parts of one-flesh love—intellectual, emotional, sexual, and spiritual intimacy.
God’s People Make the Best Lovers—Thrill to God’s Way of a Man with a Maid: This book studies the mechanics of love necessary for enjoying vaginal orgasms and cervical kisses. It exposes the Victorian and feminist mindsets that still harm couples today. Each of these books covers a different area of intellectual, emotional, sexual, and spiritual love and supports the others.
Unleash the power of the scriptures to transform your life.
Your marriage will never be the same!