Prayer in marriage
Is prayer important in marriage?
Scientists study Prayer in Marriage.
Email from Bill and Cynthia: How to teach prayer to engaged couple?
Follow up letter from Bill and Cynthia about there own experience of learning to pray.
Teaching engaged couple to pray by Pat and June Kennedy
Value of prayer in marriage by Andrew Greeley
Is prayer important in marriage?
Efforts to “prove” the value of prayer by scientific method have been difficult because there are so many variables and even so many different ideas about what qualifies as prayer. However, those who have interviewed married couples who have developed habits of prayer consistently conclude that couples who pray together are above average in their satisfaction with their marriages and below average the probability of divorce.
My own theory about why couples who pray together are “above average” in the project of sustaining a healthy and satisfactory marriage is that real prayer requires a person make him/her self completely open (vulnerable) to God…and also to his/her spouse. When a couple prays together there is less room for pretense, untruth of any kind or any kind of attitude of superiority over one’s spouse; each of them will be encouraged to develop attitudes of humility, service, listening and caring for….and all of this is good for marriage!!! Social scientists are currently making a scientific study that looks very promising (see next)
Scientists study Prayer in Marriage.
Julie Baumgardner – August 2009
“Based on our research, prayer clearly impacts marriage relationships in a positive way”
The Coalition for Couples, Families and Marriage Education held its annual international conference in Orlando FL where those who work to strengthen marriages heard the latest research on marriage and divorce. I was particularly intrigued with a presentation given by Frank Fincham, director of the Florida State University Family Institute, and his colleagues on the power of prayer in marriage.
If you are a person of faith you probably believe prayer has an impact on your marriage, but can you prove it?
What we know based on research is this: More than 90 percent of Americans experience marriage by age 55 and 90 percent of Americans say they pray at least occasionally. A whopping three-quarters of them say they pray at least weekly.
Mr. Fincham wondered about the impact of prayer on marriage.
“We recruited people to participate in a four-week study where they were randomly assigned to either pray for their partner, engage in general prayer or set aside time to think about the positive things in life and about their partner,” Mr. Fincham said at the conference. “Twice a week, they were asked to record online what they had done.”
Mr. Fincham’s research showed that those who prayed for their partner showed a greater willingness to forgive their partner for a transgression, and other surveys of couples married 25 years or longer found that forgiveness was one of the top three most important characteristics of their relationship that allowed them to stay married.
“Based on our research, prayer clearly impacts marriage relationships in a positive way,” Mr. Fincham said. “Our next question was whether or not prayer can protect a marriage partner from risk factors? Specifically, does talking to God make college students less inclined to drink?”
To answer this question, researchers took a group of college students and randomly assigned them to either keep a daily journal or pray for their partners. For those students who prayed, their partner’s alcohol consumption was reduced by 50 percent. Lest you wonder if this was a one-time outcome, the study has been replicated.
Mr. Fincham and his group knew this was an important finding because alcohol is associated with bad things in relationships, including intimate partner violence and unfaithfulness. They even found that college students who were in committed dating relationships who prayed for their partner saw a decrease in infidelity. But what about marriage?
It is basically inevitable that conflict will occur when two people come together in marriage. Initially, the couple is focused on shared goals, such as building a life together, but as time goes by, those goals may fall to the wayside as individual opportunities arise for each person, creating stress on the relationship.
Focusing on being grateful is one way to relieve that stress, and studies similar to Mr. Fincham’s have shown that prayer increases gratitude. Mr. Fincham noted that being more grateful in life is associated with better mental health and better mental health is associated with better relationships.
“Our research shows that praying for your partner can bring you back to the common goals,” Mr. Fincham said. “When people pray, they become one with their spouse. A subtle shift occurs. Praying regulates your emotion and it never leads to anger. ‘Knee-mail’ is social support available 24/7. We know that couples who have access to social support tend to negotiate their relationship affairs better than anyone else.”
Incorporating prayer for your spouse into your life can be done in small steps. Start by taking a few minutes to focus on the things you like about your spouse, ask for help in relating to him or her, and be specific about what you would like to see happen in your relationship. Be willing to forgive and to realize your need for forgiveness. Try praying together and watch what happens in response. You just might be surprised.
[Julie Baumgardner is the executive director of First Things First, an organization dedicated to strengthening marriages and families through education, collaboration and mobilization.]
Question about teaching Prayer from Bill & Cynthia.
April 12, 2007 email from Bill and Cynthia Sarles:
Dear Father Rob,
We are working with a couple named Christian and Amanda. She is Catholic; he has been baptized in another faith, does not see himself as “religious” but is a good person and seems to believe in God.
We had planned to teach them how to pray next meeting and gently brought that up as we were finishing up last night. Amanda immediately said, “He won’t do that!” and he agreed, saying he just doesn’t want to pray by himself, much less with Amanda.
Now that he’s told us where he stands, we think it might be unwise to try to show them how to pray together because it might give him a reason to “shut down” on the whole marriage preparation process….but we don’t want to leave prayer out because we think it is really important.
What would you advise, please? How should we approach this?
Thank you for your help,
Bill and Cynthia Sarles
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Dear Bill and Cynthia,
This is a very good question. Years ago I am not sure I would have even gotten this question from a Sponsor Couple because I think I did not place as much value on prayer….and there was no chapter on Prayer in my book.
But, the longer I live, the more I come to see the value of prayer….for each of us as individuals…and for couples/families and religious communities. When I think of the healthiest marriages and healthiest religious communities I know…..prayer (individual and communal) is one of the features that seem to be symptomatic (in a positive sense). And I think the reason is that “prayer” (especially prayer with others) necessarily involves intimacy. To put it another way, there is no way to pray without opening one’s self to others….and that is exactly why prayer is both “terrifying” and one of the most powerful relationship tools (for deepening intimacy).
If this makes sense to you……I would share with the couple your own ~ probably difficult ~ journey in learning how to pray (your struggles with the challenges of intimacy that you had/have to deal with) and the benefits you have experienced that motivate you to continue the effort (especially when it is difficult).
Let me assume that you are not talking about prayer with this couple because you are unwilling to accept them as different, and you are not talking about prayer because you are trying to force them to change……rather you are talking about prayer because ~ from your personal experience ~ it is one of many topics (communication skills, managing finances, dealing with family of origin issues, family planning, etc, etc) that couples need to learn/practice if they are going to be successful in the vocation of Christian marriage.
After you read this, you are welcome to call me at 210-557-3660 and we could talk more about this…….I think my main point is that I would not simply omit this topic (prayer) any more than I would omit talking about “family of origin” or “finances” or “marital communication.” At the same time, I also admit it may be a very big challenge to engage them in dialogue about a topic about which they appear to be quite defensive. A possible approach is to invite them to share their thoughts and feelings about prayer…and do lots of listening (accepting what they have to say!)….you might be able to agree to most of their concerns/fears/false concepts about prayer….and share your own struggles in overcoming your false concepts about prayer. I think that lots (perhaps most) folks have seen and/or experienced really bad examples of “prayer” on TV (both Protestant and Catholic TV) and even in churches (for example, “Let us pray for our troops”….but what about Jesus directive to “Pray for your enemies!”).
It might be a good idea to encourage them to move ahead and study the chapter on Prayer and deal with this issue rather than put it off……..I know they are not likely to understand this, but when you think about it, can a marriage really be a Christian marriage when the spouses opt to have no relationship with Jesus/God. (For a person to say: “I have a relationship with God/Jesus, but I am not into prayer” is much like saying “I have a great marriage because I told my wife I love her on our wedding day….but I am not into this intimacy stuff and I don’t need to tell my wife I love her…if she is a good wife, she already knows this.”) I am willing to bet they really DO NOT UNDERSTAND this.
The best thing you have going for you is that you are NOT the priest….you are an “ordinary” lay couple whose only motive is to share with them how to be successful in Christian marriage.
There is a reason why so many marriages come apart……and most of the time, it boils down to the fact that the two people have lost the ability to be intimate with one another. I have never talked with a couple whose marriage is coming apart and listened to them tell me they are praying together each day but it is not doing any good.
Peace and Love,
Fr. Rob
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Dear Father,
Thank you so much for all of your words. We read over what you wrote several times this week, in preparation for our meeting this afternoon with Christian and Amanda.
Christian was actually much more open to the whole idea of prayer and then, praying as a couple, after he read both chapters 11 and 14. He asked many questions about prayer: how we pray, how we prayed when we first got married, how we made that journey. We gave him a copy of Pat and June Kennedy’s article that you gave us in Baytown last year. We invited him to start to make prayer a larger part of his personal life and be open to bringing prayer into their lives as a couple.
We were VERY encouraged by his reaction. They are both open to the idea, which is way more than half the battle!
Thank you again for your ideas and thank you for taking the time to share them with us. They really helped us know how to approach them.
With love,
Bill and Cynthia
Our experience of learning to pray…..
April 25, 2007 follow up email from Bill and Cynthia Sarles:
This is really two different stories about prayer. First, it is about the two of us, Bill and Cynthia Sarles, building a prayer life together. And then it is the story of our engaged couple, Christian and Amanda, building their prayer life.
We have been married for 26 years when we were invited to join the Sponsor Couple ™ ministry team at our church. We attended our first training with Father Ruhnke shortly after that. We had not ever prayed together at that point. We’d never discussed it. Father Rob talked during our training about the value of praying together for our engaged couples and we weren’t doing that ourselves! We both saved a handout he gave us on praying as a couple, tucking it away, knowing we would have to face it at some point, but kinda dreading it too.
It wasn’t until we were doing our prep work in For Better & For Ever ™ that we faced the challenge. We talked for the first time about how we were going to have to begin praying together if we were going to be able to teach it to other couples! We were very glad to have the steps provided by the Kennedys in their handout.
[The most helpful part of that handout for us was the outline: Facing each other, holding hands and then beginning by Praising God for the incredible God that He is; asking his Forgiveness for the hurts we’ve inflicted on anyone, but most especially each other; Petitioning God for what we need; and finally, Thanking God for all the great things He’s put in our way.]
Even with the help, we knew it was going to be uncomfortable and awkward. It was. But it was also incredibly intimate. And joyful. And wonderful. We found that remembering to pray together helped us so much to be honest with each other and brought us so much closer to God and each other.
A few weeks later, we began working with our first engaged couple, Christian and Amanda. He was raised Protestant but doesn’t really believe in organized religion and doesn’t go to church. She was raised Catholic, but doesn’t attend Mass often.
At our third meeting, we gently introduced the idea of prayer to them, saying that at our next meeting we would be looking at the chapter on prayer and would like to show them how we pray as a couple and help them to begin that, if they’d like. Immediately, Amanda said, “He won’t do that.” He agreed, saying that he didn’t consider himself “religious” and he didn’t pray by himself, much less with anyone else. We backed off, telling them not to worry about it, that we wouldn’t cram anything down their throats or make them feel too uncomfortable.
So we panicked! And wrote Father Rob. How can we handle this? We are blessed by them in our lives; we do not want to chase them off or make them dread meeting with us. On the other hand, we don’t want to ignore this wonderful piece of a Christian marriage. Father wrote back to say that this topic could be treated like family of origin, or financial concerns or parenting: something to be put on the table, talked about and handled with them as it seems to fit. We should tell them about our journey toward prayer; we should invite them to be open to it as a positive contributor toward their Christian marriage.
We read over all that he’d written us many times and talked about it over and over in the days between those two meetings. When Christian and Amanda came back to talk about prayer, we were blown away! Christian started out by saying he’d had no idea what prayer really was before he read the chapter in Father Rob’s book. He thought it had to be what he’d seen on TV. He acknowledged that he did, in fact, do a lot of praying on his own, he just hadn’t realized it was prayer that he was doing as he sat at his desk at work or drove home from work or spent any other time alone in his head. Before that night, we had been afraid Christian would dig his feet in and refuse to be part of the conversation. Instead, he drove the conversation. He wanted to know how we brought God into our heads as we prayed by ourselves, what we prayed about, how did we know that was prayer and not just thinking, when did we start praying together as a couple, what did we say, did we pray together every single day, would it be okay to pray silently while he prayed with Amanda, and on and on and on. We were so surprised and delighted that he was open to inviting God into his head when he prayed.
When we asked if we could give them the Kennedy’s handout on praying as a couple, they both said "yes", and it was Christian who reached out to take it from us!
Of the five nights we spent with them, this was without a doubt the most productive one. They agree with us: for them it was the meeting that brought them closer together and closer to what they want for their marriage. We also believe at this one that all four of us grew closer to God and each other than at any of the others.
We asked them to spend the next few weeks and months developing their prayer lives by themselves, but being open to praying together. We asked them to keep the handout, read it, and when they thought they might be ready, to talk about it with each other. They are open to praying together in the future. We told them we would like to discuss it at our meeting after they’ve been married for 3 months and that we’d be happy to show them how we pray together at that time, if they’re ready.
We have learned that it is important to go into our sessions prepared but the grace of God can work amazing wonders in our lives.
Bill and Cynthia Sarles
Teaching Prayer….by Pat and June Kennedy
Teach Them How To Pray
Deacon Pat and June Kennedy
Reprinted from Deacon Digest May/June 2005
After having helped with marriage preparation most of our 43 years of married life, one of the key points that have stuck with us is the topic of Prayer. “Teach them how to pray,” is a quote from Father Rob Ruhnke CSSR, the author of For Better & Forever ™. This program for marriage preparation was developed by Father Ruhnke while he served as the Family Life Director in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston in the 1970′s.
Father Rob told us during training sessions that if we didn’t teach the couples anything else, “teach them how to pray together, they will need it.” When we train couples for this same ministry we always insist that teaching the engaged couple to pray together should be stressed as a gift/skill they can take with them and use through their entire married life.
At some point in our “sponsorship” meetings with an engaged couple in our home we ask the engaged couple: have they ever prayed together? We usually received very little or no response at all. But once the topic is opened up, we can explain to them that prayer together was not part of our lives when we began our marriage, but we have found our efforts to pray together one of the most intimate things we can do. And we have learned from other couples that praying together is something they can share together ~ even if they are not of the same faith ~ which brings them closer and help in healing when they may have passed through some rough waters in their marriage.
Pat was raised as a cradle Catholic so most of his prayers were memorized. June was raised in the Protestant persuasion and most of her prayers were spontaneous, but with head bowed and eyes closed to rule out distractions. So we came from very different Family of Origin backgrounds in our approach to prayer, even though we were both Roman Catholics by the time we married.
We were challenged by one priest on a retreat weekend to turn to one another, look into each others eyes (“the windows of the soul”), and pray aloud, taking turns. We use the model of prayer that Jesus taught us but in our own words. The general format is:
1. Praise and glorify the Father for his love, goodness, holiness, etc.
2. Express sorrow for our failings and hurts we may have caused.
3. Petitions for guidance, direction, and intercessory favors.
4. Thanksgiving for the abundance of gifts and favors we’ve received.
Having acknowledged to the engaged couple how difficult this was for us when we first began our efforts to pray together, we point out the benefits of this three way conversation. God is a real 3rd party to our marriage. Our supposition is that if we can not recognize the sacredness of others in our life we will have a difficult time experiencing God in our life.
With eyes wide open!! How vulnerable can you get? We advise starting slowly, one sentence at a time. We then model the process for them, facing each other, holding hands we do our prayer ritual for them out loud. When we finish we invite them to face one another, hold hands and pray the best they can following our model.
As you can imagine, the scene is usually halting but wonderful. We are very much aware that this is likely to be a first time experience for this couple in their own cocoon with their Creator. They gradually realize that there is no need to fear anyone else listening in, they focus on each other…and then speak to God. Often they are moved to tears.
Prayer together as a couple is a unique opportunity to tell the story of what’s in your heart, what concerns you have, providing for your partner a peek into the very soul of who you are. With a little practice it gets even better and a whole lot easier. When our sponsorship sessions are completed, in the evaluation papers, many couples thank us for teaching them how to pray together.
In order to bond the family and build the best marriage possible, Fr. Ruhnke asked us to plead with the couples, both engaged and sponsors, to sit down at the table together to have a family meal. Turn off the television, cell phones or any other distractions, break bread together and thank God for your blessings. With today’s crazy schedules it’s difficult, but make it a priority for at least one meal a day.
We followed the practice of sharing our evening meal at home with all six of our children around the table every evening at six o’clock. This was a priority for everyone who wanted to eat because our family did not allow the use of the microwave oven to permit late comers to warm up a plate after they had done their separate individual thing four or five nights a week. (Another escape mechanism for those who desire to avoid family intimacy.)
Our prayers always included the traditional, “Bless us, O Lord. . .,” but we did inject some special prayers on holidays, birthdays, and particular feasts. For these occasions we followed the Walton family method (remember how they sat around the table holding hands during their meal time prayer) and we took it one step further. Dad would start the prayer and then we would go around the table with each one saying what they were most thankful for in their life that week or at that occasion. This is a tradition that we still use when we are all together, and our children have used it in their own individual families, and that is a gift for which we are most thankful.
Our family has expanded to include l0 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren. The experiences we have had together have not always been easy, and certainly our behavior with one another has not always been perfect, but we do have our prayers, and shared prayer has been a true gift for all of us. Children don’t seem to be shy at all, in sharing their prayers.
Deacon Pat and June Kennedy minister in the Diocese of Austin, Texas.
The future of marriage & what “works”.
Andrew Greeley is a Catholic priest, sociologist, novelist, and practical theologian who wrote “Faithful Attraction” in 1992 to share some of his research on “the future of marriage” and “what makes marriages satisfactory.”
In the context of the rising divorce rate in the United States, Andrew Greeley did a survey for the purpose of determining whether the rising divorce rate was a sign that people were growing less satisfied with marriage or that marriage was failing to meet the needs of most people. Greeley conclusion from the data he gathered was:
…”The majority of those surveyed seem happily married, content with their spouse and with the common life, and prepared to marry the same person again.
Concerning fidelity vs. divorce. What appears to be present in those marriages that are most stable (least likely to consider divorce)? Prayer and satisfactory love making are key factors when they co-exist; communication is also important, but will not substitute for either of the other two. Joint prayer on the other hand is likely to substitute for communication when there is satisfactory love making. A possible conclusion is that joint prayer is in itself a form of very intimate behavior which is often directly tied to greater intimacy in love making and serves as a “short cut” to communication, i.e. the couple who is functioning well at joint prayer and satisfactory love making is probably working out “stuff” more effectively and thus requires less formalized communication than couples who are not praying together and are less satisfied with their love making.”