Online Marriage Book Club: Team Us (week 4)
Online Marriage Book Club: Team Us (week 4)
Welcome to week four of our online marriage book club! If this is your first time here at Fulfilling Your Vows, we are so grateful to have you. For our current book club, we are working through Team Us: Marriage Together. One great feature you can expect during the course of the book club is to have a Q&A section at the end of each weekly post that gives more candid insight into author Ashleigh and husband Ted’s marriage.
This Week’s Reading (Chapter 3)
This week we are working through Chapter 3. We encourage you and your spouse to read through the introduction together or separately (which ever works best for you) and then schedule a time to chat about it. It is best to write anything down that jumps out at you so you can discuss it further with your spouse. We also encourage you both to pray together asking God to open your heart to receive what He wants to show you each week.
While reading Chapter 3 there are several things that jumped out at us. Discussions will occur on our Facebook Page at 8pm ET / 5pm PT throughout the week.
What Stood Out Most to Us
This week life really kicked us in the face so we made a video to talk about what stood as it was just easier. You can watch it below. WARNING: Lots of tiredness and love went into making this video. (ha!)
QUESTIONS
Do you and your spouse have a lot of “common ground” when it comes to your interests?
What would you say is the biggest challenge you face when it comes to your differing “hobbies”?
Have you ever schemed up a campaign to try and get your spouse to be interested in something (like Ashleigh’s example of the Hunger Games trilogy)? Did it work?
What are some ways that you and your spouse try and support one another’s different interests?
How can you improve on allowing your spouse to share their passions even if you are not interested in them?
Want to dig deeper? For further study, please visit Ashleigh’s blog for a free downloadable study guide.
Q&A With Ted & Ashleigh
How would you recommend finding “common ground” for a couple that has little to no “similar interests”?
Ashleigh
I’d say start small. Think about what things initially drew you together and build on those. Maybe it’s a favorite kind of food like Mexican or Thai. If so, go on a quest together to find the best restaurant that serves it in your area. Perhaps even come up with a rating system that you can use to determine your shared favorite. As you adventure together, I think you’ll discover more common ground that you can build on.
Ted
Whew. If the couple isn’t married yet, maybe a significant lack of “common ground” is evidence that perhaps they shouldn’t be together. Maybe. Not sure. But if the couple is married, then because they are now soulmates, that lack of common ground could be a source of adventure or intrigue or conversation or laughter.
I’m twelve years older than Ashleigh. So in some ways, there is some lack of common ground. The music I listened to in high school is not what Ashleigh listened to. The experiences I’ve had in twelve years more of life are different from Ashleigh’s. But we enjoy these differences — Ashleigh gives “my” music a listen, “my” movies a view; and I have come to enjoy much of “her” music, “her” movies. And though I’ve been places Ashleigh hasn’t been, well, she’s been places I haven’t been. Hawaii, old movies, musical theater … none of that would I now enjoy if Ashleigh and I had shared more “common ground.”
So while our experiences, our “common ground,” differ, that’s simply an opportunity to appreciate each other’s peculiarities, to grow so much more than if we’d come into marriage with more “common ground.”
See you back here next week!
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