Video Transcript: Socially Connected

Hello again, my name is Steve Elzinga, you're in the pre marriage coaching class, I want to look in this session at how a couple is socially connected. Did I just do that one? Oh, playfully sorry, let me do that again. I forgot what I did.

For the three, two, Hi, my name is Steve Elzinga. And you are in the pre marriage coaching class. And in this session, I want to look at how a couple is connected socially. So first, remember, it's all in the guidebook. First, you want to ask questions, and each one will answer them separately, it's, I find it's best to get them to write their answer down. If you ask them to think about it, sometimes they think about something or sometimes they don't, when you ask him to write it down, they usually come up with something. And then it's easy to share, because they can just read what they wrote. And especially as you're getting to know, a couple, one might be outgoing and the other one's very shy, doesn't want to share a whole lot of things. And it just makes it easier if you have to write it down first, then when it comes to the sharing part, they're way more confident, because they've already had time to think about it. And they actually wrote it down. And so they have no trouble reading it if you don't do that. And sometimes people have a harder time saying what they really want to want to say. So some questions separately. Number one, what is the benefit of married couples having separate friends? What is the danger. So now you're having each one sit down with a piece of paper, write these things down. And there are benefits to having friends that are, you know, different, I have certain friends that I do things with that my wife is not interested in those areas of life, I get along with them. And, and you know, in the beginning, I thought, you know, I had all my friends had to be friends with my wife and all my wife's friends had to be friends with me. Because in the dating phase of life, young couples especially are everything they do they do together. But over time, that doesn't happen. It didn't have it didn't go that way before you started dating. And it's not going to go that way. After you're married, you end up with, you know, certain people that like doing certain things, and it's specialized, special interests, and so on. So I have people that I do some sports with and drag my wife, I don't make my wife have to do those same things. So there's benefits to having separate friends. But there's dangers. Because, you know, all of a sudden, I'm spending a lot of time in sharing a lot of my life with these people. And I am not connecting that to my spouse. So you want them to start thinking about the benefits and some of the dangers. Number two, what is the benefit of married couples having mutual friends having some of the same friends? Number three, if two people, husband and wife have a hard time finding common interests together, and a lot of couples do have a hard time finding common interests isn't any wonder that it's much harder for for people, ie two couples to have common interests. And I think Mary, many married couples find this to be true. Before you get married, you know the guy have all these friends. My wife has all these friends. And then we get together and it's it's harder to connect to all the you know each other's friends. And then when some of my friends started getting married, now another spouse gets added to the mix. And my wife's friends gets married. Now my wife is friends with her friends, but she's not friends with her friends, spouses. And the chances of getting a husband wife and another husband and wife sort of connecting together. It's like getting four people to share the same interest is very hard. It's really cool and it happens. And you want to maybe look help a young couple look for that. But it's not easy. Number four, what are some ideas to solving this dilemma? Okay, so you're putting it on the young couple? Are there you know, search your friendship network here. Do you think there's any potential polls that you can actually become really good friends with. Questions with the fiancee. So now, these are questions that you've been answered together. So they do it separately. And now they come together, list his friends. So he makes a list of his friends, she makes a list of her friends. And then they sort of compare notes. And then the list the mutual friends, the friends that I have, the you don't know is the friends that you have that you don't know, here's the list of our mutual friends. Number four, lists potential friends, in the common interests that you can share with them. So you're helping the couple do a little research among their friends. Sometimes people need to just sit down and think about, okay, so we have all these friends, I have these friends, you have these friends, we have these mutual friends. Now out of all of that this big pool, who can we connect with over what, you know, well, this couples into this and maybe we can connect on that. Usually you have, you need some kind of a shared interest with which can which with which to connect over. Okay, so after you've talked about that you have a closing prayer. Again, we're trying to you know, model or get them to start praying and being comfortable praying with each other. So start out together, and they can just read it gets in their book, you just say let's, let's, let's end this session in prayer. Together, thank you, Lord, for friends. You might take that list, and they can actually go through the list of their friends. The potential husband helped me connect with some of my wife's friends, the potential wife helped me connect with some of my husband or my future husband's friends together, help us Lord to spend time looking for other couples that need a friend and give us the energy enthusiasm to invite them to something to be a part of our lives. With Amen. Okay, questions for the group. Again, if you're doing it as a Bible study, or you're doing this session, as a retreat, what is one thing regarding friends that the ladies would like to share with the whole group? So the ladies have been meeting together answering some of these questions, separately sharing amongst themselves. Now what is the upshot that they would like to share with the whole group? And now the same thing for the men, the men did the same thing. What have they been talking about? What would they like to share with the group? Number three? What is the one thing regarding friends that any couple would like to share with the whole group? So now as a couple, do you have anything you've talked, you know, with just your spouse, your fiance? What would you like to share? And finally, number four, what are some ideas to improve a couple's social time? So now, if you're in a group setting, this is a great time for brainstorming about? Well, what are some of the ways that we can improve our social time together? One of the things that that that hurts marriages is is a couple of getting isolated. In each one having their own friends, but no friends as a couple, you need those couple those friends that are a couples because, you know the whole marriage topic is on the table, and then helps hold a couple together. Okay, we'll see you again next time.