Discovering Your Amazing Marriage Interview

Marriage and family is a primary focus of mine. For five years I produced and published a monthly family newsletter (Reviviscence) that reached family across the country and as far away as cousins I learned were natural citizens of Germany. It was a tremendous effort. One that not only has come with many rewards, and memories, but one that keeps me in favor of supporting marriage.

So, imagine coming across authors Debby and Jason Coleman’s book
Discovering Your Amazing Marriage.

It didn’t take long to pike my interest wanting to give love and show support for a book that shares some of the secrets they found to help reignite the romance, respect, and love in their relationship.

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Interviewed (September 2010) by RYCJ/OEBooks
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The foreword to 'Discovering Your Amazing Marriage' is interestingly powerful enough without saying more, but I'm still curious to know the one recurring theme you've found most troubling for/to marriages. (i.e. age, religion, education, professions, jobs, children, communicating?)

Jason: Unmet expectations. I think that there are so many times in a relationship where people have certain expectations of one another but often times they fail to clearly communicate what those expectations are. When we are disappointed because of this, we often harbor feelings of disappointment, rejection, anger, perhaps even inadequacy and a host of other emotions, which greatly impact the relationship. Couples often have deep-rooted anger and bitterness which can be traced back to a time or event that their partner let them down in a significant way.

Debby: Outside influences. There are so many ways that someone from outside of the relationship can drive a wedge between a couple, both intentionally and unintentionally. With the vast methods of communication available to us now it is easy for a person to cultivate a relationship with someone other than their spouse. In many situations a casual contact can begin innocently enough, but as the relationship develops it can turn and have a disastrous impact. Couples need to guard their hearts on a daily basis and be consciously aware of the potential threat “outsiders” can be.

Being married twenty-one years do you see marriage as a necessity of maintaining societies, a convenience, a thing of the past, or something other?

Jason: Wow, great question. I think marriage is a unique bond between a man and a woman who love one another and who are willing to do whatever is necessary to protect that relationship. I think it plays a key role in maintaining societies, that that is not the primary function. It is certainly not a convenience, as marriage requires total commitment and dedication. Cultivating a strong marriage takes a lot of hard work; so it’s certainly not out of convenience.

Debby: Marriage really does take total & complete commitment from two people who choose their one and only lifelong partner. Unfortunately, in most societies the “till death do us part” aspect of marriage is becoming a thing of the past, but I believe that if we returned to strong family values in this country, we would see big changes in our quality of life.

Does 'Discovering Your Amazing Marriage' address issues dealing with sexual incompatibility? And if so, or even if not, how important do you see this topic to the health of marriages?

Jason: We don’t address sexual incompatibility directly, but I see this as a very important part of marriage. The sexual aspect of marriage is important to both partners and if there are sexual incompatibilities or health reasons that affect the sexual relationship, there typically will be additional problems in that marriage. If these problems exist in a marriage, I highly encourage the couple to seek medical or clinical help.

Debby: I think it’s really important to be able to communicate your needs and not be embarrassed about it, and if you can discuss the issues with love and understanding you should be able to overcome many of the challenges.

Did you find co-authoring a book therapuetic?

Jason: To some degree yes, as we had to recount some of our struggles and issues from early in our relationship. Talking about the issues and how we overcame them reminded me that nothing is worth sacrificing our relationship over. Looking back at some of the things we fought over and how stubborn and obstinate I had been was pretty embarrassing.

Debby: No; it was very frustrating. Jason always wanted to work on the book when I didn’t. It was fine working together, but I didn’t find it to be therapeutic. I felt a sense of urgency to get it done and it was tough with our different schedules, but therapeutic? No.

Did you discover anything new about each other?

Jason: Yes, I discovered that my memory is nowhere near as detailed as Debby’s is! Things that I filed away never to be remembered again were recalled by her with intricate detail.

Debby: Yes, that Jason is a great writer. He has a lot of great ideas and is very articulate.

Without inciting an argument, who did the most work?

Jason: That’s easy…no argument there. I did!

Debby: Jason did definitely. I’m the ‘ideas’ girl and he is the writer. I did not enjoy the actual process of writing the book. It was very stressful, so I’m glad he took on most of that responsibility.

What was one thing you had to compromise on in pulling the book together?

Jason: How much detail we were going to include from our past. We’ve been through a lot of challenges and hard times and we really agonized over the level of transparency we would show in the book; specifically when it came to the infidelity. Initially we were going to gloss over that and just include a very short reference to it. However, as we continued working on the manuscript and talking about our ideas with some of our close friends, they encouraged us to write about the infidelity in more detail as this is something that truly impacts many, many couples. Nowhere in the book do we identify who the cheating spouse was, as we didn’t feel that detail would be relevant, but we are completely transparent with the impact of the infidelity, how we overcame it, and how we protect our marriage to this day.

Debby: I couldn’t agree with Jason more. It’s embarrassing to write about all the major problems we faced, and I couldn’t stomach the thought of talking about the infidelity. Even the little fights and problems we went through are embarrassing to air out for the whole world to read about. But, in the end we knew that if our story was going to have relevance and impact, we needed to be open and transparent. We believe that we went through these things for a purpose and if we tried to shield and hide our problems, we wouldn’t be very effective in helping others.

Name one thing you have in common:

Jason: We both love hot weather and the beach. Our favorite place is Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Debby: We’re both stubborn.

Name your favorite romance movie: 

Jason: Sleepless in Seattle 

Debby: The Notebook

And here's another fun question. While I understand it takes sacrifice and commitment, and compromising to make a marriage work, still I want to know who asked who out first? Who takes credit for this wonderful marriage happening in the first place?

Jason: It was all Debby. I’ll let her tell the story.

Debby: We like to tell people how we met because it’s kinda funny and romantic all at the same time. It would make a good movie script. We tell the story in our book, but here’s the short version. We met at an all-city dance in my hometown. Jason was meeting his date there and I was meeting up with one of my girlfriends because we didn’t have dates; I had sworn off guys because of my last boyfriend. I pulled into the parking lot and parked across from Jason and I thought I recognized him. One of my friends had a crush on his best friend. I got out of my car to talk to him and we talked for a few minutes until his date showed up. She glared at me as she waited for him, so I just said goodbye and went in to the dance. We watched each other throughout the night and when I had to go, I left my phone number on a note and put it on his windshield. He called me the next day, and we started dating!

Jason and Debby will be signing books at Borders Books

SouthCenter Mall, Tukwila, WA

Sunday, Oct 10, 2010

1:00 – 3:00 pm

Visit youramazingmarriage.com to find more on upcoming events, tours, and interviews.

God Bless! And thank you for granting OEBooks with an interview.