A few years back, I took a fencing class with one of my sons. As part of the class, we learned about the command “en garde”.
When the instructor or your opponent says ‘engarde’ your muscles tense up and you take up a fighting stance. It’s a drastic change from being in the ‘at ease’ or relaxed position to being “en garde”. In a brief moment, everything changes.
When in the “en garde” or ‘on guard’ position, your muscles tense up, senses heighten their awareness of everything and focus narrows onto my opponent. At that moment, I am ready for combat.
That same transformation has some lessons about trust in marriage.
When someone tells me ” I don’t trust my husband, I feel like he lies to me” , I feel a pang of hurt inside. When you are in a marriage where you don’t trust each other, you are always ‘on alert’ or ‘on guard’.
Being ‘on alert’ all the time gets old. You feel like you have to second guess and check up on everything they tell you. At least in fencing, you have some time to go into a relaxed position.
Fencing also taught me that when your opponent says ‘en garde’ it’s a signal for both of you to get ready. In marriages, when your spouse starts deceiving you with lies, it sends a signal as well.
In your marriage, when your spouse starts using lies and deception, its’ a signal for the combat to begin. Researchers have found that when one spouse starts using deception, the other does as well. At that point, using lies becomes accepted behavior in your marriage.
When spouses fence, they use words rather than swords. The assumption is that words hurt less. The problem is that flesh wounds heal faster than the emotional wounds of words. That means that by using hurtful words, the two of you are leaving each other wounded for longer periods of time.
Rather than go around hurting each other, the video “How Can I Trust You Again?” guides you in moving past being ‘on guard’ with each other by improving honesty and other parts of your relationship.
Best Regards,
Jeff
