mfhunting.htm

Advanced Relationship Skills

Couples - Families - Singles - Seniors

From
W. Shuford Davis, Ph.D

Improve Your Marriage and Family Life with Hunting

Learn from the very best. Study the skills necessary for success. Most of us subscribe to at least one magazine about hunting. Generally, there is a video, DVD or book in our collection to help us improve our hunting skills. What would happen in America if we annually read one article, or book, watched a video or DVD, or even went to seminar about improving our marriage and family life? Many of us believe relationships are private and we tend to fumble along interacting like our parents did. There is a “how to” article about every aspect of hunting. There is also a ton of information on doing better with the ones we love.

Patience is required to develop good hunting skills. Patience is absolutely essential in developing a healthy happy marriage. Raising kids is a long-term exercise in patience.

Hunting requires hand-eye coordination, mental focus, and the ability to remain emotionally calm when “buck fever” jumps on us. The same techniques of self calming, deep breathing, mental rehearsal and positive self talk we use in the field can work at home. Becoming angry or frustrated is a sure fire way to spook game or miss the shot. A tragic mistake too often made is to be emotionally positive in camp with buddies and in the field on the stalk but use our marriage and family as the emotional dump for all our negative feelings. Be patient and positive at home.

Humility visits our ego with regularity while hunting. A missed shot, a busted stalk, critter down wind of our stand, a boss longbeard refusing to come in the last ten yards have humbled everyone of us. Even if we are good at it we are going to have a bad day. Sometimes its hard to be humble with spouse or children because we are stubborn, proud, always have to be right, cannot apologize or are too perfectionistic. Well “partner” sit right down here at the table, eat you a big piece of humble pie and be a real genuine human with your family.

Passion characterizes people really into hunting. We love it. Healthy marriage and family life requires a passion for those we say we love. It comes from the heart. Wanting the best for them, celebrating small things, being interested in and helpful with things they like not just focused on our passion. I once asked a lady what she would like from her husband who was passionate about bird hunting and totally obsessed with an ole pointer. Without missing a beat this church going lady said, “I wish he would treat me as good as that damn dog.”

Becoming good at hunting requires overcoming failure. That’s why we call it huntin’ and not gettin’. Forget about the miss or the one that got away. Optimistically plan for the next opportunity to be in the woods. We often carry on an internal dialogue about what went wrong, how to learn from it, and what to do differently the next time. The same self-talk should go on when we have made a mistake in our primary relationships. Because we are dealing with humans who can communicate, apologize, tell them you love them, and make a commitment to learn and do differently the next time.

It takes time and money to become good at hunting. Most of us would be red faced embarrassed if we did a simple calculation of hours given to and dollars spent on a season of hunting. Fair is fair. Also spend the same time and bucks on fun things your spouse and kids want to do. If they like the woods take them with you, if they don’t, set a goal to give equally to what they enjoy. Give them our best not just the left overs.

Learn from the best, be patient, practice humility, exercise passion, forge past failure, give quality time and money to those you love.

Good hunting and good loving!