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The 5-Minute Marriage Project

Five Minutes to 
a Better Marriage...

“However important it is that love shall precede marriage, it is far more important that it shall continue after marriage.” 

– Samson Raphael Hirsch

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On average, most married couples spend only 17 minutes per week in meaningful conversation with each other. If you talked with your partner about who you are and what you want out of life for only 5 minutes each day, you would have more than twice as much meaningful interaction with your mate. Dahven’s 100-Day Marriage Program, developed during a Hundred Day Project, includes short quizzes and exercises that help couples to build their marriages into more intimate and robust relationships in only 5 minutes per day. Each of 14 weeks includes:

 

  • Day 1: Evaluating: The Quiz

  • Day 2: Training: The Skill

  • Day 3: Practicing: The Exercise

  • Day 4: Playing: The Game

  • Day 5: Bonding: The Practicum

  • Day 6: Deepening: The Dive

  • Day 7: Exploring: The Conversation

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The 14+ weeks cover the following topics: 

  • Getting to Know Your Partner

  • Assessment

  • Listening and Empathy

  • Conversation

  • Romance

  • Expressing Love

  • Trust

  • Disappointments

  • Childhood

  • Workload

  • Money 

  • Sex

  • Intimacy

  • Reflections and the Future

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Marriage Matrix png.png
Sample Exercises

Week One:
Hello

1. Evaluating: Marriage Values 

People look for and prioritize different things in a marriage. Do you know what your partner values most in your relationship? Do you agree on what you hope to get out of a marriage? While it is not necessary to be perfectly aligned, neither you nor your partner will be satisfied with the union if you are not getting the things you value most out of it. 

 

The Quiz: Share what you feel are the most important aspects of a marriage.  

  1. Rate how important the following things are in your primary relationship from 1 to 5 (where 1 means Not Very Important and 5 means Extremely Important. 

  2. Add your own values if there are other things that are important to you. 

  3. Compare the values of you and your partner and note where they are close and where they diverge. Note particularly whether your top three values are the same.

  4. For an added challenge, rank these values in order of their importance to you. 

 

The Values:

  1. Acceptance

  2. Care/Kindness

  3. Collaboration

  4. Commitment

  5. Companionship 

  6. Connection

  7. Faith/Spirituality 

  8. Faithfulness/Loyalty

  9. Honesty

  10. Intimacy/Affection 

  11. Love

  12. Patience/Compassion

  13. Respect/Appreciation

  14. Support

  15. Trust 

Week Three:
Listening

18. Playing: The Mirror Game

The Mirror Game is commonly practiced in theater, drama therapy, and dance/movement therapy. It is used to enhance empathy and emotional understanding of others, and to promote participants’ ability to enter and remain in a state of togetherness. 

 

The Game: Mirror your partner’s movements

  1. Stand face to face with your partner. 

  2. In the first round, you will lead and your partner will follow as you slowly move your arms and legs for one minute. Partner Two, imitate your partner’s movements as closely as possible, as though you are their reflection in a mirror. 

  3. In the second round, switch roles so that Partner Two leads and Partner One follows for one minute. 

  4. In the last round there is no designated leader or follower. Discover the movements together. 

Week Seven:
Trust

48. Deepening: Ask for Advice

Sharing a problem with your partner shows that you trust them and value their opinion. It makes both partners feel seen and validated: the Asker enjoys the benefit of their partner’s thoughtful attention; the Asked enjoys the confidence that their partner places in them. Win-win. 

 

The Dive: Ask for advice from your partner about a problem you are having. 

Share a problem with your partner and ask for their advice on how to handle it. Then trade places. 

Week Ten:
Workload

65. Training: Take a Load Off Fanny

Every job takes thought and care, whether it is taking out the garbage or balancing the checkbook. There are steps to it that you may not know or appreciate unless you do that job too. When your partner puts effort into their work, it reveals their philosophy, values, and resourcefulness. Understanding how they do their work will help you to understand them. 

 

The Skill: Learn about how your partner does one of their tasks in detail.  

  1. Choose a small task that you generally perform, like sorting the laundry or taking out the compost, and show your partner exactly how you do it. 

  2. Explain the steps, what the challenges of the task are, and why you do it in that particular way. 

  3. Trade places. Partner Two, demonstrate one of your tasks.

  4. For extra credit, surprise your partner by doing the task for them sometime. Be sure to consider what your partner is trying to accomplish in doing that task so that you meet their objectives.  

Week Eleven:
Money

77. Exploring: Money Talks

The Conversation: Pick ONE EACH of the following questions to ask your partner: 

 

  1. Which do you enjoy more: earning money or spending money?

  2. How do you feel after spending a large amount of money?

  3. Do you save enough money? What savings goals do you have?

  4. How do you prefer to pay for purchases? With cash, a credit card, or some other payment method? Why?

  5. What was the first job or task you ever received money for? How much were you paid?

  6. How often do you think about money? Is money a stressful part of life?

  7. Of the things you have bought in your life, which do you remember most happily?

  8. Is there something you regret buying? Why?

  9. Did you receive an allowance from your parents when you were a child? What did you usually do with it?

  10. What would you tell someone if they asked how much you get paid?

  11. Do you and your friends lend money to each other? How much are you willing to lend or borrow?

  12. Imagine you have won ten million dollars. Who will you tell? What will you do with the money?

  13. How do you feel about debt? 

  14. Do you feel you are fairly compensated for your work?

  15. If all jobs were compensated equally, would you choose to do something different? What would it be? 

  16. Do you feel that one partner has more power than the other because of an earning discrepancy? 

Week Twelve:
Sex

82. Bonding: The Domains of Sexuality

Intimacy can be practiced in the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual domains. Synergy occurs when intimacy operates on multiple domains simultaneously.  The highest form of physical intimacy is the miraculous oneness that emerges when two people have sex which includes physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual intimacy. Check in with your partner in each of these domains. 

 

The Practicum: Check in with your partner’s domains of sexuality by moving your hands slowly up your partners body, from toe to head. 

  1. Sit facing your partner. 

  2. Begin by placing your hands on your partner’s feet or knees. Slowly move your hands up their body. The Body is the domain of sensuality. How does your partner like to be touched? Feel your partner’s warmth and energy beneath your hands. Pause or go backwards if you like. 

  3. When you reach the heart, stop and place your hands over your partner’s heart. The Heart is the domain of intimacy. How does it make you feel to be emotionally close to your partner? Feel your partner’s heart beating beneath your hands. 

  4. Place your hands on your partner’s and continue moving them up your partner’s arms, shoulders, and head. Stop when you reach the cheeks. Cup your hands around your partner’s cheeks and lean your forehead against theirs. The Head is the domain of fantasy and eroticism. Imagine being inside your partner’s body. What does it feel like to be your partner? Feel what they may be feeling at this moment. 

  5. Keeping your hands on your partner's cheeks, move your head away and open your eyes. Look deeply into your partner's eyes. The Eyes are the window to the soul. Who is your partner, not their job or their story or even their words, but their essence? See your partner’s spirit. 

  6. Swap places. 

 

The Domains: 

  1. The Body is the domain of sensuality. 

  2. The Heart is the domain of intimacy. 

  3. The Head is the domain of fantasy and eroticism.

  4. The Eyes are the domain of the spirit and the window to the soul. 

The Marriage Manifesto...

The Marriage Project culminates in the creation of a shared set of foundational agreements

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1. Love is more than a feeling; it is a Choice. 

2. We choose Love by practicing love. We practice love by giving and receiving acts of love. Feelings are mutable, but choices are within our control.

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3. A Spiritual Union is founded on the choice to seek profound Intimacy. Intimacy is a fundamental human need which is met by truly seeing another person, with compassion, and opening oneself to be truly seen. 

4. The Journey of Intimacy leads from the shallow to the deep, irrelevance to meaning, craving to satisfaction, judgment to acceptance, fear to courage, pretense to authenticity, a false self to a true self. 

5. We can survive without intimacy but we cannot thrive and become the best version of ourselves. The most empowering love is that in which each partner lifts the other to a higher possession of their own being.

***

6. The first step to intimacy is to know and accept oneself. We are required to defend and celebrate our true needs, rejecting social norms if necessary.

7. Intimacy with another begins with the choice to reveal our Authentic Selves. We fear that if people really know us, they will not love us; but if they do not know us, they will never have the opportunity to love us. 

8. Fear gives birth to pretense. Pretense is a condemnation and rejection of the true self. It is not possible to achieve intimacy while rejecting the true self. 

9. When we are unwilling to participate in the rigors of intimacy, we try to fill the void with pleasure, possessions, accomplishments, and addictions. The gap between values and actions further undermines our ability to be honest. Addictions and delusions are illegitimate attempts to fill our legitimate need for intimacy. 

10. When our legitimate need for intimacy is met, we are able to let go of the self-importance that leads to selfish choices. In a complete union, both partners are assured of Mutual Primacy. Trust that our beloved puts us first allows us to put them first. The certainty that our partner puts our needs above all other things, including themselves, enables us to earnestly seek balance. This requires us to be honest about our true needs.

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11. In marriage, the Union is paramount; the individual is secondary. 

12. While we may choose to pursue separate goals, we must negotiate Consent. We are obligated to give consent and assist our partner in trying to fill all legitimate needs; we are obligated to deny consent for anything that undermines the union or diminishes our partner or ourselves. 

13. We undermine our union with non-consensual pursuit of illegitimate cravings and selfish desires. We cultivate it by mutual primacy. The collaborative process of Mutual Primacy requires humility, honesty, understanding, generosity, and commitment.

14. As true partners, we hold each other accountable for choices that do not align our actions with our values. This is a gift, not an invasion of privacy. Intimacy means being intimately involved in each other’s business. 

16. The lazy and selfish part of ourselves seeks privacy for self-gratification to avoid the more challenging, and more satisfying, pleasures of mutual primacy. Pretense hides under the veil of privacy. A healthy union demands truth, trust, and accountability. 

17. Truth grows stronger when challenged. So too is a true union strengthened by honesty, even when challenging. All marriages include disappointment, failure, and betrayal; when they are faced together, bravely and compassionately, the union deepens.

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18. Just as the highest expression of genuine self-love is to celebrate our best selves, the greatest expression of love for others is to assist, in any way possible, their quest to become the best version of themselves, as they define it. 

19. The primary purpose, obligation, and responsibility of our relationship is to help each other achieve our Essential Purpose. Our essential purpose is to become the best version of ourselves. 

20. We support each other in this endeavor by creating Sanctuary. This must include the certainty that we would never knowingly harm our beloved, stifle their true needs, or cause them to be less than their best version of themselves. It must also include the certainty that our beloved will have compassion for our inevitable failures and commitment to restoring us to our best selves. 

21. To be truly intimate is to share every aspect of ourselves and be accepted, with flaws, that we may seek to become the best version of ourselves with the help of our partner.

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22. Intimacy can be practiced in the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual domains. Synergy occurs when intimacy operates on multiple domains simultaneously:

23. The highest form of physical intimacy is the miraculous oneness that emerges when two people have sex which includes physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual intimacy. 

24. Emotional intimacy comes from revelation of our true needs, to ourself and others. It requires genuine pursuit of self-knowledge, as well as the courage to reveal ourselves with candor and vulnerability. 

25. Intellectual intimacy comes from understanding what inspires and motivates a person and can only blossom in a non-judgmental environment. 

26. Spiritual intimacy compels us to do everything within our power to help each other in becoming the best version of ourselves.  It supports our efforts to live with integrity, to seek meaning in our lives, and to embody our spiritual beliefs.

***

27. Indifference is the most corrosive force at work in our lives and relationships. We do not plan to fail at our relationships; we allow them to fail through indifference and inaction. 

28. The antidote to indifference is Soulful Living, which connects our everyday, even trivial activities, to our essential purpose. Soulful living means mindfully creating meaningful relationships and meaningful work. It frees us from despair and indifference. 

29. The task of discovering and rediscovering another person requires sustained effort as we evolve. The obligation to be interested in, and interesting to, our beloved does not end at the altar; it begins at the altar.

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30. Sustaining and cherishing Love is a determined choice that we make and remake every day

Spiritual Services...

As an ordained officiant, Dahven performs non-denominational spiritual services for weddings and other life transitions, as well as pre-marital counseling. 

Officiant pic

"A wedding is a declaration of interdependence, between two people... and the community that supports them."

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