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                   Prepping in Marriage and Divorce

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The journey for a new private prepper couple through the four stages of prepper denial takes about three years. Our couple starts out with one spouse frozen in fear of how to survive this and other one is laughing and saying “This will never happen.”  At the end of the journey we see a open prepper couple ready to support the compound at the church and or have a compound at there own house.

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A week after the event happens very unpleasant jobs will have to be completed and tough decisions are going to have to be made. 

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Dead bodies are going to have to be cleaned up and buried. Orphans children and special needs children are going to have to be taken in and cared for.

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Looters will have to be scared off, bad guys will have to be shot.  You may have to shoot your neighbor from down the street who is charging your house with a knife because he has run out of his schizophrenia medication and is delusional. 

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The best type of household to protect the children from the looters and the bad guys for a few months until help arrives is one that has a two parent married couple.  Men and Women bring different, energy, skills and personality to prepping.

  

In gay couples children pick up on which parent is the kill it and drag it home parent versus a homemaker parent and they need both. 

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Please set aside your differences and put the children's safety first. 

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Have maturity in your relationships with a children first attitude.  Be nice to your spouse and work things out until the children are 18 and out and then get divorced unless there is abuse, addiction or constant adultery.  If you are already divorced you will have to have preparations at your house and at your spouse’s house.  Be ready to have either house be the bug out location.

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To be a mature spouse and prepper is to delay pleasure and set a goal of having a healthy mind body, spirit and bank account.  

 

This Maturity flows from a foundation of a happy relationship in the home where you eat, sleep and raise your children.  This key to this is stepping into your Unemotional King / Queen and stepping away from and corralling the emotions of mad, sad, glad, fear and the shame of embarrassment and the shame that you are a bad person  Bring your drill sergeant and speech writer into focus along with your emotions to make sure that you are in charge not them.

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Set a goal to have Peace and Joy in your life by taking a risk to look at the things that make you angry and sad.  A happy, healthy, open mined life makes your work and prepping life much easier.

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Here is an exercise to resolve issues between spouses.
 
When the children are asleep or out of the house sit across from each other at the kitchen table and turn off your cell phones.  In your own mind renew your commitment to the marriage and to resolve the issue by putting your unemotional King / Queen in charge of resisting the desire to win the argument, to retreat or retaliate when you feel you are losing the argument. 

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Choose a flexible object to be the talking stick and the person with the talking stick is the only one that can speak.  The other person can only feedback what is said.  

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Start with stating one of the five emotion that you are feeling right now.  State the data in one sentence. State your judgment.  Do the mirror piece where you can see where and when you have done the exact same thing that you are judging that your spouse has done.  This illuminates the retaliation play.  Lastly state what you want.

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While still holding the talking stick ask your spouse to repeat back everything you have said. Following the model of emotion, data, judgment, mirror piece and what you want.  If they miss something then you stop them and say try again.  Once you feel like you have been respectfully heard by them repeating it back to you then give them the talking stick and repeat the process. 

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Here is an example of how this can run.  The wife says "The emotion is fear.  The data is you are speaking to people in the neighborhood about our utility grid down preparations.   My judgment is you are putting us at risk for when the event happens.  I agree with the idea of a compound after the event happens but why would we tell anybody about it before hand ?  The mirror piece is that I allowed a contractor into our house on the recommendation from a friend of a friend and then he turned out to crazy and we had to move our outside hidden key.  

 

What I want is safety for us and the kids when the event happens."   

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When the husband gets the talking stick he has to corral his emotions and not take anything of this personally.  This is your spouses truth.

 

Following the model of emotion, data, judgment, mirror piece and what you want.  The husband says.

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"My emotion is fear that my ideas of protecting the kids are different from yours.  The emotion underneath that fear is sadness that I can not connect / network with other preppers now.  The data is I believe networking / trading services with people who are knowledgeable about, guns, operational security, medical and cooking is that we know ahead of time who the experts are and what their personality is.

 

 My judgment is that your are processing my ideas form a place of fear and not giving my ideas a detailed hearing.  I own that I did the same thing when you planned an out of town overnight weekend activity for the family that I looked forward to and enjoyed after I had time to look at there website.

 

What I want is to have a slow step-by-step conversation about prepping and I have set a goal to be on the same page with you on these issues. 

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The success of this exercise above only works when you let go of the idea of changing the other persons personality.   People are who they are and they do not change.  They can change there behavior if they are motivated to do so.  A good example of this is a crabby guy is going to be nice when he is stopped by the police for speeding.  He has a 50% chance of not getting a speeding ticket if he is nice.  He will get a ticket if he is his regular crabby self.

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A lot of times in couples therapy you have one spouse that wants to go to therapy, do the therapy homework and read the self help books.

 

The other spouse has no interest in therapy / changing there behavior.

 

This shows up by them criticizing the therapist and dismissing the ideas.  In this situation if you have children do the therapy which gives you the tools to be nice and you also set boundaries against there bad behavior.  

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Make a commitment not to fight or debate stuff when you are angry and back each other up when it comes to issues and rules with the children.

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Remind your spouse that you have come more than half way with conflict resolution and that you will not have wild emotional conversations with them.

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To end on a happy note there is always trading. If you want to buy a new Prepper gadget and your spouse who is not into prepping gives you that look.  You could ask her about a trade.  She may want you to fix, paint, re-organize or buy something in exchange for the blessing of the purchase of the Item. 

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My favorite type of trade is that your wife wants you to go to her cousin Gertrude's wedding that is three hours away on a Saturday. She wants you to go there happy and not be your normal dragie self. 

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The trade is a family weekend trip to a Prepper expo. show.  You go to the show during the day while she watches the kids by the pool at the hotel and then she goes shopping at night.