YOUR SPACE: He preaches the gospel of marital bliss
David Letterman had sex with female staffers. Kate Gosselin gave cheating husband Jon the boot.
Want more details? Of course you do. Marital problems are fascinating ... unless their yours.
Clarence Shuler is at ground zero of marital mayhem. He tries to save marriages — one or tens or hundreds at a time.
“Almost every couple struggles,” the 55-year-old marriage counselor says. He has written six books with topics like: “When Your Woman Is Too Through with You,” “Affair-Proofing Your Marriage,” “What to Do When All Hell Breaks Loose.”
Doesn’t matter where Shuler is — a plane, party, checkout line — when people find out what he does, he’s suddenly the most popular guy in the room.
“They start asking questions. People want to have better relationships.”
Sex. Money. Fighting. Fidelity. Bring it on.
“I’ve never blushed,” Shuler says. “I’ve been on planes where women have shared their intimate deals. Sometimes they’ll say, ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have told you all that.’”
He is president/founder of nonproft BLR: Building Lasting Relationships and men’s and marriage ministry director at First Presbyterian Church downtown.
Some marriage seminars he leads for BLR have 500 couples. Think: “He said, she said” times 1,000.
Mates tend to not listen to one another, he says. “But put them in a room with hundreds of others and they’ll start hearing others saying the same things. It’s better to have someone outside the marriage say it. They say, ‘Oh, so that’s why he does that.’”
Example: “The biggest thing for men to understand, when women are talking to them, is that they’re not trying to nag them,” he says. “It’s how they build intimacy.”
Look at it as foreplay, guys.
“She’s trying to have a relationship with him,” he says, “and you are blowing her off trying to watch the game.’”
Shuler knows the drill. He and Brenda, also a counselor, have been married 25 years and have three kids.
“It’s kind of hard having parents who are marriage counselors,” says daughter, Christina, 20. “I told boys not to call the house.”
Shuler, a North Carolina native, started preaching at age 17. The 5-foot-7 college basketball player was a point guard for a global faith-based team. “The only one under 6-feet,” he says.
He moved to Colorado Springs in 1995 to work as a diversity consultant and later started BLR.
His marriage is fair stomping ground at seminars. “We share our stuff, where we mess up,” he says. “We’re not a perfect couple.”
What’s their secret?
He likes it when she talks to him during the ballgame.
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