Overview: The game is about creating space for open, honest, and spontaneous communication—zero significant thoughts withheld. It's about verbally acknowledging and completing life's accumulated perpetrations. Participants pass around a basket containing cards, each with a different conversation topic. One selects and reads a card and then communicates to everyone the thoughts that come up for them; what gets co-created is the experience of being in-communication. Sit-down intentional communication always produces more favorable results than does talking.2
The Baby Shower Game could be among the most effective educational experiences of everyone's life—with friends of a bride sharing what's worked and has not worked; and most importantly, how to resolve any incomplete within hours. The guests all agree to support the Wedding Guest Vow.
Preparation: As the Game Facilitator write one of the following conversation-stimulating topics3 on a small card. Repeat for all the topics (one topic per card), fold and place all the folded cards in a basket.
- Share with us a lie you've never shared with anyone.
Describe your first temper-tantrum.
What thought have you hidden from someone of significance?
What thought are you hiding from your parents?
What thoughts have you not shared verbally4 with your partner (or your betrothed)?
Describe what's so about your previous intimate relationships.5
Who would say that they still don't feel good about the way you treated them?
How much have you spent on dates compared with how much they have spent on you?
1 "positively" How we communicate with anyone, especially a married person/couple, affects them positively or negatively.
2 "talking" It could be said that the "talking" that has taken place during baby showers these past generations has produced a 40% divorce rate, most involving infidelity. It doesn't speak well of our leadership-communication support skills.
3 "topics" You can add as many topics as there are guests. (sneaky, cheating, bad-mouthed, dissed, etc.)
4 The word "verbally" is a reminder that we are always communicating our withholds non-verbally; your partner might not know what's wrong only that the experience of love is missing.
5 How one describes "what happened" is a predictor. "He cheated ...", "He hit me ...", "He argued ...", "He divorced me..." are all blame statements for which there will continue to be undesirable consequences. What's worse is, the date who listens to (elicits) such blaming statements is an unconscious enabler of irresponsible blaming. Blamers magnetically attract blamers—there are no exceptions.
Note: All divorced couples withheld a significant, deal-breaking, thought from each other on or before their very first date; all brought their addictions to deceit and blaming, into their relationship—as a communicologist, a leadership-relationship communication-skills coach, over a period of 44+ years, I have not found any exceptions to this phenomenon. The correlation between personal integrity and outcomes (happiness, prosperity, and health) is not taught in schools.
Additional Baby Shower Conversation Topics:
Creating a Marriage Vow that Precludes Cheating, etc.
The Wedding Guest Vow
Must-Reads for Engaged Couples
Wedding Expenses and Marital Happiness—a correlation?
Child (fetal) Abuse During Pregnancy
More Effective Communicators—men or women?
Wedding Guests Contributing to Divorces?
Womb-mails—emails for expectant parents.
If, as the Game Facilitator, you would like to greatly increase your ability to be the space for open and honest sharings during the Baby Shower Game you can first do The [free] Clearing Process for Professionals —that is to say, a person who is themselves relatively in-integrity automatically creates space for truths to be told. Put another way, others have no choice other than to mirror our own integrity.
Last edited 5/5/21