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I’d like to give you a view of communication that isn’t repressing feelings but also isn’t open with all of them, at least not all at once. And when you are open slowly, you are in a way that encourages the good rather than discouraging everything.
I think in our fast-paced society nowadays, we feel this inappropriate pressure to share all the feelings we have about a topic (sex is a big one!) with our spouse because we need to get that checked off of our mental burden list. Or we need to finally unload or get it off our chest.
So we pile on all these painful complaints, criticisms, and unacknowledged feelings all at once.
And it causes huge divisions between partners and can take years to heal if at all.
My encouragement in today’s podcast is to think of your relationship not as a 30-minute conversation, but as a 90-year conversation. There is no need to address everything right now.
There is a need to be respectful, kind, gentle, grateful, and loving in all your communication with your spouse. When that is your “normal” then there is an opportunity to strategically place encouragements towards a general movement in a direction that is important to you.
“But that could take months, even years”. Luckily, you have that. And you are strong enough to shift things slowly but surely in the right direction. The shocking thing is, if you are disciplined and you are careful it may take way less time than you think.
One important piece is you can make yourself happy during that time and happier as you wisely encourage and compliment in the direction you desire. (More on that in the podcast).
This is giving the truth in love. We don’t need to rhetorically cut each other because we’re lazy or we’re “good at fighting”. We can be gentle, humble, meek, self-disciplined, and patient with the truth–even in response to our partner’s accusations.
This way is harder and requires Jesus’ strength and character, but it will actually move you farther faster. The other can set you back for years to come and may undermine the very thing you’re trying to improve.
I hope you’ll listen to this podcast with an ear for what Jesus wants for your marriage and interactions in it.
Blessings,
Belah
transcript
0:02
Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. You’re joining me belah rose as I dive deep into the beauty, power and
0:09
truth about intimacy, learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. delight your marriage. Hey there and welcome. I’m so grateful that you are joining me. So I’d like to talk today about how you share what with your spouse and when. And before I do, I just want to thank you so much for tuning into the podcast, if you haven’t yet, actually review the podcast, I would love for you to do that, and then just snap a screenshot on your phone. And you can just send that to Bella at delight your marriage.com. And I will send you back a training that I did for gentlemen, all about how to romance your wife. And it’s actually what I consider to be around a $97 value, because it’s within a program that’s a $297 value. And I think it’s got really good insights that I’d love all husbands to have. So go ahead and send me that email with a screenshot and I’d love to hit you back with some really good value. All right, let’s dive
1:32
into today’s topic. How do you know when to share difficult things with your spouse. So this is not easy. This is not an easy topic. And
1:53
my opinion of it is very different than the norm. Because I just have seen, I guess I guess I’ve seen my way work many times over. And I’ve seen the other way, not work many, many times over.
2:11
So this is not like normal wisdom that you get from marriage communication. So just to be aware, here’s here’s what I want to share is your spouse is the most important person in your life.
2:40
Aside from God, it is the most important relationship. And the truth of the matter is our marriage impacts our relationship with God in a huge degree. So what your spouse thinks of you, impacts the way you think about yourself. And when you think about yourself a certain way, it actually impacts the way you see yourself and your identity. And when you have a negative identity, then you actually live into that identity. Let me clarify that if your spouse says that you’re sloppy, and messy and disorganized, you’re going to start thinking that about yourself. And that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of I am sloppy and messy and disorganized. So then what’s the point? I’m lazy, I’m sloppy, I don’t care. And the way your spouse speaks to you and about you, is the way you think it’s true. Because obviously they know you the best they know you better than anyone else. They see you at your worst, they see you at your best. And if they say negative things to you, then that’s what you’re going to think is true. Why is it so important to be careful around how you talk about difficult things to your spouse. Because without meaning to what you say to your spouse, even in a weird moment, even in a bad mood, even in a space where you are just feeling crummy and you decide to complain or criticize.
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They carry that
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it is a wound that you inflict on your spouse. Just a careless word. Just a rude comment. Just a mean jab. Those things are wounds that you never I see. And this goes for men and women. But sadly, I see it so frequently, with men in the way they speak to their wives about sex. They think they’re being open and honest and sharing and even vulnerable. And it is vulnerable to talk about sex, it’s vulnerable and hard to talk about things that you don’t like in your sex life. Yes, I understand. For men, it’s a it’s a difficult thing to share with your spouse. And so they share it. But it comes off in a way that’s extremely painful for their wife. And what happens when they are when a wife feels criticized about her sex in any way, whether it’s frequency, or variety, or initiating or any possible thing. It makes her feel like she’s not good enough. And it makes her feel like you want someone else. Even though you’re saying those things because you want her? Not because you want to go somewhere else, otherwise, you would have gone somewhere else. But no, you want to share it with her because you want her to be everything to you sexually. But she doesn’t take it that way. And so how do you share things that are hard in your marriage? How do you share when you’re dissatisfied with something your spouse is doing or not doing? Well, my invitation to you is to take the long view. To take the long view. Your marriage is not a 30 minute conversation. Your marriage is a 80 year conversation. 60 years, however long you end up living, it is a long conversation. There is no reason to get everything out on the table in one, conversation. None, there’s no reason for that. You don’t have to share all of your thoughts. You don’t have to share all of your complaints, you don’t have to share all of the negative things that’s going through your head right now. What my encouragement is, is to broaden, widen the time line, make it longer, you can share a little piece. And then a couple weeks later, another little piece, but bathed in so much gratitude of the good. Bathed in so much encouragement of the good the things that you see about your marriage that are good, and that you appreciate about your spouse. If they have this incredible concept of themselves because of the things you say about them all day long every day. Why then and encouragement around I’d love to, you know, do something minor in the bedroom is going to be well received because you’ve told them about all these amazing things about who they are and, and what they do. But the criticism and the correction and the Oh, I just wish we would do this. Those kinds of things are just going to make her clothes off and make her feel like she’s not good enough and make her not want to try. No one wants to go towards something that they feel like they’re going to get criticized for. It’s just like for a husband. If wives I’ve been there. So that’s why I’m saying this because I have been there. When I have felt like my husband wasn’t putting any effort towards romance I have flat out told him that he’s not putting any effort and I’m putting in all the effort and he’s not doing what he needs to do. Was it true? Sure. Sure. That’s how I was feeling. Was it helpful? I don’t think so. I don’t think it moved the ball forward. I don’t think it made him any more motivated to please me. If instead I had shared some things around his identity of who he is,
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you know that he loves me and I can tell he takes care of our family and I’m so grateful for all the things he does for us and I’m very specific about posts compliments and then I talk about the things that you know, I love when we go out to a restaurant and yeah, that would make me so happy if we could do that sometime. Like, that is the easiest thing to, to drop a hint there. And then a week later, maybe you go out to a restaurant if not, okay, give it two weeks of continuing gratitude and gratefulness and all that. And then you mentioned I’d really love to go to this restaurant here. And there’s an event coming up, that would mean a lot to me. And then great. Maybe you go to the event, maybe you don’t maybe another week goes by and you’re grateful for all the good things and then you share honey, I’d It would mean a lot to me. If we could go someplace, is there? Is there a possibility we can put that on the calendar? And you’re a bit more vulnerable? You’re a bit more open? And yes, this is a process? Yes, it’s it’s not. I mean, honestly, it’s lazy communication, complaining, and criticizing. It’s just lazy communication. It’s we’re not thinking about the other person’s feelings. We’re just thinking about our own. And I’m not inviting you to bottle everything. That’s not the invitation. I think, strategically, though, you need to be kind. You need to speak the truth in love. Loving truth does not mean immediate truth. Jesus was so careful about timing, when people were ready for what? You know, when when the woman caught in adultery. You know, he treated her very differently than he treated the man who was totally righteous. And all he needed to do like the next step of because he was doing every single thing, right. The next step was the rich young ruler, right? He was doing every single thing, right, though, the last step Jesus said, was to give everything you have to the poor, like, people were ready for different things at different times. And he was careful about that. He didn’t give everyone the same advice. So my invitation to you is to be cautious, and to be careful, and to recognize that your words can leave wounds that take so much more effort to heal, than the effort it takes for you to just be careful about what you say, and to have peace reign in your home. You know, it’s, my husband and I were hosting someone recently. And it was just so beautiful. Obviously, with COVID. We don’t, we don’t host people regularly. This was this was someone in particular, but I remember they said, you know, it’s the it’s the best sleep I’ve had in weeks. And then they stayed for another night because it was and then again, they said is the best sleep I’ve had in weeks because of the peace in your home. And there’s a we have some another, it’s just something we’ve heard many times is that there’s peace in our home. It’s just like, you come into our apartment. It’s just this oasis of peace. And I think that comes from our marriage. You know, we’ve got two robot, rambunctious boys, there’s no reason for it to be peaceful. I mean, and you come in, it’s not immaculate, seriously, it’s not even beautiful. Like we’ve got, you know, kids scrawling with pencil and marker on the walls, like it is not a beautiful apartment by any means. But it is peaceful. Because of the way my husband and I treat each other. Because of our intimacy is generous and frequent. And free and enjoyable. It it builds each other up, we’re careful about how we speak to each other, we respectful, we use all those extra words that seem unnecessary, like honey, would you mind? Or oh, excuse me just a second, or oh, gosh, I’m so sorry to interrupt you. Like those are the things we say to each other. And yes, we’re married, like, why would you say all those things? Because truly the other person is the most important person in our lives, and we’re not going to take them for granted. I was with my mom. And she goes, I said something like, Honey, do you want do you want me to get
14:21
something or whatever? And my husband’s like, no, no, I’ll bring it down. And my mom’s like, you know, he was going to do that for you. And I was like, Yeah, well, of course, but I don’t want to take him for granted. And it’s true. Like I know the the character and the you know the generosity of my husband and the way he always goes far out of his way to serve me and carry my bag and do all the chivalrous things like I love it. I love being treated like a queen in my own home. But I don’t take him for granted. He doesn’t have to do that. He does I have to clean the dishes every night. So I don’t have to and I get to go primp at night, like, he doesn’t have to do just be immense amount of things he does for our family like the the dishes, the laundry, the vacuuming the cleaning the bathroom, like he does those things, gentlemen, he does those things. And of course, I’ve got energy at the end of the night to do other things that matter to him. Because I haven’t been scrubbing, and cleaning, and grocery shopping and all those things. So just let that be a lesson to you, gentlemen. But the point is, I don’t take that for granted. I recognize how important it is that he does those things for me, and I’m grateful and I constantly share with him how grateful I am. So that’s the way our communication is in our home. If I want those things to happen, if a wife is listening is like I wish my husband did those things. Well, it wasn’t immediate, it wasn’t automatic. Where we are today is careful, strategic, important communication, and my husband is gonna listen to this audio, he listens to everything I put out. It’s not manipulative guys. It’s, it’s genuine gratefulness and appreciation. And of course, your spouse wants to make you happy. Of course they do. It’s not going to help for you to complain until they get it that doesn’t help. It doesn’t help. What does help is for you to gratitude yourself into them, feeling so happy to make you happy. It takes a process that takes time it takes self discipline, and not saying everything that comes into your head. But that’s the process. And it’s effective. And it makes you happier. So that’s my encouragement is to get superduper grateful in your heart and share the things you’re grateful for. And little by little slowly, slowly, slowly bathed in peace, bathed in appreciation. You can share, I’d love to try this, or I’d love to do that. But it can’t be fast, can’t be pressured. It can’t be impatient. It’s got to be the fruits of the Spirit that you live out between the two of you. And it’s not bottling things up. But it is the truth in love. The way Jesus modeled it. He was patient, he was gentle. He was kind. He was self disciplined. Let me pray for your father. The person that’s listening right now needs wisdom. They need wisdom on how they’re going to speak to their spouse, how they’re going to speak to their spouse in front of others. When it’s just the two of them in front of a counselor. They need wisdom on how they’re going to speak to their spouse because they those words, leave scars or those words, he’ll give them the grace to heal the wounds of the past. Give them the grace to be wise. And to speak the truth in love. And to use all of the wonderful wisdom of Proverbs. There’s so much wisdom in that book. That they speak to their spouse respectfully kindly, with all the fruits of the Spirit in their home. That their marriage would be a true testament to non believers of what love looks like. We love you, Jesus. Amen. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being a part of the delight your marriage. Group. I don’t know. movement feels way too pretentious, but just the people that share delight your marriage and pray for it and do all the things you do. Thank you.
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I love you. I’d love to receive a review for you from you, on whatever place you listen to the podcast. And if if you do that, send me a screenshot and I’ll send you back some trainings. Alrighty. God bless you and we’ll talk soon.
19:42
Bye