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If you’ve ever seen a headline (one of mine or someone else’s), “They did [this] and got [this],” you may have experienced a “transactional trigger”.
My motivation is to attract people who need transformation in their marriages.
What I call “missional marketing”, some may call “bait and switch”, which is kind of true, too.
You may be someone who came for a certain outcome, but you listened and found out that to get that [thing], you have to change who you are – including your motivations.
For many, it works (by God’s grace).
But, initially, it may have triggered transactional thinking for you.
This can lead you to believe that you’re guaranteed a certain result if you do [X] for your spouse.
Here’s what I hope for you.
I hope that you’ll start your journey with an expectation of an incredible marriage and sex life and end your journey with a completely different set of motivations: to love your spouse the way Jesus loves them. Unconditionally.
Whether they do X or not, you get to love them the way Jesus does.
The cool thing is…
Humans are designed to respond very differently to unconditional love.
Humans heal.
Humans let down their guard.
Humans start to act differently when they know the rug won’t be pulled out from under them at any moment.
The desperation ends.
Peace and freedom begin.
And marriage can become pretty amazing.
BUT your motivation should be to love your spouse unconditionally and enjoy–every moment–every smile–every laugh–every miscommunication–every peculiar habit–enjoy life alongside this wonderful God-designed being you get to love.
Blessings,
Belah
PS – Loads of free downloads here: delightyourmarriage.com/free
Delight Your Marriage has been awarded in the Top 30 Relationship Podcasts for 2018, 2019, 2020 & 2021!
“Through working with Belah, my marriage is saved and thriving, and I am forever changed and grateful.”
We work through recommendations—if you’ve been impacted by our work, please consider helping another couple by sending them to delightyourmarriage.com
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 truth about intimacy, learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. delight your marriage. Hi there and welcome. I’m so grateful that you’re joining me, I’m hoping that where you’re coming from is, wherever difficulty or challenge or things that are swirling around in your head, that you can just be here, be present, relax, you know, do whatever you’re doing, as well as listening. And may this encourage you and inspire you. Awesome. So before we dive in, I have some cool resources for you, if you haven’t ever checked out the webpage to light your marriage.com/free I’ve got a ton of free downloads in there for you. And yeah, from building your confidence to figuring out what’s blocking her libido. And there’s just a ton of them. So go to delight your marriage.com/free and check them out, I think it’ll bless you. Alright, let’s go ahead and dive in to this important topic about your motivations. And I think it’s gonna actually be very productive for you in moving the ball forward. So let’s dive in.
1:42
So if you have followed me for a while, you know that my titles are very much like, do this, get this, it’s very results oriented. But then if you clicked on it, and you listen to it, you understand that things are way more complex than that. Because the point is, you become a different person, you treat your spouse out or the overflow of your heart for them. And it’s kind of natural that God changes their heart. But you’ve got to, you’ve got to love unconditionally, unconditionally. And so yeah, those are the kind of the soundbites, the one liners, that piece gets people’s attention. But that’s definitely not the whole story. It’s not the whole story in the least. We, as followers of Christ, have to love our spouses unconditionally. That’s the way God loves us. We don’t parent, our spouse. It’s not a when you do something good, you get a treat or some kind of reward. When you do something bad, you get some kind of consequence. I unfortunately have heard this from actually both husbands and wives, even leaders in marriage, places. It’s it’s not okay. It’s not okay. This is an unconditional love, contract that you sign up for in your marriage. The thing I think is important for you to understand, though, is that this hopefully is going to be a huge paradigm shift. As humans, we fear disconnection. We fear disconnection. You know, the people that don’t believe in God, they say it’s because we were evolved to be part of a tribe. And so our greatest fear is to be cast out. Because we’re cast out then you know, the saber toothed Tiger will eat us. And, you know, Christians can believe in evolution too. I don’t I don’t dive into that piece. So I really don’t know. The best way to think about it. But you know, even as a as a Christian, I mean, looking at the Bible like, this is not a condition on your behavior, whether or not your loved God, God loves you, no matter what. He loves you no matter what, how nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. I think it’s the love of God who is in Christ Jesus, right? There’s, there’s nothing that can separate. I mean, God sent His only Son to die for you, so that you could be in communion with Him. You could have a relationship with Him. You would never be disconnected from him. So know the rewards and punishments. That is that’s not how you’re supposed to treat your spouse. And when we do have our mindset set up like that, then it undermines everything because first of all, your your spouse is smart. So I guess I’ll say that I see this in husbands more than I see this in wife. So let me just direct this, this mindset issue to husbands. But it could be wives too. So listen up if your lady. But if you are thinking that, I’m going to be kind to my wife, if she makes love to me, or if she is enthusiastic, I’ll be happier, or, you know, I’m not going to be serving her and loving her well, unless she does X, Y, and Z. Because what that does is it makes your marriage unstable, because she’s smart. And she can sense whether or not this is a for real, forever. Unconditional, accepting love. Like, that’s her feelers are up for that she knows. And so if she doesn’t feel stable, and fully accepted in the relationship, then she’s not going to let her guard down. Emotionally, or intimately. She’s not going to let her guard down. She’s to know that she’s accepted for who she is, the uniquenesses of her, the emotions that she has, you’re not scared by those things.
6:32
You’re not scared by her emotions, you’re not scared by the mistakes she makes. I’m not saying that I defend those things. But I will say that, when you love her, well, she can relax in your love. And her emotions get better. And her potential outbursts get better, because she can relax in your love. So there’s not a punishment for her feelings. There’s not a punishment for her not making love a certain amount of times, or what have you. Instead, there’s, there’s gratitude for whatever she does do. And that naturally grows when somebody is assured that the relationship isn’t going anywhere, then true intimacy can emerge. So I told you that we’re learning a lot about parenting, and it’s really surprising. But you know, what used to be big, you know, blow out. I don’t know fits are lessening within weeks. It’s amazing. It is utterly amazing. And one of the major things that a couple of resources talks about like this book, rest, play, grow. And the blog and podcast called make Joy normal. The lady’s name is Bonnie Landry, Bo n, n, ie, last name is Lan, Dr. Y. Anyway, these are the resources we’re learning from. And they talk about collecting, collect your child, collect your child, collect your child. And what that basically means is different times throughout the day. Do a little ritual to show that your kids are loved by you. So depending on the age, that might mean a tickle or a smile or a quick kiss on the cheek or quick squeeze of the hand. A dear mentor of mine said that you grab their hand, and you squeeze it three times to say I love you. And so that might mean in the middle of the day. It might mean when you’re sitting at church quietly and you reach over and squeeze their hand three times it might mean any other time of the day. But just different little collecting rituals that your your kid knows you love them. They don’t have to earn it. They don’t have to do something to earn your approval or your love. I mean, think about all the men out there you may be one who felt all their life like the only way you were going to get your daddy’s attention is if you became the star of the soccer team or the football team or you were amazing in school or you whatever made everyone laugh, whatever thing you thought you had to do to earn your parents affection. It’s probably stayed with you and it’s probably impacted whether or not you felt like a failure or awesome because of what your parents are either gave you, you know, unconditional love for was it conditional on do this, and I’ll give you this sort of response. And that’s not the way we’re supposed to treat anyone in terms of our who we are before Jesus. So the reason I say all that is because now that we are really changing the way we interact with our kids, oh my gosh, they are relaxing in our, our love, and also our leadership. That’s the thing that I’m shocked about. And I haven’t figured out if there’s a metaphor here for marriage or not really. So don’t, don’t think that this is I think the metaphor stops at the unconditional love piece. But the leadership with kids is just amazing, because it is helping to see this as like, I’m the leader, but I can handle their emotions. They don’t scare me, I don’t have to turn into this immature brat in response to their immaturity, I need adult, I get to be mature while they are not. And so think about that. I think that also matters in terms of, of your of your spouse, like this moment, this interaction is not indicative of your whole relationship. One interaction, you’re working towards a bigger purpose. There’s, there’s a long there’s, there’s a length of time here, you don’t have to say, Oh, this one situation. She was disrespectful to me. So she’s always disrespectful to me, and I have to correct it in this moment. You don’t, you don’t you can work on the unconditional love piece. And as that has become healed,
11:52
you can slowly bring in healthy boundaries. You know, when she does feel that there’s unconditional love that she is accepted that you love her no matter what, that there’s the delights frequently. There’s these, you know, consistent reach outs and accepting and safe when that is really deeply established, then the healthy boundaries do come in, then you can say, you know, honey, I wanted to circle back to that. What happened at the party when you corrected me in front of everyone? I’m curious if if you felt like I was stupid, and that’s why you said it in front of everyone. In you know, you got to watch your tone, watch your tone, make sure it’s calm and curious. And she says no, no, I didn’t. I was just in the moment. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. Like, okay, thank you. That means a lot to me that you would apologize. It was it was kind of hurtful in the moment. Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. And that what that does is communicate to her that the respect hurts your feelings. Okay, another way is in the moment, it could, it could be you know, whispering in her ear. You know, honey, if if you continue to treat me like that, I’m going to have to wait out in the car. Or I’ll you know, I’ll probably join somebody else’s conversation for a while. You know it, it doesn’t have to be this huge, angry fit of rage. It’s you know better. You’re the husband, you can decide in dignity, to respond well to the situation. But they have to be assured by your love that this is not a divorce topic. This is a this is a you know, you’re not leaving her you’re not going to take away affection. You know, that makes a woman desperate. And then she does all sorts of things that are you know, just desperate we do. We do crazy things when we’re desperate as humans. And so when you don’t feel desperate when you feel assured, and you can rely and relax in your spouse’s love, then you don’t you don’t keep acting desperate you you can act more calm. But what if you don’t feel love? What if you don’t feel the love is unconditional in your marriage? Well, sorry, first of all, I’m sorry that that’s not I’m sorry. That’s painful. That’s hard. I know you’re listening to this because you want it to be different. Which is why I’m going to help you with those sorts of ideas and action plans. But that’s not easy. It’s not easy at all. What I would invite you to think about is If you are listening to this, then you are probably a learner, you are grower, you want to change, you want to get better. So you have to be the one that has the mature response, you have to be the one that says, You know what my marriage is worth healing, I’m not going to wait for my spouse, I’m going to decide I’m going to respond in healthy ways. So the controlling, I have a course called controlling to care free, it’s amazing. And it really goes into this deeply. So you can go to delight your marriage.com/courses. And you can look into that. But I mean, that is the roadmap of how to move a marriage that’s truly deeply controlling, husband, wife, or wife to husband, and, and really gives you those insights. But yeah, the it has to start with this, this deep, knowing that you are accepted, that you are loved. You know, when a lot of us have parent wounds, or wounds from other relationships or that that kind of thing. But if we don’t feel that we are loved unconditionally, we can’t. Really, it’s hard to change because we’re, we’re in this fight or flight mode all the time. When we don’t know our spouse is is going to love us no matter what. We feel like we’re always on guard. So, if that’s how you think sometimes you’re like, Oh, I just want to get out of this marriage. I mean, your spouse knows that you think that way? Whether it’s, you know, consciously or unconsciously, they know.
16:47
This has to be a change in your heart. You need to change your motivations. Yes, I mean, if you find this podcast helpful, great. But don’t allow it to make your motivations to I only love my spouse if they make love to me X number of times a week in these ways in this. No, that’s not God’s way. Not even close. But I have to tell you, when you do love your spouse, Well, God does amazing things in your spouse. It’s not guaranteed. No, it’s not. But it’s it’s human nature’s the way God made us to operate in unconditional love. That’s the way he made us to operate in unconditional love. So yeah, when I have made these changes with my kids, oh my gosh, they’re, they’re so different. They’re becoming such different beings because they feel unconditionally loved. And I have to be consistent in loving them unconditionally. And that means figuring out what they like, figuring out what makes them love, feel love figuring out what makes them smile. And I have to do that pursuit of them. And, and yes, that when you feel loved, when you feel accepted, you can become the best version of you. But there can’t be strings attached to the way that you look at your spouse. So yeah, so you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the term bait and switch. A lot of my programs are this, this sort of, quote, bait and switch because you you want your marriage to change, you want your intimacy change, okay, work on your character, work on the inside of you. And yes, there’s there’s other external things that you can do that are really important and good and important, and all these things, but the inside of you shines brighter than anything else. Anything else? And I know in our world today, where social media and expert external appearances seem higher priority than anything else possibly could, but you can’t fake it with your spouse. They know who you are. They know who you are. And, you know, it’s unfortunate sometimes because I’m like, I just can’t get it past my husband. My, my all it all hangs out with him. Not, you know, physically and emotionally and spiritually, like he knows if I’m living what I preach if I if my heart is really for what I’m saying. Yeah, I mean, and and, you know, we hear it all the time that you know, somebody has had knowledge about Jesus, they they know the Bible, but gosh, they don’t live it. Like what? That’s not good. That’s not okay. That’s not okay. We need to be living the world Word of God, that means we we love unconditionally. Now it doesn’t mean that we’re going to love everybody unconditionally. That’s the peace of priorities. We don’t have bandwidth for that it’s impossible and not God’s calling, even Jesus. He said, at the garden, he said to God that I have. I don’t know if he said, I have I have, let me find it. In John 17, nine, it says, Actually, let’s start in verse seven. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you, for I have given them the words that you gave me. And they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you. And they have believed that you sent me, this is the key verse, verse nine, I am praying for them. I’m not praying for the world, but for those whom You have given me. So to me that that really means that we have to be clear on who God has given us, your spouse, number one, your kids, number two, everyone else, it’s a discernment process after that. So unconditional love for your spouse, unconditional love your kids.
21:21
And, and that’s a constant heart thing we have to check, we have to check on that is our motivation. So we’re going to do this. So they’ll do this. And, you know, in some ways, a client told me the other day, they listened to one of my podcast, and it really triggered transactional thinking. And I really liked the way he said that, because that’s not of God. And I feel like a lot of my podcasts, I almost should have a, you know, a trigger warning on there, but probably most of them, because it’s so easy to get in that trap of Oh, they’ll do this. So I’ll do this. And that that’s not on me. That’s not on the teacher that’s on the person listening to make their heart say no, no, I’m going to do my part. And I’m going to love them unconditionally. And who knows. So change your motivations. And, and I will attract people who would never listen to this kind of content with my titles, I will attract people into my programs, who would never have done such a character journey with those sorts of titles. Because, as you know, God has worked in those ways many, many times over. But through the material, my hopes and prayers that motivations change, that I will love my spouse unconditionally. And we’ll see what God does on the other side, but my part is fixed. That’s what’s important because when you stand before Jesus, it’s not going to be about how great your sex life or your marriage was. It’s gonna be about your heart. Did you love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength? And did you love your neighbor as yourself? That unconditional love, the same way that Jesus loves you is the way you love your spouse unconditionally. You know, my husband says it a lot. He’s like, I would die for you. He’s very romantic and sweet. And so he says, he says that I I have a hard time saying that because it feels like a superhero movie. But it is it’s very reassuring. Like I know it’s true. If somebody pulled a knife on me he would jump in and rescue no matter what. I would hope to do the same in you know, such situations. But yeah, I I want you to rectify your own heart. And say my motivation though maybe I clicked on this episode because I want this to be changed. Okay, great. This is the you can do your very best in loving your spouse unconditionally, and doing all the you know, certainly their their skill, their stuff that I teach that, that is more specific and all that but the motivation at the heart has to be unconditional love. It has to be that it has to change to be that maybe it didn’t start out that way. But I’m in the changing business. Right? That’s what God is in. I’m on his side. He changes people all the time. And that’s what we’re doing here. Changing Lives changes marriages, changing children’s trajectory in their in their families. You have to change your motivations. To unconditionally love that man or that woman that you have been privileged to live with. that they experience God’s love through you, regardless of their response. It has to be consistent checking of your heart. am I loving them? Because I want them to do XY and Z? Or am I loving them because I love Jesus. And this is his well. So that’s what I want to leave you with. Let me pray for you, Father, I asked for this person listening. You know them, you know their heart, you know their struggle. You know, their search, you know, their reach for you, God. I pray that you would purify their motivations, purify my motivations, help us in this, God, we can’t do it on our own. Help us to purify our motivations to love our spouse, and our kids well, and the people that you have also assigned to us individually, who are those people help us to love them unconditionally. Lord, help us to clarify what your will is for our lives. God to change our motivations, according to your will. Lord, we love you. Help that to be a deeper, truer love.
26:19
In Jesus name, Amen. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me.
26:25
Go ahead to delight your marriage.com/free and check out a ton of free resources that I have for you. I’m excited for you in that. All right. God bless you. And we’ll talk next week. Thanks so much.