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When she says, “We just don’t communicate,” or “You never listen,”…she is talking about this learnable skill.
Listen to her heart. Listen to understand. Listen to let her know you understand and care.
Not listening to respond or even defend yourself.
It is to listen to her emotions and sit with her in her pain. To be curious and to give her a safe space to share. When she shares her emotions (her heart) vulnerably, you are witnessing courage.
You are on sacred ground.
Tread carefully and gently.
For Mother’s Day, just the other weekend —
Did I get diamonds?
A weekend getaway at a fancy resort?
A stainless steel, 14-quart Instant Pot Duo Mini 7-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker?
I mean…
Sure those would have been good gifts.
But,…
What I got was priceless:
Hours of his full attention.
He got excited about what I shared.
He cared about what matters to me — how I’m growing,
how I was feeling,
and genuinely wanted to hear more.
He noticed my feelings — wanted to hold space for them —
and held me emotionally…
And…well…did what I teach you to do in today’s episode.
It was far more fulfilling than those other things ever could be.
(Just FYI, when he surprised me with my favorite wine, beautiful glasses, roses, and sitting together in a gorgeous spot in Central Park…that did add to the intimately fulfilling conversation. 🙂
Blessings,
Belah
PS If you’d like to have a conversation with me or a member of my team about what’s going on in your marriage and see if one of my programs can help you, apply for a Clarity Call: delightyourmarriage.com/cc
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.”
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. Welcome. This is Bella, I want to thank you for joining me today. And I’ve got a really, really exciting conversation to share with you all about an incredibly important skill if you are a husband, and you want to seduce your wife, and cause her to come towards you in all sorts of ways, including intimacy, this is vital. And if you’re a wife, it’s just important in your all sorts of areas of your life but and if you want your husband open up and be more vulnerable and share more, which is a beautiful part of relationship, this is also key for you. All right. Before we dive in, I mentioned on our last call that I have opened up Clarity Calls again. So you can speak to me or one of my team members to talk about what would help you in your marriage. And if one of my programs would be the right fit for you. So if you’d like to apply, you can go to delight your marriage.com/cc for clarity call. Alright, let’s go ahead and dive in. So let me tell you kind of a funny story. Just the other day that happened. My husband and I made love in the morning. And afterwards, I said, I’d really love to spend time with you. And for him, he felt like we just spent time together, we just made love. For him, he was filled up and happy and ready to go. And I was wanting to have coffee together in bed and talk and, and share. And that would be most connecting for me, even though I enjoyed making love and it was great. And we both had a great time. So I think that it’s helpful men, for you to think about listening in that way. Now, I I think sex is complicated. And I think all sorts of things in life are complicated. And that’s why what there’s 280 Plus shows about this topic that I you know, have produced and there’s plenty of books out there, and plenty of just tons and tons of things. I have plenty of resources and programs and all that. But so this is not a you know, very easily understood topic. But I think that if I could make this simple for men, I think listening in an engaged, curious caring manner can be just as connecting for a woman as intimacy is for a man physical intimacy. And that sounds crazy, right. But that, I mean, that’s my experience of it. Like, yes, sex is important. It’s the glue. But if, you know you hear so often women are saying things like we just don’t communicate, there’s, you know, he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t talk like they’re, they’re talking about an engaged person who cares about her heart. I mean, that’s what she’s communicate. That’s what she’s saying. When she says, quote, communication. That’s what she’s saying. There’s no communication. I mean, yeah, there probably is there’s fighting and yelling and back and forth. But are they listening? Is it impacting the hearer by what is said, in an empathetic way? So this is a skill that is worth your pursuit of mastering and, you know, in my course, masculinity reclaimed, we go into it very deeply. And the gentlemen are just like, oh, my gosh, I had no idea listening would impact her wanting sex. It’s like, yeah, yeah, it really does. It really does. You know, some of these guys are just literally weeks in and because of this transformed way of interacting with their wife. She’s making love to them. And literally, she doesn’t know he’s in the program. And that’s many times over and I’m thinking of multiple men in my program right now, that are experiencing that.
4:58
So that is Good, is a good hopefully the why is there of, of the listening piece. So, I’ve written down a few items that are key to listening. One is you need a curious attitude. It is required. But that starts in your heart. You need to decide that what’s going on for her is important. And if you think about the end of your life, when you think about regrets, it’s gonna not be about I regret not sending enough emails, I regret not attending more meetings with my boss, I regret not having that perfect spreadsheet for the report. That’s not going to be it, or I regret not making more money, or I regret not having more Instagram likes, or I regret not being more proactive on the baseball team, that’s just not it. What’s going to matter is your closest relationships, you know, if you didn’t have a connected, intimate marriage, like, that’s huge, and it fuels all these other places of your life. So you being curious about your first and highest priority human assignment
6:29
is huge. So choose a curious mindset number one. And I’m just going to kind of go through how to do more of that. So
6:41
So one thing is bring your full attention. That means turn off the computer, turn off the laptop, shut down the phone, look at her straight in the eye. Not not be fidgeting not be thinking about other things have be curious about what’s going on in her life. What’s going on in her heart, her feelings? What feelings is she bringing to this. And even if it’s mundane things, even if it’s planning, xy and z, if you’re not a good listener in the mundane things, there is no way she’s going to share more vulnerably more openly, you’ve got to start by listening carefully to the things that matter to her, even if it seems mundane, so that she will end up sharing more and trusting that you actually care so that she can share more of her heart. And when she trusts you with her heart that’s vulnerable. And it translates into being vulnerable in the bedroom too. Because the bedroom is vulnerable for her and for you and a little bit of different ways. But that’s key. Knowing erupting is important. You know, think about if you’re sharing with someone and they just start interrupting you, it’s like, oh, they don’t care. You just shut down. You’re not, you’re not going to keep opening up. So that’s important trying not trying to fix it. It’s a huge temptation for men to try to fix it. Whatever problem or however she’s feeling like I love when you know something happens in a situation or conversation, whatever. I’m like, Honey, can I talk to you? And we sit down and he just lets me share and he empathetically listens. He’s like, Ah, wow. Oh, honey, I’m sorry. And that’s literally all he says like, ah, that’s tough. And then I love when he says this. What do you think you’re going to do? That’s all he has to say. He doesn’t have to fix it for me. He doesn’t have to take away the pain. He gets to witness me having emotions holding me holding space for me. And yeah, I mean, if I’m crying, that means physically holding me but it might just mean holding space. Being willing to witness me have strong emotions, and letting me figure it out. I’m not dumb, he doesn’t have to fix it. I know the situation. I know what’s going on. He just needs to trust me and know that I’m capable and I can handle this. But I might need time to process with him. And that means strength when he can hold me in my emotions and not try to fix it that strength. I think I got that from Brene Brown. I think she has kind of a quote almost exactly what I just said. So check her out for more of this sort of allowing someone to be vulnerable in front of you and not trying to fix their vulnerability just letting them process it in front of you. Yeah, tell me more. What do you mean by that? Wow, that’s hard. Like, write down those phrases and commit them to memory like that’s vital. The next thing is consistent. Again, she needs to trust that you care. This is not a one time deal, listening and growing in her trust of you. Remember, the intimacy framework that I say so frequently, is that she needs to feel known, safe and wholeheartedly cherished. When you listen to her. I mean, you’re basically hitting all three of those, but one in particular is safety. And so when you are consistent in caring about her heart, she can trust you. She can trust you. Another piece is having those nonverbals. So just just Mm hmm. Wow. It’s funny, I have had listeners on the podcast. And they’ve responded in different ways that I make too many noises when I’m interviewing somebody. And I think that’s pretty funny. But the reason I do that is because it encourages somebody to share. Because actually being interviewed, as somebody who gets interviewed a lot
11:23
is vulnerable, because you’re sharing your thoughts, your beliefs. And when you don’t get feedback by the person who’s interviewing you. You’re you’re kind of not sure, do they? Do they agree with me? Do they disagree? How are they feeling about this? And so as an interviewer, I know that I get better interviews with people, when they feel safe and comfortable, and like I care about them. So the nonverbals are actually very important for it to be great interview, I’ve had people cry on my interviews, you’ve probably heard them. And these are people that get interviewed a lot. And the reason they cry on my interview is because of this, because they know I’m safe. And so it’s the nonverbals. And so you might have to deal with some of my nonverbals on some of the interviews, because it’s worth it. But I have recently chosen to do more video interviews so they can see my head nodding and my expressions of my face. So you as an audio listener, you don’t necessarily have to hear all of my, all of my responses. But the point is, when you’re with your wife, she wants to hear that it matters to you. When you’re silent, it makes her think that you don’t care. And you might be, you know, you might be looking somewhere else in the room. Because a lot of times that’s how men think, is their eyes wander. But it helps them to process what’s going on, it actually helps them to listen. But to her, it seems like you’re not paying attention. Because for women, they fix their eyes on what they’re listening to, generally speaking, and a lot of times men, they kind of need other things to help them listen more. It’s kind of interesting. And that even happens in babies with female babies. I gaze with their mother. I can’t remember the statistic but just many times more than male babies. I remember that with my son’s like, even though we’d be nursing my my one of my sons and his eye, he would just be all over the place with his eyes. And suddenly he’d be looking somewhere else. And I’d be trying to get him to like stay focused. We’re doing something important here. But that’s just the way he was built. And, and now like even with him, I have to realize, I might be telling him, you know, the most beautiful sentiment in the world and it looks like he’s not even paying attention. But he is. And so with your husband, it’s the same thing. If your wife listening, he is paying attention. You just have to give him grace that this is how he processes his listening. He is listening. And for men on your side of the deal is do the nonverbals even if you have to put your eyes different where you know different places in the room while you’re listening. If you do nonverbals by like huh, oh, wow. Huh? Gosh, that’s hard. I hear you, huh? Wow. Those kinds of things. They’re the encouraging noises they encouraging nonverbals help her to know that you are listening. Another thing that’s gonna sound interesting maybe, is that you need to be very careful about bringing energy to the conversation. That’s your job as the listener. She is not when she is sad or she She is, even when you’re on a date, right? You have to bring the energy. She’s not going to be the one to push a conversation. Like, think about it. Something’s vulnerable, something’s hard to share. You don’t naturally say, Sit down and listen to me. It’s just not. That’s not the way it is, that’s not a natural thing to do. The natural thing to do is kind of be quiet about it. And especially if you’re not sure if the person wants to hear it. So you really have to bring the energy to say, what’s going on in your heart. How you doing? What’s up? How are you feeling? You know, if she calls you and she’s emotional, like, Hey, how are you? Oh, my gosh, yes, of course, I have time What’s up, you see how that’s energy. It doesn’t mean you’re, you’re, you know, yelling or getting loud, it just means you’re bringing energy, you’re bringing the curiosity, you care, you care about her, you care about her feelings, you care about her thoughts.
16:08
So bring the energy. And so when you’re on date night, and you don’t know what to talk about, you get to come up with the questions you get to create an energetic environment to share. It’s that’s your opportunity. You know, because when I think about a date, and maybe this is just because I’m, I don’t know, a romance woman. And honestly, this is how I this is, this is what I know of women. They, I consider it a date for me, I just just like in a in a dating relationship. I mean, it’s for the woman, right? The has the man gets all suit and tight and gets excited and plans out the date and she gets to enjoy it, it’s for her. So when I think about, you know what’s going to happen on the date, I’m, I’m excited to receive all the all the good stuff that’s gonna happen on the date. Now, it’s, the truth is, it’s not just for me, it’s for us. And we both have a great time. And it’s connecting and fun. And it’s important for both of us. But in terms of just what I enjoy most on dates is when my husband is prepared to ask me questions and be engaged with me and, and we have topics of conversation to bring to it. And I mean, that’s when it’s most fulfilling. That’s when I am most fulfilled is when he takes the initiative to ask me the questions. So with that in mind, ask questions like think about, even be prepared, gosh, why not write them down? As you bring up, you know, throughout the week, you know, when you realize there are things that are super hot button topics, when you notice she’s got emotion around it, you can circle back to those, you write them down and say, you know, when you have some time, and just how, how are you feeling about that again? You know, it’s, I know what was really on your heart the other day, how how’s that going for you? And gosh, that makes her feel known. That makes her feel known that you really care. And you know her that the conversation didn’t fall on deaf ears, it, it actually matters to you, you know, those topics matter to you, and you you circle back to them. They’re important. And just because she had a motion around, it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want you to talk about it anymore. I mean, it’s kind of like, and this, you know, it’s kind of a sad metaphor. But when somebody loses somebody that they love, you know, let’s say it was a parent, you know, everyone loses their parents at some point, right? So let’s say you lost your mother. It’s sad, you grieve, it’s tough. But people often don’t bring it up because they don’t want to, quote make you sad. But the truth of the matter is you You’re always thinking about it, or you’re frequently thinking about it. And so people bringing her up actually is kind of an honor. It’s kind of nice for people to acknowledge that. This, this is a woman you’re you’re acknowledging her memory, you’re, you’re bringing her up, you’re you’re showing that you care about this darling person that has mattered so much to you. Another example is if somebody has had a really tough experience with something and or they’re battling an illness or they’re battling a mental health illness, when you bring it up because they were kind enough to share it with you at some point. When you bring it up. You’re actually honoring that release. ship that they shared it with you, because they trust you. But if you ignore it, it makes them feel like you don’t care. And so it’s the same thing with your wife, if you ignore the important topics that she’s brought up with you in the past, she very well may feel like you don’t care. And just to be clear, what I mean by that is, let’s say she shared with you how she really gets stressed when the kitchen isn’t clean before you go to sleep. And so you take it upon yourself to start cleaning up the kitchen. And let’s say you circle back a few days later, or a week later,
20:38
and you’re like, Hey, babe, how are you feeling about the kitchen? Now? You know, are you still stressed about it? Or what’s? How’s that going on? You know, how are you? How are you feeling? You know, personally speaking, that’s exactly what happens to me, I get really stressed when things are just a mess, it just really stresses me out. And so that is not helpful for intimacy. Because, you know, I leave a stret a, you know, a very messy environment. And, you know, and I don’t have hugely high standards for, for cleanliness, you know, things being organized and clean. But, you know, relatively clean is very helpful for me to focus in on intimacy. So, anyway, just asking questions, circling back to things. The other piece is listening for her emotions. When you see her kind of tearing up, don’t, don’t rush past that. That’s in fact, and when I coach people this is key, is when I see emotions, I try to pause there, try to say, what’s what’s coming up for you? Where’s the emotion coming from? What would you say? You know, and just be so curious about that. Because in the moment of emotion, there’s something there. And you’re like, like, almost, you know, you’re, you’re a detective at the, you know, during your conversation, you’re, you’re looking for those emotions, you’re trying to figure out what’s going on in her heart. How is she doing? And get, you know, this makes listening cool, right? You’re you’re trying to figure it out. You’re curious, let’s, let’s see what’s going on here. So when you see that emotion that glimmer in her eye, where she’s, you notice she’s, you know, trying to hold back tears? Or
22:25
that’s when you can sit? Wait, what’s coming up for you? How are you doing? What’s up? And just be curious, you don’t have to push into it. If she’s like, No,
22:34
I’m good. I’m fine. Okay, great, back off, no big deal. She’ll let you in when she’s ready. When she can truly trust that you’re safe, you actually care and this is consistent. But if she does let you in, she does let you in, be really grateful about it. Which is kind of my next point is after vulnerable, emotions or conversations are shared, the next day, even thank her for it, just thank her for being willing to share. Thank you for her being willing to open up and that what that does is just cement in her that it really mattered to you that you actually do care that, you know, this is important to her. And the fact that she shared her heart, that’s a big deal. And you should honor that. Remember, your wife was made in the image of God. And these are attributes that you get to experience as someone who married a woman, you get to experience this, this is an attribute of God. And when you see her open up, I mean, you’re on sacred ground. I never thought about it like that before. I said it just now but it’s true. You’re you’re holding her in the most intimate place. She has let you into her heart. She is trusting you, be trustworthy, be trustworthy. And hopefully this goes without saying but when she opens up, this is never something to use against her. Never, never never. This is never something to be used against her at any time in any argument in any moment of stress or frustration. Because that’s truly shooting yourself in the foot that’s causing her to not trust you. It’s causing it all the you know, connection you’ve built all the emotional intimacy you’ve fought for will be undermined if that’s something you would use against her somehow. And what do I mean by that? So let’s say she shares you know, something that I’ve struggled with plenty of times is, is food of abusing food. And so let’s say and I do share that with my husband, when, when, you know, let’s say, when God convicts me, and I’m like, I kind of circle back and I’m like, I need your crude up again, I ate too much of this, or, you know, I, whatever, whatever, I responded to my emotions in an unhealthy way again, or whatever it has happened. Then, you know, let’s say he sees me eating, when I shouldn’t be eating, and he knows that there’s probably going to be some ramifications, if he were to use what he knows about this against me in a way of like, come on, belah, you know, this is bad for you. Like, can’t you just stop, like, if he were to say anything of the sort, I would never share, again, about this important stroll in my life and heart, I would never share again, I would never trust him again. But instead, he just ignores it. If it if he notices, it’s happening again, he just ignores it, he just lets me come to it on my own. And, and again, that’s, that’s what makes me it gives me more and more strength to, you know, kind of fight that demon again, and I get to open up when I want to, about that struggle. You know, so, so yeah, he would never use it against me, which is key. So never use that against. And then finally, listen, for the purpose of understanding, not for the purpose of responding. Again, the curiosity staying in the moment, don’t seek to respond, seek to understand. So usually, we’re never taught how to listen, right. And so it’s, you know, it’s the most important thing for us to navigate life well is listen. But if you’re trying to just respond to an argument or a point made, you’re actually going to miss what’s really happening for this human in front of you. And this matters in everything, every human that you interact with, when you are actually curious and trying to figure out what’s going on for them. That makes it so you actually respond in a way that helps them. Remember a recent conversation that was really hard to hear from somebody
27:36
if I took it personally, but instead, I just, I just decided before the conversation, that I was just going to be there to listen, I was just going to be there to hear their heart to see where they’re coming from, to understand them. Not to take it personally, not to defend myself. But to just listen, and you know, what, I didn’t defend myself, I just really listened and tried to hear their heart. And I, I hope and pray that in the future, even though I did disagree with them. In the future, I hope they look back on the conversation and actually have a reception a possible receptivity to what I stand for, and what I think is right, because if I just defended and, you know, tore down their arguments and you know, had a big debate with them, the possibility of transformation for them would be closed. So instead, I just listened. And I thought about what would matter what would actually help them? What would move them one inch towards the way that I think God wants them to go. And that’s what I chose to do in that conversation. And, yeah, I mean, in some ways, I’m like, I could have sold this, I could have said that I could have totally debated them on that because I think that was wrong. But no, it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna cause them to be receptive. So hopefully, that also helps in your conversations with your spouse, and whomever else that you disagree with. If they’re not receptive to what you’re going to say, it just doesn’t matter. And the only way they’re going to get receptive is if you really understand them first. And I think my final wrap up about listening is, I think this quote, I heard it originally from John Maxwell. I think it came from him. But he says, people don’t care about how much you know, unless they know how much you care until they know how much you care. And so all of this is caring. All of listening is love, all of it. There’s some great quotes about listening also from Mr. Rogers. By By the way, if you haven’t seen that documentary about Mr. Rogers, it is so good. Just search documentary about Mr. Rogers. It’s so good. He was a Christian. And he just, he loved kids so much. And it’s beautiful lessons that you can learn from him about listening. And so, yeah, I hope that, you know, let me just do a quick summation of what I brought here. So, first of all, you’re listening to understand, not to respond, you’re listening for emotions, you’re going back and thanking her for being vulnerable. You’re doing a lot of nonverbals. You’re having eye contact, you’re giving her your full attention. You do this consistently, because this is frequent ways that you you listen over and over again, you’re not interrupting. You’re not trying to fix it. You’re being superduper. Curious, you’re bringing energy. And you’re asking questions. Alright, let’s pray. Father, I lift you up. And thank you, God, that there was a lot in here. And I pray God that what the gentleman needed to hear, or what the wife needed to hear on this call, is what they would leave with God that the connection with their spouse is worth them going outside of their comfort zone, doing things new, feeling awkward and silly at first. Because when they get this connection, it matters so much. They will learn so much about you. By listening, truly listening to their wife and knowing how to do it. So I pray God that you would give them the grace to listen, the grace to move forward. In Jesus name, Amen.
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All right, so thank you for listening. Look at you, you’re doing so well already. Thank you for listening, go to delight your marriage calm slash CC, if you’d like a conversation with me or my team, and we’ll listen to you. And we’ll hear your heart and see if we can help you in one of my programs and, and bring you in and let God transform your marriage. We just see it so many times miracle upon miracle of people married decades, like literally decades, and even within weeks, maybe a couple months. Just seeing these transformations and the people if it’s not me, someone on my team, listening to you had that happen for them. So they know it’s possible and they get to witness it in others all the time. So delete your marriage.com/cc I love you. God bless you. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Listen, well listen hard. You got this. God bless