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So much stress revolves around communication.
I’ve been there!
My husband and I have miscommunications everyday.
Today, for example, I was telling him about a sore in my mouth and he was sure I was talking about Europe.
That is silly and allowed for laughter.
But what about when someone is lost and just hoping for the other to quickly look up directions.
Or when you’re in a stressful situation and one of you is incomprehensible (to you).
Well, I want to invite you to reframe what good communication is.
I want to invite you to consider what really matters in communication with your spouse.
I try to debunk some unhelpful cliches:
“Your spouse should be your best friend,” or
“You have to be compatible with someone to be happy,” or
“If you don’t connect on common interests, you’ll die a miserable, lonely, painful death.”
Alright, that last one isn’t a cliche I’ve heard! (but maybe have felt?)
Let’s get some fun back in our lives and let miscommunication be the fodder!
Blessings,
Belah
PS If you need immediate help in your marriage and you’ve seen some changes from podcasts so far, now is the time to let that inertia grow into long term transformation with training and tailored support.
So, if that’s what you need, get on the phone with a Clarity Advisor and they’ll see if we are the right fit for your situation: delightyourmarriage.com/cc
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. Oh, right, welcome. I’m so grateful you’re joining me. listener, you are in a safe space to talk about marriage and sex and all the things that are important to it all. And we’re going to be talking about communication, because so often people come to my work trying to figure out how to better communicate with their spouse. And yeah, I want to talk about that. So you may, you know, just through the podcast, have heard different testimonies and different things that God has done through our work. And if you need help, and you need that kind of transformation in your marriage, don’t wait. You don’t have to wait for the next giant launch that I do. And all the things we can help you now, if you spend some time with a clarity advisor, they can dig deep into your story, and possibly invite you into a program if we feel it’s the right fit for you. So go to delight your marriage.com/cc That’s a $300 value for free. So I’d encourage you to do that as soon as possible. I always like always, I don’t know how long those things are going to be available. Because the business changes. And I need help from resources in different areas of the business and that sort of thing. But for now, I encourage you to jump on this opportunity as soon as you can. Alright, let’s dive into today’s topic.
1:56
So I think it’s kind of funny in our house, that we have miscommunications every day, just every day, because we didn’t grow up with the same language. And so, you know, we both speak English now. But it’s so common for us to miss, communicate, and misunderstand each other. And we also grew up with different cultures. And so once again, you know, geographic cultures, if you will, once again, there’s so many differences, we also we didn’t grow up with the same common cultural, just understandings and the things that you know, our inside jokes in American society, he doesn’t understand and vice versa. And so there’s a lot of areas of our lives, my husband and I, that easily could be interpreted as, Oh, you guys are not a good match, you are incompatible in this way or that way. And I wanted to share that because as a person that helps people in marriage, I want you to get a better understanding of my life. I’m not telling you that you can have a great marriage because my husband and I are carbon copies of each other. And we every single level and layer is the same. It’s not. We are very different. In fact, I’ve had people say if I met you and your husband separately, I never would have thought you were together. In fact, we have. We have had hilarious situations. One time we are New Yorkers are just hilarious. They, you know, they say their opinion when they think it, sometimes they don’t think it through before they say it. But anyway, I was pregnant with my first son, and he was touching my belly, you know, my husband touching my belly, we were waiting for the train. And this woman looks at me and goes, Do you know him? Like, yeah, he’s my husband, father of this child. So that happened. And another one is, you know, in the pharmacy, when you have to wait for like privacy reasons, you have to wait a little bit before the desk so that you know people have privacy. So when my husband and I go to the pharmacy, and like this happened, I’m just thinking of it right now is like we go up to the counter together. And so the people behind us think the whole line moved up because they don’t assume that we’re together and so they all move up. And so we don’t have privacy around our pharmacy things because they’re all moving up to you know, think that we’re not together often in the grocery stores. They’ll assume we’re not together like, oh, are these your things? No, no, we’re, these are together. And we just often have to clarify for people. All that to say is that we experienced miscommunications all the time. And instead of thinking of it as a frustration and annoyance, and a way that pulls us apart from each other, I have trained myself to think of it as what a fun way of interacting, like, how great is it, that we get new ways of thinking about language, and culture and all that over and over and over again, I have new ways of framing my experience in this world, because I interact with him every day. So this morning, I was telling him about a cold, it’s not a cold sore, but you know, when you get a sore in your mouth, I don’t even know what it is. You’re not taking enough vitamins or something. And I was trying to explain to him what it was. And I was trying to show it to him, and he couldn’t see it and and then I was like, I’ve seen them in your mouth. Like he’s shown me the sores in his mouth before. And somehow he thought that I’ve been to Europe. And that’s, that’s what I was telling him and, and instead of being like, Are you kidding?
6:17
How can I be talking about Europe? So instead of saying something like that, instead, I just take the moment to laugh? How funny is that? To have fun with it. And I didn’t even care to explain the rest. It doesn’t matter whether there’s a sore in my mouth, I don’t care. It’s just funny that we get to connect on a miscommunication. And so I said something like, Yeah, honey, I, I went to Europe, and I saw all these sores in people’s mouths. And you know, and, and it was a beautiful experience. I just loved it. And so here we are laughing and actually growing in our connection, because of a miscommunication. And I want to challenge you for that. Why not grow in your connection? For miscommunications, I was talking to someone recently. And they’ve got some hard things going on in their life, some, some challenges with someone very close to them is sick, and maybe nearing the end of their life. And when we have crises in our lives, it’s so easy to take those stressors and those stresses out on our spouse. Because it’s almost like the whole temperature rises of of your whole life, you’re you’re extra stressed. So you bring that stress to your relationship. And it makes it a little harder to have more patience and more peace. And I just encourage them, keep the easy things easy. Keep the easy things easy. being misunderstood is not a big deal. Misunderstanding is not a big deal. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just not. So if you keep the easy things easy, that it really doesn’t matter whether or not he understood that I was trying to describe something. And literally again, this happens every day that was just this morning. But there are things that happen every day that I misunderstand him, he misses understanding me. And, but, but if that doesn’t trip us up, then then we’re just connected. And so when the crises do happen, we’re in a connected space. It’s not, oh, this crises happen. And I’m having tension and strife with my spouse. You don’t have to fight both battles. Instead, your connection with your spouse can be that connection and fueling the strength to take care of the crisis. And so to slip it in there, sex is really important to keep your connection strong. It’s really important to keep your connection strong, is to have consistent intimacy and to serve each other a bit with abandonment in that and to love your spouse well in that in a wholehearted way. So as a wife, you get to be proactive, you get to be intentional. You get to say, I know this is good for him. I know this is good for our marriage. I know this is good for me, and even the culture and safety of our family. My kids, it’s important for me to love my husband with abandon. And so dear wife, I encourage you and invite you to allow that to just make everything in your marriage easier and happier and make your husband feel loved through sexual intimacy. And the next thing you can do in your marriage, for both sides is really changed the culture of your marriage. And I talked about almost geographic cultures, right? My husband and I came from different places. But you and your husband or your husband and your wife, you did as well. You didn’t come from the same family and each family grows up with a different culture. There are different norms in your family. There are different inside jokes. There are different traumas, there are different ways of being in each of your families. And you are coming to your marriage creating a new culture with the two of you. And what is that culture? If an alien came and sat in your living room? How would they describe your culture? what’s normal for you guys? What’s absolutely not going to happen? What absolutely will happen? What are normal things? Now I want to just call you on the carpet and say little Spats over little things are ridiculous, and they need to stop. Have an expectation for you and your spouse that there are no arguments.
11:14
I’m serious. Are you proud of the last argument you had with your spouse? Are you proud of the way that you handled yourself? If you’re not stop it, learn from it. Learn from the disconnection, learn that when you have those major disconnections with your spouse, it harms your relationship, it harms your family. If you’re a husband, it moves you guys further away from sex, if that’s your goal, to have wholehearted, wonderful sex with your wife, stop the arguments, stop them forever. There are ways to get important things settled in your marriage without arguments, especially stupid ones. And I only can say that with conviction because I have been there. And I still have to fight the urge. Sometimes when this thing is out of place, or this thing is not where I hoped it would be, or I drop the stuff all over me because this wasn’t going on the way it quote should have been. You know what I am living with a human being. And he has thoughts and desires and priorities other than me and making my life best and easy. So I get to respect him just like he gets to respect me. And that means holding my tongue when I want to get all over him about something that made my life hard. If you’re not proud of the way you handled yourself recently, turn around, repent, ask him for forgiveness, ask her for forgiveness, and move forward and change. And so when there’s miscommunications between you, let it go. First of all, decide if it’s really an important topic. Because what’s probably when miscommunications turn into big things, there’s a couple things going on. One is it could be just where each of you are. So whether it’s one of you is really stressed, or has hormone stuff going on or has just difficulty. Maybe even depression going on whatever it may be. That could be what’s causing one of you to really push for this miscommunication. Another thing that could be going on is the other person doesn’t feel hurt. And they don’t feel respected. So that’s a huge one when husbands don’t feel respected. Or if they don’t feel admired. Or if they don’t feel wholehearted sexual intimacy. It’s painful. There’s actual heart pain happening when those things aren’t going on in your marriage. And so when you are aware of that, and you’re thinking about that, and you’re curious about is that what’s happening here? Maybe he’s saying certain things, but what’s really happening is he’s not feeling filled up in our marriage. And so this topic, which seems completely out of the blue, is coming out. I don’t know about you, but for me, I have definitely felt certain ways about not feeling filled up in the marriage, but then I go in a completely weird crazy off direction. That really doesn’t have much to do with how I was feeling, but it just feels good to let him have it. if you will, because I was just feeling so angry towards him because of some of these other things not being filled up. Okay, so what about on her side, maybe she’s not feeling known. Maybe she doesn’t feel like you care about her uniquenesses and her amazing qualities that God has given her. Or maybe she’s not feeling safe. Maybe she’s not feeling like you are a safe person to talk to with her feelings. You don’t care about her feelings, you don’t care about listening to her and curious about her day. And maybe she doesn’t feel wholeheartedly cherished with the romance and the dates and the surprises and wanting to make her smile. And so that could be an undercurrent of why communication is breaking down. Because the things that each of you need are not in place. And so it’s very easy to look at the other person side and say, Well, yeah, that is why it’s happening because they are not doing their part.
16:12
But that is not an empowering way of looking at this, you will not get your marriage better if you wait for your spouse to do their stuff. You’re at an impasse, how do you make your marriage better if you’re waiting on your spouse. So my encouragement to you is to focus on yourself, focus on how you can love your spouse, well focus on how you can be more like Jesus, that He gave it all. He would he he was vulnerable to you. He did all the work without knowing whether you were going to respond or not. He did it all. I want to invite you to do that for your spouse, love them, love them, love them, with the goal of attracting them towards Jesus, through your love. And the byproduct often is really great feelings of being loved in return in response, that’s a byproduct. That’s not your goal, your goal is to attract them towards Jesus. And so the big things that need to be decided in your marriage. Like when you really think what are the big things, they should be things about eternity, shouldn’t they? That’s what they should be about. And if you are having a goal of loving your spouse the way they receive love, and thus attracting them to Jesus, by the way you love Jesus, then those big things become a lot easier to talk about. They become a lot easier to talk about. But you’ve got to put in the work first on your side, on your site and be patient and witness God. Change things about your spouse, and witness God. make things easier between the two of you and make the culture of your marriage more playful, more light, more fun, less stressed more of a, ah, I can relax when I come home, I can let my hair down. It is just a good environment to be around and be myself. Because I accept my spouse as they are. And if you are doing the intentional work, you have to have patience for it. Because the cool thing is, that’s why I love working with men. Especially when their wife doesn’t know they’re doing the work. Because when he changes who he is, and he’s got to be consistent, he’s got to have patience, but he changes who he is his wife. It’s a natural response. It’s a byproduct of feeling unconditionally loved. Because he does unconditionally love her. He changes who he is on the inside. I actually do not like and I might change my policies in the future. I don’t like working with men when their wives are working with me too. I like the men going first. Really? Because it is a it is human nature to get your head over there thinking well they need to be doing their side. What are they doing? They’re not doing their thing. It’s it’s so it debilitates it undermines the the focus and the drive that husbands need in order to change themselves. And so yeah, my policy might be changing here pretty soon just so you know. Because it’s just it’s sickens me when they had an opportunity here had an opportunity to change himself in it. And he, it didn’t, it didn’t happen because he was waiting on his wife and expecting her to change. And that’s that’s the whole point you need to stop looking at your spouse, you need to start keeping your gaze on yourself, stop the control and start attracting your spouse towards what God wants your spouse to be about, through loving your spouse unconditionally, through loving your spouse unconditionally. So yeah, miscommunications work themselves out, when you stop focusing on the tiny, inconsequential things, they work themselves out. And you start slowing down and you start having more grace with your spouse.
20:48
And I have a great podcast about an episode about listening, I think it’s um, 288. If you want to know more about communication, listen to that one. Listen to this one and the one about listening. Because you will get more from your interactions, when you have a curious mindset, a patient heart, a gentle spirit, something that’s not going to jump to conclusions, normalize the fact that you’re going to misunderstand, that’s okay. And that’s good. assume it’s happening. It’s okay to be misunderstood. And it’s okay to misunderstand. You’re a totally different human than your spouse and, and men are extremely different than women. Oh, my gosh, when I am in a group of women, it is very different vibes than when I am a group of men. And I have the grace to speak to both and coach both. And I even have to coach extremely different for men and women, because we are such different humans. And so when we expect miscommunications to happen, then we can make it fun and playful. We can make the responses to them better. And even responses to disrespect, when we feel disrespected, can be in a good way rather than direct and even mean and mean spirited? The response to disrespect could be like, oh, yeah, do you tell the story better than I do? No, go ahead. Go ahead. Honey, you’re right, you’re right, you do tell the story better. Okay. And if that’s in a culture of you guys are playful all the time. That’s fun, and it still gets the point across. But if your plate your culture is not playful, and it’s high stress and all of that, something like that wouldn’t make sense. It would, it would break you guys apart. So that’s why the culture of your marriage, the normal of your marriage, needs to be one of grace and kindness and playfulness. And calling yourself on the carpet. Or maybe the better way of saying self deprecating and, and not taking yourself so seriously. And not poking fun at your spouse but but building them up. Always. Always there’s things to build up about your spouse, always there’s things to compliment about your spouse, always. Always, maybe they said something that was a little sharp, a little hurtful, but you know it, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. So compliment the fact that they were respecting you to that degree. There’s always things if you’re looking for it. If you’re looking for it. The other expectation I want to shift for you is that your spouse has to be your best friend. That is something that people have said over the years, many times I don’t see that in Scripture. So just so you know. But it is kind of cool that some people have found that to be a great metaphor for their spouse, and that’s fine. I don’t think it’s required. And if you are using that, to judge whether or not you and your spouse are compatible, I want to just shake that out of you. It’s not true. You don’t have to be best friends, in order to be compatible. What makes you compatible? You married them. They are now your assignment. You chose them believing that God has put them in your life to be your assignment and they are so you’re compatible. And that’s it and of discussion. You’re attracted to them, you have chemistry with them. You don’t have to even wonder you pick to the right person, and of story. Let’s keep going. Don’t Don’t entertain those thoughts anymore. Because all it does is harm doesn’t help anything. It just harms. So whether or not you feel you are best friends with your spouse, this is what I want to encourage you. Your spouse does not have to fulfill all of your emotional needs. Just love Like your kids, let’s say your kids are one of them, or however many you have, they don’t have the personality of a child that you wish you had. Is it helpful for you too long for the child that you don’t have? Like? No, no, you are given this child, this child is yours to love and to allow to thrive in front of you, in the same way with your spouse, love and accept and appreciate who God made them to be. And whether or not you have the same hobbies or the same interests, or you can pontificate on the same intellectual thoughts or arguments or whether emotionally you seem to be at the same depth. So what, get some friends that want to engage in those kinds of conversations or want to be in those kinds of hobbies? or what have you, and let your spouse be who they are. And accept and love and cherish and adore them for who they are because God designed them. And you get to love them. Well.
26:13
Don’t Don’t stress that oh, my gosh, we have different XYZ. No. Don’t even let your mind go there. It’s done. You said I do. It’s over. You’ll pick the right person. Let’s move on. Let’s get on with what God wants for your family, your life, your ministry, and let marriage just fuel it. So I hope that this kind of lets you just exhale, about your marriage and your communication styles and all of that focus on making a safer culture, focus on loving your spouse Well, focus on laughing together when there’s a miscommunication. Focus on being okay that you are misunderstood that your spouse doesn’t understand what you meant to say or even what your intentions were, that’s okay. You know, a person is revealed in consistency. So maybe She misunderstands you one time, maybe two times, maybe three times, but over years, you’re gonna, if your heart is right, she’ll understand it correctly. You don’t have to, you know, pull punches back and forth, and back and forth. Just let God work on her heart. Let God work on your husband’s heart, continue to love them well, in your heart. Love them, well accept them for who they are. Trust that God is doing what he needs to do and let it go. No longer try to control them. Love them the way they receive love, and pursue God with all and God through you will attract their heart to himself. Father, I just pray for this person who may have come to this conversation with a lot of stress and a lot of concern that if communication is not strong, they are doomed. And I just pray God for grace, pray for discernment. And even just a sigh of relief. That No, it’s okay. If they’re not a great communicator, if their spouse is not a great communicator, it’s going to be alright. They can still have fun together, they can still be playful and love and dance in the kitchen and sing songs together whatever it is Be playful. And there it doesn’t have to look the way that they think it may have to or the way they’ve seen it look. They instead can expect except the spouse they have been given and love them so well. And love them so well. Father, thank you for your hand in this family. And I asked for your grace, and all of it. In Jesus name, Amen. As always, I’m honored that you would spend time with me thank you may God pick out the specific nuggets you needed for today and let you continue to have that on your heart. And if you need miracles in your marriage, and you’ve seen transformation already and some things that I’ve shared with you now that you’ve gotten started on that journey, I would say now is the time to get the support. If you felt a little inertia coming out of what I’ve taught you so far, now is the time to dive in and get support and tailored advice and encouragement along those lines. Go to delight your marriage.com/cc and we’ll have a copy conversation with you. Yeah, and see if we can actually help you get to where you’re praying and dreaming and believing God wants to give you as a marriage. All right, God bless you. And we will talk next week. Thank you. Bye