Importance of Communication in Marriage
Transcript:
Lucy: Greetings and welcome to marriage talk. We are glad that you can join us today. We hope this is a blessing to those who are wanting to get married, and to those who are already married. We have been discussing topics that are bringing us closer to understanding how we can do marriage. In the last two podcasts, we spoke about guilt in marriage, in laws and different people that are connected to you in marriage. Before we start, over to you, Apostle Priji.
Apostle Priji: Thank you Lucy. I don’t think we are perfect in our marriage and so we are here trying to teach everyone how to do marriage. But we do have a manual in the scripture, a role model on how marriage should be like is not the world , it’s not our community, it’s not the culture, it is what God has prescribed for us in His word. We take the word very literally and at no point should you look at any of us and think we have got it all figured out. We are all here trying to search scriptures and understand how to do relationships better. God is the author of relationships and marriage. He is the one who instituted marriage. We have to do it in a way that honors, pleases and glorifies God.
Lucy: Thank you Apostle Priji. The topic for today is communication in marriages. When we were speaking about the guilt in marriage in our last podcast, you mentioned how we need to take our conversation with God first, before we can carry out that conversation to our spouses so that our communication is more effective, soothing because we have received from God. That was so beautiful. In my 15 years of marriage, I haven’t practiced that. But I do intend on doing that. So my first question is how and why is communication so important
Apostle Priji: If we can communicate well and in a manner that really expresses what is happening within us, and if It is also a language that your spouse understands, almost 80 to 90 percent of marriage trouble will be over. The reason why we have misunderstandings is because we haven’t learnt to communicate effectively. Most times a disagreement or a lack of oneness is because there is no agreement at a foundational level. When we want to grow in God and when we want to grow in intimacy with God, we go and spend time in prayer. Prayer is communication with God and the way to develop a good intimate relationship with God. The same way if we don’t prioritize communication then it will surely be a dead marriage. That is why communication is a key and a foundation in marriage. The goal of marriage is oneness
God said that they leave their father and mother, come together and become one flesh. Oneness requires exchange of ideas, visions, thoughts of what each person is going through. That is why every couple should have a high priority for communication. So spouses understand and perceive what each person means. The way we express what we are really feeling and the language we use to communicate has to be in line with what your spouse understands. I definitely recommend the book, ‘5 love languages’ to everyone. Gary Chapman, the author speaks about how different people have different languages. Most often, language is not only words, it is also what you are feeling and what you are going through. This is how we can set an example.to our spouse.
Lucy: so are you saying that it is important to figure this out before marriage, for eg. If two people are coming together in marriage, but they don’t understand this love language of one another is before marriage, do you think it can be destructive or can it be figured out after getting married?
Priji: I think we all communicate differently in different seasons of marriage or life. There is a season when we are single, when we don’t have any company around us, there is a different way we communicate when we are surrounded by the sounds of our children. When you are going through some struggle, you communicate in a different way. If you observe somebody in your home when they are sick, they will be a completely different person. And when they are happy, they are very different
So even if you do say that I have figured communication in my marriage or before it, or that I have learnt the art of effective communication, then you got it wrong, because communication is something we keep working on in every season. In other words , we have to learn to adapt and grow in each season to understand what your spouse is talking about, his/her needs, etc. Your spouse may be going through discouragement, mind attacks, your communication can provide help, strength and solutions to his/her needs. Communication is not only to express yourself, it is also for it to be used by the lord to help heal and bring answers and solutions. Proverbs is full of how one wise word or sentence spoken from a kind gentle heart, can heal someone else. That is why we have to learn to evolve in every season. Study your spouse in every season and accordingly you will be able to learn to communicate better. Jesus said judge yourself first, and not one another. Use words to build and strengthen my spouse. Good conversation will also have a vulnerable side where you open up and speak about your unmet needs from both spouses. Therefore communication in marriage can’t be one sided but it should be focused on how it is blessing your spouse.
Lucy: Wow. This conversation has taken a turn to understand how communication should not be focussed on me but how to build each other. You can also communicate through silence. I love that Apostle Priji spoke the book of love languages by Gary Chapman, of how it doesn’t have to be words, it can just be observing one another and make it more us-centric than me- centric. The next thing I want to talk about is the dead spaces in marriage. There may be arguments, misunderstandings, fights, or a time where you feel like you are not being understood and you shut down, and the other one feels they are not being heard, how do you break out of this?
Apostle Priji: This is a huge poison in marriage if you have reached a place where you aren’t able to communicate and you are not being understood or you have lost the desire to communicate now, then this will become a bitterness where this will poison your marriage permanently and you have to treat it like it requires urgent attention. The bible actually says don’t let the sun go down on your anger, make sure to resolve it before the end of the day. There are certain things that require more than a day. But it still requires you to bring down your anger and say, ‘ I don’t really agree with you but let’s settle this for now and we can revisit this conversation at some point.’
You are still able to love and serve each other, even when there is a point of contention.
We aren’t machines where one stop fits all, or you load a particular software and everything will get sorted. Human beings have complicated emotions, personalities and ways of expressing things. It is going to be a process and a journey to really work on every aspect of our lives. That’s why even when we don’t have solutions, we have to learn to kill that dead space. We can’t allow a foothold for the enemy to come in and sow a negative word. Before the enemy can come and begin to tell your spouse that they aren’t loved and wanted anymore, you have to be one to keep speaking your heart out and say, ‘ hey I may not agree with all of what you spoke, the truth is I love you and I believe that it’s god who brought us together’. This way, you are speaking the heart of God in your marriage, you may not even feel like saying these things but these are truths. You may not understand why your spouse is behaving in a certain way but you can still speak life. Life and death are in the power of your tongue. Based on this, you revisit those conversations till you have a breakthrough. In the bible, when David was dancing before the Lord, he was undignified, and Michal despised him in her heart and as soon as she saw him, she spoke words of contempt, bitterness, and accusatory words.
Now there is a dead space that is developing in their marriage and David says if this is what you believe, I don’t want to be with you. The next verse says after that Michal didn’t bear any children, which means their physical intimacy, spiritual intimacy, and emotional intimacy broke at that point. Michal developed negative feelings in a way that will quench the man of God. Now I understand what she meant by that. She didn’t want other young women to see what only her eyes were meant to see. Her expectations were completely logical. And yet, the way she expressed it with so much contempt and bitterness gave way to their discord. That dead space brought a complete stop in the marriage. They had a dysfunctional marriage after that. David still continued to provide for all of her needs, he didn’t kick her out, Michal stayed in the palace, yet there was no relationship. Now on the other hand, David could have been a little more kinder and gentle to her and led her to understand why he did what he did. David could have handled it better. We have to be careful of how we respond to bitterness, hurts, harsh words. No one is perfect, we will all have moments where we might hurt others or we regret for the next 5 years. David could have brought healing in the marriage. We have to learn the art of communicating and responding to negative communication. It is just a matter of time where the enemy will creep in the marriage if you don’t resolve differences with honor.
Lucy: from what I understand, it takes two hands to clap. In the example you have given, one of them could have chosen a different way to communicate. Very often we point fingers at our spouses saying you could have said it better, you could have done this better, but what is it that you are doing to make it better? Even though it does take two hands to clap, one person can make a change and a real difference.
Do you think there are also conversations that can kill certain beautiful settings, for e.g conversation killers?
Apostle Priji: Absolutely, I think what David did was a conversation killer whereas it could have been a start of a conversation. Instead he chose to shut the doors, and built a stone wall around his heart. Sometimes the way we defend ourselves is a conversation killer. But then you realize that your spouse was right in pointing out something we did wrong. Another thing I feel is if you are constantly critical, cynical, doubtful, negative in your communication, after a while it just becomes a deep problem. God has a sense of humor. That’s why it says in proverbs 21:9 that it’s better to live in the corner of a roof than to live with a nagging wife. If the person is constantly quarrelsome, then the atmosphere is not liveable anymore. What your wife or husband may be saying can be valid or worth noting, yet the way it is communicated matters. The Bible says let your conversations be seasoned with salt. We have to be very careful how to speak. Our best role model is Jesus, how he spoke to his critics, disciples, to even those people who didn’t have a relationship with him. For eg. The Samaritan woman was healed by communicating with Jesus, even Nicodemus.
You can make your spouse or even break your spouse with your communication. Your children can talk like how you speak to your spouse. They will imitate you. If you are arrogant and rude, please wait and watch how your children are going to pick it up. We have to learn negativity out of communication, we can speak the truth in love.
Lucy: I love how you spoke about talking with flavor, imagine having a conversation with no flavor or taste. We forget about having fun in marriage. There is nothing wrong with cracking a joke every now and then even with a serious conversation. I enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much Apostle Priji
Apostle Priji: I think we should go back and see what pattern of communication we have and where we can improve. Inspect ourselves and see what what areas of our life is with contempt, and make ourselves a little better with communication.
Lucy: Thank you Apostle, I am myself going to implement in my marriage. I want to be a fun person in my marriage. We hope we can all understand and walk with this conversation we just had. Thank you for listening. Please send any questions and we will try to talk about it in the next podcast. We will see you again.