Without developing the kind of shared mind or consciousness discussed in chapter 1, the foundation of your marriage is likely to be weak and, sooner or later, may wobble and falter. When the storms of adversity come, which they inevitably do in the lives of just about every couple, your marriage is likely to shake, shudder, and shift. Like homeowners who discover that their houses were not as well anchored into the hillside as they’d assumed, you may find that your marriage has crumbled.
Like the wise man in the parable (Matt 7:24–27), build your marriage on the solid rock of connecting. If you do this, the two of you will probably survive whatever hardship comes your way. Without communication that enhances connection, you may win the lottery and still end up in divorce court. In a marriage characterized by clear and loving communication, however, you might very well go broke and remain happily married.
When Anna and I have faced hard times, and there have been many of them, we’ve often said in one way or another, we’re in this together. I seriously doubt we’d feel like this if we hadn’t spent so much time, through the years, communicating.
An Indicator and An Influencer
Communication, whether positive or negative, both reveals and shapes the nature of a relationship. First, it’s an indicator, a kind of index or barometer. Nowhere does this reveal itself more clearly than within the up-close-and-personal domain of marriage, which can turn out to be either an asylum or an adventure. From the vantage point of eternity, it may turn out to have resembled heaven or hell.
When people are dating and getting to know each other, they are typically on their best behavior. After a while, however, they may no longer treat each other with the same consideration and graciousness they did during their first few weeks or months together, and they may occasionally let their irritability slip out. Still, their treatment of each other usually remains kind and benevolent. Because of the stress and tension that goes into planning a wedding—all those details!—they may argue before the ceremony, but they are likely soon to get over this in its afterglow. Even after they marry, both may continue for a while on their good behavior.
It’s often not long before things start to change. The wife, who assumed she’d married a charming and understanding prince, may discover that he is sometimes an unpredictable and tyrannical toad. Or, maybe just that he’s beginning to gain some weight around the mid-section. The husband, for his part, may be surprised that his wife is not always as diligent as he’d assumed. Or that she doesn‘t always look as attractive as she did at their wedding.
Now the games begin. How they now treat each other reveals a great deal about them as people and about the infrastructure of their marriage.
Second, communication influences or shapes a relationship. Whatever married people say or do in relation to each other either increases or decreases their level of intimacy. They craft their relationship glance-by-glance, word-by-word, and sentence-by-sentence. From a spiritual vantage point, everything they say or do makes them either more, or less, like Christ.
If, over the months and years, they learn to live together and gradually come to share a common consciousness (see Mark 10:9 and Matt 19:6)—if their marriage doesn’t deteriorate into make-believe—they will increasingly feel complete in each other’s company and incomplete when they’re apart. Regardless of how independent or resourceful they are as individuals, or how high-powered as members of society, they will long to be with each other.
Spouses may, of course, fail to grow closer. Long before anyone would call their union make-believe, they may become hostile or aggressive.17 Or, often worse, they may simply avoid each other, finding it unpleasant even to be in the same room.
Active Listening: Communicating That You Understand
In any discussion of communication, especially within marriage, it’s important to highlight the value of what has been called Active Listening.18 This consists of saying back to the other person the essence of what you’ve just heard.
Active listening is not parroting. A recording device could do that as well if not better. It is gently leading the other person, in this case your spouse, more deeply into his or her experience. This is accomplished by restating the core message in what you’ve heard.
When you listen actively rather than trying to figure out what you’re going to say next, it conveys that you care. Rather than offering your opinion on whether what your spouse has said is good or bad, you restate its central meaning. You also refrain from making the disastrous mistake of telling your husband or wife, “there’s no reason to feel that way.” Telling someone what they should or shouldn’t feel is massively insensitive and is certain to imply that you’re missing the point: this is how your spouse does feel. If he or she is giving you the gift of opening up, honor that gift with attentiveness rather than admonition or advice. Your job in a marriage is not to be a strategic consultant.
At least two benefits come from listening actively. First, it keeps the focus on the other person. We all have a strong in-built tendency to turn the focus on us, and what we’re thinking and feeling. Keeping the focus on your spouse without disrupting it is more difficult than you might suppose.19
People want to make better sense of their lives, of what they think and feel, and a big step toward doing this can be to talk it out with someone else. The best natural therapist for any married person is a spouse who cares enough to listen. Many times, when I worked as a therapist, people would say, in one way or another, finally someone understands me. Mostly, all I had to do was be with the person, listen carefully, and not rush in to fix things. Paying attention to your spouse is more important than returning a phone call or getting back to the game on TV.
Second, active listening keeps you reaching out to your spouse. Rather than becoming defensive, it moves you in the direction of empathy. No one is inclined to be empathic in the middle of an argument, which is when we’re most prone to want to justify ourselves. This is what makes empathic listening at such times enormously powerful.
Nearly everyone wants to tell his or her story, and to feel like someone else, in this case you, got it. Here are four principles for active listening within marriage:
1. Focus on what your spouse is communicating. Pay attention to gestures and expressions as well as to words and phrases. Stay tuned in to the other person, even if you feel like you’re being attacked. This, as noted above, is not easy to do. And, for the record, it’s no easier for a psychologist. We’re all cut from the same imperfect human cloth, with the same self-centered needs.
2. Refrain from offering advice or solutions—just listen. Men in particular find making suggestions almost irresistible, and some women do also. Not long ago, a man told me that it took him years to figure out that when his wife surfaced an issue or problem, this was not the time for him to make recommendations and in five minutes be done with the matter. It was, rather, the time she needed him to listen, which might take forty-five minutes. If you are inclined to act like a management consultant to your husband or wife, don’t. It’s often the exact opposite of what’s needed, like giving someone coffee to treat insomnia.
3. Say it back in different words. The key, here, is to see if you can verbally capture the emotional significance of what your husband or wife is communicating. Your spouse might say for example, “I feel like everything’s caving in on me, like it’s coming at me all at once.” To this you might reflect, “It feels overwhelming,” and then wait for your spouse to continue. Try to avoid falling back on stock phrases or clichés, which because of their superficiality may leave your husband or wife feeling worse than if you’d