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Love each other as I have loved you

John 15:12 (NIV)

Perhaps another way to render the meaning of this verse is, “Love one another as I have already loved you.” Jesus did not toss this off as a request or suggestion. It’s an imperative from the Supreme Commander, a requirement that was and is grounded in what he himself demonstrated.

What I’m going to share in this chapter about communicating applies as much to other family members as to spouses. It’s applicable, in fact, to all relationships, whether with children, distant relatives, or casual friends. Before getting into specifics about the nature of communication, I want to discuss love—what it is that we’re to communicate.

It is far easier to delude ourselves into believing that we love others as Christ did by thinking of love in the abstract. We may, for example, imagine someone we know from church. This is likely to be a person with whom we have little history, and who therefore has had no opportunity to debate or oppose us. Such people are easy to love if we’re willing to fool ourselves about what we are, and are not, really doing.

Loving an imperfect spouse can prove far more challenging than loving the man or woman in the next pew. This is because to love someone in the flesh, in contrast to the imagination, forces us to move from the abstract to the concrete, to face the hard reality that love can be costly. Deep and enduring love is rarely acquired on the cheap or enjoyed without a price. Love demands sacrifice.

But of what? Precisely what does love require us to sacrifice, lay aside, and do without? What is the coin of its realm?

Love requires that we give up our never-ending need for vindication, self-justification, and having the audience, in this case our spouses, acknowledge that surely we were in the right all along. Sinners that we are, we know and demand our rights. Not imaginary or hoped-for rights, but real ones. We want the world to see that we have been wronged, treated unfairly, and in some way violated, especially when we know we’re right. When we clearly perceive that we’ve been the victim of injustice.

Of course, we have! Remember, you married a sinner. Never mind that we, too, are imperfect. We are quick to hold others accountable for what we explain away in ourselves. Without a nanosecond’s hesitation, we conclude that their bad behavior reflects character flaws, whereas ours was, well, because we had an off day.

When two human beings first establish even a casual connection, two material beings and two spiritual beings begin to engage. This implies that, however invisible the spiritual dimension may be, it is always there. Even if one remains oblivious to its existence and completely lacks faith in God, the spiritual remains inescapable.

All of us are beasts and angels, caught between two worlds, the animal and the angelic. We are like titans, struggling somehow to find the intimacy we need in the up-close-and-personal mini-verse of a marriage. Few of us may look, feel, or act much like demigods. Far from it. Yet, made in his image as we have been, our Creator has bestowed on us qualities that are indeed godlike. Our mental capacity is enormous, our power of invention almost limitless, and our potential to build up or destroy seemingly boundless. But, like the titans of Greek mythology, we have flaws and faults that make it hard for us to love.

Communication As Connecting

If you were to ask people to tell you what they mean by communication, some might say that it’s imparting or transmitting data. Others might suggest it’s the transfer of information from one person or group to another person or group. A few might focus on understanding and the expression of feelings. Still others, if they have studied semantics, might say that communication is conveying meaning, getting across what you intend.

Communication involves both sending and receiving. If you just talk, you’re only sending. If you just listen, you’re only receiving.

I once listened to a talk on communication given by a man whose family had worked in the film industry for decades as producers, directors, and actors. Rather than emphasizing proper diction, the mechanics of delivery such as not rocking from side to side, and avoiding fillers like “um,” he bypassed all that and focused on what he considered to be of paramount importance: connecting with your audience.

I’ve thought about this over the years and still believe it to be the best definition of communication I know. Depending on the purpose of the communication, we might add the phrase in ways that bring about change. But such change is secondary. Connecting with your audience remains the core concept. If you’re not connecting, you’re not communicating. It doesn’t matter how erudite you are, with what resonance you speak, or how well you articulate or project your voice. If you don’t connect, your message will fall on deaf ears and soon be forgotten.

I watched this play out at a Toastmasters meeting that Anna wanted to attend. After your first meeting or two, Toastmasters invites you to give a five-minute talk. I prepared mine carefully, making sure that every word was perfect. And, that’s how I delivered it, with consummate precision. The audience politely clapped but without enthusiasm. Then, Anna gave her talk. She spoke from the heart, without worrying about word choice, or the finer points of elocution, and she connected. They rewarded her with loud applause. A humbling experience to be sure, considering that I’d made a significant part of my living speaking.

The most important audience you’ll ever have is your spouse. It is he or she, above all, with whom you have to connect if you want to enjoy a happy and fulfilling marriage.

Hindering the Connection

I’ve stressed how we’re sinners; we marry sinners and so do our spouses. This is merely to accept a fundamental tenet of Christian doctrine: we fail to love God or our neighbor as ourself. As the late theologian Paul Jewett put it,11 rather than loving our neighbor as ourself, we love ourself in our neighbor.

Utopian hopes to the contrary, there will be no perfection of humanity in this life, and therefore Christians continue to live in the tension between two natures, which the New Testament refers to as flesh and spirit. Flesh, as used in Scripture, is how English Bibles often translate the Greek word sarx, which refers to more than sensuality.12 It encompasses narcissism and egocentricity.

If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,13 coming to terms with our imperfections is a corollary of such fear. Fear is a biblical way of expressing how without reckoning with and acknowledging the ultimate worthiness of God,14 human beings remain in the dark. Regardless of how otherwise brilliant, they fail to grasp the most important realities that determine the nature and significance of human existence. Another way of putting this might be that genuine faith begins with recognizing and coming to terms with the implications of the radical difference between God’s nature and ours. This is sound theology.

What is unsound is trying to excuse and explain away bad behavior by insisting how, after all, we’re “just sinners.” In past conflicts with Anna, when she’s expressed her objection to something I’ve said or done that conveyed rigidity, ingratitude, or ungraciousness—perhaps all three—that’s precisely how I’ve sometimes responded.

This, of course, has left her neither pleased nor amused. Anna’s reaction has often been that I was being flippant and not taking her feelings seriously. She was right of course. Asserting that I’m a sinner, blithely dismissing and failing to acknowledge the specifics of what I’d done, not only failed to increase our connectedness but, on the contrary, decreased it.

Sure, you’re a sinner, you make mistakes, and so on. But don’t use this reality as a ready-to-hand excuse, a way to fall back on an abstract generality to dismiss, diminish, or rationalize away a legitimate complaint about the concrete specifics of your words or actions. Such excuses never enhance communication.

Communication as Food for the Soul and the Marriage

People need other people, relationships, and if they’re deprived of human contact for long—for example, through forced isolation—they suffer and, in some instances, markedly deteriorate. Communication is the food on which relationships exist. It is the medium in which they grow. Humans have been expressly created for psychospiritual communion with other human begins, for what, in a church context, is often called fellowship. When people communicate, which they do in countless ways, it’s as if they’re performing a kind of mind-meld. In a limited way, they’re temporarily allowing at least one other person to read their minds.

We cannot truly know another person’s mind without permission. Perhaps we can make good guesses, inferences based on what we observe, and a few gifted psychoanalysts15 have demonstrated a remarkable ability to do this. But, regardless of how skilled we are at this, we remain in the position of having to guess.

If Sally moves slowly, looks down, and tears up, we may assume that she’s sad or depressed. But even here, we may get it wrong. Sally may simply be repositioning an irritating contact lens. To know with certainty what another person is thinking or feeling, he or she usually has to tell us, which presupposes candor. Once such self-disclosure occurs, the person will have contributed sustenance to the relationship. And, in response, we’re likely to contribute some relational nourishment of our own.

Some people suffer from what I have described elsewhere as emotional aphasia.16 Aphasia is the medical term for a number of language disorders. A requirement for the diagnosis of expressive aphasia is that the person was previously able to use language, for example to say words, but now has trouble doing so. I use the term metaphorically, so it is not so much that the person has lost the ability to express emotion, but that he or she may never have developed it in the first place. Such people have rarely been able to put their thoughts and feelings into words, have little ability to enrich any relationship beyond mere subsistence, and feel comfortable only with those who are similarly bereft of expressive capacity.

Men are more likely than women to suffer from emotional aphasia. Sometimes, however, women also demonstrate it. Whether male or female, such people may be otherwise bright, even gifted, but they cannot, or in some instances out of fear will not, put into words what’s going on inside their minds. And so, they provide few nutrients to sustain a relationship. Their marriages tend to suffer and die of communicative malnutrition.

Importance of Clear Communication: Digital versus Analog Messages

Until the invention of digital media such as MP3 files, all recordings were analog. This meant that they routinely contained a certain amount of distortion, which was often unavoidable. With the advent of the digital age, it became possible to produce near flawless recordings. The goal in a marriage is to communicate precisely, which implies more directly and with less interference from extraneous noise. Communicating clearly is an art that is acquired neither quickly nor easily.

If you think of what it takes to learn how to cook well, or consistently return a ball in table tennis, you can understand how mastering the art of clear communication requires practice. Learning to say exactly what you mean can take years, which is what is usually required to develop strong expressive skills. Doing so also takes courage.

There lies within most, if not all, of us the desire to make ourselves look good and avoid criticism, and so we tend to slant what we say to create the most favorable impression. Putting this starkly, we all have at least a slight tendency to lie, to shade the truth, especially to our spouses. This is because we have so much at stake. Later in this chapter, I will return to the subject of lying to one’s spouse, and emphasize why this is not a good idea. Here, I’d simply like to encourage you to make it a personal goal to communicate within your marriage as courageously, candidly, and caringly as you can.

If you find it hard to put into words what’s in your mind—if it’s difficult to think out loud—make it your objective to acquire this ability. Further developing your expressive skills may be among the most potent tonics you can give to your marriage. It’s also one of the best insurance policies against either of you drifting off into another relationship.

Keep at it. Expand your expressive vocabulary. This will take time, but with persistence you’ll gradually increase your emotional fluency. An easy way to start would be simply to say out loud, when you’re alone, what you’re thinking and feeling. Try it! You might be amazed at how quickly you’ll learn to put into words what’s going on in your head.

Communication as a Marital Foundation

Another way to view communication is as a foundation. Providing for a spouse’s basic needs, like housing, food, clothes, transportation, and affection can certainly strengthen a marital foundation. But, as many people have found out to their surprise, this alone may not be enough to ensure that a marriage will endure. Apart from a common bond in Christ, the most powerful way to ensure a solid base on which to build any marriage is to say what you think and feel, and to listen when your husband or wife does the same.

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 said nothing. The idea is to listen closely for what the other person is feeling. This might mean that you have to pause before responding. It may also mean that it would be prudent to ask, “How do you mean?” or “Say a little more about that, so I can better understand.” It’s almost always better to ask how do you mean than what do you mean, since the former tends to elicit more depth and detail, while the latter tends only to prompt the other person to repeat the same words.

4. Confirm your understanding. Ask if you’ve “got it,” perhaps in just those words. This is so simple to do that you might think that nearly everyone does it. Not so. People rarely check to make sure they understand what another person means. The best way to ensure that you understand is to say it back (#3 above), and then ask if what you said was accurate. If you don’t ask for confirmation and, if necessary, correction, the two of you could end up using the same words but meaning entirely different things.

Reports and Commands

Scholars who study language sometimes point out that every communication is a report and a command, an item of information and an instruction. Although this may not always be the case, it is an insightful and provocative observation, one worth keeping in mind as it applies to suggestions and questions.

Imagine that your friend or spouse says, “I think we should go to the movies.” This could mean anything from “I’m bored and would like some diversion” through “I want you to consider my plan for the evening” to “We’re going!”

Here’s another example. Your friend says, “Don’t you think War and Peace is a wonderful book?” This is likely to mean, “You should like it too.” The “don’t you think” part is what members of the legal profession would call leading the witness.

Once you see this two-pronged nature of suggestions and questions, you will be more alert to the unvoiced commands embedded within them. This is not to say that such commands are sinister. They can be quite helpful, in that they provide social cues by conveying what the other person wants or expects. You don’t necessarily have to comply, but it’s useful to know what’s being asked or demanded.

It is generally better in any marriage to make requests as opposed to demands, to err on the side of maximizing your spouse’s freedom. It is worth noting, however, that freedom is not always the license to do what we want. Sometimes, it’s the chance to do what we ought. When Christians enter into marriage, they vow to accept certain limits in those regions of life that have to do with emotional intimacy and sexual fidelity. Yet, apart from such sacred domains, the more freedom we give our spouses, the better. And, the more freedom we grant them, the more likely they will be to prove worthy of it.

Saying and Doing

It is not enough to say that you love your husband or wife. You also have to show it. Turning things around, it is not enough to demonstrate that you love your spouse by what you do. You also have to say it. Both modes of communication—saying and doing—are necessary for a thriving marriage. Neither by itself is sufficient.

In chapter 9, we will take up modes of expressing love. Here, I simply want to shout “foul,” to blow the whistle, on any husband or wife who neglects either to demonstrate or to verbalize love, or worse, to rationalize away the deficiency.

You could, of course, reduce verbalizing love to just another kind of behavior: talking. Fair enough. But it’s an important, even essential, one. Human beings are verbal creatures; language is central to who we are. If you don’t express your love in words as well as actions, your actions may prove anemic.

The Importance of Self-Disclosure

Like saying the words I love you, telling your husband or wife about what’s going on inside of you is vitally important. It can make the difference between a tepid worn-out romance, with little spark and both spouses going through the motions, and a vibrant love affair—something from the pages of the biblical book of Solomon. It’s difficult to love someone you don’t know. How can two people relate intimately if one or both of them hides behind a wall?20 Walls guarantee that they remain emotionally distant.

If such a wall exists between you and your spouse, you’re moving in separate orbits. Walls can make us feel safe, but they also imprison us. To get your marriage to grow, you have to knock down the walls, open up a bit, and take the risk of getting hurt.

Wisdom in Choosing What to Communicate to Whom

We generally reveal different things to different people, a reality that has been backed up by psychological research. With one friend, we might share our health concerns, while with another we might talk about difficulties at work. The first friend is unlikely to hear about conflicts we’re having with a colleague. And, unless we experience a medical crisis, the second will not hear much about our health. The interesting thing is that we may feel equally close to both friends. Our choice of what to say to whom is neither random nor arbitrary. It reflects deep unconscious wisdom. We seem intuitively to know which friend is going to be the more receptive and responsive to which sorts of disclosures.

I have occasionally wondered why God hasn’t equipped us with telepathy. We have so many other impressive powers, such as adaptive intelligence and technological creativity. How is it that we do not have the capacity to read each other’s minds?

The late Oxford mathematician Jacob Bronowski suggested that we all have two languages, one for thinking and the other for speaking.21 Unless we’re out of touch with reality and living in an imaginary world, what we express in our speaking language is more or less organized. What we don’t express, what we filter out, comprises our thinking language, silent mental verbalizations devoid of much organization.

Perhaps God didn’t equip us with telepathy because we couldn’t stand it. We might not be able to endure the pain of overhearing each other’s thoughts. If people knew everything that ran through our minds, even for a day, they might be tempted to lock us up, or at least to ostracize us. We all have private mental lives, and God has graciously given us the right to keep them to ourselves. Only we can’t keep everything secret, not and enjoy close relationships.

So, the question becomes, what should we reveal to whom? If we choose the wrong people with whom to share deep feelings, we might pay a heavy price, either because they won’t treat them as confidential, or because they’ll dispense unwanted, annoying, or superficial advice. Sharing about our marriages can prove especially troublesome.

Several difficulties flow from disclosing marital problems to friends or acquaintances, so I recommend that unless your marriage is causing you intense and long-lasting pain, avoid sharing routine domestic squabbles. Here’s why:

1. Such sharing does not bespeak loyalty to your spouse, and remaining loyal is foundational to the covenant of marriage. I’m not referring to the light-hearted and affectionate sharing of your spouse’s foibles, but rather to statements that reflect global disapproval or general disgust. It only makes sense to share your marital problems if you’ve been in agony for some time. If your spouse is physically abusive or someone you fear, you face a problem that should be taken seriously. But if this is the case, you’re going to need more help and guidance than you’re likely to receive from a friend. Often, the first person with whom you should talk about anything of this nature is a pastor. But be careful. Not all pastors are equally sensitive or savvy.

2. Once you’ve declared a strongly negative position about your spouse, you’re likely to feel like you’re behaving inconsistently if not disingenuous if, a week or two later, you say something positive. People have a strong need for consistency. We don’t like to make contradictory statements, so if we’ve made disparaging remarks, we’re likely to continue to make them, even if we no longer completely believe what we’re saying.

3. Telling your problems to some people, even if they are well meaning, invites them to encourage further conflict. Decades ago, a psychiatrist named Eric Berne wrote a book called Games People Play,22 in which he outlined both constructive and destructive scripts people engage in, often without realizing it. Such games can be anything but playful and, in some instances, may prove lethal. Berne called one of them, “Let’s you and him [or her] fight.” Here are two examples of how this game can operate without much in the way of awareness or intention. A wife says, “My husband doesn’t want me to cut my hair short,” and back comes the response, “You should wear it any way you want!” Or, a husband says, “My wife keeps bugging me about the garage,” in response to which he hears, “Who wears the pants in your house?” Recall how communications often contain embedded commands. In the first instance, the command is to disregard the husband’s preferences, and in the second, it’s to ignore the wife’s desire for him to tidy up the garage.

What If You Have a Serious Marital Problem?

Marital difficulties come in as many shapes and sizes as people, and it would be irresponsible of me to try to turn this book into a textbook. Regardless of the specific form that marital dysfunction takes, there are tens of thousands of people in this country who have marriages that are so damaged, and damaging, that dissolution may seem to be the only way one or both spouses is going to survive.

There are those in which one or both partners has refused, from the beginning, to enter into anything many of us would recognize as full marriage. They may have signed papers and repeated vows, but in their hearts they never made a marital commitment. As a result, they and their spouses live in agony. There are other marriages, also more legal than covenantal, in which the withholding of love and affection has all but destroyed the relationship or one of the spouses. There are still others in which the deeply ingrained behavior of one of the spouses, perhaps owing to poor impulse control, intoxication, or drug use, has resulted in serious, if not debilitating, injury to the other. And, there are marriages in which psychiatric disturbance has wreaked havoc. These are but a few of the causes of serious marital trouble.

For many Christians, an excellent source of help is close at hand: their pastors. But as suggested above, not all pastors are equally gifted or experienced. Some are effective pastoral counselors but less capable in the pulpit, while others are superb preachers but not skillful counselors. Not all are tuned in to psychological nuances; they therefore miss the subtleties of what people are thinking, feeling, and saying. A few major in vague, imprecise, and nonspecific utterances. What they say, therefore, resembles the lines of the preacher in a recent western spoof,23 which went like this: “And that’s just exactly like that part of the Bible that applies to that situation.”

Because of such differences, I cannot issue a blanket endorsement of every pastor. But neither would I endorse every psychologist, psychiatrist, or marriage therapist. This is partly because some of these professionals use the church primarily as a referral source and, so, market themselves as believing practitioners. It is sometimes the case that such practitioners have tried Christianity and found it wanting, and what they offer therefore amounts to a false religion. Such a substitute religion can subtly embody values that are anything but Christian.

If you have a serious marital problem, consider talking with your pastor or a wise and mature Christian of the same sex, rather than with your friend at the gym. For obvious reasons, avoid sharing what you’re going through with a next-door neighbor of the opposite sex.

Avoiding Trigger Words and Phrases

Just about all of us experience certain statements as irritating. They may even prompt explosions.

The causes for such detonations may not be conscious or rational, even to us. We may not know precisely why this or that word or phrase has the effect on us it does. All we know is that, if our husband or wife says that, we are ready for war. The perversity is that some spouses feel an almost irresistible urge to say the very thing that detonates the one to whom they are married.

Suppose your spouse is notably reactive to any statement that suggests timidity, perhaps due to the taunts of abusive siblings. It might, in this case, not be the path to marital bliss for you to say, “Stand up for yourself” or “Don’t be so weak and afraid.”

Similarly, if your spouse is overly sensitive, it will do no good to advise him or her not to be touchy. Such advice is likely only to cause further touchiness. Although I have never said this to anyone, in response to you’re too sensitive, I’ve occasionally been tempted to say, you’re too insensitive. If you criticize your husband or wife for being hypersensitive, this is what he or she might be inclined to fire back at you.

Or, suppose your spouse is reactive to anything you say that hints at a lack of mental agility. Even statements that disparage a suggestion might sting. This would not be a spouse to whom, even in jest, you should say, “That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard” or “How could you possibly think that?” If you are married to someone who’s easily triggered in this way, refrain from disparaging even the least worthy of your spouse’s ideas.

Even if you believe that your spouse’s trigger words or phrases are irrational, avoid using them. And whatever you do, don’t turn them into a joke. Keep in mind that there are no jokes. This is not literally true of course. Still, it’s a good idea to listen closely to what the other person might have meant before adding, “I was only kidding.” Often, the person meant exactly what he or she now wants to dismiss or cover over.

Deep down, most of us know this, even if in the moment we may not want to face such a painful truth. Assume that your spouse knows it, which is why it’s best to avoid saying anything to which you have to add that qualifier.

The Do-Over

Here’s a simple method for restarting a conversation that has begun to go south: When the discussion becomes tense, say something like, “Let’s have a do-over.” By using these words, you are acknowledging that the conversation is not going well, and rather than blaming your spouse, you’re essentially saying, “Let’s not worry about whose fault this is . . . let’s just try it again a different way.” Adopting this approach may be especially useful when you’ve just angered your spouse with a trigger word.

Anna and I use a similar method. As soon as we sense that the conversation is deteriorating, one of us will say, “Stop.” Then, “Let’s start again.” This usually does the trick.

When and When Not to Use Humor

Although I’ve cautioned you not to hide cutting comments under a veil of humor, light-heartedness can work well, but only if both of you know for sure that it’s good-natured. We use it all the time now, but it took years to get the point where we could do this and see the benevolence underneath it.

Humor does not work well if it suggests to your spouse that you are not taking the issue on the table seriously, or if you’re making light of your spouse’s concerns. This is when it is most likely to backfire and be more destructive than constructive. It is rarely well advised, therefore, to resort to it when you’re trying to work out resentments.

If a soft answer defuses wrath (Prov 15:1), a humorous comment uttered at the wrong time can incite it.

Lying to Your Spouse

To dissemble is to conceal or disguise one’s true motives or intentions, to act without sincerity or integrity. It is, therefore, to lie. There are two general kinds of dissemblance, lies of commission and lies of omission. We will return to the subject of lying in a later chapter, but here I want to emphasize the potential adverse consequences of lies that involve leaving out important information.

In telling a lie of commission, you actively communicate something false. You might tell your spouse that you forgot to do something, when in reality you simply chose not to do it. Or, you might say that you’ve already paid a bill when you haven’t.

When you lie by omission, by contrast, you fail to communicate something of importance, encouraging your spouse to draw an incorrect conclusion that you don’t bother to correct. Perhaps you fail to mention that your spouse’s cousin, whom you can’t stand and don’t want anything more to do with, telephoned earlier that day. Or, you never volunteer that you gave one of your children money to pay a speeding ticket, which you know your spouse would disapprove of.

Attorneys draw a distinction between misrepresentation and fraud. You can innocently misrepresent something, such as a product, simply because you believe claims about it that later turn out to be false—for example, that a stain remover will not discolor anything it’s used on, when it turns out to discolor leather.

Fraud is different, since by definition it implies intent, the willful desire to mislead. Intent is so central to the concept of fraud, in fact, that to convict someone of fraud, it is necessary to demonstrate that it existed. Without proving intent, there can be no conviction of fraud.

The boundaries between conscious, preconscious, and unconscious thought are so fuzzy that it may be theoretically possible for a human being to defraud with only marginal awareness that this is happening. But that’s not what we’re addressing here, which is deliberately lying to your spouse by omission.

Few married people may be completely innocent of all lies. The heart, we are told in Scripture, is “desperately wicked,” and it is sometimes far more convenient to slip and slide than to own up to what we’ve said, done, or thought. There are also times when certain lies of omission may be more ethical than starkly blurting out the truth. If, for example, your spouse asks, “Do I look fat in these jeans?” you would have to be both cruel and stupid to answer, “It has nothing to do with the jeans!” But, I’m not focusing, here, on tactful omissions.

Over the past three decades, Anna and I have worked hard to avoid even tiny falsehoods. If one of us deems someone on television to be good looking, we don’t regard it as a lie of omission not to blurt this out. But we strive to take the more difficult path of being open and vulnerable whenever doing so does not fly in the face of civility. I encourage you to do the same.

There have probably been times in every marriage when one or both spouses have spent money that the other would frown on or disapprove of. At such times, it is so much easier to camouflage the expenditure, to hide it. After all, it’s just only a few dollars. As another example, one that may be more common, when challenged we may deny the hostility lurking behind some remark.

Take the high road if you can. Honorability, even in small areas, may not be everything, but without it, you cannot build a strong marriage, or maybe even a marriage at all. I’ve been so impressed with the importance of trust and truthfulness that I wrote a book about it.24

If you lie and get caught, your marriage will suffer, and if the lie is glaring enough, the relationship may never be the same. Your spouse may find it difficult in the future to feel sure of you, to be able to count on your integrity. I want to share a few stories of how lying led to marital breakdowns. Although names and other identifying information have been changed or omitted, these narratives reflect the experiences of people who consulted me in my clinical practice.

Doug fell in love with Toni, a model for a prominent line of sports apparel. She was not only attractive but also athletic, and, trained in ballet, moved with the grace of a gazelle. During their courtship, he wined and dined her, taking her to the finest restaurants and buying her expensive gifts, including stunning pieces of jewelry. He also paid for what, by any reasonable standard, would be called a lavish wedding.

They weren’t married long before the bills started rolling in and Toni realized what had been happening. Doug had kept her in the dark about his income and how he was paying for their indulgences, and he’d kept creditors at bay by making minimum payments on large credit-card bills. They were now in substantial debt. She found his deceit so intolerable that their relationship quickly deteriorated, and within a year she divorced the man she’d mistakenly assumed to be perfect.

Sandra had a habit of shopping at high-end department stores, hiding the new clothes she’d purchased in the back of the closet, and lying to her husband about why they often ran out of money before the end of the month. Since she was in charge of paying the bills, he remained in the dark for almost two years, until one day, home from work with the flu, he got the mail. He noticed a receipt from a local jewelry store, one known for its distinctive pale blue boxes. When he opened the envelope, he discovered that Sandra had recently acquired a high-priced necklace. He then opened two bills for charge accounts, and what he discovered shocked him. Sandra arrived a few hours later and encountered a stone-faced husband who wanted to know—now—what else she’d kept hidden from him. Angry, she defiantly blurted out a few more financial indiscretions, and then announced how much she appreciated Tom, a neighbor in whom she routinely confided because of how understanding he was. The marriage went downhill quickly and they, too, went their separate ways.

Andrea, a secretary who’d been twice divorced, met Scott at a party, and it wasn’t long before they began dating. Within a year, they were married. Scott sold technical equipment and wanted to invest in the development of a new computerized device. This, he told her, was a sure thing. But it was far from that, and he knew it. Having been a marginally successful salesman, he was looking for that one big score, the too-good-to-be-true investment that would set him up for life. Grossly understating the risk, Scott asked Andrea to take out a second mortgage on her house. When a large corporation came out with a better product, the small start-up in which he’d invested her money went belly-up. This couple, too, ended up in divorce court, when, unable to make the required loan payments, she lost the house.

I want to end this chapter by reporting the sad reality that some married people, typically men, continue to put on business attire and ostensibly leave for work. Only, that’s not where they go. Having been laid off or fired, they do not want to confess this to their wives, and so they spend their days at a library or coffee shop.25 This charade may go on for months.

Is this lying? Of course it is. As we have noted, lying takes forms other than telling straight-out falsehoods. Material omissions and willful acts of misdirection can be just as destructive.

God is the author of truth. If you want to enjoy a deeply fulfilling marriage, a necessary condition is that you establish a track record of unwavering and unerring truthfulness in relation to your spouse—no matter how awkward, embarrassing, or painful. And, if you slip up and find yourself lying—we’re all occasionally moral cowards—return to the issue and fess up as soon as you can.

Communication founded on lies is not communication at all. It fakes a connection that doesn’t exist, and as we have seen, the essence of communication is connecting.

11. Jewett, Lectures for Systematic Theology I.

12. Ladd points out that in the Bible sarx is often used in an ethical sense. See Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament.

13. Several verses in the Old Testament mirror the insight most vividly captured in Ps 111:10, including Job 28:28, Prov 1:7, 9:10, 15:33, and Isa 11:2, 33:6.

14. As we will see in Chapter 16, acknowledging the ultimate worthiness of God is an important clue to the nature of worship, a term that to many people carries with it an uncomfortably archaic ring.

15. Otto Rank (1884–1939) was well known for his skill at drawing correct psychological inferences.

16. See McLemore, Toxic Relationships, 226.

17. As we will discuss in chapter 4, hostility is a passive emotional predisposition to react in an angry manner, whereas aggression is the active attempt to harm another person, either verbally or through overt action.

18. Active Listening is also called Reflective Listening.

19. This is why being a psychotherapist is a challenging occupation. Many non-psychologists assume that working as a therapist is a cushy job. All one has to do, after all, is sit there. In truth, it is not easy to be with people hour after hour, especially when they’re in pain and there’s little you can do to change that. A therapist can, however, provide something else, and it’s largely what a wise spouse can provide: understanding.

20. The Great Wall of China was an ingenious military invention, in part because it prevented mounted horsemen of the north from invading the south. Its walls in many places are thirty feet high, and it is difficult to get a horse to climb a thirty-foot ladder! But the Great Wall also hindered movement from the south to the north.

21. Bronowski, The Identity of Man.

22. Berne, Games People Play.

23. “A Million Ways to Die in the West” was a 2014 film directed by Seth MacFarlane, who also stars in it.

24. McLemore, Inspiring Trust.

25. Recall how the character of Don Draper in Mad Men concealed from his wife that he’d been fired.