April 9, 2025 • 14 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
How do you improve communication in your marriage?
Here's the deal about thisquestion, and I understand that
a lot of people are looking tothe answer for it, but the
question isn't exactly right.
Not that it's wrong, it's agood question.
But there's so many differentways that this question could be
answered that I think it'sappropriate to address it in a
(00:20):
couple of different types ofcircumstances, communication is
very vague across the board.
So when you're asking thequestion of how do I improve
communication in my marriage, myquestion back to you is gonna
be what kind of communicationAre you wanting to improve?
The positive, lighthearted,friendship type of communication
in your marriage where you'rejust able to talk and have fun
(00:42):
and laugh?
Or are you looking to improvethe communication where you're
in the middle of disagreeingabout something and you feel
like your spouse just isn'tlistening to you?
Or maybe you aren't activelyfighting, but you have certain
expectations that you havethought of and are keeping in
your mind that you're hopingthat your spouse will live up to
(01:05):
, but you haven't exactlycommunicated what those are.
For this video, I'll be usingthose three categories to give
the answer of how you canimprove communication in your
marriage, and even then, I'mstill sure that there are other
facets of communication thatcould still work to be improved
upon, but overall, those are thethree that we're going to
address in today's video.
(01:26):
So the first one is how do Iimprove communication with my
spouse?
Because we're just not talkinganymore.
This is a great question, andif you're wanting to improve
communication, let's go back tothe basic definition of
communication.
Communication is a person who issending a message that the
other person receives and thengives feedback back that they
(01:49):
have received it.
At its basic core, that is whatcommunication is.
But when we're looking at amarriage, when we're looking at
two people who love each otherand are supposed to love each
other until death, do us part.
Communication needs to not justbe a bunch of back and forth of
facts, because that's where itstarts to feel like a job and
(02:10):
that's where you can start tofeel like you don't want to be a
part of it, like it's gettingmundane, it's getting monotonous
and you want to do somethingelse to spice it up.
So let's start looking atcommunication as a modicum in
which you can spice up yourmarriage.
Think back to when you and yourspouse were dating.
You communicated, you talkedabout things that you had shared
(02:32):
interest about, about thingsthat both of you found important
to each other.
You talked about the day, thenews, your dreams, your future,
your past, your hurts, storiesfrom your past.
Those were likely things thatyou engaged in and talked about
all the time, and it's a type ofcommunication.
It's the type of communicationthat builds friendship, and
(02:54):
friendship is the basis ofintimacy, and intimacy is one of
the three areas of love, andwhen we look at the research of
what love is, according to DrSternberg, we see that love is
comprised of intimacy, passionand commitment.
Intimacy is the communicationwhere you're best friends with
(03:15):
each other.
Alternatively, but in line within the intimacy part of
communication, talking aboutthings you both enjoy,
connecting with each other onshared hobbies and things like
that is also part of how we areattracted to another person
through what we callintellectual attraction, which
is one of the four types of waysthat we are attracted to other
(03:36):
people.
The four are physical,intellectual, emotional and
spiritual.
So with intellectual attraction, it's sharing a set of hobbies
together, or even if you don'tshare the same initial enjoyment
in those hobbies, it is showinginterest in the hobbies that
your spouse has and them showinginterest in yours, which gives
you more things to talk about.
(03:56):
So if you want to improve yourcommunication overall, then it's
great to start with thecommunication that allows you to
be best friends, sharing aboutwhat's going on, what you're
struggling with, where you needhelp, where you need support,
where you need encouragement.
That allows you to be bestfriends.
In fact, in the fitness world,which is something that I am
(04:20):
personally passionate about Ilove working out, I love
focusing on fitness and healthand all of those things there's
something that we know when itcomes to fitness levels,
especially specifically likecardiovascular fitness, if you
think of it like a pyramid andstay with me, it's going to come
back to communication If youthink of physical fitness like a
(04:40):
pyramid, then you need a reallystrong base foundation in order
to build your max capacity ontop of so, a lot of times, this
is used in cardiovasculartraining to state that you don't
need to be running full outsprint efforts every day.
You actually need to have areally strong base of being able
to run at a conversational pacethe majority of the time, and
(05:05):
that allows you the ability tohave a stronger or a higher
pinnacle of being able to runall out sprints at a faster pace
.
How does that all connect withthis that we're talking about?
If you want to be able tohandle the hard stuff together,
if you want to be able to havedifficult conversations and
(05:25):
disagree or have conflict butstill love each other afterward,
then it's important to have thestrong foundation of intimacy,
of friendship, of seeing eachother as each other's best
friend, because that builds thetrust that allows you to have
more difficult conversations inthe future.
(05:46):
So then, what's the next bucketwe want to cover?
Let's cover the bucket of unmetexpectations, which was the
third thing that I mentioned,but we're going to move it to
the second thing we talked about.
A lot of times we suffer in ourcommunication because we have an
expectation of our spouse thatour spouse doesn't know about.
There was a couple that Iworked with several years ago
and the wife said to me I justwant to feel like my husband
(06:09):
appreciates me.
I want him to show me throughrandom acts of kindness that he
loves me.
Now, she never really told himthat was her expectation and,
even worse, when he did try todo that in his way, by
scheduling sending her flowersand putting it in his calendar
to remind himself, to take heron date nights or to write her
(06:30):
love notes.
She got pissed at him becausehe wasn't doing it spontaneously
.
So not only were herexpectations uncommunicated, but
also her expectations wereunrealistic and a bit
controlling, if we're going tobe honest, because she was
expecting her husband to doeverything the way she wanted
(06:51):
him to do it.
This suffocates love.
If you try and force yourspouse to do all of the things
you want him or her to do in theway that you want him or her to
do it, it leads to control.
It leads to divorce.
I know that those are strongwords, but unless this is
(07:11):
rectified, it's going to pushthe other person away.
So why don't we start with firstasking yourself what are the
expectations you have notcommunicated?
And let me be clear it's okayto have those.
It's okay for me to have anexpectation that on Sunday
afternoons, when my husband andI are getting ready for small
group to come over to our house,that my husband is going to
(07:33):
help me.
It's okay for me to have thatexpectation.
What's not okay is for me tonever tell him that and then
judge him, resent him or yell athim when he doesn't do what I
wanted him to do, and especiallywith saying the phrase he
should have known.
He's not going to know, he'snot a mind reader it is one that
(08:08):
you communicate it clearly withlove, what your expectations
are.
So something such as hey, rob,you know, today small group
happens at four.
When can we start cleaning?
When can we do this together?
How are we going to break upthe tasks between the two of us?
Opening it as a conversation,bringing him into the loop,
(08:29):
instead of just assuming thathe's going to help me and then
stomp around angry when hedoesn't Understand?
Where are your expectations?
And then, furthermore, whereare they unrealistic?
It would be unrealistic,perhaps, for me to think that my
husband is going to have thedrive to do it at 7 am on Sunday
(08:51):
morning, even though that mightbe the time I want to get it
done.
It would be unrealistic to makeall of those same assumptions
for him.
So, instead of makingunrealistic assumptions or
expectations, state yourexpectations with love.
Expectations, state yourexpectations with love, have the
conversation, compromise whereneeded, and that will help a lot
of the resentment anddisagreement that could come.
(09:12):
For our third category, we'regoing to address what to do to
better communicate in the middleof disagreeing.
Similar to the last point,there's unmet expectations and
unmet needs that likely come into almost every disagreement.
In fact, one of the things thatwe know from the research is
that 60% of disagreements, 60%of the things that you and your
(09:34):
spouse fight about, are nevergoing to be resolved.
Never.
Aren't you glad you came herefor some encouragement today?
It is encouraging, and here'swhy Most of the reasons that
those conflicts are never goingto be resolved is because you
are two different people withtwo different outlooks on life,
(09:54):
two different upbringings andtwo different experiences, and
so the things that youultimately, would love to see
happen in the way that you wantto see them happen again,
they're not always realistic,and the beauty of marriage and
the beauty of greatrelationships is you're not
always going to get everythingyou want.
(10:14):
Why is that the beauty of greatrelationships?
Because if I was in arelationship where I constantly
just got what I wanted all ofthe time and didn't have to put
any work into it, I wouldn'ttreasure it.
I wouldn't treasure or respectthe other person to see that
sometimes, a lot of the time,probably most of the time their
(10:34):
needs are more important than myown, even if I still feel like
my needs are important, whichthey are.
Everyone's needs are important.
But when we bring in themindset of how can I love
unconditionally, how can I helpmy spouse meet their needs, it
breeds a much betterrelationship.
(10:55):
That's the kind of relationshipeveryone wants to be in.
If you and your spouse boththought that way about each
other, don't you know thatcommunication would be better
and conflict would be better.
So it's actually kind of goodnews that 60% of the time you're
not going to fully agree, butit gives you the opportunity 60%
of the time, to show the otherperson you love them, by
(11:18):
listening to them, by trying tounderstand where they're coming
from and by compromising.
And that's the key here.
When you disagree aboutsomething, try and shift your
mindset away from proving yourpoint and getting your way into
listening to understand.
That's a very mature mindset tohave and it's very difficult to
(11:40):
do, especially at first.
And it's not that itnecessarily ever gets easy, it
just gets a little easier to do.
That it doesn't mean it'salways easy to hold back and
listen when you're reallywanting to prove your point.
But I promise you, if you takethat approach, it will make a
huge difference in the way thatyou and your spouse not just
(12:01):
fight, but the outcome that youboth can come to.
And then the bonus point forthis is that, even if your
spouse ultimately don't agreeabout any of the things that you
fight about, you don't have to.
The key after fighting or afterconflict is to be able to come
back together and connect in anemotional way, in a positive
emotional way, so it's beingable to still hug, kiss, cuddle
(12:24):
on the couch, have aconversation where both of you
say to each other, even thoughwe don't agree, I love you, I'm
here for you and I'm not leavingyou.
So those are the threedifferent ways in which we can
improve our communication.
First, focus on building afriendship by talking about
things that build intimacy.
(12:44):
The second one is to realizewhere your unmet and unrealistic
expectations are and shiftthose to not have so many unmet
or unrealistic expectations.
Make your expectationsrealistic and communicate them.
And then, thirdly, realize thatdisagreeing about something is
(13:05):
actually an amazing opportunityto lean in, listen to your
spouse and show them that youlove them by trying to make a
compromise on what to do next.
How do you improve communication in your marriage?
Here's the deal about thisquestion, and I understand that
a lot of people are looking tothe answer for it, but the
question isn't exactly right.
Not that it's wrong, it's agood question.
But there's so many differentways that this question could be
answered that I think it'sappropriate to address it in a
(00:20):
couple of different types ofcircumstances, communication is
very vague across the board.
So when you're asking thequestion of how do I improve
communication in my marriage, myquestion back to you is gonna
be what kind of communicationAre you wanting to improve?
The positive, lighthearted,friendship type of communication
in your marriage where you'rejust able to talk and have fun
(00:42):
and laugh?
Or are you looking to improvethe communication where you're
in the middle of disagreeingabout something and you feel
like your spouse just isn'tlistening to you?
Or maybe you aren't activelyfighting, but you have certain
expectations that you havethought of and are keeping in
your mind that you're hopingthat your spouse will live up to
(01:05):
, but you haven't exactlycommunicated what those are.
For this video, I'll be usingthose three categories to give
the answer of how you canimprove communication in your
marriage, and even then, I'mstill sure that there are other
facets of communication thatcould still work to be improved
upon, but overall, those are thethree that we're going to
address in today's video.
(01:26):
So the first one is how do Iimprove communication with my
spouse?
Because we're just not talkinganymore.
This is a great question, andif you're wanting to improve
communication, let's go back tothe basic definition of
communication.
Communication is a person who issending a message that the
other person receives and thengives feedback back that they
(01:49):
have received it.
At its basic core, that is whatcommunication is.
But when we're looking at amarriage, when we're looking at
two people who love each otherand are supposed to love each
other until death, do us part.
Communication needs to not justbe a bunch of back and forth of
facts, because that's where itstarts to feel like a job and
(02:10):
that's where you can start tofeel like you don't want to be a
part of it, like it's gettingmundane, it's getting monotonous
and you want to do somethingelse to spice it up.
So let's start looking atcommunication as a modicum in
which you can spice up yourmarriage.
Think back to when you and yourspouse were dating.
You communicated, you talkedabout things that you had shared
(02:32):
interest about, about thingsthat both of you found important
to each other.
You talked about the day, thenews, your dreams, your future,
your past, your hurts, storiesfrom your past.
Those were likely things thatyou engaged in and talked about
all the time, and it's a type ofcommunication.
It's the type of communicationthat builds friendship, and
(02:54):
friendship is the basis ofintimacy, and intimacy is one of
the three areas of love, andwhen we look at the research of
what love is, according to DrSternberg, we see that love is
comprised of intimacy, passionand commitment.
Intimacy is the communicationwhere you're best friends with
(03:15):
each other.
Alternatively, but in line within the intimacy part of
communication, talking aboutthings you both enjoy,
connecting with each other onshared hobbies and things like
that is also part of how we areattracted to another person
through what we callintellectual attraction, which
is one of the four types of waysthat we are attracted to other
(03:36):
people.
The four are physical,intellectual, emotional and
spiritual.
So with intellectual attraction, it's sharing a set of hobbies
together, or even if you don'tshare the same initial enjoyment
in those hobbies, it is showinginterest in the hobbies that
your spouse has and them showinginterest in yours, which gives
you more things to talk about.
(03:56):
So if you want to improve yourcommunication overall, then it's
great to start with thecommunication that allows you to
be best friends, sharing aboutwhat's going on, what you're
struggling with, where you needhelp, where you need support,
where you need encouragement.
That allows you to be bestfriends.
In fact, in the fitness world,which is something that I am
(04:20):
personally passionate about Ilove working out, I love
focusing on fitness and healthand all of those things there's
something that we know when itcomes to fitness levels,
especially specifically likecardiovascular fitness, if you
think of it like a pyramid andstay with me, it's going to come
back to communication If youthink of physical fitness like a
(04:40):
pyramid, then you need a reallystrong base foundation in order
to build your max capacity ontop of so, a lot of times, this
is used in cardiovasculartraining to state that you don't
need to be running full outsprint efforts every day.
You actually need to have areally strong base of being able
to run at a conversational pacethe majority of the time, and
(05:05):
that allows you the ability tohave a stronger or a higher
pinnacle of being able to runall out sprints at a faster pace
.
How does that all connect withthis that we're talking about?
If you want to be able tohandle the hard stuff together,
if you want to be able to havedifficult conversations and
(05:25):
disagree or have conflict butstill love each other afterward,
then it's important to have thestrong foundation of intimacy,
of friendship, of seeing eachother as each other's best
friend, because that builds thetrust that allows you to have
more difficult conversations inthe future.
(05:46):
So then, what's the next bucketwe want to cover?
Let's cover the bucket of unmetexpectations, which was the
third thing that I mentioned,but we're going to move it to
the second thing we talked about.
A lot of times we suffer in ourcommunication because we have an
expectation of our spouse thatour spouse doesn't know about.
There was a couple that Iworked with several years ago
and the wife said to me I justwant to feel like my husband
(06:09):
appreciates me.
I want him to show me throughrandom acts of kindness that he
loves me.
Now, she never really told himthat was her expectation and,
even worse, when he did try todo that in his way, by
scheduling sending her flowersand putting it in his calendar
to remind himself, to take heron date nights or to write her
(06:30):
love notes.
She got pissed at him becausehe wasn't doing it spontaneously
.
So not only were herexpectations uncommunicated, but
also her expectations wereunrealistic and a bit
controlling, if we're going tobe honest, because she was
expecting her husband to doeverything the way she wanted
(06:51):
him to do it.
This suffocates love.
If you try and force yourspouse to do all of the things
you want him or her to do in theway that you want him or her to
do it, it leads to control.
It leads to divorce.
I know that those are strongwords, but unless this is
(07:11):
rectified, it's going to pushthe other person away.
So why don't we start with firstasking yourself what are the
expectations you have notcommunicated?
And let me be clear it's okayto have those.
It's okay for me to have anexpectation that on Sunday
afternoons, when my husband andI are getting ready for small
group to come over to our house,that my husband is going to
(07:33):
help me.
It's okay for me to have thatexpectation.
What's not okay is for me tonever tell him that and then
judge him, resent him or yell athim when he doesn't do what I
wanted him to do, and especiallywith saying the phrase he
should have known.
He's not going to know, he'snot a mind reader it is one that
(08:08):
you communicate it clearly withlove, what your expectations
are.
So something such as hey, rob,you know, today small group
happens at four.
When can we start cleaning?
When can we do this together?
How are we going to break upthe tasks between the two of us?
Opening it as a conversation,bringing him into the loop,
(08:29):
instead of just assuming thathe's going to help me and then
stomp around angry when hedoesn't Understand?
Where are your expectations?
And then, furthermore, whereare they unrealistic?
It would be unrealistic,perhaps, for me to think that my
husband is going to have thedrive to do it at 7 am on Sunday
(08:51):
morning, even though that mightbe the time I want to get it
done.
It would be unrealistic to makeall of those same assumptions
for him.
So, instead of makingunrealistic assumptions or
expectations, state yourexpectations with love.
Expectations, state yourexpectations with love, have the
conversation, compromise whereneeded, and that will help a lot
of the resentment anddisagreement that could come.
(09:12):
For our third category, we'regoing to address what to do to
better communicate in the middleof disagreeing.
Similar to the last point,there's unmet expectations and
unmet needs that likely come into almost every disagreement.
In fact, one of the things thatwe know from the research is
that 60% of disagreements, 60%of the things that you and your
(09:34):
spouse fight about, are nevergoing to be resolved.
Never.
Aren't you glad you came herefor some encouragement today?
It is encouraging, and here'swhy Most of the reasons that
those conflicts are never goingto be resolved is because you
are two different people withtwo different outlooks on life,
(09:54):
two different upbringings andtwo different experiences, and
so the things that youultimately, would love to see
happen in the way that you wantto see them happen again,
they're not always realistic,and the beauty of marriage and
the beauty of greatrelationships is you're not
always going to get everythingyou want.
(10:14):
Why is that the beauty of greatrelationships?
Because if I was in arelationship where I constantly
just got what I wanted all ofthe time and didn't have to put
any work into it, I wouldn'ttreasure it.
I wouldn't treasure or respectthe other person to see that
sometimes, a lot of the time,probably most of the time their
(10:34):
needs are more important than myown, even if I still feel like
my needs are important, whichthey are.
Everyone's needs are important.
But when we bring in themindset of how can I love
unconditionally, how can I helpmy spouse meet their needs, it
breeds a much betterrelationship.
(10:55):
That's the kind of relationshipeveryone wants to be in.
If you and your spouse boththought that way about each
other, don't you know thatcommunication would be better
and conflict would be better.
So it's actually kind of goodnews that 60% of the time you're
not going to fully agree, butit gives you the opportunity 60%
of the time, to show the otherperson you love them, by
(11:18):
listening to them, by trying tounderstand where they're coming
from and by compromising.
And that's the key here.
When you disagree aboutsomething, try and shift your
mindset away from proving yourpoint and getting your way into
listening to understand.
That's a very mature mindset tohave and it's very difficult to
(11:40):
do, especially at first.
And it's not that itnecessarily ever gets easy, it
just gets a little easier to do.
That it doesn't mean it'salways easy to hold back and
listen when you're reallywanting to prove your point.
But I promise you, if you takethat approach, it will make a
huge difference in the way thatyou and your spouse not just
(12:01):
fight, but the outcome that youboth can come to.
And then the bonus point forthis is that, even if your
spouse ultimately don't agreeabout any of the things that you
fight about, you don't have to.
The key after fighting or afterconflict is to be able to come
back together and connect in anemotional way, in a positive
emotional way, so it's beingable to still hug, kiss, cuddle
(12:24):
on the couch, have aconversation where both of you
say to each other, even thoughwe don't agree, I love you, I'm
here for you and I'm not leavingyou.
So those are the threedifferent ways in which we can
improve our communication.
First, focus on building afriendship by talking about
things that build intimacy.
(12:44):
The second one is to realizewhere your unmet and unrealistic
expectations are and shiftthose to not have so many unmet
or unrealistic expectations.
Make your expectationsrealistic and communicate them.
And then, thirdly, realize thatdisagreeing about something is
(13:05):
actually an amazing opportunityto lean in, listen to your
spouse and show them that youlove them by trying to make a
compromise on what to do next.
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