9 Principles of Good Communication in Marriage

Introduction

I am convinced that one of the biggest struggles in marriage is the issue of communication. A good marriage rises and falls on how well a husband and a wife learn to communicate. Communication is always lacking when couples first get married. They never start off marriage being great at this one skill, but some marriages can start off well and then drift into disrepair in this area. There are many reasons why people don’t communicate ranging from unintentional reasons to intentional ones. Consider the following:

They just think that they are communicating, but they have only given basic information. Your spouse doesn’t just need to know when to pick the kids up; he needs to know your struggles and how you truly feel about a situation. If he asks where you want to eat dinner, tell him if you actually have a preference.

Sometimes, couples don’t communicate because they expect the other person to already know what you want. He should know I don’t like flowers for valentines day or they should know this is how this would make me feel. Can I be honest? Men are oblivious. You need to spell it out for us sometimes. These are unrealistic expectations. You cannot expect your husband to read you mind. Good premarital counseling will help you process these unspoken expectations before you get married but often times people don’t get good premarital counseling.

Sometimes, couples don’t communicate because of a lack of trust. If I tell him this, he will use it against me as a weapon or I told him this before and he didn’t do anything about it.

Vulnerability can keep couples from communicating. You have been hurt in the past and so you don’t want to open up. There might be a fear of their response. She will just get angry if I tell her this is how I feel. It becomes self-preservation. In a healthy marriage, you shouldn’t feel this need to preserve yourself, but sometimes people come with all kinds of baggage.

Some people just aren’t talkers, so they don’t communicate. They get frustrated when things don’t go the way they want but they never told anyone what they wanted. All relationships thrive on communication. If you aren’t going to do it, your marriage will die.

Tonight I want to look at 9 Principles of Good Communication in Marriage. These principles can apply to communication in general so no one should feel like this message wasn’t for them, but we are going to focus the application on the topic of marriage.

Principle of Life

Speak words that bring health and good into the marriage Prov 18:21 “Death and life are in the power of the tongue: And they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.” our tongue has the power to destroy or to grow and give life. Your words are not neutral; they have an influence on your marriage. In the heat of passion, words of destruction can easily escape our lips.

Words of death:

You are worthless

Thats the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Gaslighting- illustration the movie with Ingrid Bergman “you’re imagining things”

Words of life

Encouraging words- You can do this. I know its hard but I’m here if you need me.

Words of love- I love you honey and nothing is going to change that.

I read of one example where a husband knew his wife was not very organized, so he wrote a list of things to do and then checked on her throughout the day to make sure she was getting them done. If she wasn’t, he would criticize her for her laziness. Words are like seeds. Once you plant them they can either bloom into beautiful flowers or grow weeds.

Principle of Response

This principle isn’t necessarily the most obvious, but the person who first speaks does not set the tone for the conversation. The person who responds first sets the tone. Proverbs 15:1 “A soft answer turneth away wrath: But grievous words stir up anger.” People can come at you with anger, but that attack can be diffused by a right response. A conversation means two people are talking so a conversation has not happened until you respond. How you respond can determine the direction that conversation is going to go?

Responding by arguing just inflames the fight.

Responding by ignoring makes it worse because you devalue the feelings and thoughts of the other person.

Responding by attacking puts them on the defensive.

We are often like a porcupine. When we are under attack we bristle with our quills and at the end of each quill is a sharp barb. The natural human response is to attack in kind, but a gentle, loving, merciful response can diffuse the situation.

Principle of Timing

Find the right time to say something. Proverbs 15:23 “A man hath joy by the answer of his mouth: And a word spoken in due season, how good is it!” There is a right time for everything and a wrong time for everything.

It is probably the wrong time to ask your husband to go do something right when he walks in the door. Men don’t like to be rushed from one thing to the next. He probably would like a chance to be able to relax for a second.

Its probably the wrong time to have a possibly heated discussion in front of your kids. Kids don’t need to see all of that. It easily creates favoritism and makes them feel like they have to choose sides. It also makes them afraid that mom and dad are going to get a divorce.

It is probably not the right time to say something negative about them to their friends. Whether its true or not, you have shamed them and put them on the defensive.

Here are some practical suggestions about the timing of the conversation:

Try not to have potentially heated conversations before bed. This is bad for the marriage and the physical intimacy.

If you need to talk about something when the kids are present, whisper in their ear “Can we talk in the bedroom?”

Make plans to go on dates to talk through some important issues in the family and marriage.

If your spouse has had a bad day, wait until later to talk about the issue.

But don’t bottle it up inside and ignore talking about it. The time to talk about things that continually bother you is not never. You must be willing to talk about things if your marriage is going to get stronger. If you bottle it up inside, you will just get bitter and it will explode sometime when you don’t want it to.

Principle of Listening

Listen before you talk. Proverbs 18:13 “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, It is folly and shame unto him.” Men don’t listen really well. We either:

assume we know the issue before we hear it all

aren’t truly interested so we split our attention between our wife and something else. Like reading a book, watching TV or scrolling on our phone.

Tips for listening well:

Lean in

Maintain eye contact

Ask follow up questions

Principle of Thinking

Think before you speak Proverbs 15:28 “The heart of the righteous studieth to answer: But the mouth of the wicked poureth out evil things.” Don’t just respond to what you think they are saying, but actually think about it. Ask yourself some questions?

Why do they think this?

Why do they feel this way about the issue?

How should I respond that will help the situation?

What do they actually mean by what they are saying?

Does this make sense with everything else I have ever heard them say? - Sometimes we misinterpret people because we forget everything they have ever said to us in the past. We interpret this statement through our own lens.

Principle of love

Eph 4:15 “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:” This is the only principle that I dipped out of Proverbs for because I think it is so important. Jesus taught that love is the keeping of the law. If I love someone, I will treat them right. This verse really challenges us to do two things:

Speak truth- don’t ignore the facts

in love- but deal with the situation in love

Is my response all about me, or does it come from love for the other person? Reactionary, defensive responses are all about protecting myself and not about loving the other person.

1. Love changes the content of our communication- Love will often change what I thought I was going to say. Instead of attacking because I am angry; I lovingly say, I wish you wouldn’t treat me this way.

2. Love changes the tone of our communication- In stead of yelling back, I will be gentle in my tone, understanding, forgiving.

3. Love changes the result of our communication- There have been many times when I wanted to tell someone exactly what I thought of their problems because it was an inconvenience to me, but when I went in after having stopped to calm down in love, I was able to deal with the situation in a way that did not blow up in my face.

Principle of Truth

Proverbs 12:17 “He that speaketh truth sheweth forth righteousness: But a false witness deceit.”

In marriage it is easy to exaggerate and be blinded by emotion. We often make statements like “you always do this” or “you never do this.” The problem with these statements is that they are rarely true. No one is always bad and never good. Except maybe Hitler. So for the rest of us in-betweeners lets be more courteous towards one another.

The problem with absolutes like these statements is that focusing on them blinds us to everything good the person has ever done. We forget all the great moments, the loving moments in our marriage when we focus on the fact that “He never takes out the trash.” Maybe he does struggle with that but it is only a partial picture of who he is. Have you forgotten that he always tells you he loves you each night? Have you forgotten that she always makes sure you uniform is ready for work the next day.

We can become blind to everything else that is good about that person and we only see the bad, but this is not a truthful picture of our spouses. Obviously some are better than others, but communication breaks down when we can’t see anything good in the other person.

Principle of Confession

Proverbs 6:2-3 “Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, Thou art taken with the words of thy mouth. Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself, When thou art come into the hand of thy friend; Go, humble thyself, and make sure thy friend.”

Be willing to admit when you messed up. Men especially struggle with admitting their faults. They will buy roses or do something to try to show you they are sorry, but they will not say the words. Say the words. Humble yourself before your wife and kids. Humility disarms the attacks. Imagine this scenario:

Your wife is angry because you were late getting home for dinner. You didn’t call and the food is now cold. She knows you don’t want cold food; the kids have been wining for the past hour and everyone is grumpy. Being willing to admit that you messed up. That you could have called and let her know you were going to be late.

Principle of Questions

Proverbs 25:2 “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: But the honour of kings is to search out a matter.”

One of the best skills you can develop in your communication is the ability to ask questions. Questions show interest, but they also help you determine what she means and how she feels about what she is saying. Jesus Himself was an excellent questioner. Often when he was challenged with something, Jesus would respond with a question. According to Martin Copenhaver, the gospels record over 307 questions that Jesus asked.

Questions dig deeper. Deeper relationships can be discovered by questions. Most interactions that you and I have only get to the surface level. We ask questions like “How are you?” and then we get an answer and leave it there. If you want to have deeper more meaningful relationships you need to keep asking questions. Here is an example:

How was work this week? (Level One)

Answer: It was alright but my boss really works us hard.

What does he do? (level Two)

Answer: Well, he is constantly yelling at us to work faster.

How does that make you feel? (Level Three)

Answer: I feel like he doesn’t appreciate me and only cares about numbers.

By just three levels of questions you have dug down into the level of how he feels, what some of his struggles might be and you can go from there to being involved in their lives.

Consider Asking Questions like this in your marriage:

How are you encouraged in your faith and life right now?

How are you discouraged in your faith and life right now?

How can I grow as a husband, father, and Christian?

What was the last thing I did for you that you really enjoyed?

When was a time you felt that I listened to you really well?

What could we do to be an even better team?

Conclusion:

I cannot stress the importance of this message to your marriage. Communication is the foundation to any good marriage. Here’s the question I want to ask you, “Are you satisfied with where your marriage is at today?” If you are honest, you will know that we all have some growth that needs to occur in our marriages. None of that growth can occur without this. You will get nowhere in your marriage without communication.

If your engine has a problem, how do you know it has a problem? Well, for most of us, it is that little orange check engine light. For some, you can listen to the sound it makes and tell there is a problem; but both are means of communicating that there is a problem. Without communication, your marriage might be dead and you don’t even know it. If we are going to find out the problems that exist and fix them, we must communicate with one another.