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
