Marital Communication That Works

Maybe you've heard the proverb that says a gentle answer turns away what?

Wrath, right? Rob Flood says that's really true in marriage. The direction of a conversation doesn't typically belong to the person who starts it, but it belongs to the person who responds to it. I can say something in a harsh way at a bad time, using the wrong words to Gina, and if she responds knowing I'm for her, even though I just totally messed it up, and her response is gentle or her response is though I said it not in the tone that I used, we're not going to be in a conflict.

It's really hard to get in an argument with someone who won't fight with you. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com.

We know that a soft answer can turn away anger or wrath, so how can we get better at delivering soft answers? We're going to talk more about that today with Rob and Gina Flood. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. Don't you think it would have been helpful when you guys first got married? Yes, I don't even know what you're going to ask. Yeah, me too, yes. The answer's yes.

Any help for our marriage would have been helpful. In the first year and a half, if there had been communication coaches who kind of came in and just watched you do it and then said, Time out, come over here, huddle up, and help call a few plays, wouldn't that have been helpful? Yes, they would have watched us for five minutes and said, Just because you think it doesn't mean you have to say it. That's good. I'm saying that for my wife. I'm just going to be honest.

There's a lot of truth in that. No, that's for both of us, but we said some things in year one. Talk about the power of words that we'd never forgotten 40 years later.

You've got to be very careful. You've forgiven, and you've reconciled, and you understand we were young, we were immature, but those words don't go away, do they? I remember thinking after a fight, does he really feel all of that about me? Because we throw out words as ammunition, as shrapnel, as weapons, and so what happens is we're just beat up, and later we think, wow, does he hate me? And what do we think is actually going to happen when we say those words? Do we think that our spouse is going to turn around and say, You're right, I'm so sorry.

That never happens. And thank you for sharing that. If only somebody would write a book on this. We need help. We have got a couple of communication coaches joining us. Rob and Gina Flood are with us. Guys, welcome back. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Rob and Gina were a part of family life back in the first part of the 21st century. You joined here in 2001, and we're here till 2006, is that right?

2006 here, we finished up part-time, 2007. Hey, I got a question for you. You sort of worked for Bob, right, in content? Yes, I did. How was that? Oh, it was great.

Let's be really honest. I'll tell you how it was. Was it good? It was fantastic. Yeah, Bob was the kind of manager who would give you a nine-month project, be really clear, and not check on you for nine months.

But on nine months, you better be ready. And I loved that kind of freedom. I loved that kind of empowerment.

I think it got the best out of me when I was here. And Rob did great work. He was a writer on our digital team. In fact, wrote an article back then that has been shared by a lot of folks, and it's the five communications tools that saved our marriage. That's right. That's now at the heart of the book you've written, which is called With These Words, where you take these five communications tools, and you've already shared with us this week that your first year and a half, your communication was not very good.

Right. Did you get coaching, or did you just get on-the-job training that led you to get better? We did not get coaching. It was on-the-job training that came through a few venues that did not coordinate with one another. A pastor and his wife who are, to this day, very careful with their words.

It was their example. It was reading Paul Tripp's War of Words that educated me on what happened in the last 18 months. It was the combination of those things, and then just going to work together, having the faith that God was in this, to go and make mistakes together, realizing we're putting back together something that our own hands have torn apart. Did you start acknowledging to one another, we've got work to do in this area, and were you allowing one another the freedom to correct when you were making mistakes? Because you don't just flip a switch and go, oh, we used to have bad communication, now we have good communication. You've got patterns and habits that have been developed over years.

They keep showing up. You say something and you go, I shouldn't have said that. Were you at a point in your marriage where you could say, sweetheart, we've agreed that's not how we want to talk to one another? In the beginning, it was saying words that were hurtful, but then repenting and coming back and asking for forgiveness after we had repented, and then having that conversation again, or laying that conversation aside, because that area was just too tender. So let's lay that aside for a day or two, and we'll come back at it again.

And then over time, as we learned one another, because we didn't really care to learn one another. We didn't take that time to learn, what is the best way that I can say something to Rob where he's going to receive it? When should I be quiet?

Like you were saying, just because I think it doesn't mean I should say it. It's a long, like a dance. It's like a dance. You were making the mistakes, but now there was grace instead of being isolation. Is that right? Yes, what we realized really early on in this restoration process was that our communication could not be about winning and losing.

Yeah. Because that would always divide, because one of us wins and one of us loses. We realized our communication was either building something together or tearing something down. And so when there was a mistake that was made or a harsh word that was spoken, how I respond to that will determine whether something gets built up or torn down right now. And so we learned early on that we can't have a perfect accounting for every word, but we needed a bigger vision of what we were building.

And that allowed an offensive word to fall to the ground, and you didn't have to respond to that. Yeah, I've always said, I mean, it's in your book as well. When you're trying to resolve a conflict or communicate in a marriage or in any case, really, with your kids in a business setting, it's about two things. One is skills, and obviously we're going to talk about some of the things you say in your book about skills of learning how to communicate and timing and that kind of thing. But another big part, which is huge, what you just hit on is attitude. Yes. Like an attitude that says, I care for her, I care for him, so I'm going to be very careful how I speak to them because the attitude is the foundation of the skill, right?

That's right. Talk about that because you went from an attitude early in your marriage where words were like weapons, and now you're talking like you get really careful with the skills of communication, but it was all based in an attitude. Talk about the attitude. It goes to that shovel and rake when we realized in the months leading up to the second weekend to remember and then at the weekend to remember that we are a part of building something bigger than us. And if it was all about me in that moment winning or losing, I may win the next 40 conflicts and we'd be worse off at the end.

Yeah. We had to join together in realizing we're going to have different ways of building this, but we're a part of something. That was a major message that got through to us, the legacy message.

Not just what are we building now, but what are we building for the future, for our kids and our grandkids. And so at that point, every conflict we had was not high stakes because if it was, we have to put all of our ammunition in it. Because you have to win.

Because we have to win. But if we realize we're going to have conversations for the rest of our lives together and some of them are going to go great, some of them aren't, some of them are going to feel like I lost, some of them are going to feel like I won, but the right paradigm is what are we building together. And what I've tried to capture is that there's actually ways, skills that we can incorporate in marriage that help us build. So when we're having a conversation, for example, about our teens and we're disagreeing on something that we need to do for them or with them, that attitude, like you're saying, as the foundation, our skills don't need to be as sharp. Because if our attitude is there that we are together, we are a team that's going to slow us down because I don't have to get my way with what we do with this team.

Yeah, here's how we talk about that at The Weeknd to remember, or how I talk about it at least. I will say when you've got an issue in your marriage, you need to put the issue on the table and the two of you together need to say that's the issue. You're not the issue. I'm not the issue.

That's the issue. So let's together figure out, we've got an issue, now let's talk about how we fix this issue. And we may have different perspectives, but rather than making the other person the issue, we make the issue the issue. And we can now go after that together and say, well, I think we ought to do this.

No, I think we ought to do that. Rather than saying, well, you're stupid for thinking that, now I've made you the issue. We say, well, that's a different perspective, so let me think about that. But together, our goal is fix this issue, and we are allies in that rather than being opponents in that.

That's right. And that's part of this attitude you're talking about, Dave, which is we're together on this. We want the marriage to be good. We want what we're working on together to be good. And if we've got that attitude, now we can be allies toward that end rather than opponents. Yeah, and I think, as you're saying, Bob, when you put the issue on the table, and it's almost like you separate it from us. Right. The attitude that has to happen, and this is only I believe Jesus can do, is take us from sort of arrogance or I'm right to humility, which is you're my partner. You're my spouse. I love you.

I want to hear your perspective on this. Now, I know I'm sitting in a studio, and I'm not mad at Ann right now, so it's easy to say. But in that moment to say, God, give me a spirit of humility. She's more important than this issue.

Yeah. And I don't want to destroy her over this issue. So how do I step back and listen? That's a communication skill, but it's coming out of an attitude of humility, which Jesus breathes, right, through the Holy Spirit to say, okay, we can resolve this because we're a team.

And like you said, it's a legacy thing at stake here. That's right. Let's talk about the tools, the five tools, because you put labels on these, names to these that have been helpful, and you've come back to this over and over again in your own marriage. The first tool for effective communication is what you call the tool of first response.

Explain what that is. Yeah, the principle behind this first tool is that the direction of a conversation doesn't typically belong to the person who starts it, but it belongs to the person who responds to it. And in the book, I go through multiple examples of how Jesus really exemplifies this. People were trying to pick fights with him constantly during his earthly ministry, but they never got what they wanted.

They never got him to go in the bad direction. His response steered it towards a redemptive direction, steered it towards a lesson, steered it towards a parable. And because the person that started that conversation was an enemy of his, they were against him, it really frustrated them. It's really quite the contrary if you've got two people trying to build a marriage. I can say something in a harsh way at a bad time using the wrong words to Gina. And if she responds knowing I'm for her, even though I just totally messed it up, if she responds knowing I'm for her and her response is gentle or her response is though I said it not in the tone that I used, we're not going to be in a conflict.

It's really hard to get in an argument with someone who won't fight with you. So you're saying the responder determines whether this escalates or de-escalates. That's absolutely right. And the Bible says a gentle answer does what?

Turns away wrath. Right. So in a moment when a spouse in frustration, exasperated about something, says, well, this wouldn't be a problem if you didn't do whatever. What happens next determines whether this escalates or de-escalates.

That's absolutely right. The power is in the hands of the responder, isn't it? Oh, and I would say what happens next is very much determined by what your spouse has been feeding their mind and heart with. In other words, when I'm spending time with God, when I'm with Him, when I'm asking God to give me eyes for Dave the way God has eyes for Dave, then my response could be one of gentleness and not kind of jumping on the bandwagon of that anger. But if I'm not and if I haven't spent time with Him and I've been spending time with thoughts that are very unbiblical or like Dave is the problem and this is the issue, then my response is going to be very much like I'm right on it and I'm jumping on Him.

Because you've been having that argument in your head for two hours before He ever showed up. That's a great point. Maybe two weeks. Yeah.

Maybe two years. Yeah. But you even talk about in one of your principles, you talk about how we should speak so that the other person encounters God. Right. How do we do that?

What's that look like? The principle there is that God has given us words to minister grace. The rest of the principles talk about giving grace to those who hear, talking about not allowing any corrupting talk to come out of our mouths. So when we speak to them, our goals in our words should be aligned with God's goals for them. So that when I'm responding to Gina, it ought not be self-defensive. God's not interested in defending me. He's interested in glorifying Himself in that moment. And so my response to Gina ought to be with the compassion and with the goals that God has for her, He wants her to grow in Christ-likeness. If my words are not aimed at helping her grow in Christ-likeness, I'm actually out of sync with what God is doing in that moment.

And so it's having a constant awareness of what God has commanded us to do, how He's called us to love. The truth is that we're actually pretty good at this outside of our house, right? We're all pretty good at responding.

If your boss says something nasty to you, you're not responding back and escalating that, or you're not doing that for long as an employee, right? We're good at measuring our responses. The problem is when we walk in our front door, we take that gift off, that skill off, and we give ourselves license to sin against one another. Yeah, I mean, we do it all the time. And it's with the people we love the most.

I remember, you know, I've taught this principle, general answer turns away wrath. And I remember one time I was pulling out of my subdivision to get on our road, and I couldn't get in, couldn't get in. There was no break. And finally, there was a little break, and I pull out, and I realized, oh, no, that car was coming a lot faster. So I really cut him off.

And so, you know, I did the deal where you're like, oh, I wonder if he's mad. And you look in the rear-room mirror, and he is livid. And it's a two-lane road.

So there's only one lane going south, and I'm in it. So he's on my bumper doing what we all do, right? No, I've never done this, but he's doing this. I mean, I can see him yelling.

It's Michigan, it's cold, windows are up, but I can see him, there's hand gestures going on. And I'm like, I just want to separate from this guy as fast as I can. I can't, because we get up to a stoplight, and there's a lane beside me.

And I'm like, oh, no. And he does. He pulls right over to the lane to my right.

I don't look. I'm like, I don't even want to see what's going on, but I sort of, out of my periphery, I can see him yelling. I can hear him. His window's now down.

He's got all kinds of things, just trying to get my attention. So finally, after like eight or nine seconds, I just turn like this, and I look at him. And the window's on my side still up, so I mouth these words, I'm sorry, my bad. Just like that. And he goes, oh, no problem.

See ya. And he just drove off. And I was like, what just, I mean, he went from rage to this and what happened? Proverbs 15, one, a gentle answer turned away this wrath. And I think, okay, why can't I do that at home? When my wife offends me, I don't do it.

So, I mean, the question, how? The most important, and Ann hit on this earlier, what happens in those moments is an overflow of how you have fed your soul up to that moment. Good. And so we have to be aware that Christ himself has been a first responder to us. That if he had treated us according to our sins, we wouldn't have received grace and compassion and mercy and forgiveness. We wouldn't know fellowship and restoration with God. We wouldn't know the power of the Holy Spirit living in our lives.

We'd be rejected, and God can yell louder than us. His response, rightfully, should have destroyed us. But he chose to respond in compassion. And so we are a recipient of the grace of the tool of first response from the throne of God. If we can live in the goodness of that, in the truth of that, and allow that to function in how we relate to one another in marriage, I'll never be asked to respond to Gina's wrath with more grace than God responded to my rebellion. If we live in the goodness of that, if we feed our souls on what God has done for us, the responding is a natural fruit. Responding in this way, in the redemptive, kind way, is a natural fruit.

Yeah, that's good. Obviously, when things are going smooth in life, that's easier to do. It's when things get busy, hectic, stressful. You have babies that haven't slept through the night. You've had no sleep. Your life is stressed. Right.

In those times when you are stressed out, and because you're stressed out, it's a little easier to go toward the flesh than toward the Spirit. Is there a way to walk yourself back in those moments? There is. It may not be in the tool of first response, because we've already blown that, right?

It may be in some of the other tools, in the more restorative tools. This would be more of a proactive tool, where someone acts toward us in a way that we wish they wouldn't. Now we can say, we don't have to go there.

We can respond in a way. But if you've already blown through that guardrail, there are other things to keep you from going off the cliff, and that's where some of the other tools come in. Well, you've got the second tool, the tool of prayer, right?

That's right. The tool of prayer shows up a lot. It got its own chapter, of course, but it shows up in the tool of first response, because you may need to pray before you say your next words.

It shows up in the tool of mirroring, because before you respond to what your spouse has said, and you try to repeat back to them, am I hearing you correctly? You're going to need prayer, prayerfully listening, prayerfully thinking. So yeah, prayer is one that can show up in every tool. And was that always easy for you guys, to pray with one another?

We did so much damage in that first year and a half that it takes time for you to feel safe with your spouse again. Prayer is such a vulnerable thing. When you're praying with your spouse, you are vulnerable. And if you have destroyed that, then praying together is going to be difficult. So maybe in the beginning, you're not praying together. You're praying individually, and then maybe as healing continues, you're praying individually and saying, I prayed for you. I prayed for this conversation we're going to have. And then maybe then you take a walk and you're praying together, but you're not sitting down, you're not looking at each other, you're not holding hands, and you're just praying out loud. And it just, it comes in baby steps, but God is patient with us. And God's desire is for him to be glorified in our marriage.

And if it's not going to happen in a lightning bolt, he will allow it to happen over the course of time. In reality, when we first started to be able to put our marriage back together, these were things we worked through together. We were both kind of on the job. I don't want that to discourage somebody who may be listening where only the wife is trying to really grow in Christ and the husband may be disinterested or vice versa. The reality is the way these tools play out in the rest of our marriage is I'm using them when Gina may not even be thinking about them. And she may be using them when I'm not thinking about them. The illustration I've given, not in the book, but in counseling multiple times is that communication and marriage can be quite like a dance where you would dance better as a couple if you both went for lessons.

But if only one of you goes for lessons, you may not dance as well as if you both went for lessons, but you're going to be better than if none of you go for lessons. And so these tools can help even if the other spouse is not interested in growing or in that moment is not interested in living for Jesus. They can still help the marriage. They can help the spouse that is pressing toward Christ.

And Lord willing, when the other spouse has received grace, the effect of that will be a softening to the Lord and conviction on how they haven't lived for him in his words or in her words. And I know as you talk about this tool of prayer, I know that I have often, I wish I could say just a few times, but many times I've prayed to win. You know, I'm taking this tool of prayer and spinning it toward me. God, help me win this argument. God, help her to see my side rather than God help me to hear her, to understand her, to be gentle and responsible.

That's what you're talking about, right? It's really, I mean, it'd be great if you could pray together, but even if you can't, I can pray and I can pray the right thing, which is God. I want, and again, we're back to attitude, but I want this to end in reconciliation.

God, help me forgive her rather than for her or him to see my way, right? Right, now you said, help me to hear her. I think that's very, very important. I think what's equally important is help me to hear you. You're doing something right now that if I don't get on board with that, it doesn't matter how I use these tools, I'm going to be a miss.

I'm going to drift from where you want us to be. What are you wanting from me right now? What are you working on in Gina?

What are you wanting in our marriage? So Lord, help me hear Gina, but help me hear you. I think the greatest lesson I learned and probably has had the greatest impact on me is taking my words to God first and saying, God, should I say anything? And then for me to listen and to say, Father, if I do say anything, what do you want me to say and how should I say it? That took so much self-control for me because I wanted to say exactly what was on my mind. And it took so much self-control to say, Holy Spirit, I need you first, I need self-control, and I need to hear you, Father. And sometimes I would wait because we hear God in many different ways through the Word, through Spirit, through friends.

And so it was a matter of waiting, and that's hard. But I think it's really important because I really did use my words as weapons so often, and it hurt Dave, it hurt our relationship. And so that's not an easy thing to go to God first in prayer, but I think it's really important. And I think that for everybody listening to ask two questions, first of all, to say, am I a good responder? Am I walking with Jesus in such a way, day in and day out, that when I get hit with something that kind of takes me, throws me for a loop for a minute, can I rebound and respond well? To work on that as a strategy for your marriage and say, I want to be the kind of person that when my spouse says something that is angry or frustrating or hurtful or harmful, I can take a breath and say, let's talk about that, rather than erupting in anger. And I think it's unnatural.

Yeah. The natural thing is when somebody escalates, you escalate, so it's got to be supernatural to respond the way Jesus would respond. And then the second thing is, have I been praying for our marriage? Have I been praying for my spouse? And what have those prayers sounded like?

Are those just prayers of anger and frustration and, God, you need to fix them? Or is it, Lord, what do I need to do? I have a humble heart. I'm teachable.

How can I be a different person? Lord, make me more like you in this situation with my spouse. These are two of the tools that Rob outlines in the book with these words that we've got in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can order the book from us online at familylifetoday.com. In fact, I'm sitting here thinking about a couple I know, and we've been talking about challenges and frustrations in their marriage, and I'm thinking a lot of it is communication. It's just they're not expressing themselves well to one another, so I'm going to get them a copy of this book. You can order a copy for yourself online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call to order 1-800-FL-TODAY is our number. That's 1-800-358-6329, 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word Today.

The book, again, is called With These Words, Five Communication Tools for Marriage and Life by Rob Flood. Let me ask you whether it has been hard or easy for you in recent days to find yourself rejoicing. I think as you pay attention to what's going on in our world, as you stay connected to social media or you're watching what's going on in the news, it's hard to maintain a spirit of joy. And I want to point you to what the Scriptures tell us in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 16 says, Rejoice always.

And let me remind you, the person who wrote that was somebody who spent time in prison, who was locked up in chains, who often did not have enough to eat, who had been beaten for his faith. He's the one telling us to rejoice always and to pray without ceasing and to give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. So rejoice, pray, give thanks. These are our marching orders as sons and daughters of God during these difficult times. And I'll tell you what, as we do that, as we rejoice, as we give thanks, as we pray, the people around us are going to wonder why we are hopeful and joyful and at peace. And that gives us an opportunity to give a reason for the hope that is in us. So keep your spiritual vision intact during these difficult times. Stay on mission. Stay focused on God.

Let the peace of God that passes understanding put your heart at ease. Now, tomorrow, we want to talk more about communication and marriage. We want to find out if it's okay, if you're locked up in communication and you're not doing well, is it okay to call a time out and to separate for 15 minutes or half an hour or even a half day?

Is it okay to take a break? Rob and Gina Flood will be back with us tomorrow to talk about that. Hope you can be here as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, with some help from Mark Ramey. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.