The Best Choices You Can Make for Your Marriage

I was really struggling as we walked through the aftermath. It just felt like every day was a struggle. It was hard to breathe sometimes. It was hard to just function day to day. And it was so lonely. When Kari learned of her husband's affair, she felt betrayed by God. She lost hope until she heard a Focus on the Family podcast. The reason why I listened to it over and over again is because it felt like I was sitting down with a friend who was telling me, like, I've been there and it's okay. And you can do this and I promise in the end it's going to be worth it. And it just broke me in a good way.

I'm Jim Daly. Working together we can heal more broken marriages like Kari's and give families hope. Please call 800 the letter A in the word family.

That's 800-AFAMILY or donate at FocusOnTheFamily.com slash hope and your gift will be doubled. It's a daily decision if you want to be in love that day. And we have this language that talks about it happening to us like it's an outside force and we fall into love as opposed to making a conscious decision to say I want to love you, I'm going to love you and I'm choosing to love you. Dr. Ron Welch is our guest today on Focus on the Family and he and his wife Jan have some simple advice for your marriage that can really be implemented today.

Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller. Hey John, if you think about it every day of our lives is made up of lots of little decisions. We decide whether or not to hit snooze button. Did you do that this morning? I wanted to.

Or perhaps what shoes to wear. But researchers say that on average a person makes about 35,000 decisions a day. No wonder I'm tired. Well I said this to Jean and to Troy last night and they said yeah I could see that. Tell me whether to get up right now, whether to scratch my head, whether to walk across the room. When you put it in that context yeah I could see how we would reach 35,000 decisions a day. But here's something we often don't think of as a decision, loving our spouse. Hollywood often paints love as this huge romantic, you hear the themes, the big build up, the big music, the theater release, diamond rings, all of that. But as we're going to learn from our guest today, it's actually the small simple choices that can transform your marriage in a big way.

And that's good news. Dr. Ron Welch is a clinical psychologist. He specializes in marriage and family. His wife Jan is a teacher. She works with at risk children and they've been married for over 30 years, have two grown boys and two grandkids. Dr. Welch has written a book called 10 Choices Successful Couples Make, The Secret to Love That Lasts a Lifetime. And we have that of course at our website.

Details are in the episode show notes. Ron and Jan, welcome to Focus on the Family. Thank you so much for having us.

We're glad to be here. Okay, well let's get into it. You've been married over 30 years now. I understand you decided to get engaged only four days after meeting each other. Okay, everybody's going, what? Honey, did you hear that?

Four days? What's that all about? I think this is my wife's story to tell. Oh, nice punt.

I'm going to punt this one right over to my wife. Ron and I were at Denver University together and I realized he was such an intelligent, kind person and we ended up doing a project together and we were able to, he asked me out and he was, when we left, he wanted to borrow a quarter because he was going to move someone from our date to another date. He was going to make a phone call.

Make a phone call. Yeah, and I don't look very good in this part of the story, just so you know. And thank goodness the line was busy because I asked him what it was and he says, well, explain that, and I was like, I like movies and we were never apart. So we talked all night.

That's a really fast, condensed story there. I had to move one date around to make room for another so it didn't turn out to work very well, but the end result is we spent a lot of time together over the next few days and after three or four days of spending time together, we looked at each other and said, should we go look at rings? And we're like, yeah, let's do that. Okay, so then you get married. How did that go in the early days of your marriage? We had to get to know each other after we got married. Right. I would think there were some problems.

Not the best plan. As you hear our story unfold a bit, you'll find that one of the reasons that I wanted this to happen so quickly was that I was a really insecure guy. I needed to control things and be in charge and I really believed at that point that if she really got to know me, then what would happen is she probably wouldn't want to marry me. And so I wanted it to happen quickly and soon so that God could move things along because I was pretty insecure about how that would work otherwise.

So did that come out pretty quickly then? What I would describe as a marriage trap in some ways. I'm not trying to be unkind, obviously, but when you try to compensate for those insecurities, it's kind of like, get the girl and then we'll deal with my issues later. Right. And to the point of the controlling, I couldn't leave the apartment without him. And if I chose to do something, I would kind of pay for it because it would be an inquisition. He would keep asking questions. What did you do?

Who did you see? And it got to where it's not worth that. Yeah. And in fact, in your book, you talk about the difference between falling in love and jumping in love.

What's your distinction? You know, that's where these choices come in, right, Jim? It's a daily decision if you want to be in love that day. And we have this language that talks about it happening to us like it's an outside force and we fall into love as opposed to making a conscious decision to say, I want to love you.

I'm going to love you and I'm choosing to love you. Yeah. And in my case, after a year, she told me this is not working. And in God's perfect world, I would have been healed. Everything would have been great.

In reality, it was probably eight or 10 years. And there's there's nothing I regret more in my life than the fact that she had to help me become the man God wanted me to be. Well, and the irony is that is in part what marriage is about. Unfortunately, in the modern world, we've lost that understanding of completing each other. And we'll unfold some of that as we move through the story. You also mentioned something called choice theory.

You say that it can bring hope to any marriage. So walk us through choice theory. You know, I think there's a level of expectation people have and there's a level of understanding that makes them think this is just the way it is and this way it has to be.

And there's not much more we can do about it. Choice theory says that in every single situation you have opportunities. God created us to be a certain kind of person in his image and we can act in that image if we so choose or we can act not to. And so what I've done in my understanding of choice theory is to apply that to how couples make choices, whether it's getting up in the morning and deciding today I'm going to honor my wife, I'm going to look at her in the face and tell her how beautiful she is, or I'm going to be someone who will honor and respect and love my wife or my husband in a way that is more about me than about them. And I think that's where it comes from.

Yeah. And in one of those, you mentioned it's a choice to be unselfish. And I think when you look at marriages and you embrace a Christian perspective, you're trying to walk more like Christ. This is exactly, I think, why he created marriage the way he did, because we're attracted to opposites that typically can rub you the wrong way over time. And what you've got to learn to do is to choose to be unselfish because we're selfish creatures because of our sin nature.

Right. I think there's two kinds of models of marriage in the world right now. One is the me kind of marriage and one's the us marriage. The me marriage really focuses on this idea that I'm in this for me. As soon as you don't meet my needs, I'm out. And you see divorces, you see people who have affairs because it's about me.

And if I don't get my needs met, I'm going to go find someone who does. Let me ask you this question about the early years of your marriage, the first eight to 10 years then. Jan, you had to be unselfish to recognize Ron's controlling temperament.

How did you survive that? Well, my father was very similar in a way of control. And so it was very easy for me because I wanted him to be happy and I would sacrifice everything so he could be happy and that things would be good.

And I really wish I'd had someone tell me that you have to hold them accountable. Well, right. Easy isn't necessarily healthy. Right. And that's a big point. So that's what you're saying is that I, in essence, I went with it and you allowed it to happen. And that's what happens, I think, in a lot of those things because your insecurities, whatever reason, you hold back some of the things you might have said to the person. Right. And you just kind of keep doing that. And so it's not always beneficial in your marriage. So when controlling, you also have a part in allowing that, if that makes sense.

Yeah. And I appreciate that honesty, really, both of you to talk about those first eight to 10 years. I think for a couple that may be in that situation right now, they're still at year four. Let's just imagine that couple who's listening. How can we cut their pain in half?

They don't have to go eight to 10 years. What were some of those things in those years six, seven and eight that begin to change things for you? What was it that woke you both up to this unhealthiness? So I remember the day God slapped me across the face with this.

My sons were starting to talk to my wife in that same manner. Why aren't you where you're supposed to be? Why didn't you get me here?

You need to do this for me. And I gave him the dad lecture, right? Don't talk to your mom that way. And I remember God just slapping me across the head and saying, who do you think is teaching them to disrespect women? I've taught you a different way to value your wife. Why are you doing this? And there was this inconsistency between my faith and between what I was.

And I think that's that couple you're talking about in year four. I think there's an inconsistency between I love you. I'm going to church with you. I'm telling you, I value you. But when we get home, I'm telling you what you need to do for me.

Let me give you a quick example. I would ask Jan something like, where do you want to go for dinner? I really wasn't asking her, where would you like to go for dinner?

I wanted to start a conversation about barbecue. Right. So you actually knew. Yeah.

See, I'm the guy that really doesn't know where I want to go for dinner. I could care less. And I wish I could portray myself in a better light, but I can't. Because it wasn't just Jan I did that with.

That was how I worked my life. What's the root of that? Insecurity. It's like I'm so scared about things getting out of control that as long as I can control everything, it'll be okay. And I fight that every day trying to say, if I trust God and God has my back, why am I so anxious and worried? Where did that come from?

My mom, God bless her. She was an anxious woman, but she was kind of like the glass wasn't just half empty. It was draining rapidly, if that makes sense. Oh, it does. She could look around the corner and see all the things that could go wrong. So fear and anxiety. Yeah.

And I got really good at trying to do enough to maybe prevent those bad things. Yeah. I mean, that there usually is that, you know, early childhood development issue that people encounter.

And it worked well until I got married and then it caused a lot of problems. Yeah. I think many people are going to lean into this next question because it affects all of us as human beings.

It's just part of being on this earth. You mentioned a choice that you outline is choosing to let go of old baggage. And Jan, I think this was especially difficult for you, even though we've heard Ron's letting go of some of that baggage. How has your past affected your marriage?

I think it impacted it a lot. As I said, being controlled was kind of normal for me. I didn't know something different and pleasing somebody. So you were pretty much always controlled by your own parents, right? Yeah.

My dad, pretty much. Do you think that helped you make a decision to marry Ron? Because you saw that in him? Yeah. And it was comfortable? I don't think I saw that in him.

Okay. I didn't really realize it until after we were married. And then it was like, oh, I married my dad. But in a good way for many, because people, there's so many wonderful qualities about him.

He's an amazing person. That was just a part that we needed to work on. And I really didn't do my part in holding him accountable, saying, no, I'm going to go and be with my friends. Jan, in fact, in the book, I think you position it as blaming yourself. Which, can I say this so that women can hopefully release this? Women are so quick to look at their own selves.

Yes. And sometimes that's good. But sometimes it can become unhealthy.

And that's what you're describing. It was very unhealthy. Always blaming yourself. That's not the right spot.

No, that's not good. And baggage is what kind of weighs you down. And when you unpack it, it stays in the marriage. And you use it as a crutch.

And so getting rid of that baggage and really looking at it, it helps so much. When did you find the courage to say, hey, Ron, can I challenge that a little bit? Our first anniversary.

The first anniversary. Yeah. But I feel like I'm in a golden cage because there's other good things. But I can't get out of the cage because you won't let me. And I didn't listen at all. So that was the beginning of an eight more year journey.

I think a few more years. Yeah. Because my part in not really trusting in it, because at some point it always came back up again, you had to work through that. Well, speak for a moment to those deep patterns that we learn as children and then how we manifest those as adults. This is almost compulsive behavior. It's hard to grab a hold of that.

And when you have that thought to grab it captive, just like the word talks about, to take that captive so it doesn't come out of our mouth, as James talks about the power of the tongue. So what discipline have you applied, self-discipline, to change those things? I had a student, I'm a professor up at Denver Seminary.

I had a student ask me that exact question maybe a year or so ago because they wanted to know. Very good student. Very good student. And part of the answer was, you can't start by trying to change your entire life. You can't just say, I'm going to be different tomorrow. Wow, that's good.

We're all done. You have to start with a small choice and say, so what could I do today that would lead me to make a selfless choice or an unselfish choice as opposed to a selfish choice? So it might be something like, okay, you said you wanted to play softball. I'm talking to the guys out there. They assume they have a softball game, so they should just go play softball. But they don't ask their wife whether the wife would take care of the kids at night.

They just assume, well, it'll be fine. She wants to go out with the girls and there's like some permission needed. That's a power issue. That's not okay.

One needs permission, the other doesn't. Yeah. It should be a matter of saying, so how can I serve you today? What would you like to do tonight so you could really get closer to God? If you want to go to Bible study, I'll take care of the kids. But more of the time you look at people's schedules. I have the couples I work with. I'm a marriage therapist. I have the couples pull out their planners and you'll see everybody in there.

You'll see their job, their dog, some guy named Frank. I mean, everybody shows up in their schedules, but their own names don't show up in each other's schedule because they don't plan time. They don't think about the week and say, when are we going to be married this week? So one of the choices I try to make with Jan is to say today, when are we going to be married today?

That is so good. And it's great, you know, especially when you know that person is thinking about you and really cares about what you may want to do, which was such a change in our marriage because it was always, what did he want to do? If he wanted barbecue and I wanted Mexican, we would go get barbecue. In the old days. In the old days. And now he's like, where do you really want to go? And I'm like, I feel like I can say that.

I know it's a simple thing, but it really impacts your life in other ways. Well, I'm with you. Let's go get Mexican food. Amen.

Sounds good to me. You know, Ron, I wanted to ask you this too. You have a statement or a descriptor called the Niagara Falls analogy that helps couples de-escalate. So often, I mean, even for Jean and I, that's what we need so often is how do I de-escalate this?

Because I've said something that obviously has triggered her. And sometimes I look for that de-escalation and sometimes I don't. So speak to that. How do I Niagara Fall this in a healthier way?

How do I pull back? Especially if you want to win in this moment, which is a competitive nature thing, which I do possess. And so, you know, it's about, hey, how do I win this argument? Okay, help me out, Mr. Therapist.

You betcha. I'm so glad you asked about that, Jim. This is the single most effective thing I've ever seen in counseling. This is important.

It is so amazing. I was in the prison system for many years. Which side? Not in prison. As a psychologist, I was not an inmate. I guess I should explain that for your listeners.

Yes, I got it. But I worked with a lot of inmates with a lot of anger problems. And I met a guy named Bill Fleeman, who was doing work on Niagara Falls, looking at how that affected anger. And I said, man, can I use this for marriage?

And afterwards, his organization let me use this with marriage couples. And what I do is, have you ever been to Niagara Falls? I have. Big waterfall, lots of water. My Canadian friends want to make sure I say the Canadian side is prettier. It's probably true, actually.

Probably true. But what most people don't do is go back up river about two or three miles. It's calm.

It's peaceful. You can run out of the water. You can make choices about what you want to do.

As you get closer to the falls, when we've been there, it was, you know, you have a roaring sound of the water. There's a point of no return. And this was what happened to the inmates I worked with, where two days before in the lunch line, when someone elbowed them, they could make a different choice. When they're down on the rec yard with a shank trying to stab somebody, it's too late to make a different choice. They've already made their call. They're over the falls.

They're over the falls. And so with couples, I say, I ask them to make four lists. I ask the husband to make a list about how he knows when he's okay and when he's not okay. I ask the wife to make a list about how she knows when he's okay or not okay. Because sometimes our wife or our husband knows a lot more about how okay we are than we do, right?

And then I ask the wife to make a list about the husband and about herself. These four lists give you all sorts of ideas of how you know things aren't okay, and I ask them to rank order them. What they do then is they use these lists, and I have some couples that have had a huge picture laminated of Niagara Falls up in their kitchen wall, and they just identify, what are our warning signs? When are we getting close to the falls?

When are we getting anxious or upset or angry or frustrated? And they choose to make choices way upriver before they go over the falls. Yeah, those are, in essence, the cable, the safety cables. That's right. No, that's really good. Another choice you mention and talk about with couples is the choice to communicate positively. I think I get that one, and I think the power of that, I'm doing that more in my marriage now than I have in the past, and it is really good. Make sure you're more positive than negative. Yes, I like to think about what I can do to make someone else's day better. Is there something that I can compliment them on? Is there something that I can tell they're worried about something?

Do you need to talk about it? I work with children, and you need to be able, in many ways, to kind of see if bad things are happening, and you communicate with them, you pull them out, you can talk to them. I love being able to make someone else's day better, and I think by being positive and communicating that, and sometimes you just don't know a smile could make somebody's day if they're having a really rough day. Unfortunately, many teenagers are needing that a lot more.

Yeah, I would say double down on the positivity with your teenager, because at that stage of life, there's so many negatives coming at them. I would also add delivery matters. The attitude, the tone of voice can throw a message right out the window, so you've got to deliver it positively. In fact, you have ten rules for positive communication, and Jon will post those at the website, but give me a couple of those.

I mean, you mentioned one or two, but what's... So, for example, nothing good tends to happen in communication after 9 p.m. That's close to the be home by midnight, because nothing good happens at midnight. Pretty applicable in my home. When couples... Jon, you know, if a couple starts talking about a conflict at 9.30 when they're both tired, the kids just went to bed, it's not going to go well. Another would be if you think about bringing up the past, you know, the great pancake incident of 2012 or whatever, you know, just let it go. Don't bring up the past and bring in new stuff, so I think the rules have a lot to do with being fair in your communication. Yeah, marital coat of arms.

Let's mention that one. Oh, boy, this is interesting. I do this a lot with couples near the end of counseling, and you remember back when there used to be a family crest on your front door? I ask couples to think about that and say, what are the words and images you'd like your family to represent? And I ask them to put those together, come up with the words, come up with the images, and then make a project, make a crest. Put it on your front door for everyone to see. These are the things that our family represents. When people see God through our family, this is how they're going to see it, and it's amazing what people come up with in terms of how they represent how people will see God through them and what their family stands for. That is really good. I think I'll do that with the boys.

I will come over to see what you post. No, no, you've got to do your own. But, Ron, you say there's something called unspoken truths and that they can be a silent killer in marriage. What do you mean by that? This is all the things that you know about your wife right now that you believe to be true, and you're fairly certain that you really can't talk you out of it. You believe, for instance, something like, you kind of are a lazy person. Or someone else thinks, my husband cares more about work than me. Or maybe, ah, you really probably are going to think of yourself before me most times. It's the unspoken truths that are what in the scientific world would be called givens.

They drive everything else. Because their assumptions that are so powerful, they form the basis of what you choose. One of Jan's assumptions was that she wasn't worthwhile enough to stand up for herself and be treated the way she deserved to be treated.

And so she kind of took my inappropriate, ridiculous, immature behavior for many years. We call it learned helplessness. You guys ever remember the old animal experience? They'd shock the dogs, dogs would jump, dogs come back down.

Eventually the dogs lay down and they say, you can shock me, but you can't make me jump. Right. Yeah. And that's, I think that was kind of what it was like for you. It's like, why bother trying? He's not going to listen.

Yeah. And sometimes, especially when I would bring something that was not like money or something, and he could kind of explode out of that. Why did you spend that or those kind of things.

And those became my unspoken truths. So I'm not going to talk to him about money because it usually comes back on me. So you'd hide. Hide it. Emotionally.

Yeah. And then, you know, you buy something, you stick it in your closet in the back and bring it out. And he'd be like, oh, is that new? It's been in my closet for a while. You know, because I knew that if I told him, he might react so negatively.

And I already felt bad maybe about buying it. So unspoken truths can really strangle your marriage. Okay. So a woman is going, oh, that's exactly where I'm at today. What do you do to change that trajectory? How do you work up the courage to say we need a different way of doing this?

We need a budget, whatever it might be. How do you go about doing that? I think if you can agree as a couple, even if you're not going to make changes immediately just to say it out loud, there's a way you can do this. You can say something like my husband always or I wish my wife wouldn't and fill in the sentence and show it to each other and say, I don't know how we can work on this, but I want to say it out loud. I want to let God know. I want to let you know this is not okay. And maybe you can even say, how does this work with the kind of man Christ called you to be?

Is this consistent? Just throw a little guilt trip in there. And this is not the kind of thing, Ron, that a couple should just spring on each other.

Right. I mean, I shouldn't go home tonight and say, hey, I was thinking about things that you shouldn't do anymore. And here's my list. Let's not start there.

I mean, the context is very important here. If they were going to start, I'd start with, here's some things I've learned about myself that I want to do differently. Let's share an example first and then say, and maybe if you have some time, it'd be great if you think of some things that maybe could be better for you on your side of the street. And we're right at the end. But I do want to grab that that question for that spouse who's saying, I'm pretty good. I'm in a good spot.

I'm all right. But it's my spouse, that guy. He's this.

He's that. How does that spouse and it doesn't, you know, just put it in a generic term, but how does that person make that turn to not amplify the spouse's negatives and amplify their righteousness? I can only speak for myself. I had to look directly in the mirror, hear what God was saying, what God's taught me to be, what the Bible tells me to be and see the discrepancy between what I'm called to be and who I am. And you have to be honest with yourself and God and say, I can't keep living this way because this isn't who you've called me to be. I'm so glad that we can turn to God to help us in every area of life, especially marriage. And this has been a best of 2020 Focus on the Family broadcast with Ron and Jan Welch.

John, that conversation with Ron and Jan was so refreshing and so real. You know, sometimes as believers, we want to honor God by projecting that we have a perfect marriage, even though nothing's perfect in this life, including our marriages. There's always things to work on. Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians, God's power is made perfect in our weaknesses. Maybe your marriage looks good on the outside, but behind closed doors, you're struggling a bit.

If that describes you, please reach out to us. One couple, Kiera and Daniel, wrote to us after attending our marriage intensive, Hope Restored, as we call it, and said this. For seven years, our home has felt like World War III.

We came to focus broken, nervous and skeptical. But the intensive has truly been an amazing journey. God has opened our eyes. We have learned how to take care of our hearts and truly care for our spouse's feelings.

We opened up to each other. I will cherish this memory of Hope Restored forever. Well, that is such a great story, and it's really why we do these marriage intensives at Hope Restored, to give couples like Kiera and Daniel something to cling on to so they can rebuild that relationship. You know, in addition to those couples we've helped through, Hope Restored, there's also about 100,000 couples this past year that Focus helped them work through a major crisis in their marriage.

And if you'd like to join the team to help keep marriages together, whether it's Hope Restored or just the broader marriage effort here at Focus on the Family, become a supporter. A one-time gift helps us so much. A monthly gift is really stabilizing to the efforts here. Either way, when you give, I'll send you a copy of Ron's book, Ten Choices Successful Couples Make, to say thank you. And we do encourage your prayerful support right now, and there's a matching gift opportunity available today, so please donate as you can and know that your gift is going to go twice as far because of that matching gift opportunity.

The number to donate and get the book is 800-AFAMILY, 800-232-6459, or click the link in the episode show notes. And on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back for a special conversation tomorrow with two infectious disease specialists.

They're going to help you separate fact from fiction when it comes to the new coronavirus vaccine. That's next time on Focus on the Family, as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. We offer hope to couples in crisis so they can have the marriage they've always dreamed of. For the first time, I felt like my husband truly heard me. I've received some great tools from the counselors that have changed my life and my marriage. To begin the journey of finding health, go to HopeRestored.com today.