Joel and Gretchen Journey

Sometimes I don’t want to talk to or listen to my wife. Even though we’ve been married since 2001 and I’ve served as a marriage pastor since 2006, I admit I sometimes strongly dislike communicating and resolving disagreements with Kristen.

The reality is, most married couples don’t love to communicate or resolve conflict. We’re not good at it, it’s rarely modeled well, and it takes so much time and effort to do it with success. Our selfish desires get in the way, and most of the time we are radically different from our spouse in the ways we prefer to communicate and resolve disagreements.

All our lives we’re taught to win, defend, and prove our point. We often do this by speaking more than the other person, by talking in a raised voice, or by becoming master debaters and crushing our opponent. These tactics might work in a debate, argument, or sporting event, but they won’t work in a marriage relationship. If you act like this with your spouse, you will end up with a mess of a marriage. You and your spouse won’t truly know each other, and you’ll end up resenting the person you are intended to love most.

What if things could be different? What if the two of you were able to engage in awkward and difficult conversations, which are inevitable in any relationship, and come out of them better off and closer than ever? Imagine learning to value understanding each other rather than winning. Marriage calls for a different type of communication, where if one person “wins” an argument, then no winner truly exists.

Next to your decision of whether or not to follow Christ and trust Him as your Lord and Savior, how you communicate and resolve conflict will play the biggest role in determining the strength and health of your relationship.1 If you can’t communicate, then the rest of this book will not benefit you.

To help you determine if you and your significant other are ready for marriage, you need alignment in your views about effective communication and conflict resolution.2

Meet Jason and Kelly

To help us navigate this topic well, let’s turn to a couple with one of the strongest and most intentional marriages I’ve ever seen. Jason and Kelly tied the knot in 1995 and have served and led in marriage ministry in the church since 2002.

Jason: The first five years of our marriage were good. But once we learned how to communicate and engage in healthy conflict, our marriage went from good to great. Everything changed when we realized we could discuss any and every topic. Nothing was off-limits for us as a couple. We started to talk about our sexual desires, dreams for the future, and hopes to better parent our kids.

Kelly: We watched many other couples struggle, and we knew we didn’t want to end up like everyone else. So we started to admit areas of insecurity, talk about our sin struggles, and grow in emotional intimacy. We learned the value of humility and forgiveness and communicated in a way that allowed us to move toward oneness instead of running away from each other.

Jason: The turning point for us came when Kelly’s parents wanted to come visit us for the weekend. I was in the middle of an extremely busy season with work and travel, all while trying to raise two little kids.

Kelly: Jason’s parents were in town the prior weekend, so when my parents wanted to visit, I thought it was a great idea. We’d get to see my family, and I knew we’d get a date night since they could watch our kids. When Jason told me he didn’t want my parents to visit, I immediately assumed he didn’t like my family. Why was it okay for his family to visit but not mine?

Jason: I remember telling Kelly I didn’t want her parents to visit, but I never gave any explanation or other options. I got frustrated and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see why I was right and she was wrong!

Kelly: Later that night, Jason apologized to me and asked for forgiveness for being short with me. We slowed down and allowed each other to share our thoughts. This argument helped us realize the importance of listening, asking good questions, and humility.

When Jason and Kelly learned to communicate and resolve conflict in a biblical, God-honoring way, they started to attain the marriage God intends for us each to have and the marriage about which they dreamed and hoped.

Jason: Outside of intimacy with Jesus, nothing will help you improve your relationship more than how well you communicate and resolve conflict.

Kelly: Communication is both a way to connect as a couple and a way to resolve issues you need to discuss. Marriage is not just long talks on the sofa or hours and hours of sex. Yes, both of these should be a part of marriage, but so much more of your relationship will be the day-to-day communication with your spouse to discuss things such as meals, money, and what God is teaching you.

In other words, if you’re following Christ and can communicate and resolve conflict, then you will do well in marriage.

Healthy Marriages Require Healthy Communication

If you get married, you’ll soon realize that you and your spouse will need to talk about many important topics every day. You each bring different styles of communication into the relationship, and you’ll need to make decisions about crucial topics such as money, sex, spiritual intimacy, and kids. If the two of you can’t communicate and resolve conflict related to these areas of marriage, then you will always be stuck.

Your Spouse Will Help You Grow

You will look to your spouse for feedback and advice in every part of life. They will give you feedback on the clothes you wear, how you parent, your tone when you communicate with others, and much more.

Jason: Kelly sees deficits in my life and communicates those to me. She’ll help me see when I’m harsh in my tone or when I don’t listen. I think I’m doing great until she encourages me to speak with more gentleness and to pay better attention.

Healthy skills related to communication and conflict allow you to be authentic with each other. In marriage, the husband and wife are “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24), which compels them to be 100 percent open and real with each other (more on this when we discuss emotional intimacy in chapter 7). If you and your spouse can’t communicate with each other, then you will never experience oneness as God intends.

Create a Safe Place for Your Spouse

Since your spouse will help you grow in areas where you need help, you need to create a safe space. You and your significant other need to build safety in your relationship so you can talk freely about the big and little things in life.

For example, I’ve struggled with my weight and health for as far back as I can remember. As a young boy, swallowing was painful for me. The doctor told my parents my tonsils were swollen and had to be removed. Once they removed my tonsils, my difficulty with eating stopped. Now I face a different kind of eating problem. Kristen knows my weight and health issues impact my life in a negative way. Because of this, I’ve asked her to help me keep accountable and make good decisions when we go out to eat.

An unsafe marriage when it comes to communication might look like this:

Kristen: How about if we go eat at SuperChix (a restaurant near our house) tonight?

Scott: That sounds great, but please make sure I order the salad with dressing on the side and no tortilla chips.

At the restaurant:

Scott: I’ll have the fried avocado sandwich, black rosemary pepper fries, and a large custard.

Kristen: I thought you were going to get the salad.

Scott: Leave me alone. I’m a big boy and can make my own decisions. I’m paying, and you’re not my mom, so back off!

While I exaggerate for the sake of creating an example, the above scenario is not too big of a stretch. When I speak with a defensive posture after I ask my wife to help me, I’m not creating a safe place for communication and conflict resolution in marriage.

Five Nonnegotiables of Communication and Conflict Resolution

How can you communicate in a healthy way, help your spouse grow, and create a safe environment in your relationship for communication and conflict resolution? Many books present great tips and tricks on how to talk and fight well. I don’t want to offer you worldly wisdom. Each of these five essential components of healthy communication and conflict resolution comes directly from God’s Word.

1. Seek to Understand, Not Win

Perhaps no verse better captures both the problems and opportunities in communication and conflict resolution than Proverbs 18:2, which says, “Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.”

The book of Proverbs often speaks about the actions, behaviors, words, and patterns of a foolish person.3 When it comes to communication, the foolish person wants to win every argument and always expresses their opinion. On the other hand, the wise person chooses to understand and put the thoughts, feelings, and desires of their spouse before themselves.

The couple who seeks to understand each other knows that effective communication takes effort. We work hard in just about every other aspect of our lives. If we want to run a marathon, we train by getting up early and running in the mornings and on the weekends. If we want to improve in our jobs, we take classes and read books. In marriage, if we want to grow and move toward our spouse, we also must work hard. We need to be intentional to understand and communicate with our significant other.

The chart below contrasts the foolish person with the wise one. Which will you be?

The Foolish Person The Wise Person

Expresses their opinion before listening Listens and seeks mutual understanding

Is quick to speak Is slow to speak

Is slow to listen Is quick to listen

Is quick to get angry Is slow to anger

Seeks to win Desires to serve

Knows the right way but doesn’t care Knows the right way and chooses it

Gives an answer before they hear Listens before they speak

Often, we’d rather be right and win than seek to understand. We miss the goal of mutual understanding and therefore choose not to communicate with our significant other.

2. Learn to Communicate and Resolve Conflict in a Selfless Way

In 2004, Kristen gave birth to our twin boys, Duncan and Drew. I was a graduate student, and Kristen was the breadwinner of the family. When Kristen had the twins, we lost our primary source of income. I worked as a part-time physical therapist, took classes as a full-time seminary student, and served part-time as an intern at our church. This was an extremely challenging season for our family.

To make things worse, one of our babies was colicky. This meant he cried all the time. It didn’t matter what you did, Drew cried. We joke that we don’t know how Duncan survived this season because Drew demanded all our time and attention. This made a challenging season of life even more stressful.

One day, when the twins were around four months old, Kristen and I got into an argument. To this day, neither of us has any clue what we argued about. It started with a little bickering, but before you know it, we were yelling at each other. The level and intensity of the jabs became louder and more personal, and the yelling culminated with me banging my hands on the counter, repeatedly screaming, “My life is over! My life is over! My life is over!”

See what I did there? This argument over who knows what became an example of how everything was ruined in my life. It didn’t matter that our four-month-old baby was in constant pain. It didn’t matter that Kristen hadn’t slept in months, always had one or two babies attached to her, or struggled with real fears and concerns about our kids and the mess of our lives. It became all about me.

We fought because I was selfish. I am selfish. I’m the most selfish person I know.

And you’re selfish too. You may not think so, but you are. Just ask your significant other, friends, coworkers, or parents.

The conclusion to my shining star selfish moment? Kristen set crying baby Drew down in the crib, ran across the room, and jumped on my back. For those of you who know Kristen and me, you realize she is a whole lot smaller than I am. The scene probably looked like a fly trying to knock over a gorilla. I did what any godly husband would do at that moment: I laughed at my wife. In retrospect, this might not have been the best decision. But we both laugh now at our classic selfish fight.

While we don’t deal with crying infants in our home anymore, my selfishness still screams out every day. The cause is usually food, lust, anger, impatience, pride, insecurity, and much more. In marriage and relationships, selfishness swoops in and tries to break down the marriage and destroy God’s picture of intimacy and oneness.

I’m sure you can think of many examples of how you and your significant other are selfish. Our culture has a very low threshold for pain, and when the going gets rough, we want out. But getting out is not the solution.

Fortunately, God’s Word provides the solution. The book of James, written by Jesus’s brother, is filled with practical wisdom. It points to the fact that our lives as followers of Jesus should align with the ways we think, the decisions we make, and the way we live.

James 4:1 says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” We fight because we want something, and our passions and desires rule over and control us. While we try to blame our significant other or the circumstances around us, the real reason we fight is because our selfish desires wage war within us. If you are going to succeed in your marriage, then you are going to have to deal with your selfishness. That’s why James goes on to say, “‘God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.’ . . . Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (vv. 6, 10).

In Philippians 2:2–5, the apostle Paul instructs us to be “like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.”

So what should we do whenever we have a conflict or difference of opinion with our significant other? The Bible is clear: act like Jesus. Humble yourself in your relationship with the Lord and toward your spouse. Put the needs of the other before yourself. This is definitely easier said than done, but the only way to overcome our selfish desires is to humble ourselves and become more like Jesus.

3. Be Quick to Listen

James 1:19 says, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” This verse is simple to understand but much more complicated to apply. Most of us want to get our point across and win instead of stopping to listen to our spouse.

Choose to listen. It’s a lot easier for me to run my mouth than it is to listen to someone else. Most of the time when I’m supposed to be listening, I’m actually thinking through how I’m going to respond whenever the other person stops talking. We need to pray and apply Psalm 141:3: “Set a guard over my mouth, LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips.” At times, we just need to shut our mouths. We can pray for the Lord to keep watch over what and how much we say.

Learn to be an active listener. When you slow down and listen to what the other person says without arguing, being defensive, or thinking through your rebuttal, you serve the other person by choosing to understand. When we listen, we act like Christ, who put the needs of others before Himself.

In most cases, one individual in the relationship tends to use more words than the other. If your significant other uses more words, then you can serve them by giving more details. On the other hand, if you’re the one who tends to use more words, you can serve your significant other by giving them highlights instead of details. This is how the gospel plays out in marriage. Whenever we put the needs of the other before our own, we exemplify Christlike behavior.

Pay attention to your nonverbal communication. It’s been said that what you say makes an impact 20 percent of the time. On the other hand, how you say it makes 80 percent of the difference. In other words, your nonverbal behavior plays a large role in your relationship and the ways you communicate and resolve conflict. We often can’t hear our tone. While we think we are speaking with gentleness, our significant other might hear defensiveness, anger, or pride.

Think about your posture, your hands, and your facial expression. One of my friends has a listening face that looks as if he is mad. In reality, it’s just the face he makes when he’s concentrating or trying to pay attention. Pay attention to your body language and facial expressions whenever you talk or listen to your significant other.

4. Change the Way You View Conflict

Most of us do whatever we can to steer clear of awkward and challenging conversations. We pretend issues don’t exist, or we brush them under the rug to run away from conflict.

Instead, you and your future spouse can be intentional about growing in your ability to communicate and resolve conflict. Couples who do well in marriage view conflict resolution as an opportunity for growth with God and with each other. When you handle conflict in a biblical way, as Jason and Kelly did when her parents wanted to visit, conflict resolution can and should draw you closer together. Disagreements can become a means to help you become more like Jesus and develop oneness in your relationship.

5. Become an Expert in Forgiveness

No relationship will provide you with more opportunities to seek or grant forgiveness than marriage. For this reason, you need to become an expert in seeking and granting forgiveness.

Get really good at apologizing and asking for forgiveness. Be specific in your apologies. Saying “I’m sorry for whatever I did” is not helpful. Rather, get specific and say, “I’m sorry I snapped at you yesterday at lunch. I was prideful and defensive, and I don’t want that pattern in our relationship. Will you forgive me for my pride and defensiveness?”

Be a good forgiver. If you’re a follower of Christ, then you know we live as forgiven people. Read the parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18:21–35. Live out Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” We forgive because we are forgiven people.

If your future spouse never asks for forgiveness, you need to move on. People who don’t seek or grant forgiveness don’t make good spouses. You remember the relationship traffic light? This one is a red light.

A few years into our marriage, Kristen and I developed a sincere belief that God created marriage for oneness. We learned that when we have a difference of opinion or a conflict of some kind, it’s not about being right or winning but rather about us being one flesh together. When one of us wins an argument in marriage, we really hurt ourselves. We learned it’s no longer “you” or “me” but rather “us.”

In marriage, we’ve got to be careful of the words we use with the person we love. Know that you will be deeply affected by the words and tone your spouse will use, and they will be impacted by the words and tone you use.

Knot-Tying Tip

How Does Technology Affect Communication and Conflict Resolution?

While many advantages certainly come with technology, we need to learn to turn away from our smartphone, computer, tablet, and television. In spite of the great communication benefits of technology, they can also be a barrier to oneness and growth in communication.

Quit constantly checking Instagram, Facebook, and sports scores. I’m not saying you need to delete all social media and sports apps off your phone, but don’t let them dominate your life. When you talk face-to-face instead of with a device in your hand, you communicate to your significant other you care about what they say and how they’re saying it.

One of the downsides to our obsession with our phones is we’re losing the ability to communicate spontaneously. Most of our thoughts are premeditated and calculated instead of on the fly. While this might prevent you from saying something you’ll later regret, it also changes the dynamic of your relationship. Marriage involves a great deal of face-to-face time. Put down the phone and communicate in person.

When we don’t look the other person in the eye or when we speak to them with our eyes on our phones, we communicate indifference. Even if you say the right thing, if you’re not looking at your significant other with your full attention, you diminish who they are to you and the importance of what the two of you are talking about.

Embrace the positive benefits of your phone and technology:

Text messages allow for quick, transactional conversations, such as, “Can you pick up dinner on the way home?” “I’m going to the gym after work–see you around 6:15.”

You can send quick “I love you!” messages or emojis that communicate your love and care for your significant other.

Take advantage of the “Do Not Disturb” feature on your phone. Or, if you’re prone to check your phone while you’re out on a date, give your phone to your significant other so you’re not tempted.

What If You Rarely Struggle with Communication and Conflict?

Not all couples are created equal. Depending on the personality and temperament of you and your significant other, you might not be apt to struggle in this area as much as other couples. For instance, Kristen and I both tend to be laid-back. We don’t have polarizing opinions about many topics, and we tend to resolve conflict quickly. But we have several sets of married friends who seem to argue about everything. It’s not that they don’t love Jesus or have a great marriage; they just have strong opinions.

You might be one of those couples who have it a little easier than others. If that’s the case, be grateful. However, make sure the absence of arguments isn’t because you stuff your thoughts and opinions or give in because you’d rather avoid conflict than have a hard conversation.

One of the warning signs I’ve seen in premarried couples is a tendency to avoid anything that might break up the relationship. Some couples live in such fear of ruining a relationship that they stuff their feelings or thoughts because they don’t want to upset the other person.

If you want to best prepare for marriage, you must learn to have difficult, sometimes awkward, conversations. Pushing through the tough stuff will allow you to honor God and each other.

The Rest of the Story

Today Jason and Kelly teach others about communication and conflict resolution. I’ve learned more about communication from them than any other couple. They model it well in their marriage, and they’re raising their kids to communicate and argue according to biblical principles. When you get this right, it affects so much more than just you and your significant other. The work you do to grow in this area can impact your children, friends, coworkers, and other family members.

If you and your significant other can’t (or choose not to) communicate and resolve conflict, then you are not ready for marriage. If your future spouse is not willing and able to improve the ways they communicate and resolve conflict with you, then they’re not ready to take the next step in your relationship.

The good news is that you can learn to resolve conflict in a way that honors God and each other. Healthy communication is the means by which you and your spouse will grow in oneness.

Am I Ready?

Why do you think communication and conflict resolution are challenging for many couples? What do you think will make you and your spouse different than other couples when it comes to communication and conflict resolution?

Identify your undesirable communication habits and pitfalls, confess to what you do poorly, and think through ways you can grow and improve.

What types of communication patterns did you see in your parents? If you were married previously, what challenges did you face in communication and conflict resolution?

Ask others what kind of nonverbal communication your posture communicates. Does it make you seem warm and likable, or cold and prickly?

Ask your friends and family what they consider to be your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to communication and conflict.

Strengthening Our Knot

Discuss your answers to the Am I Ready? questions about communication and conflict.

Ask your significant other how you are doing with the five nonnegotiables listed in this chapter. Which ones are your strengths, and which are weaknesses? As they share their responses with you, do not argue or respond with a defensive posture.

In what ways does your significant other think you need to grow as a couple when it comes to communication and conflict resolution?

Go on a date night with each other and leave your phones behind. Laugh, play, and talk about what you are learning through reading this book.

Closing Prayer

Lord, thank You for the ways You communicate with us through Your Word, Your Spirit, and Your people. Please help us communicate in a way that honors You and each other. Show us when we foolishly seek to win an argument instead of seeking to understand. Give us wisdom to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Help us to forgive one another as we learn how to communicate and resolve conflict well as a couple. In Jesus’s name, we pray. Amen.

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