As a married couple, your greatest tool is your ability to communicate with each other. Nothing can happen peacefully in a marriage without communication. Whether it is deciding how to steward your finances, or where to eat dinner on date night, your communication muscles are used every day. You can either purposefully hone and sharpen your communication muscles, or do what so many people do, and go down the route of assumptions which will give you nothing but frustration and turmoil. I have realized that this is particularly important in my role as wife, and that God has given me and all wives a unique gift in that we have the ability to facilitate good communication with our husbands. This ability helps us remove bricks from the wall that stands between us and our husbands, and create further oneness in our marriages.

Most of the time we as women are the ones to bring up conversations. We can either do so in a way that makes our husbands open to conversation, or in a harsh and demeaning way that is not only disrespectful, but makes them put up defenses and sets the conversation up to be an argument rather than a place for us to come together and unite against whatever the issue at hand is. You will be miles ahead of other newlyweds and even couples who have been married for decades if you realize and act upon this one simple principle: Your spouse is your best friend and always wants what is best for you. Your husband has literally committed to being with you for the rest of his life and taking care of you; so what’s the point in not communicating with him? It’s all going to come out in the wash at some point, and all that will have happened is that you’ll stew on it longer and the blowup will be bigger when it happens!The main area I have had this struggle is in bringing up conflict or something that has been frustrating me in our relationship. I always worry that my husband will be upset with me for bringing something up, that he’ll be offended somehow, or bringing up the conversation will make the issue worse. Has that ever happened? No! I have, in my humble opinion, the best husband out there. He is very slow to anger and always eager to listen. Never once has he been angry at me for bringing something to his attention, but I keep letting that fear rule over me. I will stew over something that is bothering me, even when he asks me to share with him, and by stewing and overthinking I end up drawing out the issue even more! Plus, I do my husband such a disservice by creating this version of him in my mind that is so much less honorable than he is.By withholding something he’s done that is bothering me, or a burden that is weighing on my mind, I am actually robbing him of the ability to fulfill his God given role to help me through it, and remove an opportunity for him to understand my mind more.I am robbing both of us of the ability to work through whatever the issue is, and putting a brick in a wall between us, instead of removing it.Remember, it is not you against your spouse; it is both of you against the problem.-M