Twelve Months of Loving: Communication

I have to be honest...I put off writing a marriage post because I was just not "feeling it" in my marriage last week. We all have weeks that are off, and last week was one of those for me. I felt a lack of connection with my man and instead of talking to him about it I just kind of let it grow and took each action or lack thereof on his part as "proof" that he didn't care to connect with me anyway. Oh how we save ourselves trouble and heartache when we choose to communicate!

When we finally did sit down and talk (after I had said some not-very-nice things that, to him, came out of nowhere) he had no idea I had felt a lack of connection. We were able to talk about ways we could be intentional about making each other a priority in the midst of the busy season of life we are in, and we were able to cheer each other on and fight for our marriage instead of fighting for ourselves.

Communicating will not always get us what we want. We won't always feel heard or understood when we try to express our needs or desires to our spouse. They won't always change the thing that we want them to change and there will be times we have to realize that we may never see eye-to-eye on a particular issue. When we let this get in the way of keeping open lines of communication with our spouse, however, we take away something vital in our marriage.

The end goal of communication shouldn't be to get our way. The purpose of communication is to connect and to navigate ourselves back onto the same team when we have found ourselves facing off in opposition. What's the end goal? Is the end goal to be right...or is it to be unified? Stubbornly and defiantly sticking with our way is not going to get us the end result we long for. I am finding that the more I make an effort to communicate with my fists unclenched, the deeper my relationship with my man grows. So here's to learning (and relearning) how to unclench our fists and re-tune our hearts to communicate not just to be heard, but to hear and to connect.