Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 25

10 Tips for Talking with Your Husband About Your Sex Life

Talking about sex with your husband can be super awkward.

But if you want sex to be good, you’re going to have to figure out how to talk about it!

We’re in the last week of our direct communication series on the blog. We’re talked about why direct communication is hard. We covered the 6 elements of direct communication (and so much more!). And one of the things that we talked about was how direct communication is often tricky for women because we’ve been told that we need to beat around the bush when talking to our husbands, or else we risk being unsubmissive and disrespectful. 

This goes doubly when it comes to sex, because so many Christian resources tell women that their primary goal is to make men feel as if they are doing well in bed–with no consideration to women’s actual experience. As we explained in The Great Sex Rescue:

 

From The Great Sex Rescue

Instead of saying “no man should be satisfied unless his wife is also regularly satisfied,” too many books have said, “men feel more satisfied if their wives are satisfied, so wives—make sure you’re satisfied,” without any charge to him to care for her needs. The responsibility for her satisfaction is put solely on her—and not even for her own sake, but for his. Instead of telling men to satisfy their wives for their wives’ benefit, women are told to make sure they’re satisfied for their husbands’ benefit. This is really backward.

In the book For Women Only, Shaunti Feldhahn warns wives that just having sex is not enough—men need to feel wanted. “Having a regular, mutually enjoyed sex life was critical to the man’s feeling of being loved and desired.” But then, in that same chapter, Feldhahn says, “If responding physically is out of the question, let your words be heart words—reassuring, affirming, adoring.” The wife has to affirm her husband, even if he is not tending to her needs in bed. Feldhahn does acknowledge that some women will have a hard time responding physically, but then she frames this as being a personal issue that may need counseling rather than the far greater likelihood that he has never learned to prioritize foreplay or her pleasure. We find it problematic to tell a woman she must enjoy something without also telling her that she can expect him to make it enjoyable.

Then The Act of Marriage chimes in, “A wise and considerate woman goes out of her way to let her man know that he is a good lover and that she enjoys their relations together.” Yet it says this without saying the husband should actually be a good lover. And if she can’t feel satisfied? Then she might “consider herself unsuccessful in bed.” This language incentivizes women to fake orgasm (something 60% of women report having done) to avoid bruising their husbands’ egos instead of pushing for open and honest communication about sex. A husband’s ego is not more important than a wife’s sexual pleasure.

See The Great Sex Rescue!

I even created a Fixed It for You for this!

See it on Instagram! Ladies, it’s time to put that pressure aside and speak up about sex!

Good husbands don’t want you to coddle their egos. They WANT to make you feel good in the bedroom, so they need your help.

And if he doesn’t seem interested in learning? It’s even more important that you speak up, because the longer you wait, the less likely things will ever get better, and the more likely you’ll be living with mediocre sex forever.

So let’s talk 10 tips for talking to your husband about sex:Tips for Getting The Right Attitude about Your Sex Life First1. Realize that asking for what you want is not selfish.

One of the biggest roadblocks for asking for what we want is that we feel like it’s selfish or mean to do so.  But as I’ve been talking about repeatedly, sex is meant to be mutual, intimate, and pleasurable for both. 

We have a 47 point orgasm gap in the evangelical world, where 95% of men almost always/always reach orgasm, compared with only 48% of women. That’s not okay. And if sex isn’t feeling very good, it doesn’t mean that you’re broken. It just means you haven’t figured it out yet!

2. Remember: what you put up with now is what you will be putting up with for twenty years.

What happens when you don’t speak up? He thinks he’s doing a good job, or that you’re okay with the way things are. So he keeps doing what he’s doing, thinking that you’re fine with it.

That leaves you feeling even more distant. Even if you’re trying to make him happy, the fact that he can’t even tell that you’re unhappy or that you want more makes sex feel like the most UNintimate thing in the world, because it’s like he doesn’t even know you. 

He doesn’t seem to realize how lonely and sad this makes you feel, which ends up making you resent him even more.

Usually what happens with these dynamics is that women can’t do this indefinitely. As you get older and you start thinking that the best sexual years are behind you, then resentment can build and often that’s when women speak up–decades too late.

You don’t want that. Speaking up now is so much better to do!

So if things aren’t feeling good, tell him now–not twenty years in the future when he’ll be blindsided and he’ll feel so empty too, thinking that all of these great memories he has are fake.

Don’t like how he rubs your breasts, or how he touches your clitoris? Tell him! If you lie there and say nothing, he’ll think he’s doing a good job. If you moan, he’ll think you really like it! I’ve talked with so many women who have learned to moan and breathe heavily to make their husbands think they enjoy sex (because that’s what the women think they’re supposed to do), and then they start moaning even when their bodies feel terrible. And he thinks, “Oh, she really likes it when I pinch her nipples!” So he keeps pinching them, and she keeps feeling pain and says nothing but keeps moaning, and it all feeds itself.

What you put up with now is what will keep happening for the next few decades.

So if you don’t like something, speak up!

3. Set the stage and focus on the goal.

Okay, that’s getting our own perspective right. Now, how do we communicate that to him?

Focus on the goal that you have–that God made sex to be awesome for both of you, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This is the message that you want to give:

Honey, I know that God made sex to be awesome, and I want to feel incredible highs with you. I want to have great orgasms, but I also want to feel really close to you. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but I’m very committed to getting there.

I’m shy, though, and I may need your help and encouragement to speak up and tell you what I like, or even to discover what I like. But I know that God made us to have an abundant life, and I want that for us!

Focus on the future and what you want, not on everything he’s been doing wrong.

Tips for speaking up during sex 4. Disrupt the habit

All of us get into rhythms and habits with life, and sex is no exception.

We kiss for two minutes, he starts rubbing my breasts for a minute and a half, he reaches between my legs….

If you want sex to feel differently, then you’ve got to break that habit! And the time to break it is not when intercourse is about to start, but earlier when you need to get aroused. 

Maybe you insist that you start with a massage. Maybe you say, “Tonight, let’s have a bath together first and talk about our day.” Set the stage the way that you need it to feel relaxed and connected.

And then, when you do start the physical part of sex, take the lead a bit. You be the one to touch him! Or even lie on top of him, instead of on your back. Lie on your side. Do something different to disrupt how you’ve normally had sex, so that it’s easier to speak up and change how things are going.

5. Ask him to slow down and explore.

One thing we talk about a lot in the orgasm course is that all of us have a sexual response cycle, where we move from excitement to arousal to orgasm. The way we like to be touched during the arousal phase is quite different than during the excitement phase. If he goes straight for your clitoris when you’re not excited at all, it will feel off-putting.

So spend the bulk of your time just touching and exploring. In general, think of the touching and kissing part of sex as being 75% of what you’ll do, and intercourse as only 25% (and most women need to reach orgasm BEFORE intercourse starts if they’re going to at all).

If he rushes to touch your genitals or your breasts and it feels like nothing, or it feels very awkward or wrong, it’s likely that he’s doing it too early when you’re not excited yet. Ask him to slow down (and check out The Orgasm Course for more on that!)

 

The Orgasm Course is Here to Help You Experience Real Passion!

Figure out what's holding you back. Open the floodgates to orgasm.

Tell Me More about It! I Need that Now! 6. When something feels good, tell him.

Give feedback! If something suddenly starts feeling good, THEN you moan! Loudly. Let him know. Even if you like the way he’s kissing you, tell him that, too!

7. Show him what feels good by doing it on him, or by taking his hand.

Do you know what you want him to do, but he’s not really getting it? Do it on him. If you want to be kissed a certain way, kiss him that way! If you want to be stroked a certain way, show it on him! Or else take his hand and do what you want him to do, so that he can feel the pressure, motion, etc. A lot of guys really enjoy direct teaching!

8. If something is uncomfortable, do something about it right away.

Is one foot hanging off the side of the bed and starting to go asleep, or feeling really uncomfortable? Shift right away! It’s not going to feel any better in five minutes, and it’s going to distract you and keep you from feeling good. Are you starting to get cold? Pull the sheets up right away.

Is the way he’s touching you not quite working? Say something!

If you have 10 seconds of something uncomfortable but you fix it right away, it won’t affect your arousal level. But if you notice something is uncomfortable, but you think, “I don’t want to bother him or disrupt him or make him feel bad,” it’s not going to get any better! And then you’ll have ten or twenty minutes with the uncomfortable thing, and now your arousal is all gone.

9. Work through a guide!

It’s often so much easier to be direct when you’re expressing your opinion on what someone else has said than when you have to own that opinion yourself. So,for instance, if you’re reading something like my book 31 Days to Great Sex together, and I’ve spent three pages talking about the importance of being affectionate at other times of day, it’s much easier to then tell him, “I really enjoy kissing you earlier in the day or when you send me flirty texts,” rather than having to bring it up yourself.

And when it comes to the sexy stuff? It’s so much easier to talk about how you need more for orgasm when that’s what the video is telling him–or the book! Plus it can be fun to work through something together that has lots of fun challenges. Here’s what I’ve got:

The Great Sex Rescue: Great for setting the stage and understanding some of the negative beliefs about sex you’ve both brought into marriage.

Read it or listen to it together, and do the “check ins”. Then try the explore together exercises at the end of each chapter!

31 Days to Great Sex: For couples who want to focus on how to make sex feel great

Read 2-3 pages a night and do the challenge! Much more hands on than The Great Sex Rescue (excuse the pun), and builds day by day on how to feel intimate and close and have much more fun!

The Orgasm Course: For couples who want to focus on a physical breakthrough

If you’ve had difficulty reaching orgasm, I do recommend reading The Great Sex Rescue first, because our research found that our beliefs are often the biggest roadblock. Then work through the course together to help you learn about sexual response cycles, how arousal works, and how orgasm works!

10. Celebrate.

Learning to directly communicate about sex isn’t only to tell your spouse what you want or don’t want. It’s also to celebrate and learn to speak openly about what you enjoy! So when you’ve had a great memory, relive it together. When you’ve had a breakthrough, celebrate! Have code words that remind you of certain times together, and use them.

This is meant to be a beautiful part of your marriage. As you learn to communicate more directly, then it hopefully will become something that feels much more intimate!

What do you think? Why do we get into such bad habits when it comes to speaking up about what we want during sex? Let’s talk in the comments!

The Direct Communication Series5 Reasons Direct Communication is Difficult6 Elements of Direct CommunicationWhy Direct Communication Feels Mean--and Why It's Not3 Reasons Christian Resources Tell Women Direct Communication is a Sin 5 Reasons Christian Teaching Discourages Men from Communicating DirectlyThe Direct Communication PodcastThe Real Solution to Nagging10 Tips to Talking to Your Spouse About Your Sex Life How to Handle a Spouse's Negative Reactions to Direct Communication (coming soon)10 Tips to Having that Difficult Conversation You've Been Putting Off (coming soon)

And please see my book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, with lots on having difficult conversations and resolving conflict!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts How One Couple in the Arctic Got Over Nagging

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Christian Parenting Should Involve More than Influencing Your Kids’ Faith Walk

We’ve been talking about direct communication all month, and while that’s so important in marriage, it’s also super important with parenting.

Are you able to communicate with your kids?

I’ve been looking for sponsors for the blog and the podcast, and when Brett Ullman contacted me with his new book Parenting: Navigating Everything, I was so excited, because here’s a sponsor I can really and truly get behind. I loved Brett’s idea about an Annual Family General Meeting, and today I invited him on the blog to tell us the story of his heart for parents and his new book.

Here’s Brett!

Sheila Gregoire

This post contains affiliate links.

After one of my talks five years ago, I had a conversation with a father, which was the catalyst for creating my most recent book, Parenting: Navigating Everything.

I had just finished speaking on mental health, and a father asked me, “Brett, how do I talk to my daughter about sex”?

This is an important question, as you followers of Sheila’s well know, but before I could answer, he blurted out, “Oh, by the way… she hates me”.

In asking him, “what do you mean she hates you” he interrupted and said, “forget about that, how do I talk to her about sex?”.

I said, “if she hates you, you don’t have the relationship foundation to impact her about this topic.” He needed to start making repairs to their relationship first.

It occurred to me on my drive home that the presentations I do on challenging issues like mental health, parenting, media, dating, sex and pornography were all impactful–but parents needed teaching about parenting foundations first.

Only then, once the parent/child relationship was strong, could they coach their children through these cultural minefields.

Your impact on your children’s lives is proportional to the depth of the relationship you have fostered with them.

 

George Barna

Revolutionary Parenting

Knowing this propelled my deep drive into parenting research.

What I found in the majority of Christian parenting books I read was a focus on developing the faith of the child only.

This is an important thing, but it is not the entire parenting conversation. From speaking to thousands of parents, I knew most parents weren’t asking questions about their kids’ faith but rather concerns around mental health, discipline, media, sex, pornography, and others. I saw the great need to bring together a Christian viewpoint on parenting that was holistic, practical and preventative. What was needed was teaching about intentional parenting as a foundation. Then this parenting approach could be applied to current issues which are affecting kids today.

Many parents are avoiding talking to their kids about tough topics. This could be because of their own discomfort or due to not being prepared. This avoidance sets up kids to fail. As a result, there is a trend to over parent children so as to shield them from life’s many difficulties. When we as parents over-function, our kids in turn under-function. This can lead to anxious children who are stunted in their development into adulthood. Julie Lythcott Haims in How to Raise an Adult states this trend succinctly here:

Why did parenting change from preparing our kids for life
to protecting them from life,
which means they’re not prepared to live life on their own?

 

We need to be leaders and teachers in our homes.

The book Parenting: Navigating Everything prepares parents to do just that.

In Parenting: Navigating Everything I want to help you build that foundation so that your relationship with your kids is the focus–not only their faith.

1. Parenting. What are the stages of parenting? What is the current state of parenting? What is the purpose of parenting?
2. Parenting styles. What are they, and which ones should I be using? What might I need to alter about my current parenting style?
3. Progression of parenting. What are the skills our children need to learn?
4. Time. What does quality time and being present with my kids look like?
5. Communication. How can I gain better communication skills so that I can more effectively connect with my kids?
6. Discipline. How do I effectively discipline my children?
7. Family Discipline. Why our worldview is important, and how we can raise kids with a Christian worldview.
8. Mental Health. How do we address issues like anxiety, panic attacks, and depression?
9. Engaging the Culture. How do we empower our kids to engage the culture around us without compromising their faith?
10. Media. How can we help our kids navigate technology?
11. Sexuality. How do we direct our kids towards healthy sexuality?
12. Pornography. What is the prevalence of pornography and how do we address its impact on our kids?
13. Dating. How do we best avoid pitfalls in dating?
14. Finances and education. How can we help out children make sound financial and educational choices?
15. Drugs and alcohol. What tools are available to assist in drug-proofing our kids?
16. Loneliness. How do we prevent disconnection in our kids and help them to create community?

This is an extensive handbook, the first six chapters covering essential foundations on parenting. The last ten chapters approach current issues from a Christian parenting worldview.

I was drawn to Sheila Gregoire, and her Bare Marriage work several years ago, seeing the start of a sort of reckoning on the Christian teachings about sex. I see what I do like a similar reckoning in the areas of parenting, mental health and other topics. My mission is to help people connect their ancient faith to their modern world.

The church’s over-emphasis on children’s discipleship and its near-silence on other parenting challenges show a lack of understanding of what parents are needing.

Families come to church looking for support in raising their children. We owe it to them to teach effective parenting principles from a Christian worldview that will equip them to lead their children to making many good life choices including choosing to live a life with God.

When we see the church hurting others or missing out on opportunities, this should urge us to take a hard look at what we are believing and teaching. Sheila has challenged the evangelical church to do better with their understanding of sex and gender roles. We are all the better for her and her teams’ insights. Sheila has shared that she is motivated by her readers who write to her for advice revealing ways they have been hurt by harmful teachings within the church and culture. I similarly challenge my audiences to:

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

 

Maya Angelou

How can people do better unless their ideas are challenged, and they make an effort to learn? This is what compels me as a speaker and author. We need more voices speaking up for truth and challenging the church. What I do best is to distill complex topics into teachable discussion points and share those with my audiences. I have mentored other speakers to refine their voices as well.

From the themes of the book, the presentation Parenting: Navigating Everything was born.

It is now available on RightNow media as a six-part video teaching series that can be used individually or as a small group curriculum.It has a small group study guide available with it to guide you as the topics stir up good discussion.

In the book Trophy Child, Ted Cunningham has one of my favourite quotes.

They will not be with me forever, so I prepare them accordingly.

 

I leave you with the challenge to make the intentional effort to prepare your kids to navigate life.

You do not have to do this alone though. As the old Home Depot slogan goes, “You can do it, we can help.” I think my book Parenting: Navigating Everything is a great place to start.

See it on Amazon! Where can I find the Parenting Video Series?RightNow MediaOr on my course page

Brett Ullman travels North America speaking to teens, young adults, leaders, and parents on topics including parenting, mental health, men, sexuality, pornography, dating, and media. Brett’s seminars engage and challenge attendees to try and connect our ancient faith with our modern culture we live in. Participants are inspired to reflect on what we know, what we believe and how our faith ought to serve as the lens through which we view and engage tough conversations in our society today.

Husband to Dawn, and father of Bennett and Zoe, Brett and his family make their home in Ajax, Ontario where Brett leads and directs Worlds Apart, a charity focused on empowering individuals to re-align their lives with Biblical core values often muddled by media but central to Christian living.

Brett was a teacher with the Toronto District School Board for 10 years before moving into speaking full-time back in 2005. Brett has a Master’s degree in Evangelism and Leadership from Wheaton Graduate School in Chicago and is also a graduate of the Arrow Leadership Program. He and his family attend Sanctus Church (formerly C4 Church) in Ajax since 2002.

YouTube | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook 

Brett Ullman

Parenting: Navigating Everything

Do you think the church focuses too much on teaching parents to lead their kids in the faith and not enough on relationship? Let’s talk in the comments!

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A Sneak Peek at our UNFILTERED PODCAST!

We’re doing something different on our podcast this week.

We’re giving you a sneak peek at our unfiltered podcast that our patrons get access to when they support our research!

This week we hit a new milestone: 100 patrons on Patreon. And we’re so grateful!

The Patreon does not go to support me or the podcast or the blog–they’re all taken care of with money from royalties and course sales and sponsorships.

Instead, it goes to fund things that we can’t monetize, like paying Joanna to get our research for The Great Sex Rescue into peer-reviewed journals, or paying Rebecca to start making inroads on social media channels that I just don’t have the time to reach.

You can support them for as little as $3 a month, and at increasing levels of support you get access to lots of goodies, including our unfiltered podcast.

Today we thought for our podcast we’d let you preview one.

Listen to the Podcast Here

Browse all the Different Podcasts

See the Last “Start Your Engines” (Men’s) Podcast

Main Segment: Rebecca and Joanna share their faith journeys while writing The Great Sex Rescue

I’m on a few of the unfiltered podcasts, but mostly Rebecca and Joanna record it themselves. I listened to this one after the fact when I was camping, and I thought it was such a good one, and such a touching one, that you all needed to hear it!

And we thought that this week would be a great week, since we hit 100 patrons!

Our unfiltered podcasts tend to be a lot more personal, with a look at what we’re thinking and feeling during this journey. And then, in the patron Facebook group afterwards, we often have really good conversations because many of you are walking through the same things!

We’re so grateful to those who help to support us. And we’re excited to announce to you in the next few months what that support is doing.

Things Mentioned in This Podcast:Our Patreon link!The Great Sex Rescue

 

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts How To Have an Annual Family General Meeting

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How One Couple in the Arctic Got Over Nagging

Sheila here!

Today I’m turning the blog over to Joanna, my awesome co-author with The Great Sex Rescue, and our resident statistician and super smart person. She’s responsible for all the data that we derive from our surveys, and for running all of the numbers.

She’s also an American who married a Canadian lawyer, and when we started The Great Sex Rescue project she lived in the same town as me. Now she literally lives in the Arctic, where her husband works for the government of Nunavut (one of our territories).

She and Josiah have had to find solutions to avoid the nagging situation we talked about yesterday–where you’re constantly reminding someone of something–because they’re both rather disorganized when it comes to household stuff.

I thought their story may be a useful one today, showing how sometimes just getting systems in place can  help the whole dynamic of your marriage. And sometimes even good marriages struggle with these sorts of dynamics!

So here’s Joanna:

Sheila talks a lot on the blog about mental load and emotional labor and I am so grateful for those discussions.

They’ve honestly been a huge help to me and my husband… except about 6 months ago when we STILL found ourselves struggling.

So what if you’re both on board with dealing with mental load friction in your marriage and you’re doing your best… but it’s still leading to conflict, things aren’t getting done, and something isn’t working?

The background (aka the inciting incident(s))

Early in the pandemic, my husband lost his job because of COVID. But that job loss turned out to be a blessing in disguise – his being home allowed me to finish doing the statistics for the Great Sex Rescue, he got 5 months off work to spend with our daughter, and he got his dream job. The downside of said dream job is that it is located in the Canadian arctic, far from our support networks and from the amenities of the south (aka the rest of Canada).

We found ourselves moving to one of Canada’s arctic islands (Baffin) with a newborn and a toddler. We are very thankful to be in staff housing but due to the high construction costs, housing size is based on occupancy and as a family of four we were allocated an 850 square foot two bedroom apartment, a far cry from our 2000 square foot three bedroom townhouse in Belleville.

Our community is accessible by plane or by boat (occasionally), not by car, truck, or train, which means that groceries and housewares are complicated to get. We rely on a network of different solutions to get what we need and while we enjoy northern living, it’s not uncomplicated.

The transition to the north happened in the midst of the push to get edits in for The Great Sex Rescue and in the time since we moved we’ve launched one book, run two more surveys, and have been working away at writing a follow up book (Sheila is writing several). My husband’s work is wonderful but not easy. And our kids? They are wonderful but very very busy.

Needless to say, it’s been hectic. And all of the transitions (new job, new city, new house, new baby, etc etc etc) have come with a LOT of mental load tasks.

We’d done the basic stuff in the past like splitting up tasks by owner, but in the chaos of the many, many tasks we had going on, things were still slipping through the cracks.

1. Work with YOURSELVES (Understand your limitations)

My husband and I are trash at getting groceries off of a paper list. It just will not happen. We’ll forget the list or we’ll forget the pen to cross off the items on the list or we’ll forget to get three things written at the top. Or if we try to text the list it will get buried and then we’ll forget that the list got texted and we’ll try to rely on memory and it will be a horror show. Again.

Six months ago we could NOT figure out how to deal with the untenable situation of the grocery lists when we had a eureka moment: we are never going to be paper grocery list people. It’s just not happening. It’s not that we’re unintelligent, it’s that we’re both absent minded and that we’ve got a LOT on our plates. So we knew we needed a solution other than the paper list.

2. Think outside the traditional solution for getting things done

Instead of just dedicating ourselves to doing paper lists better, we decided to try something different. We found an app (picniic) that allows us to input a grocery list. Their digital lists include options to note which aisle to look in and check items off while we shop. We can even ping the other person to let them know we’re at the store and issue a last call for items to be purchased. Organizing our list this way has meant that we don’t forget the list (we always bring our phones) and that we don’t forget items (it’s easy to check items off as we go).

3. Make a to-do list for your partner (if you have to)

The most stressful part of the mental load tasks was the items that one of us had to do but that the other one kept remembering. Only my husband could submit receipts for moving expenses as he was the only one with an employee email… but I kept remembering and reminding him. Because we were both dealing with SO MANY tasks, it was understandable that it kept being forgotten… but I found it increasingly frustrating.

We eventually used the same app to create honey-do lists for each other so that we don’t have the angst of trying desperately to remember 50,000 things, reminding the other person to do their list, only to have it forgotten. Being able to send reminders and add to each other’s lists has removed a lot of the friction. (Admittedly, not being in the middle of what felt like 6000 simultaneous transitions has also helped.)

4. Remove the word “nag” from your vocabulary and talk openly about reminders and how the situation is making you feel.

When there are a lot of mental load tasks, it’s really easy for one person to start issuing reminders. And sometimes that’s fair. Other times, it’s not. We found that getting away from the word “nagging” was really helpful. Instead, we talked about what was working and what wasn’t. We talked about how having to issue reminders made us feel (or that being reminded all the time felt like being micromanaged). Using direct communication, being honest about our limitations, and making developing a family culture of “enough” with time to do things right have been keys to our success.

So there you have it – the solutions we’ve used recently to help us deal with mental load conflicts in our marriages. Have you tried similar solutions? Did they work? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks, Joanna! 

And Joanna is working so hard right now to get a number of peer-reviewed articles placed. She’s also been working with a pelvic floor physiotherapist professor, who is partnering with us on some of our vaginismus research! We want to get our stats from The Great Sex Rescue to a wider audience.

When you support us on Patreon, you support Joanna as she works up in the Arctic with two toddlers publish our research, and you support Rebecca as she tries to get our stats into new hands of people who haven’t heard of it before. Plus you get access to  unfiltered podcasts, a super active Facebook group, and more! 

The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now!

What do you think? Have you ever found practical solutions that help you get around this dynamic? Let’s talk in the comments!

Joanna Sawatsky

Blog Contributor & Co-Author on The Great Sex Rescue!

Joanna Daigle Sawatsky holds a Master of Public Health degree and is a trained microbiologist, epidemiologist, and statistician. After a year and a half of infertility, she and her husband, Josiah, welcomed Mariana Grace into their lives just 72 hours after she defended her thesis. A Pittsburgh native who somehow ended up in the Arctic with her husband and two little girls. ENFJ, 1 Twitter Related Posts PODCAST Post: Direct Communication 101–with Your Spouse and Your Kids!

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The post How One Couple in the Arctic Got Over Nagging appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

The DIRECT COMMUNICATION Series: What if Nagging Isn’t the Problem (or the Solution)?

We often hear that nagging is one of the worst things a woman can do in a marriage.

It makes her husband feel infantilized, undermined, talked down to.

But what if nagging is not the real issue? What if we’re making too big a deal out of nagging, and not enough of a big deal out of other things?

We’re talking about direct communication this month–how to express what you want and feel clearly, and how to give your spouse room to respond. We’ve looked at what direct communication looks like; why direct communication can be difficult for women; why direct communication can be difficult for men; and so much more.

Today, let’s tackle nagging, and let’s begin with a definition.

Nagging is persistently insisting that someone do something, or persistently pointing out fault in someone.

Now, a pattern of behaviour where you are constantly finding fault with your spouse is not a good dynamic. John Gottman found that in order for a marriage to feel safe and healthy, you need five positive interactions for every one negative one. If most of what comes out of your mouth towards your spouse is negative, that’s going to have a very negative impact on your marriage.

However, what about the first element of nagging? What if the issue is that one spouse keeps repeating that the other spouse needs to do something? Does this represent something that is damaging to the marriage?

Well, yes. But also–perhaps we’re asking the wrong questions. Here’s how a commenter described it earlier this week:

Nagging is a sign that a person has been treated disrespectfully.

If I ask my husband to do something and he says, “sure, I’ll do that today,” and it’s still not done a week later, it is ok for me to say, “hey hon, you said you’d get that job done, what’s going on?” If he responds with, “oh, I forgot, I’ll do it today,” and another week goes by, it is not out of the realm of normal for me to be frustrated. It is disrespectful to say you’ll do something and then not do it.

We had big talk a few years back and he admitted that he would agree to do the job without making it a priority even though his words indicated he did. I pointed out that he was lying, then. I told him if he’s not going to do it, say so. The talk involved him admitting that he doesn’t think it’s fair that I have to do everything but he doesn’t want to take on unpleasant jobs, either. Nor does he think it’s fair for me to do all the unpleasant jobs while he takes the easy ones. I told him it’s time to acknowledge that we are both the adults in the home. I’m the mom, yes, but he’s the dad. Time to just get it done.

Things are so much better now. He was infantilizing himself with his behavior. He has so much more self respect, now.

LIsa M.

Another woman expressed a similar frustration:

As for all the exhortations and warnings against wives nagging their husbands, where are all the exhortations and warnings against husbands being lazy, forgetful, uninterested liars? If a husband agrees or volunteers to do something but then never does it, whether through laziness, busyness, forgetfulness, or simply trying to keep the peace when he was asked or volunteered, then doesn’t that make him a liar? If said husband would keep his word, his wife would never have to bring up the issue again, would she? So why is all the responsibility for the husband’s utter lack of follow-through put on the wife keeping her mouth shut rather than her husband doing what he said he’d do?

Jo

Nagging has been given an unfairly negative connotation, without addressing the underlying issues.

Yes, it is unpleasant to live with someone who is constantly reminding you of things that need doing and of how you are failing.

But what if you are, indeed, failing to live up to  your word? What if someone is, indeed, being lazy and irresponsible? Let’s take a look at an all-too-typical evening for Sandra and Mark:

Sandra and Mark’s Nagging Dynamics

When dinner is over, Sandra says to Mark, “It’s your turn to do the dishes tonight, Mark.”

Mark sighs and says, “Yes, I know. I’ll get to it.” He gets up from the table and heads to the living room. 

Now, Sandra and Mark have little counter space, and Sandra can’t get the kids’ lunches ready for school the next day (or the kids can’t get their own lunches ready) until the dishes are done. 

Tonight, Sandra was planning on her evening looking something like: giving the kids a bath and getting them ready for bed; finishing up half an hour of work that still needs to be done; making the kids lunches; and relaxing for an hour or two before bed.

As Sandra clears the table, she can hear her husband start the video game player. She knows he’s had a busy day at work, and figures he just wants to goof off for a little while, but she’s afraid that little while will become hours. “Remember that I need the dishes done soon, Mark!” she calls out. He doesn’t reply.

Once the table is cleared, she gets the kids in bed, finishes up her work, and heads down to make tomorrow’s lunches–and the counter is still a mess. She calls into Mark in the living room, “Mark, you said you’d do the dishes.” He calls back, sounding annoyed, “I know. I’ll get to it in a minute!”

Sandra feels a little lost. What is she supposed to do? She was going to make the lunches and then relax. She’s finished everything else on her plate. But she can’t start relaxing until the lunches are made.

She sits down in a huff and waits for a few minutes, but Mark still isn’t coming. Walking into the living room she accuses him, “You said you’d do the dishes and I’ve been waiting.” 

He replies, “And I said I’d get to it! What is your problem? You’re always nagging me!”

Frustrated, she goes and does the dishes herself so that she can get the lunches made and then still have some time to relax before bed.

In that scenario, what was the issue? The fact that she was nagging him? Or the fact that he never followed through on what he was supposed to be doing?

I realize that this dynamic can definitely go both ways, and there are things that wives can fail to follow through on. But research has shown that this type of problem is largely a male-female one, where the woman is the one who is criticized as nagging. Indeed, “nagging” tends to be a word with a female connotation. And yet what if the problem is not nagging itself but the dynamic that often leads to nagging?

Again, I do believe that constantly criticizing someone is not good for the marriage, and some spouses do consistently find fault with one another. That does need to be addressed. But when the nagging is less about finding fault and more about asking a spouse to follow through with their promises, then is the issue really nagging?

I don’t think it is. However, I also don’t think that the solution is persistently reminding your spouse to do the task either. In Sandra and Mark’s case, the real issue is not Sandra’s nagging. But it’s also clear that Sandra’s “nagging” (for lack of a better word) isn’t solving the problem either.

Addressing The Practical Dynamic that can Lead to Nagging

The dynamic around nagging usually starts because the wife “assigns” a task to the husband, which is already demeaning. She is telling him what to do, like she is a mother instructing a child. He often doesn’t understand the bigger picture, and so he may not know HOW the task needs to get done, WHY it’s such a big deal (she can’t make the lunches until the dishes are done), or even WHEN it needs to get done.

He may do something half-heartedly, thinking it’s enough, only to have her grow frustrated with him and tell him he needs to do it over again. Or she constantly reminds him because she needs this done.

To a large extent this may be a mental load issue. She is carrying all of the mental load that goes into running the house. She knows what needs to get done when. She has a giant family plan in her head that organizes everything, and she is constantly keeping several plates in the air at once, trying to get everything done before it all crashes down. She can’t do it all alone, though, so she does ask for help. But because no one else understands the big picture, and because no one else takes ownership, it’s rarely done the way she needs it to be done.

As we talked about in our mental load series last year, the answer is often to assign different areas of household responsibility to different people. They’re not just responsible for doing the task (the dishes), but they’re responsible for the whole thing–the dishes, the cleanup, maybe even the lunches–so that they get that bigger picture and can do it when it needs to get done, without someone having to assign it to them. We all know it’s his job; he owns it; he gets it done.

If you haven’t seen the mental load series, I encourage you to read it, and look again at the post specifically on ending nagging! And in that series we also address how to set “minimum community standards” for tasks, too.

Addressing The Mindset Dynamic That Can Lead to Nagging

I really believe that sitting down and having that mental load talk can bring so much practical healing to a marriage, and that may be all you need.

But if it’s not, there is another element that contributes to the nagging dynamic, and it’s this one: Often one person feels as if the household is a place of responsibility, while the other person feels as if the household is a place of leisure.

One spouse feels responsible for keeping everything going and getting stuff done, and only relaxes after it’s done, and the other just wants to relax all the time, and will only work if they have to. This mindset can be due to either immaturity or gender role assumptions where men just don’t have to do any work in the home.

It is very, very difficult to bridge that gap when one person simply doesn’t see the house as an area of work. This isn’t always a gendered thing, but it is primarily a gendered thing. I have known many men who have said, for instance, “I work outside the house, so you work inside the house,” as if they don’t have to do any housework or childcare because the entire family is her responsibility. 

We must start raising our boys to feel responsible for the household as well. Give your boys as many chores as you give your daughters. Teach your boys how to clean and cook in the same way as you teach your daughters. Chances are your son will marry someone who will also work outside the home, at least some of the time. If they don’t share chores, it’s going to be difficult on their marriage. And it’s just a matter of fairness.

Even if she does all of the housework because she stays at home, children are not tasks. Children are people. And he needs to have a relationship with them, which means being involved in daily tasks like homework, giving them a bath, reading to them, and more. He can’t just disengage because “it’s her job.” No, they’re kids.

If he feels this way, I still suggest going through the emotional labor and mental load series with him, and even getting the book Fair Play (there is some language in it). It helps you talk the household responsibilities through and shows how to approach your spouse if they just don’t see it the same way that you do.

  Fair Play:A Game-Changing Solution for Sharing Mental Load and Emotional Labor--that will transform your marriage! Check it out here! How to Handle it Without “Nagging” When a Spouse Isn’t Pulling their Weight

Okay, let’s say that you’ve done all of that and your spouse still is not following through on what they’ve said they’ll do. He (or she) has assigned areas of responsibility that are clearly delegated. You’re not just making requests on the fly. Your spouse clearly knows that it is his (or her) job to get something done, and is still not doing it. There have been timelines and expectations set, and those timelines and expectations have not been met.

It is okay to bring this up as an issue. 

It is okay to say, “You said you’d do this, and you didn’t do it. I am not happy. I am disappointed and I feel taken for granted and used, and I would like to talk about this.”

And maybe you all need to hear me say this, too: It is okay to be disappointed when your spouse said they would do something and then didn’t follow through. It is even okay to be angry.

I know a lot of marriage advice will tell you to let it go, and not to let bitterness reign in your heart. And I certainly don’t think you should get bitter, either! And quite often when you are upset about something, they are also upset about something else, and talking through what you each can do to build the relationship is very healthy.

But when a spouse truly and repeatedly treats us poorly, then that spouse has compromised intimacy. They have made it so that we feel as if we can’t trust them, and as if our feelings and needs don’t matter to them. If this doesn’t have repercussions on your marriage and how you feel about your spouse, then that’s a sign there could be something wrong! You should feel hurt when someone treats you badly.

Think about how often in the Old Testament God describes blessings and cursings for the Israelites–when they do what’s right, they’ll be blessed. When they do what’s wrong and treat God badly or cavalierly, bad things happen. Now God also has grace, and loved us and gave Himself for us while we were still sinners. But in intimate relationships, how we treat each other does affect intimacy. That’s how we’re made!

What you do with that hurt is another story, but it is not a sin and it is not wrong to feel hurt, and you are not being a bad wife or husband.

You now have two questions ahead of you:

What will you do about the thing that your spouse has failed to do?How will you handle the rift in your relationship?Handing the thing that your spouse refuses to do

I have a longer series on how to draw boundaries with a spouse’s bad behavior, and allow them to feel the consequences of their actions. It’s part of my longer iron sharpens iron series, and that’s a good one to read about making changes in marriage.

Handling your disappointment in your spouse

This is really the bigger issue, isn’t it? How can you have a warm, close, affectionate relationship with someone that you can’t count on, and that consistently takes you for granted?

Can I suggest that the answer may be, “you can’t”?

I know that’s harsh, and I’m not saying that you can’t have a decent marriage, where you do things together and raise kids together and find a modicum of contentment. In fact, if your spouse consistently refuses to step up to the plate, you may need to find ways to emotionally deal with this that don’t depend on your spouse changing, because your spouse may never change.

And that means that you may need to come to terms with the fact that your marriage will never be as warm, affectionate, and close as you had hoped, because you can’t build a warm, affectionate, close relationship all on your own.

So, yes, keep trying to do hobbies together and spend time together.  Build your emotional connection. But you may also need to plug in to a great women’s group to get your emotional needs for friendship met elsewhere. You may need to start developing some hobbies outside of your marriage so that you have something else that makes you happy. Because your marriage may simply be a disappointment.

I wish I could paint a happier picture. But some people do disappoint us, and to try to pretend that isn’t true doesn’t help.

Also, to treat your spouse as if you are still best friends when your spouse is treating you badly rewards your spouse for bad behavior and grows your own wounds. When you have to ignore the very real hurts you feel, and pretend they don’t matter, eventually that’s going to catch up.

You can still have a decent surface relationship. You can try to build a genuine friendship. But yes, your marriage has been hurt by this, and it’s okay for you to acknowledge that and to tell your spouse that (and hopefully go to a licensed counselor about it!).

If he never follows through with anything he said he would do around the house; if she consistently refuses to stick to the budget even when she’s promised, and continually drives you into debt; these things are problems! And problems should impact your marriage.

 

What’s holding you back from a GREAT marriage?

Do you find yourselves taking each other for granted?

Has marriage lost that “spark”?

Learn how to feel connected again–and how changing the way you THINK about marriage can make all the difference.

Take me to it!

In 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, I spend the first four thoughts helping women look at themselves and change any attitudes that need changing, and look for ways to take responsibility for her own happiness.

Then we look at three thoughts that can help address these chronic issues–and why it’s okay to address those issues. It doesn’t mean you’re being selfish or bitter or angry.

And then we turn to two thoughts to help keep the relationship feeling close! If you’re finding this series resonating with you, 9 Thoughts That Can Change  Your Marriage is my book that will help you go deeper!

I do think there’s hope!

Many, if not most, marriages can actually be turned around when we tackle problems well.

Rebecca and I were talking today about how we may not actually know what happy marriages look like, because marriage books tend to focus on how if you’re upset at your spouse, you need to let it go and recognize that you’re a sinner, too. To a certain extent there is some truth there–the John Gottman Institute, for instance, did find that you need 5 happy communications for every 1 negative one if you’re going to have a happy marriage. So as you’re working on dealing with something difficult, build some fun in too, and encourage where you can.

But research has also shown that not dealing with small things causes them to become big things. And setting the groundwork early in your marriage where there are some things that you just won’t tolerate can bear great dividends in the long run.

The most unhappy marriages are not those where there is no conflict; the most unhappy marriages are those where conflict is suppressed.

So if you need to have conflict over something–have it. Quite often that conflict can be resolved.

But it will never be resolved if, when your spouse treats you badly and takes you for granted, you swallow your disappointment, pretend everything is okay, and stop expecting anything more.

What do you think? What’s the best way to stop nagging while actually dealing with the issue at hand? Let’s talk in the comments!

The Direct Communication Series5 Reasons Direct Communication is Difficult6 Elements of Direct CommunicationWhy Direct Communication Feels Mean--and Why It's Not3 Reasons Christian Resources Tell Women Direct Communication is a Sin 5 Reasons Christian Teaching Discourages Men from Communicating DirectlyThe Direct Communication PodcastThe Real Solution to Nagging How to Handle a Spouse's Negative Reactions to Direct Communication (coming soon)10 Tips to Having that Difficult Conversation You've Been Putting Off (coming soon)10 Tips to Talking to Your Spouse About Your Sex Life (coming soon)

And please see my book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, with lots on having difficult conversations and resolving conflict!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts 5 Reasons Christian Men Have Difficulty with Direct Communication in Marriage

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The post The DIRECT COMMUNICATION Series: What if Nagging Isn’t the Problem (or the Solution)? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Untangling Faith, Deconstruction, and My Story

Deconstruction, as a term,  has become really complicated to understand.

Rebecca and i talked about it in a recent podcast, and it’s one of those terms that is used differently by different people. But it boils down to this:

You recognize that some beliefs/customs/practices in your faith community are toxic, and so you try to sift through what is toxic and what is central to faith, and discard the toxic stuff.

Unfortunately, what often happens when you do this is that you recognize that some of what you know is toxic is also held as deep tenets of the faith by other people who profess Christianity. Or at least they talk as if you have to accept the entire package–including toxic beliefs about marriage or sex or other things–or else it means  you’re leaving Jesus (Rebecca talked about the problems with this as a parenting style in Why I Didn’t Rebel).

When people are told the toxic parts can’t be disentangled from faith, then people deconstructing often do leave the faith.

 I want people to see that you can deconstruct the harmful stuff and still keep Jesus, and the Apostle’s Creed, and the essentials.

What I’ve been encouraging all of you to do in the last few years, and especially since The Great Sex Rescue came out, is to deconstruct what you’ve been taught about marriage.

LIke Jesus said, “You have heard it said X, but I say to you, Y.” He said that again and again and again. And that’s what we’re doing with marriage and sex. “You have heard it said that women need to have sex whenever their husbands want it, but actually, biblically, sex is to be intimate, mutual, and pleasurable for both. Instead of seeing it as an obligation, let’s back up and make sure that we’re treating sex like something mutual and intimate and pleasurable for both.”

The Great Sex Rescue is a deconstruction book. Many of you may not like the term “deconstruction,” but if you’ve liked The Great Sex Rescue, then you’re already deconstructing! It doesn’t have to be a scary thing. It can be a healing thing (and that’s what it’s supposed to be).

When you deconstruct like that, it actually makes it more likely that people will hang on to Jesus.

There comes a point when you can’t ignore the ugly stuff anymore. And if we’re not allowed to separate the ugly stuff from our faith, then people will end up walking away entirely. We have to be able to question things.

With that preamble, a couple of things happened in the last few days that I wanted to comment on.

Josh Harris, the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, published, but then retracted, a deconstruction course.

As some of  you may know, he has actually left the faith and doesn’t call himself a Christian anymore. But he did publish a course for others who are deconstructing, offering that course for free to anyone who felt harmed by his books.

A huge outcry broke out on social media, asking why he felt that he needed to teach anyone anything, and he did end up retracting the course.

In the meantime, though, he had advertised it saying that it had materials from me. I didn’t even know about this until some people messaged me about it. Apparently he linked to my Instagram, where I had published quite a few “Fixed it For Yous” where I take a problematic quote from one of the marriage or sex books we looked at it, and then “fixed it”. He did not ask my permission first before he used my name in his marketing materials, and I did not help him with his course. So I did want to make that clear. He later admitted this in an Instagram post.

Amy Fritz of the Untangled Podcast posted an episode with me about Risking My Platform.

Josh Harris talked about deconstruction with me without my permission, but Amy Fritz did it right! She interviewed me on her podcast, and we talked about such different things from other podcasts I’ve been on that I wanted to draw your attention to it. Instead of it being primarily about The Great Sex Rescue, it was more about the journey of deciding to write The Great Sex Rescue, how this has impacted me as a speaker/author in evangelical spaces, and why I decided I couldn’t be silent anymore about the problems in this sphere. And then we talked a lot about my church journey and what I’m hoping for after COVID.

I really appreciated this conversation, and I thought many of you would, too, because you’ll hear some things I don’t think I’ve shared publicly before (or at least not all together like this!).

Listen in!

You may like the story of how I decided to initially run that very first Love & Respect post about sex, about the sermon at church the day before. Or about why I think I’m flying under the radar with a bunch of the powers that be in evangelicalism right now, and  I haven’t become a huge target to teh big names. Or why it was easier for me to risk my platform–because it’s always been based online, directly to people, rather than through gatekeepers like conferences or big radio shows.

But most of all, you’ll hear my heart for finding a church where community is the main point, and where we can honestly talk about the things that are hurting us.

I really appreciated this conversation, and I hope you do, too!

And, again, I hope we can change our visceral reaction when we hear “deconstruction.”

For most people, it just means recognizing some of what you’ve been taught your whole life isn’t healthy, and it’s learning how to differentiate that from the essentials of the faith. Yes, some people can’t, and leave all together. But most find it a healing and necessary journey.

And many, many people are taking that journey, especially millennials and Generation Z. (Seriously, the survey results from our latest survey about beliefs when you’re teens vs. now are astounding when you look at the generations).

As a faith community, we need to be willing to sit with people when they deconstruct, or listen to their deconstruction stories, or we will end up pushing out millions of people from the church.  

Plus it’s simply the right thing to do. A lot of what we’ve been teaching hasn’t been healthy–as we show in The Great Sex Rescue. We need some self-examination. And I believe that when we do that, we’ll find the person of Jesus is even more evident than He was before.

The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now!

What do you think? Can deconstruction ever be seen as a healthy term? Let’s talk in the comments!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts 3 Reasons Christian Teaching to Women Makes Direct Communication Sound Like a Sin

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How To Have an Annual Family General Meeting

Want to help your kids feel cared for, listened to, included?

And want to help them understand more what goes into running the family?

Welcome to the Annual Family General Meeting!

For many of you in the U.S., school is just starting up again (those of us in Canada are saner and we don’t go back until after Labour Day). And I don’t even think it’s a holiday for those from Australia/New Zealand at all!

But for most of us, the school year is starting up again, which makes it a great time of year to sit down with your kids and do some planning.

Talk about vacations, about extracurricular activities, about chores, about schedules, about any big decisions.

Yesterday on the podcast parenting coach Brett Ullman was talking about his awesome book Parenting: Navigating Everything. The book is a huge resource covering all that you need to build a close relationship with your kids as they’re growing up. I love Brett’s heart for helping parents build those relationships so that it becomes much easier to navigate the teen years, when kids can get into hot water.

Check it out!

One of the things that jumped out at me in his book, that was such a quick and practical thing any parent can put into practice right now–but can also have great dividends–is the idea of the Annual Family General Meeting. Brett explained it  yesterday, and I encourage you to listen to the podcast. But I thought I’d write more about it here, too, for those of you who like to read!

The Benefits of Family MeetingsChildren are more likely to comply to household rules when they have a say in establishing them.When children feel heard and their contributions are valued, htey’re generally more co-operative.Family meetings are a type of team-building exercise that helps families bond and improves relationships.Meetings teach children critical problem-solving abilities; which research proves is an important life skill that contributes to a child’s resiliency.Your house will operate more smoothly as you solve family problems together rather than treating all issues as disciplinary in nature. Adapted from Alyson Schafer "Family Meetings 101"

Parenting: Navigating Everything

How do you run a family meeting?Pick a time and make sure everyone keeps that time free and that there’s an expectation this will happen.Decide on a family reward for finishing the family meeting and the planning–like kids choosing a restaurant, or going bowling, or some other fun activityCreate an agenda and leave it on the fridge so that kids can add items to it (like “I want a dog!”)Stick to the agenda during the meeting and let everyone talkAs much as possible, let the kids’ votes count as much as the adults’. 

Here’s how Brett reports how family meetings benefited when it came to decisions about pets:

Five years ago, we made the major decision to give our kids the chance to get a dog. The kids had added this item to the meeting agenda for several years before everyone in the family agreed to do it!

This decision required everyone to be all-in. Ben was the first one willing to put in the work required, but both kids needed to understand that getting a dog would have lasting financial and practical impacts on the family. It would require them to walk the dog in all sorts of weather and clean up poop in the backyard.

My wife and I decided to see how they handled dog-sitting, to give us an idea of whether they understood the not-so-fun parts of having a dog. After they showed responsibility in dog-sitting, we were ready to vote yes at the next family meeting.

Bailey, our English bulldog, has been part of the family for many years now. Her care is divided between all of us without argument because we’ve all agreed to share in her care. However, at times we may notice that Bailey isnt’ getting walked and then we bring up the agreement. We find that the kids then step up, likely because they agreed to this arrangement in the first place; it wasn’t placed upon them.

Brett Ullman

Parenting: Navigating Everything

And you can talk about ANYTHING at family meetings!Where are you going on your next vacation? What does our family schedule look like this year? How are we doing with chores?Is there a dynamic in the household that isn’t healthy? Are we starting to get lazy, spend too much time on screens, call each other names?Do we need to make some big decisions, like whether or not to choose a new church, decide to homeschool next year, decide to get a pet?Is the family going through a particularly tough financial time, so the kids need to understand and not complain if we don’t order pizza and go on a spending freeze?Are there certain meals that the kids particularly like and want more of? Are there certain ones they definitely don’t want to eat?

And so many more! And, of course, kids can add their own things to the agenda.

When can you start family meetings?

I would say when the kids have a concept of planning ahead. Likely the child would have to be at least five or six (and younger kids can still be there but perhaps not participate as much).

But the more that we give kids a chance to have input into the family, and the more opportunities you have to explain the WHY behind the way you do family, rather than just imposing from above, the more buy-in there is with kids.

Again, here’s Brett’s explanation of the family meeting:

 

 

What about trying an annual family meeting  this weekend?

Talk to your kids as the school year starts. Get on the same page. Plan together. And use it as a way to bond together as a family and set new family traditions!

Take a look at Brett’s book Parenting: Navigating Everything for more great ideas to stay close with your kids!

 

Have you ever tried family meetings? How did they go? Any tips for us? Let’s talk in the comments!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts The DIRECT COMMUNICATION SERIES: Direct Communication Isn’t Mean–But It May Feel Like It

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PODCAST Post: Direct Communication 101–with Your Spouse and Your Kids!

So what’s up with direct communication? Why is it so hard? And how can we do it better?

This week on the podcast we’re summarizing our whole direct communication series in half an hour, so that you can share it with your spouse! Plus we’re looking at a unique way to encourage communication with your kids. 

So listen in!

Listen to the Podcast Here

Browse all the Different Podcasts

Listen to the Last “Start Your Engines” (Men’s) Podcast

Or, as always, you can watch on YouTube:

 

Timeline of the Podcast

0:15 Announcements & Giveaway!
2:30 Direct Communication in Marriage ( NOT manipulation! )
8:15 Why Rebecca hates the ‘nagging’ argument
12:00 Why is Direct Communication so hard?
16:45 How to ‘properly give indirect directions’
20:04 A guide to passive aggressively communicating
29:00 False Teaching of the Week!
30:00 Brett Ulman Interview on Parenting
(Lay the Right Foundation, Annual Family General Meeting, The Goal is to Launch Your Kids, The Importance of Relationship for Influence)
51:40 Encouraging Review!

What is Direct Communication?

Rebecca and I go over the basics of all the posts so far–plus Rebecca goes on a bit of a rant about nagging, and how it’s not the problem we think it is, while I, naturally, try to tone it down a bit.

Remember to subscribe to the email list, so that you can get our email at the end of the month with our “couples homework” to explain the direct communication series to your spouse, and go over some exercises to help you improve!

Win a copy of our Sexy Dares!

We’re giving away ONE copy of our Sexy Dares to someone who signs up to our email list this week–and ONE to someone who is already signed up.

Join our list! Brett Ullman and the Annual Family General Meeting

I had a great talk with Brett, who is the author of Parenting: Navigating Everything. It’s a huge, comprehensive resource covering everything about parenting from the newborn years to the teen years, with a focus on growing healthy communication and healthy emotional relationships, so that when they’re teens you’re better able to handle the difficult stuff.

Brett’s been teaching across North America about handling crisis parenting–sexting; porn; kids acting out. He wanted to write a book that would help prevent parents from getting into that situation. I love this book because it focuses on research and what actually works, especially with discipline.

Check it out!

Brett explains more about Annual Family General Meetings in this video:

 

Brett Ullman travels North America speaking to teens, young adults, leaders, and parents on topics including parenting, mental health, men, sexuality, pornography, dating, and media. Brett’s seminars engage and challenge attendees to try and connect our ancient faith with our modern culture we live in. Participants are inspired to reflect on what we know, what we believe and how our faith ought to serve as the lens through which we view and engage tough conversations in our society today.

Brett Ullman

Parenting: Navigating Everything

Things Mentioned in This Podcast:Brett Ullman’s website where he collates amazing parenting stuff, plus his book Parenting: Navigating EverythingOur Patreon--support us for as little as $3 or $5 a month, and get access to behind-the-scenes things!My books The Great Sex Rescue and 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your MarriageOur Direct Communication Series: Why it’s hard; what direct communication looks like; why it’s not mean; why women struggle with it; why men struggle with it.How to Eliminate Nagging for Good (from our Emotional Labor and Mental Load series)Subscribe to our emails to win a copy of our Sexy Dares!

Do you struggle with direct communication? Have you ever tried an annual family general meeting? Let’s talk in the comments!

The Direct Communication Series5 Reasons Direct Communication is Difficult6 Elements of Direct CommunicationWhy Direct Communication Feels Mean--and Why It's Not3 Reasons Christian Resources Tell Women Direct Communication is a Sin 5 Reasons Christian Teaching Discourages Men from Communicating DirectlyThe Direct Communication PodcastThe Real Solution to Nagging (coming soon)How to Handle a Spouse's Negative Reactions to Direct Communication (coming soon)10 Tips to Having that Difficult Conversation You've Been Putting Off (coming soon)10 Tips to Talking to Your Spouse About Your Sex Life (coming soon)

And please see my book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, with lots on having difficult conversations and resolving conflict!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts The Direct Communication Series: 6 Elements of Direct Communication

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5 Reasons Christian Men Have Difficulty with Direct Communication in Marriage

Our gendered teachings in the church can make it difficult for men to communicate directly with their wives, too.

We’re in the middle of our direct communication series, looking at why it’s hard to communicate directly, what direct communication looks like, and more.

Yesterday we looked at how common teachings in evangelical churches can make women feel like they’re in sin if they try to communicate directly with their husbands and ask for what they want or need. Today I want to turn the tables and look at what men hear that can undermine communication.

1. You must be content in all circumstances.

This first teaching, that I also mentioned yesterday, isn’t gendered, but it permeates all of our Christian culture. While it is true–contentment is something to practice–its application to marriage has been harmful. Yes, we need to be content, but this should not be used to say that we shouldn’t bring something up that is bothering us.

Being content with what we cannot change does not mean that we should fail to address what we can change.

Yet being unhappy or discontent in a relationship is often framed as a spiritual issue where you have a problem with God and a lack of faith. Again, not helpful for direct communication.

2. You’re supposed to die for her, so you can’t be selfish.

Now let’s get into the specifically gendered teaching.

Men are often told to focus on this passage:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word,  and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

Ephesians 5:25-28

These are beautiful verses expressing how a husband is to care for his wife–but taken to an extreme, it can make it sound like a man is selfish and being unloving if he has any of his own needs. He’s supposed to sacrifice for her; to die for her; to give himself up for her. So what right does he have to show any discontent?

I have known very, very goodhearted men who took loving their wives to such an extreme that they didn’t confront their wives, even when their wives were in very destructive patterns with mental health, physical health, or even with relationships with the kids. The husband stood by her and loved her anyway, even as he was growing sadder and sadder, and she was hurting herself.

Loving her doesn’t mean you let her get everything she wants; loving her means you want God’s best for her. And that means that you step in when she’s heading in a bad direction!

And you can’t have an intimate marriage if you don’t share your own wants and needs, too. A marriage is about two people being vulnerable; it is not about one person disappearing so the other can get whatever they want. Often this dynamic grows out of men feeling truly selfless and wanting to follow Jesus, but it does, in the end, just make intimacy less and less attainable.

3. You’re supposed to lead her, so you need to figure things out on your own.

Okay, now let’s turn to the opposite problem: some men veer towards the “I have to give everything up for her” side of gendered teaching. Others veer towards “she has to give everything up for me because I’m in charge.” This is what is taught, for instance, in Love & Respect–that he has a need for “insight”, that his insight needs to be respected, that he is in hierarchy and authority over his wife, and so what he says goes.

Some men feel the great responsibility of this, and it weighs on their shoulders. Some men use this as an excuse to avoid doing things they don’t want to do (for instance, in Love & Respect, Emerson Eggerichs said his wife was being “disrespectful” when she asked him to stop leaving wet towels on the bed and candy wrappers on the floor, and the solution to this dilemma was that she stopped asking because he was the man.)

Whether a man is doing it out of good motives or selfish ones, the net result of feeling that he is in charge and he must lead means that he may make decisions without properly communicating with her. It means that when she tries to bring up something that is bothering her, he can choose to disregard it, because she isn’t being “respectful” or honoring his “insight”.

You may also enjoy:Pastors, Can You Start Preaching What You Practice? about how having a husband make the final decision is actually quite rare in practice, while common in belief. And that practice increases divorce rates by 7 times.Our Submission SeriesMy book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage

He may feel that Johnny should not take soccer this semester, for instance, because the family schedule is too full. But instead of explaining his reasoning or asking for her input, he may simply announce it and leave it at that.

Feeling that he has to figure things out on his own, too, means that he may not share his feelings with his wife, and get her to help him work through them, because as a man he’s supposed to be able to handle all of this. To express any wants and needs to his wife means that he is not actually in charge. If he needs something from her (other than sex–the books all say he’s allowed to need sex!), especially her counsel, then he isn’t really being a man and he isn’t leading.

4. Women aren’t capable of telling you what they want.

Guys also start out with a deficit when it comes to direct communication, because they’ve been told their whole lives that women won’t tell men what they want; men are supposed to guess. In fact, Shaunti Feldhahn even writes about 3 reasons why women won’t tell you what they need–mainly, that they’re testing his love and seeing if he thinks she’s worth the effort to figure it out. (What Shaunti doesn’t mention is that in all of her advice to women she’s told women NOT to communicate directly).

If guys assume that women don’t communicate directly, then they’re more likely to discount what a woman is saying and assume that he actually knows what she’s thinking, even if she’s not saying it (or even if she’s actually saying the opposite). He’s also less likely to communicate with her, because he’s been taught that’s not how she works.

5. Real men are stoic. They don’t have feelings or needs.

Finally, I’ll leave the most important one to the end again: being masculine means that you don’t have needs or feelings. Being strong means you can’t be vulnerable.

Actually, being strong means that you’re able to be vulnerable. When a man has confidence and is strong, then he’s truly able to open up and share himself. But that’s not the image of manhood that we’ve been given.

And so men are often left either not even able to name what they’re feeling, because they’ve been taught their whole life to suppress their feelings, or feel unable to communicate their feelings, because to do so feels like weakness.

Intimacy can’t grow when men can’t express what they think or feel.

The idea that women are emotional and men are not is simply untrue. We all have emotions. That’s how God wired us! And throughout Scripture men demonstrate a wide variety of emotions. Our modern church, I think, is more interested in presenting a cultural version of manhood and womanhood than it is really looking at what the Bible says about it!

You may also enjoy:Our emotional maturity seriesDo Christian resources promote emotional immaturity–especially in men?Our podcast on men & emotionsSo there you go–5 reasons why men can have trouble with direct communication because of how the church has primed him, to go along with our post on women and direct communication. 

I hope that we can get beyond all this and learn to honor emotions and truth, which are both central in Scripture. I hope that we will remember that Jesus is Truth, and that a truly intimate relationship means that we have to value each other enough to let each other in. And I hope we will stop covering up our own emotions with shame.

What do you think? Have you seen these elements at play in your marriage, or in the marriages around you? Let’s talk in the comments!

The Direct Communication Series5 Reasons Direct Communication is Difficult6 Elements of Direct CommunicationWhy Direct Communication Feels Mean--and Why It's Not3 Reasons Christian Resources Tell Women Direct Communication is a Sin 5 Reasons Christian Teaching Discourages Men from Communicating DirectlyThe Real Solution to Nagging (coming soon)How to Handle a Spouse's Negative Reactions to Direct Communication (coming soon)10 Tips to Having that Difficult Conversation You've Been Putting Off (coming soon)10 Tips to Talking to Your Spouse About Your Sex Life (coming soon)

And please see my book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, with lots on having difficult conversations and resolving conflict!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts The PODCAST On Sex and the New Reformation

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3 Reasons Christian Teaching to Women Makes Direct Communication Sound Like a Sin

Do gendered teachings in the church make direct communication harder?

We’re in the middle of our series on direct communication–why direct communication is hard; what direct communication looks like; why direct communication feels mean, but isn’t.

Today and tomorrow I’d like to look at specific teachings in the church that can make direct communication more difficult, especially when that teaching is gendered, and we’ll start with women.

But not all teaching that makes direct communication difficult is gendered, like this first one:

1. “Be content in every circumstance” makes direct communication hard.

Christians are taught that one of the highest virtues is learning to be content no matter what you’re living through. We often hear the apostle Paul quoted with passages like this:

I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength….

Philippians 4:11-13

We’re supposed to be able to live with anything that life brings us.

But whether we can live with something is not a good metric for whether we should live with it. Paul was not talking about being content with mediocre or bad relationships that could be improved with a little bit of effort; he was talking about learning to be content when he had no control over his own circumstances. He wasn’t telling us to put up with things that are preventable; he was saying don’t obsess over things that you can’t do anything about.

Nevertheless, we’ve often used this teaching to tell women (and men) that they have no right to be upset about anything. This teaching is especially focused on marriage, where the goal is on keeping the marriage together rather than building intimacy in that marriage.

In this teaching, our legitimate feelings are seen as threats to the relationship, and so the antidote is to be grateful for what you have, rather than focused on what you don’t have. To express your desire for things to change, then, means that you’re not content and you’re somehow not being Christian.

2. “Let go and let God” tells women not to communicate directly

Now we turn to some teachings that women especially are given. Here’s how I explain the “Duck Principle” in 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage:

From 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage

I’ve heard it explained at women’s retreats and on marriage and mom blogs, and it goes something like this:

Pat Answer: If you’re upset at your spouse, state your opinion, but then “duck” and get out of the way, so that God can be the one to smack your husband, not you.

I can remember one conference where we were handed little paper ducks to put in our Bibles, to remind us that it was not our job to point out any error in our husbands; it was only God’s job. We were to “pray and get out of the way.”

Leslie had really mastered that Duck thing. She was just like a little mallard, looking peaceful on the outside, while under the surface her legs were paddling frantically as she waited to see what would happen. After all, she’d ducked. So now God should smack her husband!

But let’s look at it another way. If God’s truth is timeless—and I believe it is—then we would expect that the things God wants also lead to better and healthier relationships. So if the healthiest thing were simply to “duck” and not express disagreement, then research should show that the best marriages are those in which there’s little or no fighting. Actually, research shows the opposite. When Ernest Harburg of the University of Michigan looked into what makes a healthy marriage, he and his colleagues discovered that couples who express their anger live longer than couples who suppress it.

The healthiest couples are not those where the wife states her position once and then ducks—or worse, never states her position in the first place. No, the happiest couples are those who wrestle through issues and don’t back down until they rebuild intimacy and trust and closeness. In fact, conflict resolution contributes to healthier individuals in general, since people who suppress conflict actually die earlier. So peacemaking isn’t just good for your marriage; it’s good for your heart too!

The book Power of a Praying Wife is full of this type of principle–just leave it to God. Trust in the Lord. Don’t take matters into your own hands. (Download our healthy sexuality rubric from The Great Sex Rescue to see how Power of a Praying Wife scored!)

To actually try to address something in your marriage, then, would be seen as a lack of faith in God. You aren’t supposed to be the one to fix things–God is! If you try to step in, then you’re not exercising faith.

I think this one is especially given to women because women are seen to be always trying to be in control. We have a hard time trusting God. We’re control freaks. We’re trying to “usurp” authority. And so we’re told to calm down and trust instead.

3. “You must never undermine his masculinity and his leadership” means she can’t communicate directly without being in sin

By far the most damaging and common message that hurts direct communication, though, is this one: If a woman asks for something directly, she is trying to lead and is undermining his role and his masculinity. Instead, she must be submissive.

This one is so ingrained that I’m having a hard time figuring out which quotes to use as examples, because there are so many, and the more I looked for them the more enraged I got. But here are just a few.

In Love & Respect, the only place where Emerson Eggerichs specifically tells women how to handle a husband who is in sin and hurting the family is in this anecdote in Appendix E, on how to deal with a workaholic husband:

Third, to influence him directly, respectfully say, “Your son (daughter, children) needs you at home more. You have a unique influence on him. In certain areas, nobody matters to him as much as you do. It may not appear that way to you, but your positive presence has the power to mold him. I know you are swamped and have little time, but I also know that you want to give him that part of you that no one else can give to him. Thanks.”

After delivering your “we need you at home more” message, don’t repeat it for anywhere from ten to twenty days. Then mention it again, quietly and positively with the general tone of “just a positive reminder because of your importance.” …

Have confidence in God’s Word. Quietness shouts to a husband.

Emerson Eggerichs

Love & Respect, p. 316

Now, let’s compare that to the 6 markers of direct communication we talked about last week:

Notice how in this example that Eggerichs gives, she never actually asks for anything. She merely makes observations, but then leaves it to him to decide what he is going to do with those observations. She does not share any of her own feelings about the situation. She does not tell him what she needs from him. And then, at the end, she says “thanks”, though it’s not clear what exactly she is thanking him for. Existing? Listening? Considering what she has said?

Then, she is supposed to be quiet and say nothing. This goes against every single one of our principles for direct communication.

Men reading this, please understand the weight of this: Women are told our whole lives that to actually ask you for what we want is a sin. 

Women are told that before we communicate anything to men, we must make sure that we do so in a way that honors his masculinity and that shows respect–which, in the words of Emerson Eggerichs, means remembering that:

he is in hierarchy over us; he has authority over us;we must value his insight over our own.

So basically, we’re not allowed to correct a man. And if we can’t correct him, then how are we supposed to ask directly when we want something to change?

Answer: we’re not. Because that would be a sin.

And that’s why women are supposed to talk in circles, like that example from Eggerichs.

Many of you reacted in incredulity to the John Piper quote from Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood that I put in Friday’s post–about when an “executive” who is lost asks a “housewife” for directions, she must be careful not to be “direct and personal”, since that would compromise both his masculinity and her femininity. (Presumably she should say something like, “I find that when I’m trying to find the freeway, I turn left at the third set of lights, go for a mile, and then follow the sign.”)

But Piper is not the only one who tells women they must not give directions to men. Shaunti Feldhahn, in For Women Only, talks about how men’s need to feel respected extends to needing to feel like you think they’re competent. So even if they’re clearly doing something wrong, and it’s inconveniencing you, you must not speak up about it:

 

The next time your husband stubbornly drives in circles, ask yourself which is more important: being on time to the party or his feeling trusted? No contest.

Shaunti Feldhahn

For Women Only,

To even ask him to get you to the party on time would be considered showing a lack of respect and a lack of trust. She must instead say nothing at all (because, as the book points out earlier in the chapter, the male ego is the most fragile thing on the planet, and we must treat it with care).

And the advice starts even younger.

In For Young Women Only, Feldhahn’s book for teen girls (we’ve talked about the problematic way it handles date rape before), she repeats the quote to girls that males have fragile egos, and tells them that boys need to feel respected, and that you believe that they are competent and capable. She explains that when boys get angry, it’s a good sign they’re feeling disrespected. She says it’s fine to ask for you what you want, but you must always couch it in telling them you believe in them, that you are grateful for them, and that you respect them. And this is true even if you’ve just working on a group project together.

If you have superior knowledge than them, you must not share that with them, or they will feel disrespected. So you should not tell them how to get something done, but must instead show that you respect their abilities. (Again, this is all girls to all boys; not even girls in dating relationships).

At one point she gives an example of how a girl impacted a boy without disrespecting him, referring to the movie A Walk to Remember: 

At the beginning of the story, after Landon has made an immature, costly decision, it just takes one look from Jamie to shame him and challenge him to change. At the end, when Landon makes a selfless decision, the look on Jamie’s face says how proud she is of him. She challenges him and makes him feel he can conquer his demons and become the man he was intended to be.

Shaunti Feldhahn

For Young Women Only,

Feldhahn shows how all the ways that girls naturally talk can sound disrespectful. But her example of real respect? Simply a look. We don’t even need to say anything. We hold great power just through a look.

No direct communication here.

Mama Bear Apologetics offers similar warnings to young girls:

“Talk to little girls about how they might one day be surrounded by men who are bigger and stronger than they are. How might they stand up for themselves and be strong without emasculating the men around them?”

Hillary Morgan Ferrer

Mama Bear Apologetics

Even when we’re trying to be strong, we have to be sure we’re not emasculating men. Our first thoughts, when communicating with men, have to be about supporting his masculinity rather than sharing our feelings or dealing with an issue.

When we’re trying to communicate, we have to do so in a way that does not make them feel disrespected; undermine their authority; imply that we may know more than they do; imply that they may not be as good at something as they think. We have to make them feel competent, capable, better than us, and in charge BEFORE we think about expressing anything.

Can you see how that hinders direct communication and works directly against healthy relationships? And undermines truth?

Women, you are allowed to have feelings and you are allowed to express them.

It is not disrespectful to ask for what you want and need.

It is not a lack of trust in God.

It is not a desire to be in control.

It is not an unsubmissive spirit (let alone a Jezebel spirit).

It is not unfeminine.

It is not selfish.

It is not disrespectful.

It is, in fact, being Christlike, because you are walking in Truth and you are making peace.

You’re allowed to stop listening to people who tell you that expressing your own thoughts and feelings is somehow wrong. When they tell you that, they are also telling you that they are not safe people, and you are allowed to disregard them.

You May Also Enjoy:My Submission Series: Figure out what submission really means!

And men–next time you hear women being told not to speak up or else men will feel disrespected, please speak up and say, “hey, men aren’t actually that fragile, and that’s so disrespectful to men to imply that we are!”

Have any of these three teachings affected you when you try to communicate in marriage? Have you ever second guessed yourself because you don’t want to be unsubmissive? Let’s talk in the comments!

The Direct Communication Series5 Reasons Direct Communication is Difficult6 Elements of Direct CommunicationWhy Direct Communication Feels Mean--and Why It's Not3 Reasons Christian Resources Tell Women Direct Communication is a Sin 4 Reasons Christian Teaching Discourages Men from Communicating DirectlyThe Real Solution to Nagging (coming soon)How to Handle a Spouse's Negative Reactions to Direct Communication (coming soon)10 Tips to Having that Difficult Conversation You've Been Putting Off (coming soon)10 Tips to Talking to Your Spouse About Your Sex Life (coming soon)

And please see my book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, with lots on having difficult conversations and resolving conflict!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Reader Question: When Does Anger Become Abuse?

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