Ha! I think this post is great. My friend Jill shared a great post about how sometimes the communication in marriage is so important and sometimes so hard. Bill and I have been married 8 years and we still sometimes do not have a clue what we are saying to each other. It is like we are speaking two different languages. It just impresses on me more how badly we need in God in all of it. To remind us about mercy, grace and love and that even if I have no idea what Bill is talking about... we both have God gently nudging us to be more like him. Forgiving.
One example I have of these communication things is when Bill and I were going over finances. We were talking about how to work our budget or look at numbers. Bill is VERY detailed. He is more concerned about our accounts being reconciled to the penny and I am overall concerned about the big picture. Money in... money out... how it looks at a macro level. We were seriously trying to talk about how to plan for our budget and how to develop it and we both were explaining our perspectives and I am not lying to you. He was speaking English and I had NO IDEA what he was saying!!!! We both just kept repeating ourselves and neither one of us knew what we were talking about. After about 3 times of repeating ourselves to one another... we both just started laughing... and I said, are you speaking english because what you are saying is not making sense to me. It was hilarious. We ended up just dropping the subject and moving on to another topic. It was so funny. We are wired completely different.
Bill was given some marital advice that I don't think has served us well in our marriage. Someone told him when we were married the best phrase he needed to know was "yes honey or yes dear". Well, now he has the "yes dear syndrome" and it has brought us to many a fork in the road where we had to grin and bear it as well. I will say, Billy... can you please stop at the bank and deposit this money... or can you please make an appt for such and such or Bill can you please pick up some stuff at City Market. And thankfully, my wonderful husband with all the good intentions in the world tells me, "Yes Dear" full well knowing there is no way he has time to stop at the grocery store, call to make appts or deposit money into the bank account. So when I ask him if he completed said task.. he has to confess he did not. I have impressed upon him that honesty is the best policy and if he cannot complete said task to PLEASE let me know and I will do it. I love my husband and understand he is busy, but my pleading for him to help me he feels like he will let me down if he says, "NO." He wants to be my hero so he agrees to everything I need.
Men are awesome. My husband is awesome. He loves me no matter what and we are learning to navigate this life together. We will never be perfect, have all the answers or be able to appease each other 100% but we can look to God in all of it and say... "DEAR LORD HELP ME" and full well know that he has our backs totally and completely. God definatley has sense of humor in the differences between boys and girls. We just need to keep on laughing. :-)
One example I have of these communication things is when Bill and I were going over finances. We were talking about how to work our budget or look at numbers. Bill is VERY detailed. He is more concerned about our accounts being reconciled to the penny and I am overall concerned about the big picture. Money in... money out... how it looks at a macro level. We were seriously trying to talk about how to plan for our budget and how to develop it and we both were explaining our perspectives and I am not lying to you. He was speaking English and I had NO IDEA what he was saying!!!! We both just kept repeating ourselves and neither one of us knew what we were talking about. After about 3 times of repeating ourselves to one another... we both just started laughing... and I said, are you speaking english because what you are saying is not making sense to me. It was hilarious. We ended up just dropping the subject and moving on to another topic. It was so funny. We are wired completely different.
Bill was given some marital advice that I don't think has served us well in our marriage. Someone told him when we were married the best phrase he needed to know was "yes honey or yes dear". Well, now he has the "yes dear syndrome" and it has brought us to many a fork in the road where we had to grin and bear it as well. I will say, Billy... can you please stop at the bank and deposit this money... or can you please make an appt for such and such or Bill can you please pick up some stuff at City Market. And thankfully, my wonderful husband with all the good intentions in the world tells me, "Yes Dear" full well knowing there is no way he has time to stop at the grocery store, call to make appts or deposit money into the bank account. So when I ask him if he completed said task.. he has to confess he did not. I have impressed upon him that honesty is the best policy and if he cannot complete said task to PLEASE let me know and I will do it. I love my husband and understand he is busy, but my pleading for him to help me he feels like he will let me down if he says, "NO." He wants to be my hero so he agrees to everything I need.
Men are awesome. My husband is awesome. He loves me no matter what and we are learning to navigate this life together. We will never be perfect, have all the answers or be able to appease each other 100% but we can look to God in all of it and say... "DEAR LORD HELP ME" and full well know that he has our backs totally and completely. God definatley has sense of humor in the differences between boys and girls. We just need to keep on laughing. :-)
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3 comments:
First of all, love the picture of Billy. That's totally him. Second of all, Mark and I like to joke that he speaks Chinese and I speak Japanese and no amount of shouting will ever get the other one to understand better. (funny sidenote: Mark's dad talks louder to Spanish speaking Mexican restaurant waiters -- he says loudly "Lemon Verde [if he's asking for a lime] -- quite comical!) So we have to work very hard at learning each others languages so we can communicate with each other. That's why sometimes Mark can repeat himself over and over and I will never understand - because he's speaking Chinese! God help us all!
I ditto the God help us all.
This is great and so true! Benjie and I read a book before we got married called "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." We learned one of the greatest principles of communication that has saved us many times in our confusion of what the other is saying...(cultural communication adds a whole other dimension to the husband-wife communication dynamic!) The principle is called empathetic listening. The author talks about how it is important to make ourselves stop thinking and trying to formulate a response as the other person is talking, to quiet our minds and listen so well that we literally put ourselves in the other persons shoes and make ourselves vulnerable to what they are saying. He says to repeat back what they say in a different form as many times as you need to in order to make sure that you have understood what they are saying. It is amazing how that has helped us out so much!
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