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John Fuller: Today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, Dr. Ken Wilgus shares encouragement for couples.
Dr. Ken Wilgus: Just hug each other for a minimum of six seconds, six times a day, and feel the tiny static electricity that is there. Uh, feel the awkwardness that is there. Whatever that you can’t just hug, you’ll feel something and it’s that connection or the tension in that connection.
John: Thanks for joining us. I’m John Fuller.
Jim Daly: We have a unique take on communication and marriage today from Dr. Ken Wilgus. Uh, he’ll explain how men and women process information differently. And he’ll also remind us that there’s something very special about being married. There’s a spiritual unity that occurs, right? And pain in marriage is often caused by denying that spiritual connection.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And singles, stay with us. There’s some great encouragement for you as well toward the end of Ken’s talk. Uh, Dr. Ken is a licensed psychologist who specializes in couples therapy and family therapy, especially for parents and teenagers. And we’ve had him on the broadcast half a dozen times in the past talking about how to help teens become competent adults.
John: Yeah. His insights are so good, and here now is Dr. Ken Wilgus speaking to our staff on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Dr. Wilgus: It was 10 years ago, I remember this. I was standing in an Apple Store and ordering an iPhone and this cool, you know, the genius bar guy that knows everything and saying, “Um, now when you come back in two weeks to pick up your phone, uh, I won’t be here, but you can get it from somebody else.” He said, “I’m getting married.” And I said, “Dude, that is great. Marriage is great.” And he stopped and looked at me stunned and he said, “Really? Thank you. No one that I know thinks I should be getting married. Everyone’s asking me, why are you getting married? That was 10 years ago. And you people know that, that’s only grown. The question of why should I get married and what is this about is only getting more and more.” And I understand that.
If, however, if there is a point or any advantage in a culture that is growing darker, it does give us a chance as Christians to really ask and drill down, why do we get married? What is marriage really about? We cannot afford to show marriages that are, um, just, uh, socially appropriate. Like my grandparents. My mother’s parents came to faith late and they were involved in their church. My grandmother taught Sunday school. My grandfather was the, uh, treasurer. I think it’s because he didn’t trust anyone else with the money. But still, they were involved and they were married and they weren’t gonna divorce and they didn’t like each other, not even close. Separate bedrooms.
We heard stories of my grandfather, they’d be driving together on a trip and he’d, they’d stop for gas and he’d drive off and forget she was with him. You know, but this is Christian marriage, or at least that used to kind of pass for that. We cannot afford that anymore. The world is not gonna go, “Wow, that’s great.” If we define marriages, well, you’re not supposed to get a divorce. So then what does it look like?
I can figure out most anyone else’s marriage except mine. There’s something very intense about marriage. And I wanna tell you two influences that made a big difference to me, a big difference. One of them is that I’ve always been interested in communication and language. You know, like, um, uh, i- i- one of the best speakers, the best teacher that I knew of language was Deborah Tannen, who is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. And she talked about that, yes, men and women vary different, uh, a great deal. Like there’s about 60% overlap in the way men and women are temperament-wise. But when they communicate, there tends to be some almost subconscious agreement about the rules of communication that are not spoken.
For example, women tend to, when you’re co- communicating, most women have a third ear for this. Wait a minute. I’m hearing the words you’re saying, but does that say that you and I are close? Or are we distant? Are we intimate and the same? Are we far apart? It’s a, a tendency to, to listen for that in relationship. But men have a tendency to listen this way, more of, “Wait a minute, does what you’re saying mean that you think you know more than I do? Or where, where do we fit status wise? And what are you requiring me to do?”
It’s kind of the, the language of instrumental behavior, like getting stuff done. And that kind of made some sense for much of what I was saying, but it didn’t make any sense for everything. And the other thing I was reading, stick with me here, was a series delivered by Pope John Paul II called A Theology of the Body. And there’s been a much writing about it, now Saint Paul II, John Paul II, that talked about the body and our physicalness in scripture. And I have to tell you, it just blew my mind and connected things that I was seeing in relationship I had never seen before.
So most people would say if you really wanna look at scripture and about marriage, probably an important, if not the most important place to start is Matthew 19. And you’ll remember this part, this is Focus on the Family. You people know all this stuff. I’m sure you’ve memorized it, but Matthew 19 is when Jesus is asked by these Pharisees, really tested, about divorce. You remember that? And Jesus, like he has a tendency to do, completely blows their paradigm. He answers by saying, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
That’s a, a weird mind blower for a couple of main reasons. One of the big ones is that he, uh, first, he’s asked about the law. Isn’t marriage, you know, an agreement, a legal thing? Yes. But he answers from creation. Marriage is founded not in a, a legal agreement, but in human. It means that marriage isn’t a Christian thing, it’s not even a religious thing. It’s a human thing. It is how we were created. It is a fundamental aspect of creation. He who created them from the beg- beginning, who was it that was created then from the beginning? Jesus. John 1 tells us this is, the pre-incarnate Christ is the one that created us this way.
So it takes us to Genesis 2, which is that very weird story of the creation of humans. You remember that? How many humans did God create? One. Out of the clay or whatever. He blows life into it. Why does he create the human? To image God, to be here, it’s all of creation and here is this human to be the God, the, today the part of God will be played by, and he makes this human. And then he says, the weirdest thing he says, uh, as the image bearer, he says, “It’s not good for this human to be alone. And I’ll fix that problem.”
And remember how he fixed it, and this is really important. Didn’t scoop up more clay and blow life into that. He, what? He puts the, caused a deep sleep to come on the man, right? And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up his place and the rib the Lord had taken, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. He took the human that didn’t look right as a single, singular and divides him into a male human and a female human. What was hi- part of him is now her and says, “Interacting as one, that looks a little more like me.” It’s a very weird story. And you can even tell more because what does Adam say when the woman comes to him, is brought to him? “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” He’s stunned that, that’s me. She is me. And that’s what humanity does to look like God.
Why is marriage so hard? Well, to really understand what’s so hard about marriage, because you got this man and the woman and they are one and, and working in unity, you have to get to Genesis 3. Genesis 3, another weird story where you remember it’s sin. Sin enters the world and what was the sin? The sin was to be like God. You will eat of this fruit and your eyes will be opened, a strange way to describe becoming blind. Your eyes will be open and you will be like God, basically making your own decisions about what’s good and bad.
And so they did eat. Their eyes were opened to another reality, but they didn’t become like God. They just thought like God. That’s the tribe we’re all in. We are the creatures who think that as if we are a God. And I would imagine that was fun for them for about, I don’t know, 30 seconds. I forget, I don’t know how long they could look around and go, “You know, I don’t think that tree’s as good as God said, whatever,” until they look at themselves. And this is true of all of us. You know full well, when you look at you, nobody likes their own body.
So many of our young people don’t realize that, no, it’s not that you need to get past that feeling bad about you. They need to talk to other brothers and sisters to go, “Oh, oh yeah, no, no. We all hated our own body, how we see, we judge ourselves.” And they judged themselves, they knew they were naked, exposed, and what did they do? They sowed fig leaves together.
Now, stick with me. What is it they didn’t like about their body? They didn’t cover, they didn’t make hats and gloves. The, the, I think the King James version, they make aprons. They covered their connecting parts. Let’s take the man. He’s now sown away to cover himself. Who’s he covering from? God hasn’t shown up in the story yet. And remember when God shows up, you gotta run, your little leaf ain’t gonna help you. Who is he covering from? He’s covering from her. His judgment of himself that this is not good and I need to cover that. He thinks she thinks that same thing. He assumes she is looking at him how he looks at him. Do you follow me?
And you know he wasn’t paying attention because if he did, he would notice that she was too busy sowing her own leaves. Who was she covering from? Him. She had judged herself and assumed he thought the same way. The man and the woman were not covering the same thing. What they felt, and this is far more than just body parts, what they felt and the shame they experienced were different kinds of shame. The man is covering his effectiveness, his strength, his manly- … All the things you can think of that if you think about it more, it’ll go into jokes and so forth, all about a man’s defensiveness of whether he’s adequate.
But the woman isn’t covering the same thing. She’s covering a receiving, a much more vulnerable, a something much more about her loveliness and her inviting. It’s a whole different thing she feels. And they’re covering from each other because they assume they are thinking the judgment of each other that they have for themselves and they’re not the same judgment.
Pain in marriage then, pain in marriage comes from denying that you’re spiritually connected. Not that you need to become spiritual, you are connected. Marriage is a three-legged race. And if you don’t know it, you’re gonna just be falling all over the place and hurting yourself. You are connected. When you go through difficult times in your marriage, it’s important to think about Jesus got you into this. This is his deal. What do you want from me? Why am I struggling like this? You are connected. You are joined. Your self-judgment you feel is coming from your spouse’s, uh, mouth and you try to ignore it. You can try to ignore it, but you can’t make it go away. Married people are never two individuals who just happen to be living together.
You remember my grandparents? Just, you know, separate bedrooms, whatever, that’s how they lived until my grandmother, the last probably about two years of her life. She had a series of strokes that left her with dementia, with two major features. Number one, the only person she regularly remembered was my grandfather. She didn’t, often didn’t even know her own daughter, my mother. Didn’t know us, so she knew him. And secondly, she never really knew that she was at home. This means that for 18 months, she shuffled around her own house saying, “I, we gotta go home. I, we gotta go home.”
And it was sad to watch. And my grandfather was a good man and we knew he would do the right thing and put her somewhere that was, she could be taken care of. Guess what? My grandfather wouldn’t hear of it. He did not want her taken from him. He watched over her, and this was even weirder. They started like kissing and stuff. Whoa, whoa. They’re like, “Grandma, what are you doing?” They were, they loved each other. They had denied this all this time, but once that changed, she needed him and she knew it and he knew she needed him. What happened was that resentment, those layers blew away and they were suddenly the married people they always had been, always had been. You can deny it, but you can’t have a marriage that isn’t that way. You’re always interacting with each other.
John: Hmm. You’re listening today to Dr. Ken Wilgus on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and we’re including this message in a free set of audio downloads called Nurturing the Heart of Your Spouse. This collection features almost six hours of content to help you as a husband and wife bring the best to your marriage. Get your free access to the collection at FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast or call us for details. Our number’s 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY, 800-232-6459. Let’s go ahead and return now to more from Dr. Ken Wilgus.
Dr. Wilgus: But what do we do in marriage? So if you look at Ephesians 5, and I’m actually gonna start with the second part. Uh, husbands are told to love your wives, but love them as your own flesh. Love your, uh, wives as their own bodies. That’s a particular kind of love. It is showing her the connectedness. It is reinforcing to her that we are connected. Remember how women think of things? I can’t tell you how many husbands I know waste their time trying to be heroic, uh, buy the expensive gift, and all these things that that woman doesn’t appreciate, you’re doing it wrong. You’re not actually thinking about the way that reinforces unity to her. Do things that reinforce that you are thinking about her.
If you think about it, when women talk to each other about a problem, listen to women talking to each other. Most of the time, or very often what they’re looking for is a witness to my experience. You will hear a woman say to a woman, “Oh, I know. I know, right?” And I’ve told many husbands, tattoo on your hand. “Oh, I know.” Right? Because men think their wives want you to do something about it. “It’s kind of cold in here.” “Oh, okay, here. Take my shirt. I’ll, I’ll talk to the main-” No, no, no, no. Probably she’ll want to hear, “I know. It’s kind of chi- … Wasn’t it chilly in here last time?” That, believe it or not, is helpful to her to know that you and I see the same thing.
And it’s weird, we’ll get to this in a minute, how often men don’t see that. But just sharing and witnessing her experience, “Oh, I know.” Showing and doing things that know you’re thinking about her versus trying to do it right. If you’re good enough at this, for your 25th wedding anniversary, you could buy your wife a rock. I don’t mean a diamond, a rock. She’d open it up and go, “It’s a rock?” And you go, “Do you know where that rock came from? Do you remember when we were in Canada and we climbed up that mountain and we … So I called the guy the … And he went and got …”
If you had enough story behind that rock … Am I … Do you know what I mean, women? If there’s enough story behind the rock, it’ll be up on your mantlepiece, because it shows what she needs to know. Are we connected? Instead, men are like, “Well, I got her a three carat we, we couldn’t even afford.” And she was like, “We can’t afford it.” Yeah, that’s not really the thing that shows her that we’re connected.
Now, marriage work is to reinforce unity. Husbands love your wife as your own flesh, like yourself, show that you are connected to her. It’s probably easier than you think. For women, again, what if wives submit to your husbands as under the Lord, which by the way, of course, the only way you can do it? If you submit to your husband to the degree he deserves it, he’ll be waiting a long time. We know that, we get that. It’s doing it as unto your real husband, the Lord.
But what if instead it is actions and words that you show that you appreciate him and you respect his efforts? Not because of how great he is, but because of how sensitive he is, because he’s covering, he’s hiding, and he needs to hear, or it’s helpful to him to show that he’s winning with you. That, and I don’t mean … You know, you’re doing a lot better on that Bible study. That sounds like a, like a five, you know, like a kindergarten teacher. It’s not that, it’s that winning with you. It sounds more like hi- …
“By the way, I was thinking yesterday when you called to ask how the doctors … I love when you do that. Thank you so much for that.” That means you can get your guy to do anything. There was a, a Dr. Laura, did you ever hear her on the radio? She said that if you will cheer him on, feed him and give him affection, he’ll do anything you want in response. And he didn’t even mind saying it. He’s like, “Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty much all I need.” And, and that kind of encouragement, again, to help him with his shame and his struggle, cheering him on, which means, by the way, for some of you, it means learning to let him do things for you.
Some women are really good at taking care of everything and wonder, what’s the problem here? Well, he really needs to know where do you need him. You’re playing the part of the church. You can’t possibly tell the story of, “Well, the church in Christ, sometimes Jesus needs our help. And he …” No, no, no, no. He came to get us. It’s the most romantic story ever, and that’s closer to what he is needing from you.
When you do talk to your husband about things that bother you, do you know how many women have told me? “Um, I can’t tell my husband how I feel without him getting defensive.” Look, you know why? Well, it’s not your fault. You’re doing fine. He’s the one hearing it as critique. But if you listen, women, if you listen to men talk to each other, which they don’t do a lot of, but th- they’re getting better. When they talk to each other, especially about something tense. If I’m talking to my brother about something I’m disagreeing with him on a whim, I will start with an apology.
I’ll preface it with something. You’ll hear men say, “Dude, I mean, this is none of my business and you, you’re good at this.” But he’ll start by kind of going down, like, “I don’t wanna come in high because it helps with this kind of thinking.” And where do we stand status wise? So it’s very important that when you want to tell him the things that concern you and you must never bite your tongue, it only makes it worse for you and him, but it can actually help sometimes to start with, “Listen, I’m not saying you’re a terrible father. I mean, you obviously you, you do well at, but yesterday when you said …” And believe it or not, it can help a man hear you, not because you’re saying it wrong, but because it is the way he hears it.
Lastly, when you’re disagreeing, and this is important, because you will get into your God-like judgment of, “Okay, he’s wrong, she’s wrong about this.” You must keep in mind that you’re joined, you are connected. If you talk to your spouse in a way that lights up their shame, you’re wrong even if you’re right. If a man tells his wife what’s right, and men are big on that by the way, men are always going, uh, Doug goes, “I’d like to stop here. Can I just tell you what really happened?” Uh, like the accurate, that’s how we think we’re seeing it, and she’s all emotional as if that isn’t accurate.
But when you try to tell your wife a thing you feel strongly about that says to her, that implies, “I don’t care what you feel about this, I don’t wanna know what your thoughts are on it, I’m just gonna tell you, you’re wrong even if you’re right.” Because she is your other half, and she is fearful of one main thing. She thinks she’s alone and she’s afraid. She thinks she is alone, and she is afraid.
So when, in disagreement, a husband must always be careful to know, help her to know, “I’m hearing you. I wanna know what your experience of this is and what your thoughts are.” More than whether you completely agree with her at the end of it, it’s knowing that she’s connected to you. And women, it’s also difficult that even when you know he’s way off on this, not even close, but he needs to hear the help from you that you’re not completely disrespecting him. There’s a way to talk to a husband. Look, I’m not saying you don’t know anything about this, but to kinda help him not to feel crushed in what he is dealing with.
And lastly, then is this fix our shame? If husband and wife know this, is this how Christians get through this? And the answer is no. Believe it or not, that’s Genesis 3:21. Remember the weird part at the end? God does not show up and say, “Look, you have sinned. Stop judging yourselves and each other and just judge the world as I …” You can’t. There’s, you can’t …
Apparently, um, this thinking like God is a fatal and irreversible condition. So what does he do? He covers them with skins, right? And God made for Adam, uh, and his wife, garments of skin. Who is that prefiguring? Jesus. The answer in marriage isn’t to just be able to lift each other enough, you won’t. It is to also know that in marriage is the rehearsal for all of our lives, singles as well, that you’re dealing with Jesus.
Men, when you are feeling like your wife is shaming you, no, number one, she’s not. She’s talking like a regular woman. She’s not even aware of that. Our marriages are about drawing us to him. Jesus should make some difference to us as husbands, that he is right behind your wife saying whatever nightmare thing you think you’re hearing, that you’re terrible or whatever. And he’s going, “You’re mine. I’ve made you whole, you’re mine.” And hope it makes some difference.
For women, it’s the same thing. That feeling of alone, which is so common, your husband will never do enough that you won’t worry that, “I don’t think he thinks about me at all.” There must be comfort in knowing that Jesus is the man. He is the one who can quote Isaiah to you, “Would a mother forget her own child? I will never forget you. I have carved you into the palms of my hand.” He is the man that you are really married to.
It’s awkward for your husband to be wearing the Jesus suit because it doesn’t fit well. It is Christ who will never tell you, “Well, that hurt, that feeling, that’s not important.” Jesus never does that. He is the man that should comfort you. Even when your husband fails at that, it’s knowing that we are covered by his love, his sacrifice, and his, uh, submission.
For those of you that are single, which apparently that’s a thing today I was told, um, is I think it’s really important that you really take into account that your singleness is not the same as the world’s singleness. You are married. For you who are women that do have that concern of, is there something wrong with me? Am I not? What is that? Let Jesus speak to you, who adores you. I mean, adores you.
And for single men, again, Christian men are not single like the world’s, uh, like secular men. You are adequate to marriage. All you have to do is to look for the answer to, is this someone you would have for me to marry? And let him cover that sense of, “I don’t know if I’m ready for … I don’t know if I would even know if I am ready.” I, I hear that all the time from young men. I get that. But the answer to that is letting Jesus cover your inadequacy, knowing that all it takes is in prayer, “I think he wants me to marry, then do it.” Then don’t worry as much. I can’t believe how much young men think about whether … I didn’t think that much about marriage. I just wanted to be married. I wanted to be married to her. And I, and Jesus took me there more than I even knew.
So that’s what I wanted to tell you is the work that I’ve done in marriage has gone from this is too hard and I quit, to recognizing that, wait a minute, marriage isn’t a relationship. It is the relationship. And whether you are married or single, we are all in the same boat working our lives out with our husband, the guy who never married and called himself the bridegroom who has come to get us because he loves you and he has covered you, he’s made you adequate and made you to be never alone.
John: Hmm. What a great reminder from Dr. Ken Wilgus that when we know Jesus Christ, we’re truly never alone.
Jim: Yeah, that is a beautiful thought. Uh, what a comfort it is to think of it in that way, that he is sufficient and he’s covered those sins for us. And our thanks to Ken for visiting our campus and sharing this message with our team here. And I hope you’ve enjoyed it as well. I think it’s a message for everyone.
We’re adding it to our Nurturing the Heart of Your Spouse Collection, which is free. It’s a free audio download, almost six hours of tried and true biblical advice for your marriage. Find it at our website. And when you’re online with us, follow the link to our free marriage assessment. In just 10 minutes, you can take the quiz and learn your strengths and maybe some areas where there’s opportunity for growth. (laughs)
John: (laughs)
Jim: Uh, then you can access articles to address those weaker areas in your relationship. It’s easy, enlightening, and free. And let me encourage you to also consider donating to Focus on the Family. We’re a nonprofit ministry, and we rely on financial support from donors like you. Uh, we can do ministry together every day here at Focus on the Family, so get in touch with us and be a part of the team.
John: Yeah, you can donate at FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast, or when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY, 800-232-6459. When you’re online with us, be sure to get your free access to the collection. It features Dr. Greg Smalley, Shaunti Feldhahn, two great messages from Dan Seaborn and more. And it also has this show from Dr. Ken Wilgus with extra content. And as Jim said, be sure to check out our free marriage assessment as well. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
