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Focus on the Family Broadcast

Understanding Your Spouse’s Emotions (Part 1 of 2)

Understanding Your Spouse’s Emotions (Part 1 of 2)

Drs. David and Jan Stoop discuss the concept of emotional intelligence – the ability to understand your emotions, as well as your spouse's. The Stoops explain how bettering that understanding can help you improve and strengthen your marriage. (Part 1 of 2)
Original Air Date: November 27, 2017

Preview:

David Stoop: … and he said, “Well, I think…” I said. “Oh, tell you what you think. Tell me what you feel.” He couldn’t, he couldn’t say a word. And so I started to, through a list of feelings, “Do you feel this? Do you feel this?” And he could think a minute and say yes and say no. And his wife, all of a sudden stopped crying. She said, “You mean he has emotions?” And he just didn’t have the language for emotions.

End of Preview

John Fuller: Right, well, you’re going to learn how to put language to your emotions on today’s episode of Focus on the Family with the late Dr. David Stoop and his wife, Dr. Jan Stoop. Your host is Focus president and author Jim Daly, and I’m John Fuller.

Jim Daly: Uh, John today, we’re going to be sharing some ideas that may be pretty groundbreaking for many couples. And we’re going to hear about emotional intelligence in marriage. And this term is usually used in the business world, but the couple we’re talking to today has found that these concepts can greatly increase intimacy and improve communication in marriage. Uh, before we recorded this interview, John and I took the SMART love inventory that our guest created, to see how we scored in our own emotional intelligence. The highest score is 120. Uh, John lay it out there. What’d you get.

John: I’ve got room to improve, Jim. (laughs) I think-

Jim: We all do.

John: I think I was like an 86 or something.

Jim: That’s pretty good though. I had a 98, but still under 120. Uh, I wish it were 98 out of a hundred. I’d feel much better-

John: Whoever can score a perfect thing on that. I mean-

Jim: The emotionally intelligent, of course-

John: I guess so.

Jim: Uh, but today we’re going to learn exactly how to understand our emotions better and use them to grow closer to our wives like that, uh, story he just told.

John: Yeah. And that’s something that we’re working on in our own marriage Dena and me. And, uh, as I said, our guests are Dr. Jan Stoop and her husband, uh, the late Dr. David Stoop, Jan is a counselor and David was the founder and director of the Center for Family Therapy. And they wrote a book together called The Emotionally Healthy Marriage: Growing Closer by Understanding Each Other. And, uh, the former title of that book was SMART Love. Uh, you might hear that referenced in the program as we listen along. We do have that book and the SMART Love assessment that Jim and I have taken. Uh, that’s free and online. Uh, just look for that at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. And here’s how we began the interview recorded a number of years ago, on today’s episode of Focus on the Family.

Jim: Hey, David and Jan, welcome to Focus on the Family.

Jan Stoop: Thank you.

David: Our privilege. It’s great-

Jim: I’m looking forward to this, uh, in so many ways. (laughs) How can it help me today be a better person? But I love this concept. Now, first of all, you’ve been married 60 years-

David: That’s right.

Jim: So when you’re talking to 20 something, 30 something married couples, do they just like drop their jaw and say, “You really did that? You married and stayed married for sixty-”

David: You really lived that long?

Jim: Years. (laughs) Even when I do it, we’ve been married 31 years and they’ll go, “Wow, how did you do that?” But 60 years, I’m in awe. And it’s wonderful.

David: Well, it’s interesting. The first 10 years of our marriage, we’ve named it, uh, the great tribulation (laughs). So we, we never read the tribulation books because we had already lived through the great tribulation. We, we got married very young and we didn’t know much about relationships and it was a tough time, but we stayed the course. And I have couples come in, married five years and they’re in difficulty. And I say, “Well, you got maybe five more years to go before you just kind of settle in.” And-

Jim: Five years?

David: Yeah. And th, th, I don’t know that… I mean, divorce wasn’t in our vocabulary. So it was like, we had to-

Jan: That’s one thing, we’ve never, we would never speak the word.

David: Yeah-

Jim: And that’s good.

John: I mean, foundational, a lot of young couples today need to have that same attitude.

David: ‘Cause it takes on a life of its own, if you start talking about it.

John: That’s so very true, let’s discuss emotional intelligence. Some people may not have heard of that term and not read literature about it. What is emotional intelligence? How does it differ from IQ and just, what is it?

David: Well, Daniel Goleman introduced the term in ’95 in a book called Emotional Intelligence. And he, he covered the whole spectrum. He covered family relationships and other relationships in the business world. But the business world and our business world, you kind of just grabbed hold of it and ran with it. So it’s only been applied primarily in the business world and it’s been probably the most important quality that a leader can have. Is to be strong on emotional intelligence in terms of their leadership. So it has its value been proven in the business world.

John: In fact, there was some study that showed the greater your EQ, your emotional quotient, the higher your pay, usually-

Jim: Yeah. 1300, 1300, dollars a year for one point on the, on the-

John: [crosstalk] Fascinating. Um, so that, I mean, there’s an empirical data driven relationship there between income and leadership positions and EQ-

Jim: And, and effectiveness.

John: And that’s, uh, different from what we want to talk about. Because where we’re going and your application of those learnings really applies to marriage and to God’s design of marriage, right?

Jim: That’s right.

David: I got involved in reading everything I could read on it. And every time I’d be reading it, I’d be thinking this applies to marriage, why doesn’t somebody do the, the application? And finally, we said, “Let’s do it.”

Jim: (laughs) Because nobody else did. And I appreciate that. That’s so often, what happens. Uh, but in your own marriage, what were those deficits? You referenced them and kind of made light of them, but for us to better understand how you began to say, “Okay, we aren’t doing things properly.” What were those things you were experiencing that lacked EQ?

Jan: W, well, we both grew up in Christian homes and, um, I mean, we had that great background and my folks were the ones who are on their knees every night. And you would think that we would come into a marriage well prepared. But when I said to Dave after the first few months, uh, “Could we pray together?” And he said, “Oh, oh.” And-

David: I, I was very creative with the reasons not to.

Jim: (laughs) Yeah. Oh.

David: And once our kids came along, I could pray with the family and I could pray with people. I was an associate pastor at the time. I could pray with people in my office, but to pray just with Jan. Oh, that was terrifying.

Jan: I think he was intimidated about, “What do I say? What…”

David: I thought I had to go down deep and reveal the dark side of my personality. If I was going to pray with her, it was my own problem. Nobody’s ever said that.

Jim: Right.

David: And I thought, “I can’t be that open with her because then she’ll reject me.”

John: Yeah.

David: And about 12, 14 years into our marriage, we, I said, I bit the bullet and said, “Okay, let’s pray together.” And we’ve been doing that ever since, every night and-

Jan: Never miss-

David: Got us through some terrible times within our family, with one of our kids. And got us through times where the difficulty within the marriage, it’s just been a stabilizing point.

Jim: But it was a flash point until you said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

Jan: Uh huh. And often part of what we like to teach in the seminar, is how to get that going, to really understand that it’s not as easy for some. Others are, are very fluent in it because they came from it. Uh, but to really have a starting point. So we, we talked to them about how to start praying, uh, silently holding hands. We just we’d go through the whole thing to… and it’s usually the men who are holding back, but that’s, that’s not always true.

Jim: And you think it’s that intimidation. Huh?

David: I think so because, uh, women pray with each other at women’s Bible studies, men don’t pray too often at the men’s Bible studies. It’s comfortably-

Jim: Don’t tell the women that. (laughs)

David: (laughs) But it, it’s a comfort, but I’ve had men complain on the radio calls that we do, uh, saying, “My wife won’t pray out loud with me.” And he wants to do it. So there are exceptions, but, but you know, one of the things that we comment on in the book is our Basic Emotional Posture, or we call it the BEP. And that was what that’s, what was the problem in the beginning of our marriage, we didn’t understand our emotions. We didn’t understand, uh, my instant reaction to any kind of criticism or a conflict was to get angry. Because that was my basic emotional posture, it was anger. That’s what I’d learned from my father, and his anger and his outbursts. And I didn’t want to do it, but it was almost automatic, you know. And Jan’s was fear and they complement, the ang… If I got angry, she got afraid. She had rheumatic fever when she was a kid and stayed out of school for a year. Uh, her house was totally destroyed in an explosion one time when she was about nine. So those kinds of feed into a fear posture. And so I would get angry, she’d get afraid and back off, or she’d leave. She would often leave.

Jan: I’d actually walk out.

David: And, and go for a walk and, I mean, it’d be nighttime. And I’d be worried about her, you know and have to find her.

Jim: And that’s part of it, the SMART concept, that acronym. And we want to dive into that but give us a quick overview of SMART. And then we’ll start to dive a little deeper in each of those.

David: Well, the SMART is an acronym for, uh, five facets of what emotional intelligence in a marriage would look like. One, the S is, uh, self-aware of what I feel, and, and maybe, I start to become aware of it after I feel it. And after we’ve had the argument, “I was angry, I’m sorry.” Then I want to grow to the place where I can become aware of what I’m feeling at the time, so I can manage it in that. And the M stands for managing my emotions. Uh, the biblical concept from Timothy, there was self-control, one of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control. And so how do I do self-control? Well, I manage what I feel, especially the four negative emotions of anger, fear, shame, and sadness. And, uh, then the, A, we added the A. And we felt [crosstalk] yeah, the publisher, the publisher didn’t want to do SMRT.

Jim: Yeah, smert.

David: My son said, “Well, that’s kind of the way that people do things now.”

Jim: I’m pretty smert (laughs).

David: But they, uh, when Goleman first introduced it, he had five facets and, and motivation was the one that was eliminated eventually. So, so we added accountability, being accountable to myself. Uh, being accountable to my spouse and being accountable to other couples and how important that is. Uh, and then the R is reading my spouse’s emotions, which is a way of saying I have empathy. And I can read her emotions because I have developed my own self-awareness in managing my own emotions. And I’m comfortable now with my own feelings. And so I can be comfortable in reading and interpreting her feelings.

Jim: This might be one of the key areas, reading your spouse’s emotional feeling.

David: Oh, that, that makes all the difference.

Jim: It does make all the difference. It’s probably one of the most difficult of what you’ve mentioned so far to actually accomplish.

David: But [crosstalk] if, if I work on the S the S and the M and those facets, then I’m equipping myself to develop the skill at the empathy level.

Jim: Right. And we’re going to get into each of these more in just a minute, but let’s get T we got SMART.

David: T is together in the land of emotion. We talk, I talk about the land of emotions, uh, in the beginning of the book. And so T that means that we’re together. We’re comfortable to in with our emotional world now.

Jim: Boy, that’s a big one too.

David: Equally. And it’s a big one too.

Jim: And being comfortable-

David: Those are consequences. The R and the T are consequences of my developing the S and the M, and the A.

Jim: Let’s go back before we get into the SMART acronym, more deeply, the negative emotions you touched on anger, fear, sadness, shame.

David: Well, they, the… all of the emotional theorists agree that there are six basic emotions.

Jim: Yeah.

David: Uh, anger, fear are common. And then sometimes they use disgust, but disgust doesn’t fit what I’m doing. So I went with the others who use shame and sadness, and then there’s joy and there’s surprise. And joy and surprise-

Jan: So we concentrate on the first four, because that’s, that’s the issue. That’s where the problems come.

David: Yeah.

Jan: Yeah.

David: You don’t get in trouble with, because you’re too joyful. Or-

John: Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes I’ve surprised my wife and she’s didn’t really like it a whole lot. (laughs)

David: (laughs) Maybe it was the motivation behind the surprise.

Jim: That could be it.

John: Yeah.

Jim: Now, you’re finding and have found over the years that you’ve done this, that men are typically going to struggle a bit more with the concepts, more so than women. Why is that?

David: Well, it’s not that men don’t have emotions, although their wives are convinced they don’t have any emotions. You know, I had a couple in my office where she was extremely angry. I always said that the doorframe around my… the door in my office charged when she walked through it-

John: Oh my.

David: In the heat of her anger, you know. And then she sat there with her arms folded and just stared at me. And I said, “You’re, you’re very angry. Aren’t you?” And she says, “How astute.” (laughs) But I, he, she was talking, and she started crying, really crying heavily. And I turned to him, I said, “What are you feeling right now? As you watch your wife feel so pained.” And he said, “Well, I think…” I said, “Don’t tell me what you think. Tell me what you feel.” He couldn’t, he couldn’t say a word. And so I started to, through a list of feelings, “Do you feel this? Do you feel this?” And he could think a minute and say yes, and say no. And his wife, all of a sudden stopped crying. She said, “You mean he has emotions?” And he just didn’t have the language for emotions, but he, he could help. So we have a, we have a chart in the book of the four negative emotions, and I think there’s nine sub feelings that go under it-

Jim: Descriptions.

David: Descriptions of, of that emotion, how we might characterize it. And I suggest that you take it, and laminate it and carry it with you if you’re a man.

Jim: Well, that’s a great idea. And I was even thinking about that. I think we do not connect these dots very well as men. We will say we feel angry, but then what does that really mean? And in fact-

David: That’s the only emotion we are aware of.

Jim: Yeah. And let me just read some of those descriptors, because even as I was prepping for the show-

Jan: Well that, that’s important.

Jim: It helped, it helped me go, “Oh, that’s the label.” But under anger, it’s furious, enraged, irate, seething, upset, frustrated, annoyed, irritated, touchy. I mean, that, that gives some substance to that-

Jan: All under anger.

Jim: Yeah. And I found that to be really helpful because I… it’s, multi-dimensional-

David: Chart and say, “Well, this what I’m feeling.” That goes under the rubric of fear, or shame, or what or sadness, you know, unworthy is the sadness.

Jim: So I think women are far more adept at connecting to those descriptors than we are. It’s innate for them. They know how to do it-

David: But they don’t… They don’t know how to do it with their husband.

Jim: Yeah and so-

Jan: Well, yeah. Oftentimes, they feel like, “We’ll just make things worse. If we, if we talk about our emotion, what we’re feeling.” And it goes by, then the time goes by and they don’t really get to share with him because they, they’re afraid. And many women have deep emotions. Of course they do.

David: And they share them with them with their lady friends.

Jan: They might share them with her or my prayer partner-

Jim: ‘Cause they understand them.

David: They understand them, yeah.

Jim: My husband doesn’t understand me, which is pretty true-

David: She withdraws. And the, and there is a way to express it and to get him to understand the language is a big help.

John: Well today on Focus on the Family. We’re talking with Dr. David Stoop and his wife, Dr. Jan Stoop. And, uh, the concepts that we’re discussing are in their book, The Emotionally Healthy Marriage: Growing Closer by Understanding Each Other. And, uh, we do have that book and the link to the Stoops’ emotional intelligence assessment. You’ll find those and other resources at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. And now let’s return to the second half of our conversation with David and Jan.

Jim: Let me ask you a more fundamental question. Why is it so scary or intimidating for us in our marriages to be vulnerable that way? You would think that, particularly with Christian marriages, that we would want to understand each other as best as we could. To learn about each other, to have a SMART love, but even in Christian marriages, we pull back, we hide, we don’t, uh, let the other person in, the spouse that we know and love so much.

David: Well, we can do it before we’re married to some degree.

Jim: Right. And it’s attractive.

Jan: Yeah.

David: Yeah. And then all of a sudden, the person who we were going to marry disappears, and the real person comes at the wedding, and now it all changes. It changed for us. Then as soon as the ceremony was over, it was like, I was a different person.

Jim: In what way? Just give us some descriptors.

David: I, I became more controlling and less understanding. ‘Cause I was, you know, I, I say I was young. I was immature. I didn’t understand. I think it has a lot to do with maturity, but it has to do with self-acceptance. Because there’s a sense in which my feelings are the closest part of me to my soul. And that’s the most vulnerable place that I have, is when I get emotional. So a guy will cry at a movie, but he’s got to be sure and clear up his eyes before the lights come back on.

Jim: (laughs) That’s for sure.

David: And it’s okay. He might allow himself to do that. But if, to talk about it with his wife afterwards, that’s weak. And we, we often define that as weak too, which makes it difficult.

Jim: Yeah. Jan, how about for you as the wife and you, I don’t know if you saw that right away, that change at the altar, so to speak. You move from SMART love to stupid love. And thankfully you got back to SMART love.

Jan: To me, it felt like, “Oh, I’ve got you now.”

Jim: Yeah, “I’ve got you now. So we’re done. Now, this is the real me.”

Jan: And so we’re, we’re, we’re in the real world now. But, um, but a lot of it was triggered by my changes too. After the marriage, I felt trapped. I felt like I was going to be, um, just overshadowed or I, it wasn’t important for me to get my degrees or all those things came about within the fact that-

David: I didn’t know you felt that.

Jim: Here we go, right here. Breaking news, will they make it to 61? (laughs)

Jan: Right. But I think that, um, it took a lot of years for me to feel comfortable. Like I was, um, my decisions were important and all those things that a woman wants, they were sort of shadowed. Because we were… but a lot of it was because we were, we were not on the same page a lot of the time. And both of us were working, we were busy. And then, uh, we had children really quick. And so I think that both of us had a, a big part in what we did those first 10 years.

David: It does. It’s an interplay between the wife’s fears and the husband’s fears. And we don’t know what to do with our fears at that stage. And so we, we give in to them and that just perpetuates the cycle.

Jim: When so many, again, you’ve been married 60 years, so many couples experience, 20, 30 years of hiding. And maybe they continued to just be there. And eventually one of them dies-

David: That’s a lonely feeling.

Jim: And that’s a lonely feeling. And this is the point. So many, particularly women feel lonely in their marriages.

David: That’s why the seven-year itch. The old seven-year itch has become the 37-year itch, because a lot of divorces are taking place in the late thirties. And they’re initiated by the wife.

Jim: Right.

David: Because she’s fed up with the loneliness.

Jim: And the kids are gone, usually it’s an empty nest and that’s what’s happening. Let’s dive into SMART again. And let’s go a little deeper with each of the acronyms. That’s the goal. And we’ll get to one or two today and then we’ll have to come back next time and cover the others. But, uh, let’s start with S uh, what does it mean again? And what does that self-awareness uh, how is that defined and why are so many of us just bad at it? (laughs) Is it the fall? Is it sin nature, is… what is it?

David: I think it’s sin.

Jan: I think as women we are, we’re, we are bad at it too. We, you know, I had never, ever thought about what kind of, um, category I was in, as far as my emotions until we started doing something like this. But I had no idea of all the fears that I was working with.

Jim: Women do make him to be bound by fear.

Jan: Yeah. And-

Jim: And it’s a general statement but-

Jan: And so, yeah, so for me, uh, that first part, what is so important under the S, is that we begin to find our basic emotional posture. And that’s so important that you start there because that’s going to overshadow everything else that you, you do with this SMART.

John: It’s that BEP that you mentioned earlier.

Jim: Basic emotional posture. So define that for us.

Jan: And we call it the BEP, B-E-P. (laughs)

Jim: And, and What does it actually mean, what is it to be in your basic posture?

David: That’s my default position. That’s the place that I go to automatically without even thinking.

Jim: What do those attributes look like?

David: Uh,

Jim: Anger?

David: For me, it would be anger. For Jan, it would be fear. I did a workshop last week and my guy came up to me afterwards, said, “When you started talking about that…” He said, “I knew immediately my basic emotional posture was shame.” Because of how he was raised. And then the sadness is the feeling of total unworthiness and the hopelessness-

Jan: So there’s four basic, it’s one, going to be one of those to start with-

Jim: Those emotions.

John: And those are just present. And it takes a little bit of stress maybe, or a circumstance and that-

Jan: And then it comes-

David: It gets, it gets triggered instantly. And it’s probably come from things that people that I’ve experienced it growing up or like events that I experienced growing up. And so there’s an action plan. The first action plan after the SMART-

Jan: Well, under each one of them-

David: Under each of those-

Jan: SMART that we have about five action plans

David: Action plans and the first one that you come to is to define your emotional posture. And it asks you questions to discuss with your spouse about who represented that emotion. And when you were growing up, how was it experienced and things like that to try to get at the root of it. So that you understand where it comes from, but it’s, it’s like a trigger point and boom, I’m there. I’m acting out that-

John: So it’s your buttons, what pushes your buttons. So it’s the buttons anger, or shame-

David: Yeah. It’s the emotion that’s attached to all of my buttons.

Jim: Right.

Jan: And then once you decide or not decide, because you don’t have to decide, but, but you realize that you are probably in that category, then I can see all the places that I use that. One of the things, the fears I got out of my childhood was I was not going to have enough, I wasn’t going to have the right things and all those things because of our losing everything as a child. And, um, I realized that I treat him like that. If I see him, uh, carrying something out of the house and I say, “Are you-”

David: Towards a trash can.

Jan: “Are you gonna put that in the trash?” And I think, “Oh, okay. All right. But I wanted to have some choice in that.” And so I can just feel even subtly the triggers of fear on things like that, even.

Jim: Yeah. You know, one of the difficulties, again, as Christians, I think we can, um, kind of play this down as just a bunch of psychology. But the Lord does encourage us to know our hearts as best we can. To know more accurately who we are, because that grounded-ness allows you to say, “Oh, I’m outside of his will. I’m sinning.” You have to have an awareness that you’re in the right spot, or you’re not in the right spot. And that’s really what we’re driving at overall. Right?

David: Paul says be angry, but don’t sin. So there’s a way to be angry that’s healthy. And there’s a way to be angry that’s sinful. And I think that would be true for any of the negative. And there’s a way to be fearful that that’s-

Jan: That’s appropriate.

David: Reasonable, it’s appropriate. There’s ways that not to. But that’d be the, the basic, the reason we want to identify that, that becomes the first emotion that we’re going to, we’re going to learn to manage. Because that’s the one that gets us in trouble in our marriage. And that’s the one that we’ve got to get a handle on and kind of release our buttons so that they’re not so easily triggered.

Jim: We’re going to come back next time and talk more about this. But, uh, you used an analogy in your book that puts a smile on my face right now. It’s the Eskimo culture and how young people enter into adulthood.

David: Yes.

Jim: Uh, it’s kind of unique. What was it?

David: Well, they had to touch a bear-

Jim: Not just a bear-

David: A polar bear. They had to touch a polar bear. And, and basically what they had to do was face the biggest fear that they would ever live with. And-

Jim: Hmm.

David: To successfully do that, launched you into adulthood. And to not successfully do it kept you from it that it’s like the old Testament blessing.

Jim: Yes.

David: Where the father would launch the, him into adulthood by blessing him.

Jim: Hmm. David, in that context, just for some of us who may not see it clearly, what does that do for me? What’s the emotion that it’s, uh, pulling out that’s positive? To go up and touch your biggest fear.

David: Well, if I can touch my, the thing I’m most afraid of then there’s nothing I need to be afraid of anymore.

Jim: Hmm.

David: And so I see myself as being competent-

Jim: So confidence, courage-

David: Courage-

Jim: All the brighter sides of emotion.

David: Yeah and fear grows when we don’t face it. And so we become more afraid if we don’t deal with the fear that we have. And, and I have a book called There’s a Nightmare in My Closet, where the little boy finally faces this fear that there is a nightmare in the closet, and he turns the light back on after going to bed. And sure enough, there’s this big monster at the bottom of his bed. And he shoots it and the monster starts crying. And then he tries to get him to stop crying. And finally, he puts him into bed with him and he says, “I’m sure there’s another monster in my closet, but there’s only room in my bed for one.” And it’s a book on fear and I have adults read it right in my office. It’s a children’s book, because if you face what you’re afraid of, it becomes a crying little baby, rather than a scary monster. And so in a sense, I have mastery over the polar bear because I could reach up and touch it and survived it.

John: And we’re going to press pause right there in our conversation with the late Dr. David Stoop and his wife, Dr. Jan Stoop. And we’ll be back next time to share at the conclusion of the conversation.

Jim: John, it’s true that treading into the territory of emotions can be really scary, especially for us guys. And I remember a time in our marriage when Jean said, “I love you. I just don’t like you right now.” And her saying that really brought so many emotions up in me. And I didn’t know, really what to do with those feelings. But as David and Jan have reminded us today, processing and sharing what we’re feeling, even when we’re hurt or angry is a fast track to greater intimacy in our marriages. It’s just like the Lord to set it up that way. When that vulnerability is there, then he moves through us. If you’re ready to work on your emotional intelligence in your marriage, the perfect place to start is the Stoops’ book, The Emotionally Healthy Marriage: Growing Closer by Understanding Each Other. It dives deeper into each part of the SMART acronym and also includes a detailed assessment for you and your spouse to do. And if you’d be willing to join our team of monthly sustainers and give to Focus on the Family each month, I’ll send you a copy of The Emotionally Healthy Marriage to say, thank you for joining us. Or if monthly support isn’t in the budget, I get that, a one-time gift is certainly helpful to the ministry.

John: And the number to donate and get that book is 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY or stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. And on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I’m John Fuller inviting you back next time as we hear more from Dr. David and Dr. Jan Stoop, to help you and your family thrive in Christ.

 

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Building Strong Father-Son Relationships

This father and son team describe the problem of disengaged dads — men who may be present physically but not emotionally with their families. The Beckers encourage dads and sons to be “tender lions” who will confront societal ills and yet remain tender and compassionate in their relationships.

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Creating a Shared Vision for Your Marriage (Part 2 of 2)

Pastor Sean and Lanette Reed describe their marital journey and God’s faithfulness. Although many wondered if their relationship would survive, the Reeds were proactive about creating a long-term plan and a godly legacy for future generations of their family. (Part 1 of 2)

Focus on the Family Broadcast logo

Creating a Shared Vision for Your Marriage (Part 1 of 2)

Pastor Sean and Lanette Reed describe their marital journey and God’s faithfulness. Although many wondered if their relationship would survive, the Reeds were proactive about creating a long-term plan and a godly legacy for future generations of their family. (Part 1 of 2)

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A Legacy of Music and Trusting the Lord

Larnelle Harris shares stories about how God redeemed the dysfunctional past of his parents, the many African-American teachers who sacrificed their time and energy to give young men like himself a better future, and how his faithfulness to godly principles gave him greater opportunities and career success than anything else.

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Accepting Your Imperfect Life

Amy Carroll shares how her perfectionism led to her being discontent in her marriage for over a decade, how she learned to find value in who Christ is, not in what she does, and practical ways everyone can accept the messiness of marriage and of life.

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Affair-Proof Your Marriage (Part 1 of 2)

Pastor Dave Carder offers couples practical advice for protecting their marriages from adultery in a discussion based on his book Anatomy of an Affair: How Affairs, Attractions, and Addictions Develop, and How to Guard Your Marriage Against Them. (Part 1 of 2)