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Intimate Covenant Podcast
Intimate Covenant Podcast
Difficult Conversations [174]
Difficult conversations are at the heart of successful marriages, yet many struggle with vulnerability and emotional expression. We explore practical ways to share feelings authentically and address how to reveal past mistakes you've been hiding.
- Sharing your feelings can be a difficult conversation for some. This is a skill which may require intentional practice.
- Vulnerability is the heart of intimate relationships. Revealing the fullness of yourself is the only way to be loved for who you really are.
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Cherishing,
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Intimate Covenant | Matt & Jenn Schmidt
Hey, jen wanna talk about difficult conversations. Every conversation with you behind the microphone is difficult, Great today on the podcast, we're talking about having challenging conversations, like sharing difficult feelings or sharing a past you're not proud of. Is there a way to make this easier? Let's do it. Welcome, friends.
Speaker 2:Welcome.
Speaker 1:We're Matt and Jen, and this is the Intimate Covenant Podcast, where we believe the Bible and great marriage. Sex both belong on the kitchen table. That's right. We are talking about godly marriage. We're talking about hot sex and we are talking about emotionally fulfilling oneness in your marriage. We're so grateful you're with us. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2:That's right, and if you would like to learn more about us, you can do so by going to our website, intimatecovenantcom, and we would always love to hear from you. You can send us an email at podcast at IntimateCovenantcom.
Speaker 1:And, like many episodes, we're going to draw from our email list with a couple of questions that have been sent in to us. You know, learning to have difficult conversations is at the heart of successfully navigating marriage, and today we're responding to two related listener questions. The first one is would love any suggestions on how to make sharing feelings less intimidating.
Speaker 2:As a very non-confrontational introvert, that's a good one, and the second one that we're going to combine together in this episode is this If you haven't been completely vulnerable with your spouse before and you may have some quote skeletons, how do you initiate that conversation with them?
Speaker 1:Tough questions about difficult conversations and we're going to try to grab some maybe general principles to help you frame some difficult conversations for your marriage and hopefully help you navigate those successfully.
Speaker 2:But before we do that. We have to remind you that our annual marriage retreat is happening again this year and retreat registration is open now.
Speaker 1:Open now. The retreat, of course, happens in the middle of September this year, september 18th through the 20th at the beautiful Houston City Place Marriott. That is right outside the Woodlands, texas in North Houston, if you're not familiar, that's right. That 18th to the 20th is a Thursday evening through Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 2:It is, and if you're wondering what does that look like? How does that break down? Thursday through Saturday? You can go to our website and see a sample itinerary, just to give you a little bit of a clue. We don't proclaim to say that's exactly the itinerary, but it gives you a clue what it looks like. So go to intimatecovenantcom. Slash retreat Scroll down to about halfway down the page-ish and you'll find a link that you can click on to see a sample itinerary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, See what we do, see what's happening there, see why it is such an amazing weekend for us and for all the couples that join us. Also, if you go to that website, intimatecovenantcom slash retreat, you'll find that our theme for this year, which we are very excited about, is titled One period One period.
Speaker 1:One One, as in becoming one emotionally, spiritually and physically. That is really at the heart of what we have tried to do with Intimate Covenant, and so we kind of wanted to go back to some of our foundational materials, some of our foundational principles and ideas that we have really tried to introduce and frame for married couples to guide them into their marriage journey and relationship, really just looking to guide couples towards oneness. To see that as a goal and a priority for marriage is to seek that oneness that we're all made for.
Speaker 2:And we always start the retreat on Thursday night with some form of fun, entertainment, relaxation, just to kind of get us all there and enjoying the process and everything together. And we are going to be we're in the middle of planning that we're going to tie up some a little bit of loose ends and get a little bit more details for you guys. But we will be making an announcement soon regarding a very special guest entertainer.
Speaker 1:Yes, we're going to build a little bit of suspense while we tie up some of those loose ends, but you're going to be thrilled with this announcement. We are super excited about this one, so we'll build the suspense now.
Speaker 2:There you go, you have to come back for the next podcast.
Speaker 1:Yes, We'll make that announcement shortly, but we can't wait to announce that and let you all in on the big secret.
Speaker 2:And I feel like Matt. Before we go on to the rest of the episode, we need to pause and say hi.
Speaker 1:Welcome, yes.
Speaker 2:To new listeners. We've had kind of an uptick here in some of our numbers. I got to be a guest on the Christian.
Speaker 1:Sex Chat for Christian Wives.
Speaker 2:Thank you, my words were not coming out with the order of that name. Sex Chat for Christian Wives. I was a guest on their podcast and so I think we maybe gained some new listeners from that and some other things going on, and so we just want to say welcome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thanks for being here. If you're new here, we would like to just pause for a second and just explain a little bit about our podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's appropriate. We probably should do this more frequently anyway because, who knows, most of you probably haven't gone back to listen through all 170, some odd episodes.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of episodes.
Speaker 1:So we do want to maybe just reintroduce ourselves, reintroduce our goals for this podcast and I think to just kind of boil it down simply, our hope here is that we have created a safe space for conversations among Christians about difficult topics, specifically with respect to sexual topics.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Most of us did not grow up with resources to be able to answer all of our questions about sex.
Speaker 2:Most of us right. We didn't necessarily know that there was even the option to ask questions about sex. Some of us didn't even know that sex was something we should be asking questions about, yes, right, especially my own sexuality, let alone. What does that look like in my marriage and how do I talk about it when things aren't all perfect? Or just how do I think about sex as a whole?
Speaker 1:Exactly so. We want you first to know that you're not alone if you have questions about your sexuality and especially about the sexual relationship in marriage, and we want you to know you're not alone if you're having conflicts about sex in your marriage. Those are normal processes and our hope is to be able to give you some resources and create a framework for you to be able to talk about these conflicts in a more productive way in your marriage relationship.
Speaker 2:Right. We've said all along that our goal with this podcast is that we can help provide the framework to start the conversations in your marriage. These are conversations for you to have. The beauty of the podcast is you're not sitting here looking in my eyes I'm not looking into your eyes. So this is a place, a private place, in which we can discuss some of these more delicate topics, if you will. I mean, I know it's shocking to hear this, but Matt and I actually do talk about things other than sex. This is not the only thing.
Speaker 2:If only and if you were to join us at live events, you know that those events are not just like a live podcast, right, well, right.
Speaker 1:But I think that the reason we do the podcast and the reason that we focus on sexual topics here is because, number one, this is a great venue to be able to do that and talk about sensitive things without having to look in people's eyes, without having to look in people's eyes. But also, there is a lot about the sexual relationship that is a reflection of your entire relationship Absolutely. And so we want to look through the lens of the sexual relationship at your entire marriage. Right, look at the wholeness of your oneness. Because, again, so, just because we start with sexual topics, or maybe just because we're addressing specific questions about sex, doesn't mean that we want to neglect the entirety of your relationship.
Speaker 1:And we don't want you to neglect the entirety of your relationship, because spiritual intimacy and emotional intimacy are, in fact, required for great sexual intimacy. You must have all of those elements in order to have great sex. So, similarly, your spiritual intimacy and, similarly, your emotional intimacy are also never going to be as fulfilling as they could be if your sexual connection is neglected. All of those elements must be working together in relationship, and so, again, just because we're starting from sex doesn't mean that's what it's all about or that that's even the most important part of your relationship. It all is important. It all must be part of who you are and what you are building.
Speaker 2:Right, I think if you're listening for very long at all, we hope what you walk away from this podcast knowing and hearing us say over and over and over, is that sex is about connection. What we're also saying is that your marriage is about the goal of connection, the goal of oneness as the Bible puts forth for us as our goal, and so that's what this podcast is all about. It is about connection, seeking connection, seeking intimacy, seeking oneness in our marriage, sexually and in every other avenue.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you're new here, we would definitely invite you to check out the rest of our episodes, but understandably, not everyone is going to binge listen to 170 plus episodes.
Speaker 2:What? Not everybody has that time.
Speaker 1:I don't. I wouldn't listen to all of them myself, but we do recommend if you're starting out here, if you haven't already listened to episode 43, also episode 1A.
Speaker 2:It did eventually get saved as 1A. Yes.
Speaker 1:So you'll find it in both places if you're looking through the list. But 1A is our story. Yeah, and it is a way to help you get to know us a little bit better. We're Matt and Jen, again by the way you get to know us a little bit better we're Matt and Jen again, by the way. Get to know us a little bit better and to be able to better understand our mission and our purpose and where all this comes from and why we do what we do. We think that'd be insightful for you.
Speaker 2:So again, if you're new, welcome. Thanks for being here, and now let's jump into our episode.
Speaker 2:So, as we were saying, we have two questions that we want to tackle today. Both come from listeners to the podcast. So thank you, listeners, thanks for sending in these questions. Again, if you have questions, you can email them to us at podcast at intimatecovenantcom. But both of these questions are about navigating difficult conversations with spouses. One of them, one of the questions, is from an introvert, about sharing feelings. Matt, you don't know anything about that one right Never heard of it.
Speaker 1:Never heard of it.
Speaker 2:The other is about revealing skeletons that we may not have been fully transparent about in the past.
Speaker 1:These sound like difficult conversations.
Speaker 2:They both are. That's our theme today, so that's where we're going to go. All right, let's start with our introvert emailer. Thank you for emailing us, mr Introvert. Do we know if it's male or female? We don't know we don't I just made assumptions. Sorry about that. Maybe it's Mrs Introvert it says I would love any suggestions on how to make sharing feelings less intimidating. As a very non-confrontational introvert, I love how they explain themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, as you have alluded to, I can definitely relate to being a non-confrontational introvert. That is where I started out in my life. That is where I started out in my life. That is where I started out in our marriage. I'm happy to say that I am still an introvert.
Speaker 2:You are.
Speaker 1:But I am.
Speaker 2:That's shocking to people who hear you on this podcast, but if you know Matt, in social settings he is very much an introvert.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm definitely an introvert in social settings. He is very much an introvert. Yeah, I'm definitely an introvert in social settings. I can turn on this persona that is a little bit more engaging in a public setting, but definitely an introvert yeah but you started there.
Speaker 2:You started our marriage from a place of sharing feelings, even getting to the depth of considering why you feel what you feel, what it is that you're feeling. That was a hard.
Speaker 1:That was a scary place for me because I was definitely non-confrontational. Not only was I an introvert, but I was also an avoider in terms of avoiding any kind of conflict or difficulty. I'm happy to say that I am not that any longer.
Speaker 2:So what's your advice? How did you get where you are now, and what would you say to this emailer? Oh, so you're turning this on me. I'm just yeah, why not? Okay?
Speaker 1:So I think one place to start in this if you are feeling non-confrontational or you're scared about having conversations about your feelings, I guess I would first have you consider and think about what is holding you back. What is it exactly that you are afraid of? If you're scared to share your feelings with a coworker or scared to share your feelings with your boss okay, that's understandable. That is probably not a very safe place to share your feelings with your boss. Okay, that's understandable. That is probably not a very safe place to share your feelings. But consider why you might be afraid of sharing your feelings with your spouse.
Speaker 2:The person that you have covenantally bound yourself to and declared that you would seek oneness with. Why are you holding yourself back from them? Yeah, that's a good place to start.
Speaker 1:I think that's a good place to start, because if that's where you start, you might come to quickly realize that maybe this is not a reasonable fear to have Now. It might be, and if that's the case, then there's probably some other work that needs to be done. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Certainly, it could be that you are married to someone who has let it be known that it's not safe to share your feelings Right right. And if so, then that's another issue, right.
Speaker 1:Well, it's another issue. It's certainly wrapped up in this Well right, not, where you feel unsafe to share your feelings. I think you have to also consider, not only consider what's holding you back, but consider what the alternative is. If the alternative to sharing your feelings means that you will never be known for who you are, and if that's the path that you continue, then you'll never know full oneness, you'll never be able to get beyond just a superficial understanding of one another. And I would just ask you I mean, do you want to be loved for who you really are or do you want to be loved for some other version of yourself?
Speaker 1:Because when you're dating, and especially when you first are married, you're growing together, you're in that honeymoon phase. The reality is, you're not loved for who you are. Your spouse is in love with your PR department, and so the only way to get to know each other and to love each other for who you really are is to actually be sharing who you really are. So that's the reward that is at the end of the risk of sharing who you are Now. Sharing who you really are, sharing your feelings that comes with the risk of being rejected, and so I think that is what introverts are afraid of.
Speaker 2:And I kind of think that that's what's being alluded to here. So, as someone who is very open with sharing my feelings, what I picked up on in this email was that that they equated sharing feelings with confrontation. How do I make sharing feelings feel less intimidating as a very non-confrontational introvert? So, in other words, why is there a connection between sharing feelings and confrontation? And maybe that connection really does exist in their marriage? But is it also possible that because rejection is such a place of fear that that negative motivator is causing them to hold back from sharing feelings because that feels like I potentially could put myself in a place of rejection? That feels a lot like confrontation, right, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:So why the tie? And could you maybe break that tie a little bit? Could, you consider that sharing your feelings doesn't have to be confrontation.
Speaker 1:I think that's an astute observation of the question and the fact that maybe this person is tying confrontation to sharing feelings and maybe that's something that comes from this particular marriage relationship, but my guess is it probably is something that originated far well before they even knew each other that this is something that maybe this person has been either rejected or they have been confronted or are for some reason afraid to share their feelings. Again, that's something that this questioner has to really wrestle with. Where is that fear coming from, and is it a rational fear? Is my spouse someone that I can trust with my feelings?
Speaker 2:Right, and you just said you know they may need to wrestle with this. I think that's really the heart of a lot of this is it may just be and I think this was the place that you started out just a complete unfamiliarity with your own feelings or needs or wants, I mean. And if you're not sure of how you feel or what you might need, how in the world can you possibly share that with someone else? Right? What you might need, how in the world can you possibly share that with someone else? Right? So sometimes it's coming from a place of like. Have you even been willing to really look into your own self, to do the hard work of understanding your own self, to challenge yourself for identifying what is it that I am feeling?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head, at least for me. My fear of sharing feelings was not that I was afraid of something specific. It was really more along the lines of I just was so non-emotionally intelligent I don't know what the right word is there.
Speaker 1:You're a very intelligent man, but I was emotionally unequipped, in that I didn't even know how to describe my feelings.
Speaker 1:And I think a lot of men maybe women too, but at least I can speak, probably for men a lot of us are unequipped to wrestle with our feelings. We really know and are comfortable with just less than a handful of feelings, primarily anger. We understand that really well and we can do that really well, but we are very unfamiliar with the nuance of all the different types of feelings. So that is, and so I mean a conversation has to start with vocabulary, right? If I only know whether I'm happy, sad or angry, I'm not going to be able to have a very in-depth conversation about how I'm feeling Now. A conversation can start from there and then we can work through some of that nuance. But this is something that, for me at least, required quite a bit of practice, something that, for me at least, required quite a bit of practice. So for some of us it's going to require practice and it's going to require a spouse who is willing to be patient enough to help us learn how to express that emotion.
Speaker 2:Well and I can speak to that, I had to learn that the more pressure I put on you to, how are you feeling? Why are you feeling that way? Are you feeling the right thing? No, I don't think you're feeling that. I think you're feeling this. All of that equated into a whole lot of pressure that made it real easy for you to then feel like that was confrontation, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, pressure feels like confrontation. So, as the spouse of someone who's struggling with learning how to share feelings, if I could speak to that spouse I would say be patient, be patient, yeah, be patient, and if this is a scary process to you or this is just something you're unfamiliar with, you also just need to be diligent and constantly ask yourself what is this emotion that I'm feeling? Can I be more specific than happy, angry or sad? And can I learn then how to communicate that with my spouse Right?
Speaker 2:So what are things that you did that helped you get there?
Speaker 1:Well, I think part of it is. You know, I started asking myself those kinds of questions and asking myself that even when I'm telling you, especially when I'm just telling you the details of my day, yeah, so a conversation probably every couple has in the evening or after a long day is how was your day? How was your day and then we talk about, we tell each other the stories about what happened during the day, we tell the facts of the day.
Speaker 1:But you're right, we tell the facts at least, especially I'll speak for myself and probably most men. We tell the facts of the day. But I had to push myself to be a little bit more, go a little bit more in depth, ask myself and then be able to describe to my spouse. How did that make me feel, yeah, can I be more specific?
Speaker 2:And when you started doing that I felt like it opened up a whole world to now. I am learning so much more about you and knowing you. You know I didn't frankly really care about the facts of the day.
Speaker 1:You didn't care how many surgeries I did or how many patients I saw.
Speaker 2:Right about the facts of the day. You didn't care how many surgeries I did or how many patients I saw, right, but I cared about how that made you feel, because that's your heart and that's where I learn who you are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's because sharing with you the facts of the day only helps me share myself so much. But if I can tell you that those events made me stressed or anxious, or they made me feel fulfilled and accomplished, or proud or whatever it was, that is sharing the realness of who we actually are. That's getting below the surface and getting to something much more meaningful.
Speaker 2:Now a tool that we started using in our marriage and then we kind of further developed it into something that you guys can use. Previously we called this the daily check-in. We renamed it a little bit nicer name to covenant conversations. You can hear all about this in episode 154, but this was a tool that really helped us practice this skill. It's a guided conversation, takes less than 20 minutes and it was a way, a structured way, in which we could like apply this every day.
Speaker 1:It's a structured way and it helps you turn this into a ritual, something that you're doing regularly and that you can learn how to value and cherish. But again, the value, I think, is in that it is structured. There is a framework in which to have this conversation, where we go from having conversation and building mental intimacy it builds emotional and spiritual intimacy and even physical intimacy. So it's a great way to help learn this skill. And then one tool that you can wrap into this covenant conversation is something called an emotion wheel. This was not created by us, but we have adapted it for this use. It is a way to look at sometimes for some of us who think about emotion very simply. Look at sometimes, for some of us who think about emotion very simply, in the center of this wheel are the eight basic emotions and then, fanning out from those eight basic emotions, are nuances of those emotions, and it helps you really dig down to something deeper than just sad.
Speaker 2:And I remember when we first discovered this and again, we didn't create it, but it was a big breakthrough for us I remember looking at all those nuanced emotions and I could immediately come up with a time, a place. I could connect that word to an immediate feeling. And I remember being shocked, shocked that you would look at these words and be like, okay, I'm working, let me think about this, you know, and seeing the center of that wheel and the basic emotions and being like that's where you're at, like goodness, I am way out here and you're just in that little center.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there were words on that wheel that I would have never thought to use, about how I felt about something.
Speaker 2:So if you're wondering, wow this emotion wheel sounds like a great tool.
Speaker 1:Well, if you send me an email, I will be happy to send you a copy of the emotion wheel, but if you join Patreon, you will have access to this resource, as well as a number of other resources, for free, forever. You have access to that.
Speaker 2:Patreon is a way for you to financially support us in as little as $5 a month less than a cup of coffee but it's a way that you can help support us and the work that we do here on the podcast, and so in return, we'll give you some resources.
Speaker 1:Yes, so that's one of several that are available there, and we'd be happy to have you join us. Patreoncom slash intimate covenant.
Speaker 2:All right, let's get to our second email and it says if you haven't been completely vulnerable with a spouse before and you may have some quote skeletons how do you initiate that conversation with them? So this is a good one. This is somebody who recognizes there are some difficult conversations ahead, that they seem to need to have.
Speaker 1:And how do you do that? They've been withholding that.
Speaker 2:First of all, good job. Good job for being at a place where you say I want more, I want a deeper connection. I don't want this to be between us. I mean, that's the pursuit of oneness, right? So whoever sent this in to us just know that we're here cheering for you.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Because we're proud of you for asking this question. Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:This is a big step in a lot of relationships and it's a big question, and I would say for us to be able to answer this question completely, it really is highly dependent on your individual situation. It's dependent on the maturity of your marriage. It is dependent on the nature of what you have to confess. Yeah, your marriage it is dependent on the nature of what you have to confess. And I would just caution here, before we get too far into this, that many conversations like this should absolutely be guided by a trained therapist or, at the very least, a very wise and godly mentor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we did an episode about this way back at the beginning. So go all the way back to episode 34 for maybe some more details on how to go about having those really difficult conversations. I do think that this emailer is using the phrase skeletons. That tends to be a phrase that we use when we're talking about sexual pasts, and so it's likely not always, but likely that that's kind of where this is leading, and yet that's a really hard conversation. It can bring up a lot of emotions on both sides. So again, that might be a place where you recognize there needs to be a third party to help navigate some or all of this kind of conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, but I think that's true just generally, that the more we know about each other, the more that we are open and transparent with one another, the more we can become one, and if there are barriers between you, then those barriers need to be removed and that distance needs to be healed. In James 5.16, james is very clear that healing begins with confession, and so confession is essential and really, if you just want to get really down and basic with this, confession just simply means to tell the truth. Yeah, so telling the truth Jesus says the truth will set you free right. Telling the truth is essential in a covenant relationship like this.
Speaker 2:And if you want true intimacy, if you want that level of knowing and being known, you have to reveal yourself. I mean, just like the previous email and questioner, if you're not revealing who you are, if you're not sharing your feelings, if you're not sharing the fullness of who you are, even the parts that you're ashamed of, you're not going to have the level of intimacy that I think God intended, that scriptures proclaim. That is what God intended for our marriages.
Speaker 1:Naked and unashamed. That's how he defines that first ideal marriage relationship. And if there is something that you're not willing to confess, if there is something that you're not willing to confess, then there is something that your spouse cannot know. And you can only be known as much as you're willing to tell the truth about yourself. Your intimacy is only as deep as your honesty.
Speaker 2:That statement kind of hurts a little bit If you're in a place of holding back that your intimacy is only as deep as your honesty.
Speaker 1:And I think the corollary to that is that you can only be loved as much as you are willing to reveal. Your spouse can only love what they know about you.
Speaker 2:Right, and you know, and not that every part of us is lovable, but there is real love that comes from knowing not just the beautiful parts but the real, authentic, sometimes ugly parts as well.
Speaker 1:I would contend that in this life, the greatest gift that you will ever have is to be loved for who you really are. That's true no matter what relationship we're talking about. I mean, it's true. Your kids will love you as a parent in spite of all the times that you mess things up for them. Your friends will often love you in spite of all the flaws that they see in you. But in the most intimate and most, the closest relationship that you have in this life is marriage. It's the only one that's covenantally bound to another person. To be loved by that person, who knows you the most deeply, is the most and the greatest gift that you will have in this life, other than, of course, the blessing of God. But guess what? The blessing that comes from God is to be loved by Him in spite of who we are.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, that's the love that he offers us and that's the love that he calls us to in marriage, because our marriages are a metaphor of his love for us. And so, like you said earlier, it's all about the pursuit of being naked and not ashamed with one another.
Speaker 1:So, in all of our relationships, but in particular in the marriage relationship, god calls us to confession in part, so that we will own it in part, so that we will acknowledge where we have fallen short, that we will acknowledge where it's our fault, where we will acknowledge where we have betrayed our spouse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can be tempted to think that I don't really need to confess, I just need to do better, or I'll have that in my closet, my skeleton. But as long as I don't ever do that again, or as long as I'm a different person than that, that's good enough. But it's ultimately the confession, the owning it, the taking it out, if you will, and looking at it and owning it, that confession is what will strengthen the relationship between two covenantly bound people, if they know how to handle the confession correctly, if they know how to use that confession to deepen that covenant and that connection with one another.
Speaker 1:If both of us are willing to confront that truth, as ugly as it might be, but if we're willing to confront that truth with humility and grace and love from both sides, then that confession becomes a place that you didn't know before.
Speaker 2:Now that's a knowledge that comes with pain, certainly, but it is also knowledge that you didn't have before, and so you have to recognize the beauty even within that. And so how do you get there? How do you share in this kind of way?
Speaker 1:Well, I think for this person who's trying to gather, trying to figure out how to go about and start this conversation, I think something primary that this person needs to understand is you must confess and come clean entirely the first time. If you try to spread this out or if you think, well, my spouse can only handle this much and you don't share the whole story, you are ultimately going to be doing more damage. If you don't tell the whole truth the first time, if you try to reveal this in pieces, it's not going to go well. You're going to actually erode your spouse's trust rather than build it.
Speaker 2:And within coming clean. I think it's also imperative that you take responsibility for your past. So it may be that your spouse didn't know about these skeletons, but I can guarantee that those have caused a barrier in your marriage, and so you have to own that. You have to own that you have kept back a part of yourself from your spouse and, whether or not they knew that beforehand them learning that highlights that barrier within your marriage, and so you have to take your part of the barrier that that has caused in your marital intimacy, and I don't just mean sexually, I mean that's emotionally too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even if this is a sexual sin again, whether that sin happened before you were married or after you were married, even if it's a sexual sin, it's going to impact all of the other ways in which you are intimate. It's going to affect your emotional intimacy. It's going to have placed barriers between you spiritually. So you have to own that, you have to take responsibility for that and you also have to have a plan for making sure that that kind of thing never happens again. That's what you need to bring to your spouse Come clean and take responsibility for not only repenting and confessing of what's gone on in the past, but also repenting and making your life different now, today, and committing to being fully open and honest with your spouse. Now, when you do that, to be clear, when you do that, your spouse is going to be hurt.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Now lots of people want to ask this question how can I tell my spouse something and then not get upset about it?
Speaker 2:How can I control their reaction to what I'm about to say?
Speaker 1:You can't, ain't going to say you can't, ain't gonna happen. No.
Speaker 2:You can't, and so your spouse will be hurt. I mean, in part, that's because you've betrayed your covenant, you have not been fully known, and so it will be hard. But if you want to overcome the guilt and the intimacy issues that come with having a sexual past, you have to eliminate the secrets, and so if your skeleton involves a sexual sin, the only way you're going to overcome that guilt, the only way you're going to overcome the barrier that that is, is by eliminating the secret. So just because it's going to hurt your spouse doesn't mean, therefore, you shouldn't tell them.
Speaker 1:Right Now. The other part of this is you also have to let your speech be seasoned with salt.
Speaker 2:Your speech should be gracious and seasoned with salt, and I think this is a vital, vital part of this conversation. Right, you need to share basic facts. I mean, some things simply would not be loving to share.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if, for example, if we're confessing some sexual betrayal, your spouse needs to know that that happened and your spouse needs to know, probably, who it happened with. They don't need to know the room number of the hotel room that you used, they don't need to know what color the sheets were or whatever else might have happened, but they do need to know the basic facts. Some details are just not going to be loving to share, right Ephesians 4.15, speak the truth in love. So the raw details of past indiscretions, the raw details of these kinds of traumas, are not all loving.
Speaker 2:And that's where, again, a trained professional might be who needs to help guide you through this.
Speaker 1:Yep. Now I would say, if you are the one confessing, you should be willing and be prepared to tell your spouse as much as they want to know. You should be willing and ready to answer any question that they have, because they need to know that you're not keeping secrets.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And you also need to not be keeping secrets.
Speaker 2:Right, if you're the spouse that it's being told, to stop and recognize that certain details of who, what, when, where, how, those all might actually create a foothold for jealousy and anger. They will plant mental images that might haunt your mind and your heart for years to come your mind and your heart for years to come.
Speaker 2:So you need to recognize that you don't actually maybe want to know all of those kind of details and again, that's where we would advise if that's the level of skeletons, then seek the help. To help guide this conversation, yeah.
Speaker 1:A trained mentor or a counselor can help both of you understand what might be helpful to share and what is probably not going to be helpful to share. They can help guide that conversation and help you both understand where those limits need to be, based on your individual circumstances.
Speaker 2:And so then, once those skeletons have been revealed, now you know each other in a way that you didn't know before, and that, then, is a place for you to forgive yourself and for both of you to forgive each other fully. You've got to state it to each other specifically, You've got to find the freedom from that sin and that shame. I mean again, we're imploring you to get rid of the skeletons. It might be painful, it will be painful, but there is so much joy on the other side, and that's what God calls you to.
Speaker 1:Yes, because then you both have an opportunity to rebuild something from the ashes of that confession. You can now build something that is free of barriers, and you can have an opportunity then to build greater trust with one another, greater depth of intimacy, greater depth of knowing each other. You can understand each other better. There is a place, then, to be able to celebrate and to expand this new level of intimacy that you have created by confession.
Speaker 2:And that doesn't happen overnight. We're not trying to make this sound like a completely simple process, but we are calling you to begin. Begin this journey. Get rid of those barriers between you. Be naked and not ashamed, right?
Speaker 1:All right, matt, give us our wrap-up can be a difficult conversation for some, and this is a skill which will require some intentional practice. Vulnerability is the heart of intimate relationships, and revealing the fullness of yourself is the only way to be loved for who you really are.
Speaker 2:Now it's time to grab your spouse and your Bible and head to your kitchen table, have the conversation about difficult conversations. What are you going to do to lean into conversations that make you want to run and hide?
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