Understanding Your Spouse’s Needs: Communication

I remember reading about a study that was done on the ways little boys and girls played. The differences became very clear as the researchers observed these children, especially in the way the kids used words.

Little girls talked when they played. They made their dolls talk. They made their animals talk. Everyone talked to each other.

But little boys? They just made noises. Car noises. Boat noises. Lightsaber noises. Grunts and explosions and war noises.

There’s a difference in the way men and women communicate, and that difference exists from the time we are children. Women have a profoundly important need for open, honest, detailed communication—especially when it comes to our emotions.

This makes men uncomfortable, because we don’t want to talk about our feelings. We’d much rather be making lightsaber noises.

When Karen and I were dating, she would always be asking me things. She wanted emotional information from me, but I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t just leave me alone. I thought she was being nosy, so I refused to give her anything.

What did you do today? Nothing. Who did you see? No one. She would get so frustrated with me.

When our marriage began to turn around, I started to become more sensitive to her. One night, after we put the kids to bed, I gave in. I told her we could talk as long as she wanted about anything she wanted to talk about. When we started, I was feeling like the greatest husband who had ever lived.

It’s a long story, but what happened during that discussion helped me in a profound way. With her guidance, I had the opportunity to think emotionally about something in my past that I had completely shut out—out of my thoughts, out of my emotions, out of my life. It was something I had needed to deal with a long time.

When I began to open up to her, I discovered that communicating about this past event was as beneficial for me as it was for her.

We began to talk like this more frequently, and every time we did, it was like Karen reached into my heart, grabbed some loose wires and re-wired me the right way. With God working through her, she helped heal a lot of the things in my past that I had refused to deal with because I hated talking about my feelings.

Sex and intimacy are important to a marriage, but so are words. For men, communication may feel like a major sacrifice or inconvenience. But remember that Proverbs 18:21 says “The tongue has the power of life and death.” Open, honest communication brings life to your marriage.

Men, when your wives want to talk, you need to be willing to sit down and share with her the details of your life. Women, don’t let us get away with grunts and car noises. Keep working on us.

As husbands, we need to know that communication is a special kind of nourishment for our wives. But we also need to know that, when we finally do open up, it will not only meet a deep need in her. It might just fix us, too.