Pulling Weeds
Have you taken time to pull weeds lately? In your marriage? You know, taking the time to talk about and process the little nagging issues that are creating tension and disconnection in your marriage? The ones that if they aren’t dealt with will build up, like a volcano, threatening to erupt and wreak havoc on the entire household? We’ve all experienced those issues, and it’s typically super uncomfortable to confront, so we tend to avoid them. Not our loved ones silly, but the issues! Instead, we dance around the issues, learning to function with them and allowing them to create a permanent residence in our living room and slowly deteriorating the safety and connection in our relationship. I experienced it in my first marriage and I’ve seen it happen to many of my friends which in many cases, resulted in divorce.
Pulling weeds is essential to a healthy, long-lasting and fulfilling marriage. So much so, Michael and I have committed to being intentional about regularly taking care of family business and want to share a bit of our journey and what we have learned in the process that is helping us to better articulate our hearts towards one another to resolve conflict more quickly. Hopefully, some of this advice can help you prevent volcanic explosions, emotional meltdowns, and mud-slinging in your marriage. So keep reading!
True story … not too long ago, our family was playing the game Solar Quest. It’s a vintage boardgame from 1986 that’s very similar to an outer space version of Monopoly. Now I played this game many times as a teenager and more recently with our youngest son, Josh, but Michael had only played it once before a few years earlier. So as Michael was relearning the rules of the game, Josh and I extended grace to Michael and let some of the rules slide with the belief, “that’s what he meant to do”. Although Michael can be highly competitive in several areas of life, his primary interest in playing board games is being relational with the other players. He doesn’t focus too much on the details of the rules and prefers to focus on the conversation. After about half an hour of playing the game, when Josh and I thought that Michael had grasped the concept and rules, we began to enforce the rules more strictly. Surprisingly, Michael uncharacteristically got emotionally triggered, and decided to no longer play the game and leave the room for some alone time.
Later when Michael and I talked about what happened and took the time to peel back some of the layers of the onion, we realized we had failed to process some of the daily, small resentments and hurts that had begun to build up in the past week or so. Of course, we had to dig through some emotional dirt to arrive at this conclusion, but what helped us get there quicker was the initial first step of Michael choosing into humility and owning him, his actions, and his attitude. And what followed was some invaluable feedback from me. As Michael says, “When you make a big mistake, you get feedback, but it rarely comes in one package. It usually ends up in a feedback train.” And honestly, feedback trains aren’t usually emotionally neat and tidy. There’s usually a healthy dose of blame, along with some daggers of pain, and finally, some jabbing away at the person receiving it. It’s not an enjoyable process, but feedback is necessary for the emotional health of the relationship. By taking ownership of you, it allows for open, vulnerable communication that allows for mutual understanding and gives everyone involved an opportunity to mature and grow.
If you are finding yourself with a huge pile of undealt-with emotional crap residing in your living room that you’ve tried to cover with a designer rug, it’s time to take an honest look at it. A good place to start is by asking yourself, “Why am I holding back from bringing up the hot topics that create tension between me and my spouse?” Is the reason because you want to keep the peace? Not trigger the other person? Not deal with the emotional fallout? The reality, is that in many marriages, the dividing differences, built-up resentments, and frustrating misunderstandings rarely get processed and become detrimental to the relationship. It’s like ignoring the increasing pain in your mouth and refusing to go to the dentist’s office. What could have been a simple filling for a cavity, turns into a root canal because you were too afraid to address the situation in the early stages. But the good news is, the solution is simple. I said simple, not easy, because it requires great humility, a desire to seek understanding, and incredible intentionality.
To begin, you could ask your spouse a simple question such as one of these:
“Hey, are there any little issues you would like to discuss?”
“Are there any unresolved conversations from this past week that you would like to revisit?”
“I’m sensing some tension between us, is there anything you would like to talk about?”
If you ask one of these questions when you feel grounded and centered, and the likelihood that your spouse isn’t hungry, angry, frustrated, or tired, it can prove to be a powerful approach that gives your spouse the permission to freely communicate what has been on their heart. And it allows you to process relational conflict when either of you aren’t as likely to be emotionally triggered, increasing your chances of healthy conflict resolution.
Michael and I are anything but perfect. Our first marriages, both suffered from a backlog of unresolved issues. But one of the most important lessons we learned from those relationships and in this marriage, is the value of regularly doing emotional maintenance by talking about the issues, tension, and conflict on a periodic basis and in more real time.
In our coaching experience with clients, we learned that nearly every relationship has hot topics, and both individuals can easily name what those are for them. Our advice is to ease in slowly, addressing one topic at a time, practicing healthy conflict resolution skills. No one wants a dump truck of emotional garbage unloaded on them. We also recommend to seek understanding more than defending yourself, fight for connection over correction, and fully owning you, your choices, actions and behaviors to the best of your ability. Of course, a good bit of humility, apologizing, and extending forgiveness and grace is always a good idea as well.
Today is a great time to start boldly and respectfully expressing the concerns of your heart, taking into account the needs of your spouse in the process. It truly is an act of self-love, and by extension, love for your spouse. Besides, pulling weeds is a necessity for the garden of your marriage to flourish. We want to encourage you to take care of your family business in a healthy way so that you can enjoy a thriving marriage!