Discover the transformative power of deep emotional bonds in our latest video, "How Deep Bonds Transform Marriages: The Power of Emotional Safety." Join Dr. Joe Beam as he explores the profound impact that emotional safety has on sustaining and enriching marital relationships.
Learn why emotional connections are often cited as the most powerful attractors in a relationship, surpassing physical, intellectual, and even spiritual components. This video will provide insights into how couples can cultivate a safe emotional environment that nurtures acceptance and vulnerability, key elements that transform marriages.
Whether you're looking to strengthen your connection or understand the foundational elements of lasting love, this video will guide you through the importance of emotional safety in achieving a deeper, more meaningful relationship with your spouse.
Discover the transformative power of deep emotional bonds in our latest video, "How Deep Bonds Transform Marriages: The Power of Emotional Safety." Join Dr. Joe Beam as he explores the profound impact that emotional safety has on sustaining and enriching marital relationships.
Learn why emotional connections are often cited as the most powerful attractors in a relationship, surpassing physical, intellectual, and even spiritual components. This video will provide insights into how couples can cultivate a safe emotional environment that nurtures acceptance and vulnerability, key elements that transform marriages.
Whether you're looking to strengthen your connection or understand the foundational elements of lasting love, this video will guide you through the importance of emotional safety in achieving a deeper, more meaningful relationship with your spouse.
Welcome to Relationship Radio. Hi, I'm Dr Joe Beam. Sometimes people ask us questions about what is the most powerful attractor of another person. Is it my physical, my intellectual, my emotional, my spiritual? I did actually a survey on that several years ago Actually it was a little bit of a poll, if you will. And as I did that poll, I asked them, for a long-term relationship, which one of these is the most important to you? I also did another poll saying, before you married, which one of these was the most important to you, which was the strongest as to what was happening, and in both polls emotional beat the others by far.
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Now we know if somebody's just looking for a short-term relationship, they tend to concentrate on the physical Is she pretty, is she well-built, is she clean, does she have great perfume on? Look at her hair, etc. Etc. And if she's looking at him, you know, is he as tall as I want him to be, does he have muscles, etc. And if they're just looking for the short term, then they may enjoy each other's company for the evening because they've been in the presence of somebody physically attractive. Or, if their morality allows, they may wind up going home with each other and they enjoy that because they had sex with a person that was very physically attractive. So physical attraction is an important thing. It never goes away. But understand, people looking for long-term relationships aren't looking for that. Oh, they don't want you to be as ugly as a fence post. That's a phrase we used when I was growing up. They don't want you to be like that at all. They want you to take care of your body, to clean your teeth, to comb your hair, all those kinds of things. But the physical becomes less important Intellectual, where you can talk to each other. That's important too if you want to develop a relationship. But if that's all you do, you'll just become friends, having very interesting conversations with each other. And spiritually, if you have similar beliefs and values, it's a whole lot easier to get along then than if they're far apart.
Speaker 1:
As I'm recording this, it's the summer before the election for president in 2024, and I'm watching the country turn against each other, not just because of the fact that they believe different things, but because of the fact that they won't accept people who have different beliefs and values than theirs. Now, understand that when we say accept, we don't mean endorse, we don't mean encourage. But if I meet a person of a different faith. I am a Christian. I have met many Muslims and I give respect to them. I treat them with respect, even though our beliefs and values systems in some ways are extremely different, in some ways are very much alike. If I meet a Jewish person, the same thing, I don't have to endorse their beliefs and values, but I need to give them respect that they have beliefs and values and accept that that is what they believe. Now again, I won't endorse it if I don't agree with it. I won't encourage it if I don't agree with it. And so spiritual attraction is actually pretty important because of the fact that it keeps us being civil with each other, whereas right now, in this great country of ours, as I'm recording this, a lot of people aren't civil to each other anymore and actually turn violent.
Speaker 1:
But notice, I left out one thing, and that was the E, the emotional. Now, that's what we saw on both poles. The thing most important to me in the long term is this emotional connection. The thing that I had with this person that led me to make the decision to marry them was the emotional connection. You say why? Because the emotional connection. You know the basis of it push, pull. I'm not going to do things that evoke negative emotions within you, if I can help it. I'm going to do as many things as I can to evoke positive emotions within you, if I possibly can.
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Now, this gives us the ability to reveal ourselves thoroughly. You say what do you mean? All of us, each of us, wants to be loved as he or she is. I don't want to have to meet your criteria for you to care about me or for you to accept me. Can you accept me just as I am? And I know that just as I am is flawed, I'm screwed up, but I want you to accept me. You don't have to endorse me, you don't have to encourage me, but can you accept that? That's the way I think, that's the way I feel, that's the way I believe, and if you can do that, then I can be more and more vulnerable to you.
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You see, most of us are completely closed off to the rest of the world. We don't want people to know things about us. We don't because of the fact that we fear that they will reject us, whereas if a person demonstrates unbelievable acceptance, then we want to open up. We want to tell our secrets because we want somebody to know who we really are and still care about us. Because if somebody thinks I'm this awesome dude and they like me because of that, I'm going to have something called an imposter syndrome, because I know I'm not an awesome dude and I'll be thinking yeah, I know that you like me, but you like me because you think I meet your criteria. Would you like me, would you love me, would you accept me if you knew that I don't live up to all your expectations? And when you meet a person that that can give you that emotional safety and hopefully that would be your husband or your wife then you want the relationship with them to stand for a long period of time. Now you understand it has to be reciprocal. You have to be doing the same for them.
Speaker 1:
I remember years ago I was being picked up at an airport in Birmingham, alabama, and driven to Tuscaloosa, alabama, where I was going to be speaking to, I think, a couple of thousand teenagers, if I remember correctly, and the minister from that church in Tuscaloosa that picked me up. I had not known him before yet. We had not met before then. His name is Buddy and as Buddy was driving me to Tuscaloosa, I had the strongest sense of here's a person that's unbelievably accepting, that I can tell him things about me and that he'll accept me anyway. I could just read that in his character, and you probably have run into people just like that as well, and so before we got to Tuscaloosa, I poured out my heart to him, I told him all kinds of things and he accepted me anyway, and from that day we became very, very close friends.
Speaker 1:
Now I was willing to reciprocate. It's just he was such a nice guy he didn't have much to tell me, but it's a matter of that allows me to be vulnerable. Now think about how that would work with a husband and a wife. If I cannot be vulnerable to you about what I think, what I feel, what I believe, if I feel I have to meet certain criteria for you to accept me, to have me around, to treat me well, it doesn't mean my desire to open up has disappeared. It's still there. It's just not one I can do with you, because I know that you're going to judge me, you're going to treat me badly, but if I tell you the truth about those things, rather than being accepted, I'm going to be rejected, and personal rejection is the biggest push there is out there. Personal rejection is the biggest push there is out there, whereas acceptance personal acceptance is the biggest pull there is out there, whereas acceptance personal acceptance is the biggest pull there is out there. And so you can love each other, accept each other, have this amazingly deep relationship without ever having to totally agree with each other, because, guess what? You never will. You never will.
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Do you realize that up to 60% of disagreements between a couple, a married couple, will never be resolved? And yet they can still have this extremely close relationship, even though they don't somehow solve their things where they disagree? No, even though they don't do that? Then how can that happen? Because they remain close to each other. They remain connected to each other. They remain connected to each other. So you vote for one party, I vote for the other. I wish you'd vote for mine, you wish I'd vote for yours. But you know what? I still accept you and you still accept me.
Speaker 1:
You think one way about some big issue. I think a different way about that big issue. We can talk about it, not arguing, not fighting, not duking it out with each other, but truly listening, asking questions, conceding sometimes. Yes, I see that point. You're right about that. And still, even if we don't come to any agreement, or maybe just a little agreement, can still accept what the other person thinks and feels and believes, and when that, as I said, is the biggest pull there possibly is. So how difficult is it to do that? Very Because of the fact that we want to tell people when they're wrong no, no, no, you got that wrong, you're not seeing it correctly. It's human nature. We want to straighten people out. Also, because of the fact that things we hold dear we want other people to agree with us.
Speaker 1:
I'm a Christian, I love God. I look on various Facebook groups occasionally, just trying to read the country so that I can better determine how I can serve people and how we can serve people. And as I do that, sometimes I run across the most vitriolic, angry blasphemy toward God or toward Jesus. And every time I see it, even though I don't know the person that posted it, it hurts. It hurts because that's a very important belief to me.
Speaker 1:
But suppose it was one of my daughters and she came in and said I no longer believe there is a God. As a matter of fact, I might as well pray to John Wayne, because I'd get just as much answer if I would to God and I look at her and I want to correct her. I want to say let me give you all the evidence, let me show you why it makes more sense to believe that there is a God. Let me explain all these things to you. But if I do that, rather than listening to her and hearing her heard, she's going to feel rejected. Maybe you're pushed away, may even leave my home. You say so.
Speaker 1:
Would you approve of? I've just said I'm not going to necessarily approve of anything. I'm not going to endorse anything I don't agree with. Well, would you accept the fact that your daughter is an atheist? If she were, you see, that would be recognizing reality. It would be seeing what's actually happening, and I believe that recognizing reality makes all the sense in the world. So I acknowledge, yes, I see right now that you don't believe there's a God. Yes, I understand right now that you are an atheist. I accept the fact that you feel that way. I don't encourage it, I don't endorse it, but I can accept that Now, if I can do that with my wife and my children and they can do that with me, even though each of us will always be flawed and none of us will ever be 100% in agreement with the other.
Speaker 1:
We can be vulnerable so that I can come home and tell my wife hey, let me see what happened today. There was a woman in the mall and she smiled and flirted at me and I flirted back. I feel badly about it. You say you could tell your wife that If we had the kind of acceptance I'm telling you right now and she'd say is that all you did? Yes, ma'am, and I felt very bad about it and I came straight home and told you Is she happy about the fact that I did that? No, but she would accept. It's the truth, because she would be acknowledging reality. But another reality she would acknowledge is that hurt Joe to do that and he had to come and tell me about it because his conscience told him to. Therefore, our relationship is sound, it's pure.
Speaker 1:
Now, if you can have that with your spouse and have that with your children, it means that you have to be able to overcome your own prejudices. You can't be controlling or dominating about what they think, feel or believe. You have to understand that there's a possibility that some of the things that you believe or think or feel are wrong and that possibly your children or your spouse maybe they're right, or the possibility that nobody's right, but you can still accept each other and be totally vulnerable to each other. And so over the years not so much now that I'm 149 years old and fat, but over the years when I used to be younger and thinner and a lot more handsome occasionally on the road traveling, speaking and I was back then all the time on the road speaking Occasionally women would actually try to seduce me. I remember one time a waitress tried to seduce me in the restaurant, kept coming back to my table, getting boughtier and boughtier with everything she said, trying to seduce me in every way she possibly could, telling me what time she was getting off, et cetera. Those kinds of things have happened many times in the past, not now. Women don't even see me.
Speaker 1:
Now you say did you go tell Alice? Yes, you told her everything she said Mm-hmm, everything she did Mm-hmm. Why? Well, so Alice would know I'm a hunk Plus. That's how open and transparent we can be with each other, that's how vulnerable we can be with each other, and that affects all kinds of things like love and trust and peace, all those things that are so important.
Speaker 1:
Now, if you're thinking, okay, I'm going to convince my spouse and children, that's what they need to do for me, you're starting at the wrong place. You start doing it for them. Demonstrate it, not for a day, not for a week, not for a month. You demonstrate it for a while and when they begin to notice, they'll start doing the same back toward you. And when they start doing the same back toward you, that's when you sit down and say let's talk about that, about how that works and how wonderful it is to love another person that way. Vulnerability, acceptance is the key to everything when it comes to love and relationships. That's it for this session of Relationship. Radio Hope to see you on the next one.
