Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
How To Avoid Divorce When Disagreeing With Your Spouse
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When you don't agree with your spouse, it can be incredibly frustrating. It might be something where you absolutely HAVE TO come to some sort of resolution, but you are both hard set in your views.
Handling divisive topics in marriage is extremely important. On one hand, you want to be able to learn how to have healthy compromise with one another. On the other hand, you don't want to go against your own beliefs and values or to become a doormat for your spouse to run right over you and control the situation.
So in today's episode of Relationship Radio, we talk about how to handle divisive topics in marriage. Get ready to take some notes!
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I don't know about you, but over the past two years, it seems like there are no end to the divisive and polarizing topics that are happening in the media, on social media and, most importantly, in relationships, and we are seeing people in not just friendships, not just communities they're a part of, but even sometimes ending marriages because they no longer agree about things that are really important to them. So we're going to be talking about how to deal with these things. How do you deal with really divisive issues when you stand on one side and your spouse stands on the other? And I am joined by Dr Joe Beam- Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2:You know, kimberly, a couple of years ago I officiated at the funeral for a dear, dear friend of mine. We were very close. We were worlds apart when it came to our political views. Now, most people will never hear my political views because of the business we're in, I don't put them out there in the public. But he and I, you know, being dear friends for many years, would not see anything alike, but we loved each other dearly and I was with him a lot before he died. And then I did as I said officiated his funeral, and there's a way to make that happen.
Speaker 2:On the other hand, another friend of mine sat on my back deck with me the other day as dusk descended and we sat there talking into the dark and we used to have very similar views when it came to religion, but now he has changed to some different kinds of views and he mentioned some of the things that he now no longer believed, that he used to believe, things that I still do believe.
Speaker 2:Yet we're still very close friends and I know that if I called him right now and said I needed help, I know he would come and the same I would go to him.
Speaker 2:So what I'm trying to say is there can be a lot of differences, but you can still be close to each other. You might be thinking, yeah, but you're talking about friends, I'm talking about my wife, I'm talking about my husband. Well, maybe the first thing to understand here is that the other person does not have to think the way you want them to think, to believe what you want them to believe, not always do the things you think they should do. When you start talking about the key to love, you have to talk about this thing called acceptance, and acceptance means I may not endorse some of the things that you believe, I may not endorse some of the things that you do, but I can accept the fact that you believe them and still accept you as well. And that has to be in existence not only between a husband and a wife, but parents and children, if you're going to have a long-term relationship, because no, two people are going to agree on everything Right, and isn't that what is so concerning about what's happening right now in culture?
Speaker 1:this whole cancel culture. If you don't agree with me or say what I want you to say, then I am going to cancel you. I'm going to delete you out of my life. The concept of it is so destructive to relationships, but it's what's being inbred in the younger generation right now, and there are several people my generation and older who have accepted this. Is okay, I'll get on a soapbox. You have to stop me, but we have to. It's in the home that we can teach our children how to love even in the midst of disagreement, and right now, social media and media is teaching them how to hate in the midst of disagreement, and it has to be turned around.
Speaker 2:And not just between husbands and wives, but again with parents and children. When you were coming up, when you were about five years old, I was actually speaking at a church. You won't remember this at all. You were so young and I said something in my sermon and you had a friend at church with you that day that didn't normally go to church one of your guests. And when we got home, you and your friend talked for a while and then you came in and told me I was wrong.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I believe that.
Speaker 2:You told me. I said pardon, she said you're wrong. Or you said you're wrong and I said what do you mean? I'm wrong. And your buddy, your little five-year-old friend, had come home and told you that no, no, this is the way it is. Your dad's all wrong about that and you two had had this deep, five-year-old theological discussion. Okay, and now you were there straightening me out. So how does a parent react to that when he or she wants your child to learn to think but, at the same time, you have certain beliefs and values that you hold, and it can be a challenge to do so, but it definitely can be done. Do you remember any of the ways that we did that with you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, yeah, so a lot of what I remember growing up was there was conversation. You would ask me questions. Why do you think that? Tell me about the conversation? Who said it? Could they have you know? What motives do you think they had behind it? There was just more of you asking me to gain an understanding of how I had gotten to this place in my head, and I remember there would have been you explaining why we would believe, or you believe what you believe, and why you would want the same for me. But it was just never done in a like in that situation. I guarantee your response was not your friend's wrong. Go away Right Like y'all don't know what you're talking about. You're just five years old. What I said is right.
Speaker 2:I think that's what I did. I'm kidding.
Speaker 1:There's no way it would have been. Tell me. Tell me why you think that. Cause you were. You would have been asking me for my evidence, like what's your evidence of this? And you would have given me your evidence of this. And I was reading a quote by a professor of organizational psychology at Wharton business school. His name is Adam Grant. I was reading something on his Instagram the other day where he said critical thinking includes being able to understand the evidence and then having a conversation about that. And the irony was so many people under that refuted him and his was in. His statement was based on evidence, and he said the irony is, you all are throwing out the evidence with what I'm saying here, and and that's part of what's happening as well right now People are dismissing evidence, whether that's actual research-based statistical evidence or just the evidence of how did you come to this conclusion? Let's have a conversation.
Speaker 2:So what we're modeling right here is the way that you deal with these polarizing conversations is that, rather than canceling a person that you love because he or she is your husband, wife, son, daughter, mother, father, brother, sister, that rather than just writing them off because they don't see it, the way you do is to actually listen to each other. And I'll guarantee you a couple of things are going to happen if you do. One is sometimes, as you listen, you're going to come to realize that you weren't even talking about the same subject, that you were thinking one thing, they were thinking another thing, and that your disagreement actually was not a disagreement. You were talking about two different things but not able to communicate that. Other times you will discover that sometimes you're wrong.
Speaker 2:I know you don't want to hear that, but surely in your lifetime there have been times when you've been listening to people. You were talking and all of a sudden they hit you. Good grief, I never thought about that. That, wow, I need to think that through. And the other thing that will happen if you truly listen to each other is you can maintain a relationship even if you don't come to the same conclusion. You can have a relationship because of the fact that I can accept the fact that you and I won't see everything alike. I know that I'm imperfect, I know that you're imperfect, but I know that I love you, no matter what.
Speaker 1:And you know the other part of that is, even if you disagree on things, that person can become one of the people you go to to actually get feedback from. Or what do you think of this? Maybe sometimes because they have a different view than you but you respect them and you respect the way they treat you. Or even if they have similar beliefs and values of you, because they have treated you with respect before, you trust them more to go back to, to ask them. You know, what do you think of this thing? That's going on and we all need that. I think there's not.
Speaker 1:I wonder, let me say it this way I wonder if a lot of people right now, because of a lack of strong relationships, they don't have someone to go to when you know the abortion thing came up right. So who do you have to bounce your ideas off of or your feelings and just unpack all of the emotions that can go around on that with it? And I think when people don't have that, they just kind of turn to social media and start making statements and that can end up being divisive because other people are going to see it out of context of a relationship and then make judgments about each other, when there's no relationship there, none.
Speaker 2:I've actually done that to a couple of my friends and said you know, based on what you just posted on Facebook, here's what you sounded like. You know, if I were able to give you a suggestion, it would be. You need to reword that because people are not going to understand what you're trying to say. So you're right With relationship. You can have those conversations With that relationship.
Speaker 2:You get frustrated or you get angry, and then the fussing and fighting starts and people start you can't be my Facebook friend, I'll never talk to you again, I'm not ever going to go to your church anymore, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the world becomes more and more divided and in my lifetime, which at this point is 149 years in my lifetime, I have never seen a more divided nation, a more divided world, more divided Christianity, everything you can think about more division between parents and children, husbands and wives, and it finally all boils down to ultimately, I have to be able to accept the fact that I'm not the final decider. Let me see if I can make that. Say it in a different way. Help me say this If I'm going to say everybody has to think, feel, act and believe, like me.
Speaker 1:Then you become God.
Speaker 2:You actually put your position as God. I position myself as God, whereas I'm not that perfect. You say so. Do you have friends that live very different lifestyles to what you believe is correct? Yes, I do. You know that I have friends that, based on my religion, they live very different lifestyles than I believe, different political beliefs yeah, and so how do we love each other anyway? That's really what it's all about. You don't have to think everything I think, believe everything I believe you don't, or feel everything I think believe everything I believe you don't, or feel everything I want you to feel. We can still be very close to each other and love each other very deeply. Now I've seen you and Rob. You're both very strong personalities.
Speaker 2:You could say that One way to put it. Let me say it again you and Rob are very strong personalities, and I've seen you argue and yet you're very close to each other, even when you don't say things alike, right?
Speaker 1:That's absolutely right. Even when I know we're going to differ on opinions on certain things, we still talk about it with each other. Now I will say, over 12 years of marriage, we have gotten better at at listening and understanding each other's point of view. Back, when we were younger and newly married, it would have been well. This is what I believe and it's right. And you need to come to my side of the table and you know and now we're both much more yeah, I can see it your way, but here's why, why I see it my way. And but there's trust there. There's trust that, even though I may not agree with him, I can respect his reason for believing things that way and trust him to hold my well. Here's how I'm going to say it and it'll make sense to some of our listeners. And we can expand a little bit, because when I share my beliefs and values with him, I'm sharing some of the deepest parts of who I am. I'm giving him bricks and if and he doesn't throw those back at me he doesn't share them with other people. He takes these, these things and he just cherishes them, whereas there's been I mean, clearly he's my only husband, but there's been other people in my life where I'll share. You know, this is what I believe about this.
Speaker 1:And then they say things like so do you not trust God or how could you? And they just start attacking my character because of something completely unrelated. And that's where there comes anxiety or shame, or like am, am I a bad person Because I believe this one thing? But they've just equated it to like my morals and um, and that's what's not good, that's what's not healthy. What's healthy is for someone to be able to sit with you and understand. Why is that important to you? Tell me more about that. So here's one good example, and I'll relate it back to what you and I were talking about when I was in college. You may not remember this. When I was in college, for a brief period of time, I was a pacifist. Do you remember this? I remember us having the conversation.
Speaker 1:We disagreed on so many different things we really did.
Speaker 2:I remember us having the conversation we disagreed on so many different things we really did In college that's just the time.
Speaker 1:Everything happens Now. Ironically, I married a soldier, so clearly that phase didn't last very long.
Speaker 1:But Rob and I still don't like war. Now, rob doesn't like war either, but he realizes it's a necessity for protection and freedom, whereas I am always going to err more on the side of but why can't it be done a different way? Right, and so even when we have talks about what's happening in Russia or whatever, we we can both agree on a common theme. No one likes war, but we're going to. Both of us see it in two different ways, right. But we can appreciate the differences in each other and still have the conversations around it, even though the differences are there, because we love each other and are committed to the future of our relationship.
Speaker 2:And love is always going to involve accepting things about the other person that you don't like.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I wish you thought differently than that. I wish you believed differently than that. I wish you felt differently than that. You thought differently than that. I wish you believed differently than that. I wish you felt differently than that. But being able to love is having that relationship anyway. Now it doesn't mean you won't get frustrated with each other. Sometimes you will Like, oh good grief, thought that again. Sometimes you'll get frustrated, you might even get angry at each other that kind of thing. But knowing that I accept and love you maintains the relationship, no matter what. That's what love really is all about.
Speaker 2:So how do you talk about these topics? Be open, be honest, say what you really believe, but don't attack and don't try to force it on the other person. A friend of mine who was just about to get her PhD this was several years ago she was about to turn a dissertation in and she said you can teach me anything, but you're not going to force your belief, something about anything. And I thought that's the way it should be. I'm willing to learn, but don't try to tell me what to think, what to feel, what to believe in, et cetera. People react badly to that. So have the conversations what to believe in, et cetera.
Speaker 1:People react badly to that, so have the conversations but do it as friends, not as foes, and be curious about why the other person has that stance.
Speaker 1:I believe, when you're curious about things like that, like so back at the for for those of us in America, uh, back in the 2016 election, when it was Clinton versus Trump, I had two good friends on opposite sides and I remember they did such a good job at this because one of them was voting based on the fact that she was an executive director at a nonprofit that worked in an inner city, and so her world revolved around impoverished people who could not get ahead, and that is what she took into the voting booth. And then I had another friend who was on an opposite side, where she loved the same people, but she was seeing it from a different perspective. But they could agree on. We both love these people, but we're going to show that differently on voting day, and it was beautiful how they stayed friends. And that's how it should be, because when you actually understood both of their stories, you could understand why they both believed the things they did. There were more commonalities than differences.
Speaker 2:Excellent. I think that's a really good story. I like that. So that's what you do. If you want to talk about these things, you're better to talk about it than not talk about it, but the way you talk about it determines what happens to your relationship.
Speaker 1:That's right. So if you enjoyed this episode, please give it a five-star review. Share it with a friend, share it with maybe a spouse, if it's appropriate to do so, and can get you on the same page about talking about a divisive subject. That would be a huge win in our books. And if there's anything we can help you with, go to marriagehelpercom to see the courses and the workshops that we have that can help you strengthen having me
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