Susan's Homeschool Blog

Is listening to your husband something you do naturally? Does your husband ever say, “You’re not listening to me!?”

The most important part of communication is listening. If you don’t understand your husband, how can you expect to influence his heart and to have true oneness in your marriage? Join Alan and Susan Evans as they talk about marriage once again, and the importance of listening. This topic applies to homeschooling, because both the husband and wife should be in agreement about what you do in your home. Listening is not something that comes naturally to most people, and it is crucial to having a good marriage.

Join us on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 at 3:30pm Central (1:30pm Pacific). Click here to join us live on the Homeschool Channel.

If you missed our previous marriage webinar, “Don’t Let Homeschooling Ruin Your Marriage,” you can watch the replay here.

Here is an outline of what we covered:

• Listening is crucial to understanding another person, especially in marriage. In order to have oneness in your marriage, you need to know how the other person is thinking about something.
• Many Scriptures mention the importance of listening. (James 1:9, Proverbs 12:15, Philippians 2:3, Romans 12:3, Galatians 6:3, Proverbs 18:3)
• When I’m interrupting, it’s because I’m putting myself first. So listening really requires you to esteem the other person as more important than yourself. (That’s what love is.)
• Pride causes you to plug your ears to the other person, so humility is required for listening.
• Before listening fully to what somebody is saying, if you’re formulating in your mind what you’re going to say next, you are not listening. (Scripture says it’s to your folly and your shame to act this way.)
• Why do men stop talking to their wives? They want to avoid conflict.
• Be positive in your interactions with your husband instead of negative.
• If you have not listened to your husband in previous conversations, there is no reason that your husband would want to talk to you, because you don’t listen to him anyway. Or we haven’t followed through on what our husbands wanted us to do because we didn’t prioritize it. We just forgot because it wasn’t important to us.
• Both people in a conversation have an agenda. This is what makes communication difficult.
• Expecting people to behave in a certain way and then getting angry when it doesn’t happen is not constructive. It’s selfishness.
• The only person you can change is yourself.
• Ask questions to fully understand your husband.
• You need to create an environment where your spouse feels safe and loved and not judged.
• Women sometimes inadvertently attribute wrong motives to their husbands, thereby hurting themselves. They twist what their husband is saying. I give a humorous example (but I was deeply hurt at the time).
• When you are talking to a man, try to get to the point and not go on and on. Otherwise it’s so much work for your husband to listen to you, and he doesn’t have the mental energy to do it.
• We talked about what to do when you have opposite views on something.
• Just because your husband is not doing things your way doesn’t mean he’s not listening to you. He can be listening to you and walking by the Spirit and choose the opposite of what you want. That can be godly and correct on his part. (It ended up that the opposite of what I wanted was better for me in the example I gave.)
• Try to see the situation through his eyes. This will help immensely in listening. You will have a greater influence on his heart and mind.
• If you are sinning (with gossip, slander, anger, complaining, etc.) and your husband refuses to listen to you, he is doing the right thing to stop you from sinning further.
• Rely on God to make you a better person in your marriage. The couples that cling to God as the only strength they really have are the ones that will make it, says my husband.