5 Relationship Lessons I Learned the Hard Way (Christian Marriage/Relationship Tips)

ideally Christians can just read the Bible learn God’s truth and then apply those truths directly to their relationships and all as well unfortunately life isn’t always that clean and a lot of times we have to learn lessons the hard way so in this video I’m gonna share with you five different relationship lessons that I’ve learned the hard way a lot of time again that scenario where I explained in the beginning happens to me God will show me something in the scriptures I’ll know something intellectually maybe I’ll read a great Christian marriage book or a relationship book and you you learn something new but until you fail a few times you experience real life that lesson doesn’t really get into you so after 10 years of marriage I’ve had plenty of trial and error moments and these five lessons are some of the most common things I see with other people and just some of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned so the first thing that I’ve learned the hard way is that when my wife tells me a problem in her life she’s not always asking me to solve it so one of the biggest changes when Bethany and I went from dating and engaged to actually marriage is that when we started living together in marriage we just experienced all of life together so she would come home from work I would come home from work or school and you know we would just share everything all the little ups and downs and so for example she’d be telling me about her work day something that happened with her boss or maybe she had some sort of odd interaction at small-group that she was leading maybe something with our family and when you’re husband and wife you just like up the up all the information that a boyfriend and girlfriend share so all that to say I’m hearing all of these stories and I’m getting all this information we’re together all the time now and I just figured hey you know what she’s probably telling me this because she wants me to help her solve a problem but what would happen is she would tell me something that’s going on in her life I would be very analytical and try to like give her tips or like tell her what she should do she would end up getting frustrated I would end up getting frustrated and offended like hey what the heck I’m just trying to help and then you know the long story short we end up in a fight and bla bla bla just a big problem so eventually I can’t remember exactly when this was it was pretty early on in our marriage but I remember Bethenny finally just told me like I don’t need you to solve this like I don’t need you to tell me what I’m doing wrong or what I can do better I just was telling you this because I wanted to share it with you and that was just like odd because as a man I don’t speak for all men but I think a lot of men we just don’t do that as much we don’t just like share like parts of our day just for no purpose or in my mind no purpose see him even doing it now like the purpose that she was trying to say was like I want to connect with you and share something and my mind is like what’s the problem that we need to solve and so long story short once that finally clicked for me and I stopped instantly trying to solve the problems that she was talking about things got a lot better I had to understand that she wasn’t telling me this because she didn’t know what to do like she’s a smart person she’s a mature Christian normally the issues or problems or things in her life she wasn’t like confused on what she’s supposed to do next she knew what she should do so she was just sharing these things with me because she wanted me to listen and she wanted to feel like I actually understood her and that I understood her feelings so that’s all she was wanting from me she wasn’t coming to me for this grand solution rather she was coming to me because I’m her husband and she just wanted me to be there for her and when that clicked things got a lot better the second relationship lesson that I had to learn the hard way is that you don’t always need to talk about relationship problems as soon as they happen so if you’re someone who has just gotten engaged or maybe you’ve been around engaged couples you probably see you probably like are experiencing what I think most people experience is that all the married people feel obligated to give you some sort of relationship advice sometimes even out like you know the party are at the wedding you know they invite all the married people up to like share some words of wisdom and there’s nothing wrong with that but one of the most common pieces of advice that I like always heard in that every wedding you always hear people say this is that never go to bed angry you know never go to bed angry always figure it out before you go to bed never be angry at your spouse when you go to sleep and I don’t disagree with that I mean I’m not saying it’s it’s always a bad idea in fact I even believe it’s a very biblical piece of advice in general when it’s not over applied for example in Ephesians 4 verse 26 it states to be angry and do not sin do not let the Sun go down on your anger so right there it says don’t let the Sun go down on your anger however I do think that I was over applying this verse and I think many other couples do the same thing so my experience was that as soon as a problem occurred or some sort of offense happened a misunderstanding some sort of relationship issue that just happens with any relationship whether it’s super healthy or unhealthy like all marriages just have little things every now and then you know just little problems here and there that you just miss communicate and my tendency was to instantly try to solve it like oh there’s a problem we got to talk about this right now and figure this out right now we cannot let this go you know we are not leaving each other until every last little problem has been solved and what I learned through trial and error is that this was not always the best of approach in general if you can solve it like that and just instantly tackle it then yeah that’s the best route but what I found was that when the emotions are so high and things are so fresh and someone just said something that hurts your feelings or you just said something that hurts you know your spouse’s feelings the reality is your emotions are so high it’s very hard to have a controlled logical rational conversation to solve a problem and it ends up being a very emotion driven and it’s just really hard to actually get to the root of the problem and so what what Bethenny and I have learned is that sometimes it’s better to actually not like dive into some problem that you’re having or some disagreement or you know she wants to do this I want to do that we have some sort of different view like it’s not always the best thing to instantly try to figure it out so for example it’s an over application that you know something happens at 10:00 p.m. at night you normally go to bed at 11:00 p.m. oh you better stay up till 3:00 a.m. and talk at nauseam until you figure it out and then you’ll be tired the rest of the week and probably get into more marriage fights because you’re tired that’s an over application of that verse what that verse is saying is saying don’t hold on to bitterness don’t be unforgiving solve problems as quickly as you can it’s not literally saying hey you know you’re sinning if you don’t solve a problem when the literal Sun in space you know goes down and it’s nighttime that’s not what the verse is saying so what I learned the hard way is that again sometimes it’s better to not instantly jump into a problem now the key is you actually have to come back to it you’re miss applying what I’m saying if you’re saying if I if you think I’m saying just let it let it go and and and ignore an issue that needs to be talked about that’s like the anti of what the verse is saying in Ephesians 4:26 but you don’t have to do it like instantly because again it just sometimes too hard to do number three really ties into point to that I just made and what I learned the hard way in relationships is that it’s not always about what you say it’s about how you say it it’s just as important of how you communicate what you’re saying as what you’re saying like it’s like I don’t know 50/50 I thought I had to put a percentage on it so that’s one of the reasons it’s so helpful sometimes to give a little bit of space between you and the person that there’s a conflict with because again if you’re really emotional and you have it out of time I need to process it and it’s just all really fresh the words you-you-you say even if they’re like the right words they’re not going to be said in the best way possible probably if you’re really emotional about it we all know that communication is far more than words God made humans to communicate in amazing ways the rising of an eyebrow body language inflection in our voice the tone that we’re using the volume that we’re using the way that you’re standing so many different things go into communicating a message that you’re trying to communicate to somebody so Christians aren’t just called to speak the truth in Ephesians 4:15 the Bible says that we’re supposed to speak the truth in love that’s a that’s a lesson that I had to learn the hard way because usually I knew what needed to happen relationally I knew it was going on you know I know the problem that I’m just too emotional to say it the way that it needed to be said if I need to apologize or maybe I needed to express why my feelings got hurt and I just can’t I though even if I said what was accurate and true if I didn’t say it correctly the problem wasn’t actually solved because again if you say things the wrong way the meaning behind those words isn’t always what you say if you say I’m sorry that’s totally different than saying you know hey I’m I’m really sorry that I did that I’m I can see that I made a big mistake the way you say that is totally different even though you you said it the same words the meaning is obviously very different the fourth lesson that I had to learn the hard way in my relationship with Bethany is that I’m not always the center of my wife’s emotions so what would happen is Bethany would be having just like a normal bad day that like all humans have when you live together with your spouse you’re gonna see all the range of human emotions that every single person has some days we have good days some days we have bad days some days were tired some days were energetic that’s just the human experience and a mistake that I was making was to assume that all of my wife’s emotions were directly linked to my behavior so anytime she would be a little bit quieter that day or maybe she just was a little bit frustrated or a little bit more touchy than normal my mind would instantly go why she mad at me like what did I do and the reality is many times there I didn’t do anything and I and I really wasn’t a part of why she was feeling that way and so I would ask her like hey you know um what’s what’s wrong like did I do something and she was saying no I’m just tired or no I just had a bad day at work and the mistake I was making was yeah right I did something what did i do like tell me what I did why don’t you want to talk about it and I’ll either just like hold that internally and then cause my own tension with her or like genuinely not let it go and keep talking about it and so what I had to learn was I am not always the center of my wife’s emotions she can have emotions that have nothing to do with me she has a life that um you know I’m not always the center of everything like obviously your spouse has a big role to play in your life but I had to take a step back and realize hey maybe did what she said is true she had a bad day at work let her have a bad day it’s okay she wants to be quieter I don’t have to always take it personal when she’s acting a little bit different vice-versa she didn’t struggle with that as much as me but the same lessons apply to her you know if I have a bad day she’s not like always the problem that I’m acting a different way in our in our house a fifth one that I’ll share in this video is that food sleep and just general physical wellness play a huge part in the mood of our household like the physical stuff and just the practical stuff is way undervalued most times in relationships so over the years this took a while honestly probably in the last few years of my no Bethany’s marriage again we just celebrated our 10-year anniversary but I would say within the last few years this is an area where we become a lot more aware and just valuing the simple physical needs of our body a lot more and it’s definitely improved effort different areas and just realizing like like sometimes it’s not spiritual warfare sometimes you’re tired and you’re hungry and you had a long day and you’re introverted and you just need like some time to recoup sometimes it is spiritual warfare sometimes it is a sin issue sometimes there is a relationship problem sometimes it’s not sometimes it’s these other things and so we started valuing those things more and putting a higher priority on those things and you know this isn’t a parenting video but we’ve learned that about our kids too like a lot of times they’re having a moment or a freakout or a tantrum and we have to ask ourselves when was the last time we fed them did they get enough sleep and a lot of times that’s the problem I don’t need to go discipline them and have a big parenting conversation with my kids if I haven’t given them enough food and they’re just acting crazy because they you know their body doesn’t have what they need and they feel agitated and they don’t even know why so long story short don’t underestimate the importance of physical health food sleep exercise which is like if you’re not feeling well physically that’s going to affect the way you interact with other people and just how you live your life don’t forget to subscribe to this if you haven’t already we’re making multiple videos like this every single week so if you don’t want to miss the new content that we’re putting out you got to make sure you hit that subscribe button and maybe even like this video and share it those are great ways that you can support the agw channel if you’ve found this content helpful to you well again i’m mark from apply God’s Word com hope you enjoyed this thanks for watching and God bless [Music] [Music]