\u00a0<\/em>Feelings? are they good or are they bad? Do they make us weak or strong? Well, there might be some situations where feelings are unnecessary or irrelevant, but a marriage is not one of those situations.\u00a0\u00a0 Does that surprise you? Have you been taught or conditioned to stuff or ignore your feelings? Are you a man and at this moment you are thinking, \u201cI am closing this post right now!\u201d PLEASE DON\u2019T. Man or woman, feeling person or not, this post will help you improve your marriage and will be worth the read\u2026I promise!!<\/p>\n The idea of discussing feelings probably insights one of these thoughts in you:<\/p>\n No matter which of these three thoughts describe your natural response to feelings, feelings play an important role in a successful marriage. Feelings are a part of life. They help us process events in our lives, and they help us understand ourselves and others. Understanding each other is imperative to good communication and ultimately a great marriage.<\/p>\n The first thing to know about feelings is that they are not wrong.<\/u> It is easy to get trapped into thinking feelings we cannot relate to are wrong. When our spouse\u2019s feelings are different or foreign to us, our default reaction can be to think their feelings are wrong. Instead of dismissing our spouse\u2019s feelings as not being valid, we need to understand and empathize with our spouse\u2019s feelings. Because my spouse feels it, the feeling is real. I need to figure out how to respect my spouse\u2019s feelings and understand them, even though it is not how I feel.<\/p>\n This was a hard concept for me to swallow. I have mentioned in previous posts that I tend to have a personality that has not always been very humble; a personality that believed \u201cI am always right.\u201d Being the person that was always right about things made me insensitive to how others felt, including my husband. I do not think it was a conscious thought but underneath I believe that I was thinking or rationalizing that if I am always right then what ever my husband has to say, including his feelings, would be unimportant or wrong. Not only did I believe his feelings were unimportant; I also believed I did not have time to talk about and understand his feelings. In order to improve our communication and ultimately our marriage, I had to realize that how my spouse thought and felt about a situation was part of the equation and that ignoring or dismissing my spouse\u2019s feelings was disrespectful. Even if my answer to a problem or situation seemed to be the \u201cbest\u201d logically, any conclusion I drew, without including my spouse\u2019s thoughts and feelings as being equally important and relevant, was an uninformed and irresponsible conclusion.<\/p>\n The second thing to know about feelings is that YES, YOU DO HAVE THEM and it is ok to have them!!<\/u> There might be situations where you look at an issue and think \u201cI do not have any feelings about this issue.\u201d Sometimes this is also accompanied with \u201cit\u2019s their issue, not mine.\u201d Both of these thoughts are a red flag!! The red flag is that you have feelings but have no idea what they are or how to identify them. Often times it is the men that struggle with this most, but it does affect some women too. When this happens you have a choice: 1) continue to think and say \u201cI do not have feelings about this issue\u201d and create a wall between you and your spouse or 2) decide your marriage is important and pray about identifying your feelings.<\/p>\n A suggested prayer for identifying feelings is \u201cDear Lord, my God. You are the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. It is you that created me in your image, feelings and all. Currently I am struggling with my ego and I am unable to identify my feelings. Finding my feelings will help me communicate better with my spouse and honor her\/him as we work through our issues. Help me to be humble so that I can see myself as you see me. Reveal my feelings to me in a way that I can understand them and communicate them to her\/him. Grant me patience as I endure this process and fight my ego.\u00a0\u00a0 Bless our marriage and my desire to love my spouse. Make up for what I am lacking so that I can love my spouse in a way that can only exist when you are part of us. I trust you to guide me in this way. In your name I humbly pray, Amen!!\u201d<\/p>\n The third thing to know about feelings is that identifying and communicating them is a learned skill, something that needs practice and patience.<\/u> Unless you are the person that is thinking \u201cFeelings are important and I like talking and thinking about my feelings,\u201d the idea of communicating your feelings is close to repulsive, it possibly could require you to fight several natural responses for you to learn. BUT it will be worth it. Take the time to practice identifying your feelings. Even when you think you do not have them, you do; you just do not yet know how to identify and communicate them.<\/p>\n Why are my feelings important to my marriage? Understanding our feelings helps us express not only how we feel about something but also the magnitude and severity. Even when our feelings go unidentified they do impact our behavior. If a situation scares us, even if our fear goes unrecognized, we will most likely change our behavior. When our spouse sees our behavior or actions changing without a know cause, our spouse tends to think that the change in behavior is due to something they did, causing them to think things that are untrue. Then a terrible cycle begins resulting in poor conclusions and reactions; we end up pushing each other away and building up walls that we never intended, all because we are reacting to a situation we thought existed.<\/p>\n The fourth thing to know about feelings is that communicating the magnitude of our feelings is important.<\/u> Not only should we communicate that we are hurt or scared but how hurt or scared are we? For example: assume the issue at hand is my 9 year old walking by himself to get the mail. In general I think he is old enough to get the mail, so when my husband expresses concern that our son is not old enough to walk and get the mail, it would be easy to dismiss his concern because I do not understand his feeling. But if my husband were to express that our son walking to get the mail by himself creates a fear for my husband that our son will be kidnapped while getting the mail and on a scale of 1-10, the fear is a 9. That fear is something I can understand and relate to; maybe not in this situation but in general.\u00a0\u00a0 Even if the current situation does not evoke that level of fear in me, it does not mean that the feeling is wrong. It is not my job to \u201cvet\u201d my husbands feeling but to recognize and empathize with it. Remember\u2026.feelings are not wrong.<\/p>\n\n
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