Am I Enough For my Spouse // Humpday Q&A

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You know what time it is, sweetie?

It's Hump Day Q and A time.

Hump Day Q and A. Hump Day Q and A. Welcome to the Naked Marriage Podcast. Hump Day Q and A. We love answering your questions, so every Wednesday we're dropping a special podcast episode focused on one of your questions. You can submit your own marriage related question online@nakedmarriagepodcast.com or by sending us a message on Instagram aveandashleywillis. We've got a great question today, so let's dive in.

Hey there and welcome back to Hump Day Q and A. We are Dave and Ashley Willis and we're excited to have you here with us today. Today's question is this. I've been struggling with feelings of low self worth and I've noticed that it's affecting how I relate to my spouse. I often find myself questioning if I'm enough for them and this insecurity is leading to jealousy, neediness, and sometimes pushing them away. I want to feel secure and confident in our relationship, but I don't know how to get there. How can I work on my self worth while maintaining a healthy relationship dynamic? That's a good one.

That is really good. And that's such an honest, honest question, you know, And I think that first off, I appreciate you. I love just the honesty and vulnerability of the naked nation. That's you all. You're being naked emotionally, which takes courage. And so right now, like, first off, pat yourself on the back and give yourself some extra self worth points. You're a courageous person to just be honest about the way that you're feeling and to reach out, reach out for help and insight the way that you've done. And so right there you're already doing maybe better than you're giving yourself credit for.

You are. And just recognizing it is the first step is saying, like, I'm having trouble with this, like I don't know if I'm worthy enough. And I would ask you this, like, is there something that happened or something, something that continually is happening that is making you feel this way? Because is it something that you feel like is coming from within or is it something that your spouse is doing that is Making you feel insecure, because I think you got to explore that and you know, whether the spouse is meaning to do that or not. But for example, I hear from a lot of women whose husbands really struggle with looking at other women and lingering in that look, like staring and ogling and things with other women. And that causes a deep insecurity. And so I often hear from women who are dealing with self worth issues just because they're husband who has not cheated on them. He's not even porn addicted, he just can't control his eyes. You know what I'm saying? But it takes that wife going to her husband and saying, listen, you have a bad habit. You may not realize this, but when you like, don't, don't start by saying that, but I'm just saying it's clearly a bad habit. But start the conversation by saying, hey, you may not realize you do this, but I find that you stare at woman quite, stare at women quite a bit. And, and when you do that, it makes me feel really insecure, like I'm not good enough for you. Like, I just, I just start feeling unsteady in our relationship. And I understand there are lots of beautiful women around us that you obviously would notice. I notice these women too. I notice handsome men. But I would really love it and I feel like it would be good for our marriage and relationship too if you could just not stare. You know, there's a difference between noticing.

And staring and letting you know, letting your spouse know how it makes you feel.

Yes. Like the I statements early in our.

Marriage, um, we went through this. Like there was a time where I was coming out of, of this pornography addiction where my mind and my eyes and the whole, the patterns in my head related to sex had become so broken. And without even realizing I was doing it, I was, I was staring, I was gawk. Which is so disrespectful of my wife, so disrespectful of these women who are being objectified. And Ashley very lovingly pointed out one day that she's like, I've just, I've noticed you, you know, doing this. And she didn't do it even though she had a right to do it in an angry way. She had a right to do it in a, in a, you know, really direct even, even pointed or sharp way. She did it with such grace and let me know how it was making her feel and that, and that, you know, that just cut me to the core. It really did. And it was a wake up call. A wake up call that I needed to really just be be aware of where. Because I think that I'd just grown like unaware in a lot of ways of where my eyes were going. And, and it was just, I don't know, it was like on autopilot in the worst kind of way. And so we have to retrain our thinking, we have to retrain our eyes and be so careful of the images that we're putting there. And so I'm so thankful she did that. And I'm still, you know, I hate that I caused her that pain through that season, through my sin. And this was of course, no deficiency in her ever. She's the most extraordinary, beautiful, incredible woman on the earth. But my sin was causing this and it was, you know, I'm so thankful that she, she, you know, dealt with me in such a grace filled way so we could work, you know, work through that together.

Well, we had to address it. But like I was saying before, I think I knew in my mind too if I was like, you are so gross looking at women and you have a bad habit, like I know that wouldn't have landed even though, I mean it didn't. Like I did feel that way, that.

Would have been understandable and just. But it probably would not have been.

As helpful or as convicting. And so shame doesn't bring change as.

Much as grace tends to.

Exactly. And it's like the Lord will deal with them but we can inform, you know, informing in by using soft ways but direct. You can be direct and still do it softly. You can do that. And so it's like finding a way to address it but focusing on how it makes you feel and just. And giving them the benefit of the doubt of like maybe you don't realize this cause you've done it a long time, but it is really hurting my heart. And I don't know, I mean, maybe that's not the situation here. It could be, it's more internal where maybe they don't even feel, you know, worthy in general, much less worthy of their spouse. And I think sometimes we can find ourselves here when we have maybe needs that we haven't expressed to our spouse that kind of feeds that, that fills that love tank and feeling adored and cared for and, and we have to remember too that like we can't really expect our spouse to do these things and then feel let down because they didn't do them if we never told them that's what we were needing. Like we have to express it and let them know what we were needing. And so that might be the case here. But I, I kind of have an inkling that this person maybe is just dealing with self worth issues and, and maybe trying to find a lot of times we can sometimes, you know, hope that our spouse is kind of fulfilling our every need and feeling worthy. But that's really not their job. You know what I'm saying? Like, we get our worth from the Lord because we are the sons and daughters of Christ. Like, you know, and he adores us and he says we are worthy. And I think that if we are putting that need, that deep felt need of self worth on our spouse and just hoping that they say the right things every day and they do the right things every day to make us feel worthy, then we're never going to, we're never going to meet. Like we're never going to feel completely worthy, you know.

Right. Because a person can impossible. You know, like the Hallmark movies and you know, romantic, the romantic ideas we get from literature and everything else tell us this myth that, that another person completes our soul. And while God's design is that to become one, but you were already complete before marriage because Christ is the one who completes you. So a single person is right. Just every bit is complete. As a married person, if both of those people are in Christ. Now a married person has this beautiful gift of oneness with another human by God's design. But that doesn't add value to your own soul in any way. That doesn't add to your self worth in any way.

You're not more worthy of love or just of humanity. Like a. Have a higher value as a human if you're married.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And I think that. Or if your husband does XYZ or your wife does X, Y, Z. You know what I'm saying? I think we've got like, we do have this narrative in our culture that almost, you know, puts that out there and it's just so wrong and it really is unhealthy and it's only going to leave you disappointed. And so yeah, I have two great resources I want to suggest for you that will help you to really, really work on seeing, seeing yourself the way that God sees you. And the first one is by Jimmy Evans. It's one of my favorite resources that Jimmy's ever written and he's written many wonderful resources. But it's the 21 day inner healing journey. So good, we'll put it in the show notes. It is, you guys, it is wonderful.

We can all benefit from it.

Everybody, we've done it. I got so much out of it, I was like, this is so good. Highly recommend it. It really helps you to address like hangups you have in your life and blocks and mental blocks. And like, why am I. I've never dealt with this from my past or, you know, why do I do the things I do? And really even your worth, like, where am I getting my worth? Am I trying to get my worth from my mom, from my spouse, from friends, from my job? Like, where am I getting my worth from? It really deals with that. And another great resource, it's like an Old Faithful that I did many years ago when I was really dealing with self worth issues and going through depression. It's a book called the Search for significance by John McGee. It is excellent. You can get it in audiobook or ebook or paperback. The there's even a workbook that goes along with it. You can do it in a small group as well. It's so good, you guys. I was just revisiting this resource because I'm recommending it to some of my coaching clients and it is just, it's just wonderful. Like I looked at it because they've redone it. It's like expanded and revamped. Cause it's been around for like 20 years. So good. It's so good. I really. It's one. It's kind of like the inner healing journey and the search for significance are not exactly the same resource. I believe they each offer unique things that literally every human being could benefit from. But especially if you're struggling with self worth.

And I promise if you go through those two resources, you will come out with a healthier view of yourself.

It will make you better, a clearer.

View of God and a stronger self worth. I promise that you will. And God wants you to have that. You know, don't believe the lie that like having a high self worth means you're being vain or prideful or any of that. God wants you to be so confident in who you are, who he created you to be. And if you're lacking that right now, don't beat yourself up for it. But take those steps to really get healing. Because that's coming from a place of woundedness and it's coming from a place of maybe misunderstanding some aspect of God and who he created you to be.

And it could be something your spouse did or hasn't done, or it could be completely unrelated to them.

It might be, yeah, you know, yeah. So check out those resources. You know, they've helped us, they will help you as well. And it, you know, and if you need that additional step, talk to a Christian counselor. I think there's so much benefit that can happen when you just, you know, you open up to somebody who's a professional that knows believes God's word but is also trained in helping, helping folks. And so reach out, reach out and get the help that you need. But so thankful for your question. Thank you so much for, for everybody for listening. We love and appreciate you all so much. We'll see you next time.

Thank you all so much for listening to today's episode of Hun Hump Day Q and A. We love getting your questions and we want to answer your question. So if you go to nakedmarriagepodcast.com you can submit your question right there or you can follow us on Instagram avanashleywillis and you can give us your questions right there by giving us a dm. So we'll catch you next time on Hump Day Q and A.