How do I get past the broken promises in our marriage // Hump Day 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.

Hello there and welcome back to another Hump Day Q and A. We're Dave and Ashley Willis and we're excited that you're joining us today. We have another great question for you. Thank you all so much for submitting your questions. And Dave is going to share today's question.

Yes, today's question says this. Dave and Ashley over the years I've built up a lot of resentment towards my spouse due to unfulfilled promises and unmet expectations. This resentment often leads to bitterness and anger, which I know is harmful to our relationship. We tried discussing these issues, but it always ends in a fight and nothing seems to change. How can I work through these feelings of resentment and find a way to forgive my spouse while also ensuring my needs are acknowledged and met? Man Great question. And I think that every, every single individual lives in that tension somewhere of what's the line between showing gratitude and respect toward my spouse but also not being a doormat and also making sure that I'm voicing my needs and voicing, even in a productive way, my disappointments when that's appropriate. I feel like when we're in this mindset, though, when that resentment has taken root, even when we feel like we're being productive, most of the Time. There's a tone. Maybe we feel like we can't even.

Help edge to our.

There is an edge of just. The warmth is gone, the patience is gone. The love feels like it's gone. And what this our spouse is hearing is just. You never measure up. You're always a disappointment. And then when you hear that, enough, and I'm not making excuses for this guy. I'm not making excuses for the poor girl, for the spouse who is, you know, who's not carrying their weight or not following through, whatever it is. But I am saying that all of us respond to encouragement more than we do to criticism. Praised behavior is repeated behavior. When we're thanked for something, when we see in our spouse's eyes that they're. They're so pleased with what we're doing that they love us, they adore us, they're proud of us, even, like, we want to do more of that. And if it feels like we never get that, then at a certain point, mentally, I think some people just clock out and they're like, well, I mean, I'm going to disappoint no matter what, so I'm just going to quit trying. So both spouses here, I feel like in these situations, they have a lot to do. They have some pride to swallow. The spouse that feels like they can never measure up, they might need to look in the mirror and say, well, what could I do better? You know, what. What could I do to be. To be that the best spouse that I can be? And how can I do that every single day? Even when I feel like my spouse might have an unfair view of me, they might be giving me a report card, so to speak. That's not fair. They're giving me Cs and Ds when I feel like I'm at least a B plus student. But what can I do to keep giving my best and being patient, letting them know that, like, hey, I want to be the best for you, but I also need. I need some encouragement here, too. I need warmth. I want to connect. For the spouse, that feels like I have this resentment. And it feels justified to say, well, okay, well, maybe it is justified, but what would it look like if I took a break from any form of criticism? And I only encouraged for a while. I was only warm.

What you want to see again, like, when they're doing it right, I only.

Modeled what I wanted to see from them.

Yeah, Yeah. I also want to say this too. I think it's good to take a good look and even maybe write down what are your expectations that you feel like they're not meeting? And then when you look at these expectations, ask yourself, are these expectations that are born out of principle, or are they more of my preference? Or are they more drawn, just part of my personality? Like, for example, I'm more OCD as far as, like, a cleanliness standpoint than Dave. Like, he literally. I'll apologize sometimes, like, oh, I haven't gotten to this yet. And he literally is like, I literally didn't see it. Like, I did not see the dust that you think I'm seeing.

Her standards are so high, and she lives with five cavemen.

And I've taught you all a lot. But here's what I had to come to the conclusion, especially as, like, a mom with young kids at the time, because you sense my resentment. I was just so frustrated. I was staying at home and I'm doing. I just felt like it never ended and that I was being disrespected. You know what I'm saying? Noticed for what I was doing. This is just one small example, but I just remember coming to the conclusion that, you know, I need to let go of some control of this because I can tell them what I need, but I can't control how they do it, and I can't necessarily control the. You know, the depth of your clinging, like, clean to you might be a little bit different than for me, so. Or even how to fold a towel. Like, you fold a towel different than me. But if you're folding a towel, yay. You know, you. You folded a towel, and so did the boys. You know, I just couldn't be so particular because it was more my personality and my preference, because those aren't things I need to. It's not the sword I want to die on here. Like, the things that really need to. That I need to really give most of my attention to. It's not that preferences don't matter. I mean, sure, voice your preference, but don't hold that against your spouse if they're wired differently. They just don't have the same standard per se. You know, it's. Try to find something in the middle, because that's not worth, you know, fighting over. But principle is a whole other thing. Like, if this is, you know, going against your collective morals, like, it's. It's a behavior that you feel like could be really taking you all in a negative direction or your spouse in a negative direction. Like, for example, just total laziness. Like, you feel disrespected because you don't have A partner who's pitching in and who's, whether that's financially or just physically or just even tuning in, like being engaged in conversation and prioritizing the marriage. Obviously those are more of principle. It could be a faith. Like maybe you feel like you resent them because they're not taking, you know, their, their walk with the Lord is serious and it's, and you're concerned because you're raising these kids together and you're, you know, you committed your life with this person. You see them going wayward. I mean, that's, that's a conversation you need to have. Absolutely. I will tell you, you can't nag someone to Jesus, okay?

I mean, like, no, that does not work.

How you do it is by simply.

Letting go to any positive change for that matter. Like, no one has ever been nagged into continuous improvement.

No, but you can be, you can be encouraged to improvement, you can be praised to improvement, you can be shown gratitude to improvement. And so, and I think another piece of this too, and I think Dave touched on this, but really, and I'm sure this person has prayed about it, but I would pray even more so like, Lord, soften my heart towards my spouse because I'm growing a hardened heart. It may not be completely hard yet. Obviously you're concerned enough and care enough to write us. And I commend you because it can be very demoralizing when you have this resentment. And so, you know, kudos to you for doing that. That's a great position to be in. But just ask the Lord, like, I don't want to, I don't want to move our marriage in the wrong direction because of my resentment. I want to be moving in the right direction so that I'm not, that I'm not the hindrance of my spouse, you know, and I coming together on this. And I'm telling you, God really does. It's really hard. He. You guys have heard us say this before. It's really hard to pray about somebody and be mad at and like stay mad at them. Okay? God won't let you. Like, I mean, something may not even change, but you'll have this softened heart that you're not making excuses for them, you're not dismissing that you need to have a conversation, but you at least come at them from a more grace filled posture. And that, that affects how you behave, it affects how you talk, it affects your nonverbals too. And so that's important.

It really, really is. Yeah, we say that a lot. I mean a lot of These things we say, it's weird, we repeat. And you're like Dave and Ashley. You know, if I listen for any length time, I've heard all this before. What most things in life, it goes back to remembering the basics, you know, I mean, all of us know how to lose weight, even if. Even if that's true.

But we're following all these different.

Yeah, there's all this stuff, but following. It gets so complicated. But really what it comes down to is I need to probably eat less and exercise more.

I mean, like, that sounds boring.

Yeah, like, that's boring. That's lame.

It can't be that easy. I was like, well, of course it's not easy.

I want all these. Yeah, it's simple. It's not easy. There's a world of difference between simple and easy. I mean, quitting a bad habit, simple, just stop doing it. But that is not easy if you've ever tried to quit anything. And so. So a lot of these things, there's a tendency for us to roll our eyes and be like, oh, if only it was that. If it was that simple. Well, it is that simple most of the time. It's just not easy. Simple is still hard. It still takes discipline because it's hard to deny ourselves. It's hard to kind of die to that selfish part of ourselves that. That motivates us most of the time. And it's hard to overlook things that we've trained our eyes to fixate on. It's hard to see the positive when we've gotten so good at seeing the negative. But if we'll do the work to intentionally do that, it will renew our mind. It will help us to see our spouse and see ourselves in a completely different light. And ask God to help you with that. That's the beauty of faith. We don't have to do this all on our own strength. You know, Jesus is there with us and he's coming alongside us to give us the strength that we don't have on our own. And we lean into him. We surrender more to him. And the more of him we invite into our own lives, the more capacity we're going to have to love our spouse and to. And to see the world the way he wants us to see it.

That's right. Well said, sweetie. Well, guys, thank you so much for that question, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you all so much for listening to today's episode of Hump Day Q and A.

We're.

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.