Who Speaks into Your Marriage?

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Hey guys, welcome back to the Naked Marriage Podcast. We are Dave and Ashley Willis. On this podcast we Undress the truth about sex, intimacy and lifelong love. And we've got such an important topic today. We're going to be talking about what to do when you've got friends or family members who are maybe negative about your marriage, negative about marriage in general. And what do you do with navigating those negative dynamics without letting them being a toxic force in your marriage? Got a quick announcement before we jump in and that is that the long awaited book the Naked Marriage releases so, so soon. And Ashley, why don't you tell them a little bit more about that.

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I'm so glad we're talking about this topic today. It's not necessarily a comfortable topic to discuss, but I think it's something that every marriage can relate to at different times. So what do you do when you've got friends, family members, co workers who are maybe just negative about marriage in general or maybe specifically about your marriage? I mean, it could be as specific as them talking bad about your spouse. What do you do in those situations to protect your marriage, to create healthy boundaries and when possible, to preserve all relationships involved? I mean, it's a delicate and sometimes messy situation.

It definitely is, you know, and I was reminded of this. I was at Chick Fil a a couple years ago just by myself, working on some blogs and writing. And I overheard these two sweet ladies, like they were, you know, moms clearly because they had their babies beside them, just kind of talking, talking to each other. But then all of a sudden the conversation really turned negative. And what it was is one mom started talking really negatively about her husband and she was just like, I mean, literally it was talking about him leaving laundry on the floor. And then instead of just laughing about it or saying, oh, I wanna work on that, I need to tell him about it. It was like, yeah, he always does this. And Then her friend chimed in and was like, oh, no, you will not believe what my husband did. He's terrible at this. And he never does that. He always does this. And they start just talking about all the negative things about their husbands, back and forth and back and forth and. And, you know, as this kind of person to the side hearing that. And I know, you know, they weren't meaning it to be mean. I mean, I think it was just two friends having an honest conversation. But it just made my heart sink because I thought, I know, they wouldn't want their husbands talking about them in this fashion, you know, and it's also. It's not going anywhere good. And it just reminded me that we've really gotta surround ourselves with people that we can be honest with, but who also keep us from just raking on our spouse and just tearing our spouse down. Because what happens is we go back to our spouse with a negative bend on them. It's kind of like every. You know, we've only talked negatively about them, so then we see them through this negative light. And I guarantee you, when those women went home, they were probably snippy with their husbands because they've already been kind of riled up talking about all the things he does wrong. And so it's gonna come out on him because that's kind of what happens. And so we really need to be careful about. About going down that road. And it's important that we get friends that kind of push us to be, you know, positive. So if you do have a complaint about your spouse, which you're going to have, you know, find a trusted friend that loves you, that loves the Lord, and is for your marriage and loves your spouse as well, and is for your marriage. You know, you need to talk to them and be honest with them, but also know that they're gonna tell you the truth, because that's really what's gonna move you forward in your marriage.

It really is. You know, we had a wise mentor who once said, you know, one of the biggest factors that's gonna determine what your marriage is gon in five years are the five friends that you're spending the most time around right now that whether you mean to or not, you're going to pick up the good and the bad from those friends and their marriage and their view of marriage. And so who are those friends that you're choosing? You know, I mean, I think this is a biblical concept. You know, the Bible says in Corinthians, bad company corrupts good character. Jesus was so intentional, even Though he was open to the crowds, he was so intentional about choosing his inner circle of 12 followers. And then from that, really three, just three out of that group that were kind of his core group, you know, Peter, James, and John. So we've got to be intentional as well about choosing people who are going to build us up, that are going to build marriage up, that are going to hold us accountable. And a good friend is someone who meets that criteria that Ashley just laid out. They've got to love you, love your spouse, love the Lord, believe in marriage, and before your marriage. And if they're missing any part of that equation, then whether they mean to or not, they're going to have a negative influence in your marriage. And you need to be the same kind of friend for other people, by the way. You need to be one who builds up marriages. Don't be that safe place that people can come to and just vent about everything wrong with their spouse in a real just kind of nagging, negative way. But be someone who's always there to try to kind of turn it back and say, yeah, but you know what if you guys did this? Or how would you feel if he or she were talking about you the same way? It's maybe uncomfortable to kind of call each other out a little bit, but a good friend will call you out when you need to be called out.

It's so true. And, you know, years ago, and I'll share this story openly because my friend talks openly about this, but years ago, I was going on a girls trip with some dear friends of mine, and I had to ride. For some reason, I didn't drive. I can't remember why, but I rode there with one of my friends, and then I rode back with the other friend. Well, riding there, I was riding with my friend, and she just starts going to town talking negatively about her husband. And she basically shares with me that she thinks that they're gonna get a divorce. And so I start really listening to her and asking her questions and like, well, what happened? What's going on? And she's like, well, not really anything. I just think that we've fallen out of love. And I just am tired of kind of working at the marriage, and I just kind of want to leave. And, you know, instead of being like, oh, girl, you know, you leave him if you're bored, just get out of there. Which I think happens.

I never liked him anyway.

I never liked him anyway.

He's never good enough for.

Yeah, I mean, instead of doing that, which I think we're prone to do as friends because we tend to want our friends to like us, so we wanna tell em what they wanna hear. But I just felt God saying, you know what? She has opened the door for you as a good friend of hers, to speak truth to her. And I just said, you know, listen, I know things are hard right now. And I know right now, you know, you're kind of on the outs with him and you guys feel like you're just totally outta sync. But I promise that if you get help and you guys decide to fight for your marriage and you really do those things, you know, read the books, get back into the word, get back into church and surround yourself with other people with strong marriages, you're gonna get through this. Cause every single marriage, and we can attest to this, right? Sweetie, we've been married almost 18 years. Every single marriage goes through hard times. There are going to be seasons where you're down on your spouse. There are gonna be seasons where you're not communicating in a healthy way. And you gotta get back on track. I mean, that's what marriage is, is fighting for each other. And let me tell you, my friend rode with me there. Then she rode with my other friend back. And my other friend did the same thing when she started talking about her marriage. She just encouraged her to keep fighting, to get help, to go to a counselor. You know, all those things that we need to do to get our marriage back to a healthy state. And I will tell you guys about, I don't know, four months from that time, my friend and her husband had a completely different marriage. They ended up later that year getting pregnant with their third child. And until this day, this is actually years ago because I think that child is now about 7 or 8 years old. Their marriage is awesome.

Oh yeah.

And she does look back. She looks back at that pivotal moment of talking to friends that she knew, loved her, loved the Lord, love her spouse, and are for her marriage. And she listened, you know, and I'm telling y', all, I don't take credit for this. I give God all the credit. But it's being willing to be that friend and to also be the, the spouse that when we are getting advice, we get it from the right people and allow God to speak truth to us through those people.

Yeah. So be that kind of friend. You might change the course of somebody's marriage, their destiny, their lineage for generations to come by being that friend that says, you know what? Keep fighting for your marriage. I love you too much to just pat you on the back and Tell you it's a good idea for you to walk away from your marriage and.

They might get mad at you at first.

Yeah, they might.

And she was not happy that I was telling her these things.

Oh, if you're a real friend, you would support me because that's what a real friend does. And that's not. That is a twisted, poisonous distortion of what a real friend should do. We don't just blindly support. If your friend says, I'm going to go jump off a cliff and you say, I think that's a great idea. I want to support your dreams, that's being reckless. And sometimes friends thinking that they're doing the right thing, actually give their friend reckless advice. And that's the opposite of being a good friend. The Bible in Proverbs says wounds from a friend can be trusted. An enemy will kiss up and only tell you what you want to hear. If you really want to be a friend to somebody, it means sometimes telling them a hard truth that might feel like a sting or a wound at the time, but it's spoken in love. And that's actually a mark of real friendship. An enemy, someone that doesn't really care about you is somebody that won't get involved enough to tell you the hard truth. And so we've got to be willing to stand up.

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You know where this gets especially tricky is when the people who are against our marriage are our family members. And, you know, we hear from so many people with these issues. It could be a parent, it could be a sibling, an aunt and uncle. You know, whoever it is, maybe it's your grandparents. Whoever that person is, they're your family members. They're your blood. They're the people who raised you, who did life with you, who've known you all these years. And for some reason, you know, they keep on hating on your spouse. It's a really complicated situation, but it is not healthy. You know, we can't. We can't. Even if they're our parents, we can't allow our mom or our dad to just rake on our spouse, be negative about them all the time, because it really poisons our marriage. And, you know, I'm not talking about situations where your spouse clearly wronged you and your parents know about this and they're trying to kind of help you guys get help. I'm talking about parents that just nitpick your spouse that are constantly tearing them down or maybe even just trying to physically get you away from them. Like, for example, we hear from people all the time where parents will wanna celebrate Christmas with their child and the children, but they will ask that the spouse doesn't come. I cannot tell you how unhealthy that is and how heartbreaking that is. But I will tell you that it does happen a lot. And it's toxic. It is completely toxic to your marriage. And it really. It kind of creates this dynamic where it's like you're separated and it really hurts your spouse's heart. And I think sometimes we will do these things because we think we're honoring our parents. Like, if our. If our mom says, you know, I want you and the kids to come over, but keep your spouse. Let your spouse stay at home. He or she can go do their own thing. You know, we think, oh, I need to honor my mom. This is what she wants this year. But I just wanna tell you, you're an adult. And honoring our parents looks completely different when we're adults than when we're children. When we honor our parents as adults, it's showing them respect and often forgiving them, you know, for past mistakes. I think we all. We all can learn that, but it's also realizing that we're adults and we can make our own decisions, and we need. We can take into account what our parents say, but we have to make our own decisions based on what's best for our family. And what's best for your family and your marriage is you all doing as much together as possible. And especially when it comes to holidays.

Yeah, there has to be unity. God gives us in his word. Like, just the loyalty line of where your loyalty needs to lie. First and foremost, we're loyal to God. He's our first priority. And if he's not, then everything else is going to be broken down because he's the foundation. But then our next loyalty has to be to our spouse. If you're married and your spouse needs to be the next most important relationship in your life next, only to God, that's above even your relationship with your kids. And we talk about that dynamic a lot, because if not, if that gets out of balance, it creates this codependency where when your kids grow up, you're going to be the one sabotaging their marriage. Because you never really understood that marriage has to be at the forefront, then after your spouse and then after your kids, then it's your parents and everybody else after that. So as Ashley was saying, honoring your parent in adulthood does not mean obeying your parent. That's only when you're a child. And if you've got that out of balance, or if they do, then there might be some boundaries, a book that we recommend a lot other than the Naked Marriage book, which you guys should definitely check out, nakedmarriagebook.com but specifically about boundaries, there's a book called Boundaries by doctors John Townsend and Henry Cloud. Great resource to. To kind of help you navigate that.

And we actually, if you want to hear more about relationships with your parents and in laws, in marriage, and when they're maybe kind of out of balance, we did a whole podcast on this a few weeks back. And you can go back and listen to that. And I highly recommend it if that is an issue for you. But just a real few quick things about this. If you do have a parent or sibling or, you know, any family member that is constantly saying negative things about your spouse to you or trying to pull you away from your spouse, you gotta stand up. You gotta stand up for them. And it needs to come from you, not your spouse, because they're gonna forgive you a lot more, you know, easily than they're gonna forgive your spouse if there's, you know, kind of a stand that you're taking. So just, you know, simply say, listen, I love you. You are my mom, you're my dad, you're my sibling, whoever it is you're talking to. But I cannot let you talk about my spouse this way. I love him. I love her. And it really is toxic to my marriage. And the best thing you could do for me right now is really to support my marriage. And if you can't say something nice, then please don't say anything at all. And if you're talking to them and they continue doing it, say, listen, I don't wanna walk away. I don't wanna hang up the phone or whatever it is, but I'm gonna have to at this moment until you can speak kindly about them. And if you talk as calm as I'm talking right now, I promise you that eventually there will be peace there. Because it's hard to get mad at somebody who's just standing up for their spouse and speaking kindly. And so we just have to be able, you know, have to be willing and able to set those boundaries.

Man, that's such good advice. I wanna talk just a second to the parent in these situations, right? Okay, so maybe you're thinking, but I see all these unhealthy things going on. My kid's spouse is a jerk, or he's not treating her right, she's not treating her right. I think that there is a place in love to say, listen, because I love you guys and because I want your marriage to thrive, and I want you guys to have all you can do. I want to help you in this. I see some struggles that seem to be happening, some maybe unhealthy dynamics. And so I want to serve you in whatever way I can to help you get the help you need. I want to help offer to pay for marriage counseling. I want to volunteer to babysit your kids so that you guys can go out on a date night or so that you guys can go out, but don't give any advice if you're not willing simultaneously to give help because you don't have a right to give advice if you're not willing to also offer the help to help them achieve whatever advice that is like, look, I really want you guys to help get to get counseling. And so I want to help make that happen. I want to help babysit, I want to help pay. I want to help whatever I can do to help take things off their plate. Now I'll say, as the dynamic goes, before your kids are married. And I'm trying to remind myself of these principles too. Before your child's married, if they're in a dating relationship or even engaged to someone and you see some really unhealthy things, I think that you can, like, very bluntly, in love, say, listen, I love you. I'm going to. I'm going to support you if you end up marrying this person. I'll be your biggest cheerleader and try to support that. But I feel like, based on what I'm seeing, that this relationship isn't in a healthy place and that this might not be the best person for you and you might not be the best person for them. And here are the specific reasons why. And I think that as awkward as that is, that can be appropriate before marriage. Now, once you're married, it's a different game. Once you're married, it's like, you know what? That's your soulmate. Now you're married. And I want to support that in whatever way I can.

And I want to say what Dave is talking about, you know, telling someone who's in a kind of a toxic dating relationship that they're not good for each other. That could be, you know, you could say that if you're a good close friend as well. You could be if you're a sister or a brother and you see this kind of bad behavior and bad dynamic going on between them, speak the truth in love before they're married. I mean, you could be saving them years of. So I encourage you to do that. There is a lot of wisdom in that. And thanks for sharing that, sweetie. I wanna kind of shift here a little bit and talk about why are we even talking about this? Like, why is this even an issue? Some of you listening might be like, well, I can't control what other people say about my spouse. I can't control, you know, their opinion, you know, whether they're my family member or my friend. But I wanna tell you this. It is true that you can't control what they say sometimes, but you can always control your reaction. And the reason you need to speak up and the reason you maybe need to change your behavior towards them and get them, you know, to not to stop talking negatively is that it's going to change you. You're going to be affected by this. You're gonna go home and see your spouse in a negative light, and you're gonna start having more fights. I guarantee you, you will. And you're gonna start, you know, having more frustration and the less time you're spending with your spouse and more with this person who's so negative on your spouse. And it's gonna draw you further and further away from them. And before you know it, you're gonna look up one day and you're just gonna only see those negative things in your spouse. And a lot of times, even these negative influences, these negative influences alone can often lead to a divorce. And we've seen this happen.

Yeah, that negativity, it just plants little seeds of doubt, little poisonous seeds in your mind, and it creates. It shifts the way that you see your marriage and the way that you see your spouse.

That.

Because if you're being fed all this negativity you're going to look through a broken lens when you look at your spouse, and you're going to see them through that same lens of negativity. And so while, like Ashley said, you can't control always what's being said, but you can control a lot. You can control what you'll allow. You can control what environments you're putting yourself into. If going out to drinks with the girls or the guys after work every night is a place where some of these toxic conversations keep happening, stop going. And they let them call you antisocial, let them call you whatever, but just say, you know what, I want to go home and spend that time with my spouse. You can be the one who's always standing up for your marriage and refusing to speak negatively about your spouse and also refusing to be in situations where others are speaking negatively about your spouse or marriage in general. I think that we all have a lot more power than we realize.

Yeah. And I would be very slow to ever really talk about your spouse or your marriage with someone who, you know, is outspoken about really hating marriage in general. You know, I'm not saying you can't be friends with someone who maybe went through a messy divorce or just never wants to get married because they don't like marriage. I'm certainly not saying that. But I'm saying I would not let them be a confidant that you go to to talk about your marriage because you're going to get negative advice. They're gonna, you know, this is how they see the world right now. And I don't know what happened to them. I'm not blaming them, but I'm just saying they're probably not the sounding board for you when it comes to your marriage.

Good advice. You got to be wise. We gotta. And it's not. It's not being elitist or anything else to feel like that you're going to be intentional about choosing who your closest friends are. It's being wise. And again, the Bible has a ton to say about this. Just start with the book of Proverbs.

Yes.

There are 31 chapters in Proverbs. You can read a chapter in five minutes or less. You know, I try to read one of those chapters every single day over and over again. So I'm reading through the book of Proverbs every month, most months. And the more that that wisdom just kind of penetrates through my stubborn brain. I'm telling you, it will change the way that you approach life and relationships. And God's word does that. God's Word always does that. So make sure that you are locking arms with some other people who share your faith. If you don't have friends at work who share your faith, it can be kind of a godly example and encourager to you in this then, man, find a good church, get into a small group, be intentional about building community of people of friends that are going to share your values.

You know, over the years we've been in small groups consistently, even if we've moved. And it's always small groups that, you know, have married couples and usually kids in the same. We're all kind of in the same phase of life. Even before we had children, you know, we were involved with people, you know, who were for marriage and who would encourage us in our marriage. And it has been awesome and we're still friends till this day. But I feel like we've all, you know, intentionally tried to be good influences on each other. And plus, it's just fun. It's fun to go to dinner with another married couple who loves God, who loves marriage and loves you. I mean, that's just so much fun. And it really is. It's just like the word says, iron sharpens iron. You know, when you are getting with other couples who are trying to maintain a strong marriage or cultivate a strong marriage and really, you know, in every season of life find ways to grow strong together in their faith and for each other, then you're going to grow stronger as well.

Man, that is such good advice. I don't know that there's anything you can do for your marriage that is more helpful than building relationships with other people who love Jesus, love you and can be encouragers to you that can genuinely want good things for your marriage and be praying good things for your marriage and then you do the same for them. It is a wonderful, wonderful gift to your marriage.

That's right. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. For more information, if you want to connect with us or you want to maybe send us a topic idea, you can connect with us@marriagetoday.com Bye guys.

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