Is it Wrong to Complain About My Spouse?

Welcome to the Naked Marriage podcast. We are Dave and Ashley Willis, and on this podcast we address the truth about sex, intimacy, and lifelong love. We are so glad that you've joined us. Got a great, great topic today, but before we get there, my beautiful bride is going to share a review. And thank you again for those who leave reviews online. They really mean a lot.

All right, today's review that I'm going to share is from dcd64, and it's entitled married 30 years. She gave us five stars.

Thank you.

And she says, wow, so happy I found your podc. Yes, I've been married 30 years and struggle with my libido. Listening to your podcast has shed a bright light and a beautiful light on sex and has helped me so much. Thank you. P.S. i have shared it with a newly married couple and a couple with young children. Well, thank you so much. I mean, that's so awesome that people who've been married 30 years are listening to this podcast and feel like they're learning something. Thank you. I just love that.

Thank you.

So thank you so much for listening and for leaving that review. And let's dive in to today's episode.

I love this series that we're in. And there is kind of this, if you haven't, if you haven't noticed, if you're a listener, but you haven't noticed, kind of the thematic series we're in. This whole season, we're talking about our favorite marriage advice. And every episode here recently, we've been focusing in on one specific piece of marriage advice and today's theme. Today's marriage advice is simply never talk badly about your spouse. And this is huge. I'm telling you. I think that one of the best indicators of the health of a marriage is in whether or not that couple speaks harshly or negatively to each other or about each other. And if they do, if they speak negatively to each other and about each other, that's a marriage that's in an emergency. But if they're a couple that honors each other with their words, whether they're face to face or whether they're talking about their marriage or spouse to someone else, they're honoring with their words, that's a strong, healthy marriage. And so if you or your spouse have ever fallen into a habit of just kind of venting to other people about, oh, my gosh, my husband's doing this, my wife's doing that, we want to give you some perspective that might help you not do that, because you might think it's just harmless venting. But really what it's doing, it's subversively sabotaging the marriage. And we're gonna talk about the reasons why it is.

And I think, you know, some of you listening might be thinking exactly what Dave kinda just touched on. Like, oh, it's just kind of our little, you know, back and forth that we do. And maybe one of you feels that way because maybe you're the one who's always kind of cutting your spouse down a little bit. And you think it's in jest, but it's really secretly hurting them. And you've been doing it so long that they haven't really said anything. I mean, I think that's kinda how we fall into this negative dynamic. But what ends up happening is if you talk about your spouse that way, you inadvertently give license to others to talk about them. That. So basically you're saying, like, it's okay to just kind of hate on my spouse here and just nitpick at them. And so what you find is like, your friends start talking about their spouse and your spouse. That way the family members start to do the same thing. And it really. It can be deeply hurtful to your spouse and they can put on a happy face and act like it's fine, but really deep down inside, it's just making them feel small and making them feel undesirable and unwanted. And you certainly don't wanna do that to your spouse. And so what you have to do is, is first and foremost, stop talking about them negatively, whether in person or, you know, when you're not around your spouse, you know, if you're at work or in other settings, don't ever talk negatively about your spouse. But secondly, you have to really put boundaries in place for others to talk negatively about your spouse. Because when you allow others to talk negatively about your spouse, whether it's family members or friends or even random coworkers who maybe don't even know your spouse, it really is. It's just disrespectful all around because you're standing by and letting it happen. And you can't do that.

No, you really can't. I mean, as this is new, if you're listening to this right when it's come out, we're at a time of the year when the holidays are fast approaching, you're going to be maybe in family gatherings surrounded by relatives that you see often, or relatives you don't see that often. And it can be an opportunity where you feel like, I'm in a safe place around family and I can just unload about everything that's going on negatively in my marriage, specifically about my spouse. And you just need to be really careful of that. Of course, no matter when you're listening to this, it could be the middle of summertime and this is a universally applicable message whether it's near holidays or not, because you're always gonna have opportunities to be around other people, you know, coworkers, friends, where you might feel like this is a safe place for me to just air some grievances, so to speak. But when you do that, there's statistical proof to show this. When you complain about someone, what it does is it cements that mindset in your brain that that person is a negative person in your life. You start seeing that person through that lens and, and your words become a self fulfilling prophecy that you're actually making your marriage harder and making it worse by speaking all of these things. Now, I'm not saying there's never a place, a safe place to talk about specific issues in your marriage you'd like to resolve. That's why we talk about counseling so much. Like we encourage you to get with one of our marriage coaches. You can get them@xomarriage.com coaches or sit down with a Christian marriage counselor in your area or maybe have one trusted friend, accountability partner, person that you do go to and you can just say, this is the struggle I'm facing right now. But someone who won't just say, oh my gosh, yeah, I can't believe he's doing that, or she's doing that. Someone who will actually challenge you as well to say, well, how are you responding when they do that? How are you reacting when they do that? And what could you do to kind of help shift the situation to be more positive? You know, Ashley has a powerful story that she's told at one of our live XO events of a counseling session where a woman went in with that negative mindset complaining about everything that her husband was doing. And the counselor did something that really challenged this lady to see the situation through a different perspective.

That's right, yeah. She went into the counseling office and was like, you know, my husband is terrible. He's just been a terrible husband. You know, I'm here at counseling, he's not here, you don't see him. And, and you know, I just really think our marriage is on the outs and, you know, he's just done all these different things. She starts listing everything and the counselor hands her a piece of paper and she puts a line down the middle of it. And she says, listen, on the left side of this paper, I want you to number and write every single thing that your husband, you know, has done wrong. And so she did that. She wrote down every single thing that her husband has done wrong. And then, you know, she's thinking that this counselor's gonna ask her to put a list on the right side of the things that she's done wrong. And she thought to herself, you know, I'll probably put a couple things. Cause I'm not perfect. But she'll see, like, he is way worse than I am. But that's not what the counselor asked her to do. Instead, the counselor said, okay, on this right side, I want you to write down your reaction to each of those things that he did wrong and how, you know, what you would do when he did those wrong things. And it really got her thinking, like, when he did this, what did I do? And. And what she found, you know, after all those numbers, you know, going through all those wrong things that he did, she found that she wasn't being a solution to the problem, but she found that she was perpetuating the problem because she was reacting in a negative way and really just calling out all those negative things. And it was just this negative spiral that they were just living in day after day. And it really caused her to pause and think about how she needs to really change her frame of mind. And again, I want to reiterate what Dave said. It doesn't mean you don't address actual things that are wrong. We need to do that. But what you'll find is if you can consistently be an encourager to your spouse instead of talking negatively about them, when it comes time for you to actually address something that really is wrong, they are going to. You're gonna have their full attention because they know that you are for them. They know that you can see the good in them. On the other hand, if you constantly are just, you know, cutting them down. I've even seen. I just wanna pause on this for a minute. I've seen parents literally cut down their spouses while talking to their kids at a loud level so that their spouse can hear saying things like, well, if your dad did this, or if your mom did this, or your dad, I mean, he's just so this and that and just being real negative, as if they're talking to their kids when really they're just trying to cut down their spouse. It's just toxic. And so when those times come when you actually do have to address a problem, your spouse doesn't wanna listen to you because they're like, here you are bad mouthing me to the kids, you're badmouthing me to your parents. You're not even for me. So I'm not gonna listen. And we don't want that to happen in marriage. We need to have open communication. We need to know that we are for each other and not against each other.

Yeah. And like we say on here all the time, you need to be a safe place for each other that you know that. Yeah. You can go to one another and point out issues, if there are issues, to say, listen, you know, I know you, I love you, I believe the best in you. But you know, here, lately or just then, in this one incident, you did this or you said this, and maybe you didn't mean it to hurt me or to be disrespectful, but that's the way it felt. And to really talk through it in a healthy way, not getting defensive, but to have meaningful conversations. We're not saying you have to put your head in the sand and pretend like there are never any issues in your marriage, because that's not healthy either. But the Bible gives us a clear roadmap for what healthy communication looks like. And it's speaking the truth. In love, we do speak the truth, but it's not ever with negativity. It's never with harsh words or with this critical spirit. But we always have the tone of an encourager. We always have the tone of one who's believing the best in each other. We always have the tone of one who is promoting healing and one who's humble enough to receive correction ourselves. And if you're not doing all of those things, then your words are gonna do more harm than good. In the moment. It might feel good to just vent and to get it all out and to throw those insults out there. But that venting. And again, there's scientific research to back this up. The more we vent, the more venting just meaning spewing out words and insults or yelling or talking bad, whatever, it actually makes us feel worse over time. In the short term, it might make us feel a little bit vindicated, but in the long term, it makes us feel worse and it makes the relationship worse. And so everything we talk about here on the podcast or in our books and all that we're doing with exomarriage, it's all about just trying to help you have your best marriage. It's not trying to limit you, it's trying to point us back. All of us and reminding ourself in our own marriage that God's plan is still the best plan and we can't rewrite the rules to marriage and expect it to be successful. And that we need to promote health in our words and in all parts of our life. Because your words have such power to build up or to tear down. And, and a lot of this is, what we're talking about is just to. Just to recognize the power your words have.

I want to talk about another scenario where I think we have the tendency to want to talk bad about our spouse sometimes when we're in a hard season of marriage and that's on social media. You know, I see these couples where they want to make their spouse feel a sting and they'll do this very like, passive aggressive post on social media and it's just so toxic, you all. And then you see the other spouse respond in some other passive aggressive. And it's just, it makes my heart break for that couple. And it's just like Dave said, I think, you know, inside for a moment you might feel vindicated, but really you're just making the problem worse instead. You know, we need to protect each other's reputations. We need to go to each other in private and handle whatever's going on. We don't need to blast it all over Facebook or take a poll from our friends about what a dud our husband is that day or how bad our wife is or whatever it is. We need to go to them in private. And if we need to get help, to have a mediator help us work through it or to have a counselor help us work through it, so be it, reach out for help. But we need to do that in private and not go talking about our spouse on social media or to other people. That's only gonna lead to a worst case scenario where you're just gonna break each other's hearts, man.

Guys, I hope you're taking this to heart. And like, with all the things we do on here, I hope that you know, when you hear this, you don't just think, oh, I wish my spouse was listening to this. This is so just for my spouse. Because we need to be humble enough always to say, lord, convict me of the times that I've done this and maybe been unaware. The times that I've been passive aggressive, the times I've been a little snarky or sarcastic and I was intentionally just trying to feel vindicated by complaining about my spouse to someone or even trying to make my spouse feel a little bit of pain. With my words, because I was feeling some pain, and it's just not healthy. And changing our marriage starts with changing our own attitudes and our own mindsets and our own words, because you don't have the power to change your spouse. And it's never our job to change someone. It's only our job to love them. You know, changing is God's business. But if we'll love our spouse and if we'll take responsibility to do our best to change our own mindset, you'll be amazed at the difference it can make in your marriage and in the difference it can make in your own. Your own mindset, you'll feel freedom. You know, you'll feel more peace. And that's important, too.

It's so true. And just to practically, you know, just point out something here. I have never seen a spouse talking negatively about their spouse to someone else or on social media, create positive change in someone's face.

Never, ever.

I've never seen that happen. In fact, it only creates more turmoil, and it creates, you know, more pointing fingers, and it creates more problems. And so we just need to resist that. We need to stop it, and we need to repent of it. Like, if this is something that you've actually done, you need to go to your spouse today and say, listen, I was listening to this podcast, and I just felt convicted. You know, I thought we were having kind of this flirtatious banter, but really, I'm just putting you down. And I am so sorry. I'm sorry that I talked about you around the kids in that derogatory way, and I didn't go to you privately and talk about our issues. I'm sorry that I put that post on Facebook or Instagram where I was, you know, being real passive aggressive about you. I am so sorry. I want us to have an awesome marriage. I want to be your biggest cheerleader, your biggest encourager, and I really haven't been doing that lately. And I'm telling you, just those that little short conversation will instantly make your marriage better, and it's going to take doing that more consistently. But just that one conversation will mean the world to your spouse.

Man, that's good advice. All right, guys, we are going to transition to my favorite part of the episode every week, and that's the question and answer. Because I love, love, love, love the questions that we get. And we don't see these questions beforehand.

We don't see them.

Our producer, Marcus, sends us these questions sometimes. I think he sends us them just to throw us a curveball. Because he'll, like, dig through the pile and throw us the hard. He never throws us the easy ones. I'll tell him that.

He keeps us on our toes.

He keeps us on our toes. And today's question keeps us on our toes. And so I'm going to read it because I see what it's about, and already it's like, this is a hot one. All right, so here's the question. And by the way, if you want to send us questions, you can send these to nakedmarriagepodcast.com you can also reach out to us on social media. The questions we answer on air are the ones that come specifically to that Naked marriage podcast site. But you can write us on Instagram, aveandashleywillis, or if you just search the keyword marriage on Facebook, our page will pop up. And we do respond there as well. But today's question says, my husband travels a lot, and when traveling, he desires for us to have online sex. I was initially uncomfortable, but over a period of time, I gave in with hopes it would improve our marriage. As a Christian, I'm still not sure if this is right. What are your thoughts? So online sex, and so we do get written questions about these kinds of things. And technology sort of created a whole new area where a lot's possible that wasn't possible before. And for couples who were traveling, who, they're apart physically, they're on deployments. You know, there are a lot of different circumstances that can create physical distance. There are those. There are a lot of people that have written and said, you know, my husband, it's usually, you know, usually, not always, but usually the husband who initiates this and says, I want to feel connected to you sexually. I want some sexual connection and sexual release. And I don't want to just turn to porn, which is clearly out of bounds and wrong. But I want us to be able to kind of, as best we can, through technology, recreate some sexual intimacy. And then just to creatively, through FaceTime or Zoom or whatever, you're on to get creative with that. And then the questions like, this wife is asking, is this right? I mean, am I making, you know, is this right? You know, we're making videos like that and then sending them to each other as husband and wife, which is a term that some people have actually coined as Christian porn, which just means, you know, you're making these sexually explicit videos specifically and exclusively for each other within marriage. And there's kind of debate as to, is that out of bounds? Is that right? Is that wrong. You know, what if that falls into the wrong hands, once it's recorded, it could go out there and be all over the Internet. Or my kid could be playing with my phone and scarred for life because he sees. I mean, there's a lot of nuances to it, but at the same time, when you're traveling and wanting to stay connected somehow, I'm just babbling at this point.

I know. I was like, you're really going on.

Marcus, what have you done?

Okay. I actually have an opinion about this. And I mean, I think when you look at it on the surface, this is a husband and a wife who are married. They are only engaging with each other. I think as long like this is online. So I take that as real time. Okay. I would say first and foremost, it needs to be a very private safe. Like this can't be shared. This is not being recorded and used for pornography, but it is for each other in the moment. I think that that's just a modern day way to connect. And it wouldn't be any different than if you were each kind of stimulating yourselves while watching each other in person. I mean, and that's not wrong. There's nothing in the Bible that necessarily says that's wrong. I think though, the bigger question here is, does she feel comfortable? Because the marriage bed needs to be a safe place. And I don't know if she's uncomfortable with it because she feels a little guilty, like, is this something I'm really doing wrong? Or if really she doesn't find it enjoyable. I'm not really sure she didn't put that in there. But I think that that needs to be something you're both asking each other. But as far as biblically, I mean, we don't have anything in the Bible that says anything about this. I mean, you can go to song Solomon and you can see they did a lot of spicy stuff for their time.

And if they had phones, they would have been doing this.

If they had phones, they would have been doing this. There would have been some online sex going on. But I think that there shouldn't be any guilt or shame here as far as just in the moment engaging with each other in that way. And we've certainly known, you know, couples who where one spouse travels or is in the military on deployment, and they've had to be creative in this way. So I think you have to make sure it's very private. And I don't know how all that stuff works technologically wise, but I would just make sure that, you know that this is a private online engagement, but I think that, Biblically speaking, I think if it's just the two of you engaging as a husband and wife, there's nothing in the Bible that says that's wrong.

Yeah, it's an innovation, but at the same time, I think there's prudence in, like Ashley said, just making sure that this isn't something that could be recorded and come back to.

Oh, absolutely.

Get you in some way. In a way that was an unintended use because, like we've said, any sex within marriage is meant to be very private and very exclusive just for the two of you. But these are great insights and I appreciate the question, because now, sweetie, next time you travel or I travel, you can expect a FaceTime call. You can just expect it.

Oh, wow. Giving them ideas.

Yeah. More information than anyone wanted. And I have a feeling you would decline that call.

Our team's about to go vomit in the bathroom. Are taking me too far, I think.

Yeah, I could just hear you're just saying hitting decline and texting.

We're sorry, mom and dad.

Like, nope, this is not going to be our thing, but who knows? I can hope. I can hope.

But no judgment for those.

No judgment.

Yeah.

These are great questions, you guys. I appreciate you writing them in.

Yes. We appreciate your honesty. Thank you all so much for tuning in, and we hope to see you next time.