Summer Quickies: How much do I tell my spouse about my sexual past?

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Hey, guys, welcome back to the Naked Marriage podcast. We are Dave and Ashley Willis, and on this podcast we undress the truth about sex, intimacy and lifelong love. And I hope you are enjoying this Q and A series as much as we are. We like to refer to these as Q and A Quickies because where quickie is just fun. And this podcast is called the Naked Marriage. And we have a great question for you guys today.

Yeah, this is a good one. And the question was to be fully transparent, should couples disclose everything they did prior to their marriage to one another? And this is an honest question. It's like, do I want to burden my spouse with all these details? Do I want to get into every specific of everything in my sexual past? It's a really, really honest question and an important question. And we've got some hopefully really helpful insight on it in this session.

Dive in to be fully transparent, should couples disclose everything they did prior to their marriage to one another? And I think that's an awesome question because we talked about in the having a naked marriage, you know, you need to be honest, you need to be transparent and come out with things and not hold things in because it's only going to ultimately hurt your marriage. And so, I mean, my first answer to this is, yes, you need to disclose everything. And I would tell you this too. If you're spiritual spouse asks you specific questions, you have to be willing to give those specific answers. Because when you hold back and you don't get really specific with your answers, they feel like you're hiding even more than you're telling them. And so in disclosing, I'm taking this off because you guys, there's like a glare and I want to see your all's beautiful faces when you're talking about these things. When you do, when you say things like, well, we just can't go there, it's like you're saying, I don't trust you with this information. And by disclosing this information, you're building trust. And so be willing to go there. If your spouse asks for details, if they don't want the details, then don't share them. But whatever you do, don't be holding in a bunch of things that you're just like, well, I can't really trust them with that information. I don't want them to think of me in that way. Because ultimately it's going to end up hurting your marriage in the long run.

It's so good. Like we said before, the level of your honesty will determine the level of your intimacy. But being vulnerable with each other, being naked with each other means vulnerability. Vulnerability means giving someone else really the ability to hurt you. You're taking off your armor. You're saying, here I am exposed and vulnerable, and I'm trusting you with this information. And so if you use things from your spouse's past as ammunition to belittle them or to hold things over their head, that's gonna damage that trust. And marriage has got to be built on trust. Trust happens first with being willing to share everything, but then secondly, it's being willing to protect each other and not damage each other.

Don't take it to face.

You bring out the best in each other. I think if you want to instantly improve your marriage, maybe more so than anything else, choose to be your spouse's biggest encourager and not their biggest critic, because you have a choice of which one you're going to be. You know more about your spouse than anybody. You can be the one who celebrates all the good in them, or you can be the one that's always pointing out their flaws. And if you want to damage your marriage and in just irreparable ways sometimes than point out everything your spouse is doing wrong. And maybe you think you've got the spiritual gift of criticism. Have you ever met people like that?

It's not a gift.

It's not. You're like the Simon Cowell of marriage. Like, you are awful at everything. You're just pointing out all this they're doing wrong. And maybe you think, well, it's because I'm being honest. And he or she, they're just not doing anything right. And I'm just being honest. But I think maybe you're not being honest. Maybe you're just looking at your spouse through a skewed lens. And so if you make it your mission to find everything your spouse is doing wrong, if you make it your mission to find everything that you wish they would do differently, all you will see are flaws. But if you ask the Holy Spirit to change your perspective and start looking for things to praise and looking for things to affirm, you'll see it at every turn. Jesus said seek and you will find. The actual verb tense he used in the original language was is. Whatever you keep on seeking is what you will find. So the opposite of that has to be true as well. Whatever you're consistently not looking for, you're not gonna see. And if there's a negative tone in your marriage and if there's a negative dynamic in your marriage, then you need to potentially change your perspective. Maybe God doesn't wanna change your spouse nearly as much as he wants to change your perspective about your spouse. And by your words of turning into affirmation instead of criticism, the tone of those words will change the tone of your marriage. Hey guys, hopefully that was helpful for you. Again, these are really important topics and this like a lot of issues in marriage, it comes down to communication and transparency. If you want to have a naked marriage, which is intimate in every way, then you can't keep secrets. Now, if your spouse doesn't want every single detail, that's fine too. But it really has to be a discussion between the two of you. Give your spouse as much detail as they ever want. Because your life, your heart, your past, every part of your life should be an open book to your spouse and for them the same. And if your marriage has that kind of transparency and nakedness, you're both going to be closer together than ever before. Hope this helped you today. We will see you next time.

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Sam.