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Automatic transcript; may contain mistakes, especially in Hebrew.
This week's question, how do you find the balance between not letting things bottle up, but not constantly criticizing each other? Excellent question. The goal of marriage is intimacy. Intimacy means the creation of oneness. Naturally, married couples are going to have things that cause friction, not only because men are men and women are women, but because that is the nature of marriage itself. The creation of oneness, just like building a relationship with. God, means moving from yourself to another. And by definition, someone who's other than you is going to do things differently than you, things that can sometimes really get on your nerves. So it's very natural and very normal and even very healthy. It's good. There are things that get in the way of intimacy. Working through those things is how we create intimacy. So, in order to know the difference between criticizing each other too much and not letting.
things bottle up, we have to ask ourselves, is this something that's causing friction in the relationship? Or is this something that I just need to move past because it's not a big deal? Marriage, like a bank account, allows for deposits and withdrawals. But even though, like in a bank, you can go into minus, you can't be in minus for too long. You have to make sure that the amount of deposits that you're making to your spouse are at least equal, and obviously it's recommended that it be more than equal, that it's at least. equal, the deposits and the withdrawals. Now, of course, we all want to be putting away money for a rainy day. So it's better to make more deposits than withdrawals. Ask yourselves, is this something that's really getting in the way of the relationship? Now let's assume that it is, let's assume there's something that your spouse is doing that's absolutely driving you up the wall and it's bottling up because it's getting in the way of intimacy. So now how do we engage in that confrontation? So the answer is we go.
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with the rules of what, why, when, where, and how. The first thing is what exactly is the thing that's bothering you. Communication requires clarity and it's very important that you know what's bothering you and how it's making you feel so that you can communicate that clearly to your spouse. And it's important that you do your best to have that worked out before you engage in the conversation. So you can come in and you can say something like, it makes me feel blank when you. do blank. You'll have clarity and you'll let your spouse know this is what's bothering me, that's what's bothering you. Then there's the why. Why are you bringing this to your spouse's attention? This requires integrity. Are you bringing this to your spouse's attention because you want to hurt him with it? Because you want him to hold your pain for you? Or because you legitimately want to work through these things so that your spouse can love you in a way that creates intimacy? Very often our spouses are.
doing things that they don't know are getting in the way of intimacy. They may even think this is the best way to create intimacy. So we have to teach them what it is that we're looking for. If you're coming authentically to build the relationship, it's a beautiful thing. So that's the what and the why. What is what exactly am I experiencing? Why am I bringing this to my spouse's attention? Then there's the when and the where. Bringing something up is delicate. It needs to be done in the right place and in the right time. Obviously, as relationships grow, they become more complicated because you have less time and less space, especially as your family, Bezr Hashem, grows. So how do you find the time? The answer is you have to prioritize. Relationship is important. It's very often not urgent, especially as your family grows. Things become more urgent, and the urgent things will occupy more of your time.
If you don't set aside time and space for your marriage, especially in the beginning, it is very easy to ignore the relationship. And like anything in life, when the relationship is not being watered, it does not grow. The only thing that will grow are weeds, and ultimately those will strangle the relationship. So when am I bringing this to my spouse's attention? Is this a good time for me? Is this a good time for them? Where am I bringing it to their attention? Obviously not in front of other people, in a safe place, in a designated place. It's important to set aside this is the time and this is the space where we sit down with each other and talk about important things. And last but not least, certainly not least, how? How am I bringing this to my spouse's attention? It is important whenever we're engaging in confrontation that we come with a soft start. with letting our spouse know that they're valuable to us, that we're only bringing this to their attention because we want to work on the relationship, that we're letting them know that we're not blaming them.
or attacking them, that we're sharing with them. We all go through a lot in our lives, and we have very little emotional capital. Unfortunately, we spend a lot of our emotional capital in other places. So if he's had a bad day, and then you come, and then you say, okay, I just want to tell you all the things you're doing wrong, it won't be received well. It's important to let the other person know how much we care about them, and again, obviously, in a way that's clear and communicative. so that they can understand exactly what we need from them. So to sum up, how do you know the difference between when you should confront and when you shouldn't confront? Is this important to the relationship? Is it getting in the way of intimacy? And then the confrontation should follow the five rules. What do I want to say? How should it be said in a way, that can allow the other person to feel safe? When, where, and why? Working through our resentments before we engage our spouse. so that we're not just asking them to hold our emotional pain, but we're actually working towards building a more beautiful and more complete intimate relationship.
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