Honesty and Openness: Key to Security
| Overview | Transparency between husband and wife is essential to growing strong communication and developing a strong marriage. |
Men, do you want to increase your wife’s deep desire for you? Here is a secret: share your thoughts, feelings, habits, likes, dislikes, past history, daily activities, and future plans. “A sense of security is the bright golden thread woven through all of a woman’s five basic needs. If a husband does not maintain open and honest communication with his wife, he undermines her trust and eventually destroys her sense of security.”[1] Instead of growing together, they grow apart.
Transparency is essential to growing strong communication and a stronger marriage. You should not hide things, thoughts, or feelings from one another. Your spouse should know you inside and out. Reasons for honesty is that it helps keep your marriage on track and it meets an important emotional need for women. Dishonesty is painfully offensive in any relationship. Being “brutally honest” is not necessary, but opening one’s soul to someone can create feelings of vulnerability. The wife needs to respond in loving ways when her husband opens up, even if it is hurtful. If you lash out at him, he will withdraw and not be as likely to share in the future.
Mutual honesty can keep a relationship healthy. Even confessing our sins to another trusted person will help keep us faithful to our Lord (James 5:16). Should not our spouse be the one with whom we can divulge our weaknesses? We can save a soul from death and keep a marriage intact (James 5:20). Psalm 15 provides a mirror for us to check ourselves against to see if we are pleasing to the Lord, specifically verses two and four which refer to honesty. If you want to develop security in your marriage, do not forget to be honest and open!
Note: A wonderful tool to strengthen a relationship and focus on God’s intended design for marriage is Willard F. Harley, Jr.’s book, His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-proof Marriage. It was referenced heavily for this series on marriage and includes questionnaires and activities to strengthen marriages. Seeking resources in our lives is a sign of strength, not weakness.
Reference
[1] Willard Harley, Jr. (2011), His Needs, Her Needs (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell), p. 103.
Copyright © 2018 by www.ebglobal.org. Originally published in Christian Family 2[3]:6.