Marriage is a soul-sanctifying relationship that takes a lot of sacrifice and service.

A thriving marriage requires a lot of intentionality and dying to self. While I don’t believe marriage has to be hard, humans are pretty good and making this wonderful blessing as difficult as it can get.

Our sinful nature is never more evident than it is within the marriage relationship. If we aren’t careful, we can fall easily into selfish habits.

This one skill all of us should be cultivating for our marriages (and really, any relationship) combats this selfishness because it requires us to put our focus on someone else.

So, what is this magical skill?

Listening. The one skill we all need to thrive in our marriages is listening.

This may sound incredibly basic, and it is, but it is also vital, foundational and needed in your marriage.

It’s so simple that often we forget to be intentional about cultivating it. Living in this world pulls our attention in a million different directions and it can be so easy to go into autopilot with our marriages.

When was the last time you spent intentional time simply sitting with your partner and seeking to understand them? Not to give your thoughts or opinions, not to debate and not to simply gather information. Not discussing bills or childcare or work, but their deepest thoughts, fears, desires, struggles, and triumphs?

I’m talking no-phone, no interruption, major eye-contact listening.

Was it yesterday? Last week? Last month? Maybe you can’t even remember.

The good news is, it’s not too late and if you’re doing this well, there is always room for improvement. I know there is room for it in my marriage.

It takes work to cultivate this skill, but the payoff is worth it. Empathy, connection, intimacy, joy and peace in your home will come from intentionality with your listening skills.

We just have to choose to pull our attention off the distractions of this world.

When all of our attention and energy is focused on someone else, especially our spouses, it makes it really hard to think about ourselves.

This in itself is the antidote to selfishness.

If we’re truly listening, leaning in with empathy, we’ll have no energy left to worry about ourselves.

I notice this happens to me a lot when my husband calls me from work. We work opposite shifts and days and many of our conversations happen over the phone and occur at times when I’m writing, eating, unwinding with a book or a movie or am working on a chore.

If I choose to continue giving any focus or energy to my previous task, our conversation suffers. Our communication is less intimate and connected because I’m focused on what I was doing before I was “interrupted.”

My husband’s phone calls are something I cherish and look forward to because some days, they are the only time we connect but my own selfishness can ruin it if I don’t choose to give him my full, undivided attention.

If I take the energy to be intentional about eliminating the distractions and putting down my task to listen to him, that’s when the connection happens.

Attentive listening communicates your spouse’s importance and reminds them that they are a priority to you.

If we tell our spouses that they are important to us, but we don’t take the time to put away distractions and give them our full attention, what message do you think that sends to them? Our actions speak far louder than our words and this is even truer in the marriage relationship.

Often, intentional time with our spouses goes the bottom of the list because so many other demands on our lives have more pressing consequences if they are ignored, such as work commitments, small children, family crises, external conflicts or even church commitments.

But the longer we put cultivating this skill in marriages on the backburner, the more dire the consequences will be.

Mamie L. Pack of MamiePack.Com helps us to become better listeners in our marriages in this week’s featured post! Read on below to learn 3 tips for cultivating that skill of listening in your marriage. I know it will bless you.

I Hear You: 3 Tips For Becoming A Better Listener In Your Marriage

Okay, I will be the first to admit, listening was (sometimes still is) my most challenging area as a wife in those beginning years of marriage. It took some time, multiple mistakes, and hard conversations for me to learn how to become a better listener in my marriage.

I had good intentions, but good intentions are not enough when it comes to effectively communicating and listening to your husband.

Nope.

I heard what I wanted to hear or listened so that I could respond. Then it hit me.

What if instead of saying, “I am listening,” I actually started listening?

Unfortunately, the art of listening didn’t come naturally for me. Friend, it takes HARD, INTENTIONAL work. Let’s not forget about time.

Work I was willing to do to become the kind of wife I knew I could be. The kind of wife God created me to be for my husband.

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