Vulnerable Language Changes Everything in Marriage

Brain science shows that the very act of verbalizing our painful experiences to another person helps us to better integrate the distress of those experiences. We are better able to make sense of them. Our confusion levels go down, along with our initial sense of anxiety about facing the pain alone.

We hurt less after we talk about our pain with a trusted person.

Easing pain is what every attuned parent wants to do for a child in need. I am inclined to believe that this is the same desire of every spouse in early marriage. We don’t want our beloved spouses to hurt. We want to be with them in their moments of need. I actually think that it takes a very long time for this level of caring to be diminished.

Even in more advanced stages of conflict, the listening spouse still wants to take the pain of her beloved. The husband wants to be able to do something to ease his wife’s pain. In my opinion, it is not so much a difficulty with listening that takes place within a distressed couple. It is a difficulty in being able to convey pain in vulnerable ways that would draw our spouses to us versus pushing them away.

When we are hurting, our entire nervous system is wired to fight or flee away from the pain. This makes it very difficult to draw close to our spouses during those times when we get hurt in the marriage. We defend ourselves with an attack, even before we get started on the approach toward letting them in. We brace ourselves for rejection and inadvertently sabotage ourselves, pulling away from ones who want to be close to us.

Using vulnerable language means that we lay aside our instinctive patterns of self preservation, our defenses. We open ourselves up to our spouses in a step of faith, returning to the face to face posture that we once had with them. It takes tremendous courage to be vulnerable, especially when we have felt the pain and neglect of our spouses’ fight or flight reactions.

We can use the gift of vulnerable language to bring healing and hope to the areas of our marriage that have been damaged by negative cycles of conflict. As a marriage therapist and workshop speaker, I coach couples to begin to use language in very specific ways.

I nudge them to take risks with one another again, to bypass defenses, and to bring down the protective walls that were built in frightened moments. I urge avoidant spouses to courageously acknowledge their needs and set limits on the protesting behaviors of their spouses. I coach protesting spouses to slow down their approach and honestly speak about their fears of abandonment.

As couples speak in vulnerable and committed ways to one another, they gain the power to stop cycles of conflict, draw close to one another, and build emotional security once again. This is the gift and the power of vulnerable language.

The Gift of Language

Language truly is a gift to us as humans. It lifts us into a realm above all the other creatures on earth. It helps us richly communicate our joys, our longings, and our sorrows. It binds us together and helps us connect to one another throughout our lives. As any parent can tell you, the advent of language in your infant child comes with eager anticipation, great welcome, and joy. You long to fellowship with your child, and you rejoice when the door opens to new depths of communing and new depths of knowing.

When first we fall in love, there is such language! Oh, the poetry that flows from the lips of one lover to the other. How we croon our devotion! How we extol the virtues and beauty of our beloved one. We compliment, make promises, and dream aloud of all the ways that we will be together, ways that we will be one. Language links us and binds us, and it is the precursor to physical affection.

My maternal grandparents fell in love through the course of many letters written while he was miles away in college. This was long before the days of cell phones and Skype. Language shared between those two dear ones, led to a great romance and a legacy of love. I am a recipient of that legacy today.

God’s Words Reassure Us

God uses language to tell us something of who He is. In Exodus chapter 3:12,14, God reveals to us His constancy and His ever-present nature through the story of Moses at the burning bush. God tells Moses, “I will be with you” and reveals that His constant presence is part of His name, “I am.” This is His very nature, an “ever-present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1 NIV).

“I will be with you.” What comfort that promise brings to us humans who are wired with needs for security and hardwired with fears of the future and uncertainty about the unknown. God’s promise, conveyed through language, soothes our fears and provides deep reassurance of His presence with us, His guidance for us along our journey.

We understand and are known through our use of language. The primary way people can know about our internal experience is through our use of expressive language. Language is the means by which we tell other people what we are going through, what we are thinking, and what we need.

I am so thankful that God communicates to us in a way that we can understand! God stoops to our level to impart His truth to our minds. His messages bring us light, comfort, and guidance.

We internalize these words and make mental pictures of them whenever we hear them. Sometimes they are stored more deeply in ways that anchor us, bolster us, and connect us to Him. When we go through difficult times, we rehearse His promises in our minds. This gives us strength to keep going and connects us to Him along the way.

His expressed promises assure us that He is with us, will never forsake us, and that He is committed to us throughout our lives. In the same manner, we can use vulnerable language to build security in our marriage relationships! We can even use language to break out of negative cycles of conflict that lock us into so much intrapersonal and interpersonal pain.

If you are caught in negative cycles of conflict in your marriage, it is essential that you learn new ways to draw your spouse to you instead of pushing him or her away. Vulnerable language is both verbal and nonverbal. It allows you to activate the power of human attachment to deeply connect with your spouse.

Vulnerable language allows you to share your needs in new ways.

This is not just about communicating differently or using “I statements.” Vulnerable language is the way we posture ourselves to share our needs in new ways. We want to frame to our spouses that at the core of all our marriage distress is our deep need to be connected to them. We are positioning ourselves to share needs, longings, and the hurts that come when we can’t find our loved ones at those key times when we are reaching for them.