"Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Got Married" Dr. Gary Chapman Part 2/2

something I think that when couples read your book there determines I will spirituality is not to be acquainted with going to church yeah again again as a pastor I've seen this you know he's a Christian guy I mean I when I when we were dating he he went to church with me and he still come to church with me but man at home you know he's something else he's beating me or he's abusing the kids or but he's a he's a Christian he's going to church yeah yeah what do you say you know often gentlemen I'm counseling couples before they get married I always raised this question about the spiritual issues and often the common answer is oh yes he's a Christian he goes to st. Joseph's or he goes to somewhere you know and that's supposed to be it they go to church are there a member of a church but we know there's all kind of Christians I mean there's Sunday morning Christians there's Christmas and Easter Christians there's daily devotional Christians you know and what I'm saying is you have to explore the foundation of spirituality much deeper than we're both Christians and therefore everything is fine you have to dig into what are their basic beliefs about Christ about God about prayer about the scriptures and how do they practice these things and this is not hard to discover if you keep your eyes open you can tell before you get married and you do have to keep your eyes open because what you hear may not be necessarily the truth I mean people are putting on their best behavior when they're when they're trying to win someone into a marriage right absolutely trying to say what they think the other person wants to hear and really you know intentionally trying to win the other person the old English word is to woo but to watch them and to observe is another matter and also to talk with their friends yeah because sometimes they're with their friends when they're not with you and their friends have a different opinion of them than you have you know you may talk to a guy's friend for example and he may say you know Bob or Joe or whatever his name is yeah he and he begins to tell you something about him that you find it hard to believe but listen this guy's seen it listen to what he's saying you see when we're loved we tend to push off what things people say to us about our potential spouse I think we have to be serious we have to listen to them and then we bring it up with the person we discuss it with the person this is like relational due diligence it is it is and I think before we get married Jim we need to explore the spiritual foundation because the spiritual foundation affects everything else in the marriage absolutely your last chapter by the way the appendix developing a healthy dating relationship I thought boy that's that's maybe that should go first from the book but personality personality profoundly influences behavior when I read that chapter I thought boy is this ever true and I'm really wondering have you ever suggested to couples that they do a personality test you know and and and discover what the other person is like from us just a psychological profile yeah I think that's always very healthy to do that many couples don't do that and but whatever the profile whatever profile you use there's many of them you need to know something of how this the patterned way in which this person responds to life you know we talk for example about optimistic people and pessimistic people those are very different orientations to life and it's a personality trait and the question is if this person's basic personality trait is always to see the negative and always to come across pessimistic is that okay with you you live with that for the rest of your life because typically they're not going to change radically they can have what I call significant growth but it's not going to be radical growth they're going to tend to always see the negative side and that's just one little trait of course you know one of the things in my marriage there are morning people and night people I didn't know that and I dreamed that my wife and I once we got married would have breakfast together and have devotions together I'm going to start the day together and after I got married I found out my wife was not a morning person she doesn't do mornings you know and that dream had to go fine we can live with different personality patterns but if we know what they are before we get married we are less likely to be disappointed and frustrated once we get into the marriage what do you say to that usually the woman more than the man who says yeah I know this I know that I know that you're right he's this he's that but I'm going to change him yeah what do you say that well we don't change people we influence people but we don't change people you know we influence people every single day if a husband walks into the room he's been at work he walks in he gives his wife a kiss and gives her a hug and asked her how her day has been he's influencing her in a positive way if he walks into the house doesn't even go find her gets him something to drink flips on the TV sits down and watches TV he's influencing her but in a negative way so we do influence each other but we don't change each other and basic patterns don't change unless a person has a radical encounter with God you know they may have a something in their life and God can change God can change people but we don't change people is that ever true it's just from my own experience I'm not a professional like you when it comes to counseling but just from my own experience as a pastor again and again again I meet with disappointed women who said you know I thought I could change him but you know he's still the same guy final final comment in terms of your own marriage you you're very transparent about your own marriage which I think really lends a lot of credibility of the book what do you think was the toughest challenge that you faced in the first say 10 15 years of your marriage the toughest one well it's hard to say what was toughest because we had a hard time in many areas but I think one I think one area was I did not know how to process differences you know when you're in love you don't think you're going to have any differences and and all these things start coming out when I came down off the high and and I found out I didn't know how to process them so what I did is what I thought you know how most people do I think I tried to explain it to her because I had the idea any sane person would understand what I'm saying now I want to tell you this one more time and I tried to convince her in whatever the conflict that my idea was the right idea I had no concept of knowing how to listen to a person try to understand how they're processing in their mind and be able to say you know I hear what you're saying and it makes sense I still may not agree with it but I can honestly say if I listen long enough it makes sense now we see it differently how can we process it how can we solve the problem I didn't have that concept to me it was an argument you won the argument because you were on the right and you know they were wrong and consequently that alone caused us an awful lot of heated you know tension in our marriage is this this Venus Mars polarity you know women are from Venus men are from Mars we think differently we see the world differently well that's part of it but part of it is just being human any - humans are going to think differently they're going to feel differently they're going to process thought differently and so we have to learn how to respect them as a human made in God's image and and and affirm what they say even if you don't agree with it try to understand it how it could how they could think that way and focus on finding a solution rather than winning an argument give me your website again five love languages calm five love languages calm and viewers I know you've been fascinated by this conversation if you want to know more about Gary Chapman the books he's written and a lot that he has their his website 5lo love languages calm can get you right to this man this book things I wish I'd known before we got married Gary Chapman author of the number one New York Times bestseller the five love languages man knows what he's talking about and has a huge audience with proven wisdom by the way friends I should mention this the eStore has the book crossroads dot CA / e store you can get the book you're going to want there you don't want it thanks for coming our way thank you Jim great to be with you

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Id: Solcn1oLjlE

Length: 8min 23sec (503 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 25 2012