Relationship Advice – How to Confront Your Spouse

Relationship Advice – How to Confront Your Spouse

The tragedy behind most arguments in marriage is what people fail to say in a calm and peaceful atmosphere, they will typically end up saying in a very heated discussion after much emotional ground is lost. Here are a few tips on how to Biblically and methodically confront your spouse. Whether the issue is adultery, sinful habits, self behavior, or something smaller in nature, I trust that this relationship advice on how to confront your spouse proves to be helpful.

Tip #1 – Serve before Confronting

It is always better to serve your spouse before confronting their negative behavior. In our book and Audio material on marriage, we deal with this in our teaching about the top mistake that husbands and wives make in a fight.

Nevertheless, you will find it beneficial to build up what I call a bank account of credibility before trying confront an issue. This always causes the emotional temperature of a discussion to be at a lower level.

Proverbs 18:16 tells us that “a man’s gift maketh room for him . . .”. This is applicable to marital conflict in that there are times when your gift of service will pave the way for effective communication.

Tip #2 – Do not Beat Around the Bush

Some try to approach a serious subject by engaging in small talk for 30 to 40 minutes before getting to the real issue. This is almost always a mistake. Though I am not sure as to why, it is better to exchange a few pleasantries and then proceed to the issue at hand. Though this seems but a small bit of relationship advice, I have found this to be more than beneficial when confronting a person. The conversation always seem to go better when you get to the point.

Tip #3 – Keep the Focus on the Issue at Hand

It is more than vital for couples confronting an issue to stay in what I call a problem-solving mode. In other words, if the conversation resorts to name-calling, belittling, and merry-go-round type of conversation, then it is best to put the conversation off until a later time. We discuss this in further detail in other posts about effective communication in marriage or premarital relationships.

Tip #4 – Watch being Drawn Out to Battle

Some spouses deflect the attention off of their sin or negative behavior by drawing the other onto a verbal battlefield. Watch out for this for some are what I call master deflectors, and they do this by learning how to push the right buttons in their spouse. Once they pull the other onto a verbal battlefield, they feel comfortable because the attention is now off of their own negative behavior.

I cannot stress the importance of this last bit of relationship advice as the scriptures tell us that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). Some have become masters at taking the attention off of themselves by irritating those around them.