Honey, We Need to Talk

I LOVE THRILLER NOVELS. They always start out with a bang. That first dramatic sentence sends a chill up my spine, and I’m hooked.

Mr. Smith didn’t know it, but he had thirty seconds to live.

The terrified woman and her paddleless canoe rushed toward Niagara Falls.

The helicopter carrying the senator shuddered as the missile struck.

As the glamorous actress left the hotel bungalow, the lone assassin raised his rifle.

This book you are holding is a relationship thriller. So I’m going to start out with my own dramatic sentence:

I know the secret to deep, lifelong intimacy between a man and a woman.

I should know it. I’ve been married to my beautiful blonde, Sandy, for over thirty years. Together we have learned a lot about intimacy. I’ve also been a Christian psychologist in private practice, working with all kinds of couples with all kinds of problems, for over thirty years. That’s a total of sixty years of experience with opposite-sex marriages!

The secret is this: learning to tell each other the truth about practically everything.

I say practically because there are some private matters that are only between you and God. I say learning because no one has the natural ability or inclination to communicate clearly and deeply with the opposite sex. No one. When we begin a relationship, we are not prepared or even able to be open and honest with the other person.

Quite the opposite, in fact. We hide the truth. We hold back the truth. We distort the truth. We have no idea how to truly connect in conversation and get to know each other.

Why? We don’t speak the truth because it is human nature to protect oneself and not be vulnerable. Sharing truth, especially with the person we are closest to, exposes us to potential harm and pain. It feels a lot safer to keep truth hidden.

A communication breakdown can happen so easily too. Here’s just one example from my marriage to Sandy.

For the first ten years of our marriage, Sandy and I had no problems with our shared use of the bathroom shower. She showered in the evening, and I showered in the morning. Her shampoo was on the top shelf of the shower organizer; mine was on the middle shelf. She was in charge of buying her shampoo, and I bought my own.

Most important, we shared equally the replacing of the essential element of every successful shower experience: the bar of soap. Sandy always kept a good supply of soap in the hall closet, a mere ten steps from our shower stall. It was an unspoken agreement that we took turns putting a fresh bar of soap in the shower whenever it was needed. The soap bar rested in the place of honor on the bottom shelf of the shower organizer.

As I’m sure you know, there’s really nothing worse in a shower than a sliver of soap. When a bar of soap reaches a certain level of sliverness, shall we say, it will not produce any lather no matter how hard you rub it. Instead, it splits into two or more pieces, and when you try to rub the pieces in your hands, they fall to the shower floor. Once the fragments hit the floor, the centripetal force of the water hurries them toward the drain.

Of course you quickly bend over and try to collect the pieces before they slide out of reach and become irretrievably lodged in the drainpipe. You fail and thus are forced to touch the slimy, hairy, incredibly nasty drain to clear it of the pieces. Your hands are now infected with the drain residue and eleven kinds of bacteria. But you can’t wash them because you don’t have any soap!

Sandy and I avoided this nightmare scenario with a highly effective procedure. Whenever the bar got down to a sliver, whoever happened to be about to shower at the time would walk to the closet and get a new bar.

We operated for a solid ten years on this guiding principle of shower etiquette. When faced with the dreaded sliver of soap, we followed seven simple steps out of respect for the shower component of our marriage:

1. Feel free to express the perfectly normal response of “Oh no! Not the sliver!”

4. Throw the sliver into the wastebasket, because soap slivers are useless and a health hazard.

5. Wrap a towel around yourself, and walk the ten steps to the hall closet to get a new bar of soap.

7. Feel good—maybe even a little proud—that you have done the right thing and kept your marriage running smoothly.

As I mentioned, this sliver-of-soap replacement system (or SOSRS, if you will) worked beautifully for ten solid years.

I will never forget the morning I stepped into the shower, got wet, and was faced with the dreaded sliver. I was shocked and appalled. I had taken a shower the previous morning and knew that I had used up the final suds of the bar. I had put the sliver back, knowing Sandy would replace it with a fresh bar that evening. I knew I had lucked out and that she would have to go through the seven steps of SOSRS.

But she hadn’t replaced the bar! My showering world was turned upside down in an instant.

Being the gracious and loving husband I am, I decided to give Sandy the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was stressed, caught up in the demands of caring for our three children. Yeah, that was it. I told myself this was just a onetime, out-of-the-ordinary occurrence.

So I replaced the bar and didn’t say a word. I expected her to say something appreciative like, “Thanks for putting in that new bar of soap, Dave. I blew it, and I’m sorry. You are a kind and thoughtful husband. Will you forgive me?” Instead, she said nothing. I was slightly concerned about her lack of response, but I let it go.

Then it happened again! And again. And again. Sandy had stopped replacing the sliver. She never said a word. She unilaterally decided she was through replacing it.

This was unfair. It was selfish. It was just plain wrong. I mean, who did she think she was? The Queen of England? Was I her sliver replacement boy? How dare she leave me with the sliver of soap every single time and act as though nothing was wrong! Apparently, she did not know with whom she was dealing.

I decided to fight back. Two could play at this game. I decided to wait her out. As the next bar of soap got smaller and smaller, I held the line. I knew she was expecting me to replace it. Dream on, baby! I was not going to do it. Not this boy. Not this time.

The sliver got down to a nub. Down to tiny pieces. Down to almost microscopic dimensions.

I held out for a week. I abandoned the miniscule sliver and took extraordinary measures. I used shampoo to wash. I used hand soap from the sink. I am ashamed to confess that I even used a new bar for a few days that I kept in my underwear drawer.

In utter desperation I took the dramatic step of putting a new bar in its unopened package right beside the sliver. I had her now. All she had to do was to throw out the sliver, open the package, take out the new bar, and place it on the shelf.

But she wouldn’t do it. What was the matter with her? Was she trying to send me to the mental hospital?

Finally, I confronted Sandy. It was mano a mano time. I walked up to her, holding the unbelievably small sliver of soap in my palm, and asked, “What do you have to say for yourself?”

I told her the whole story of the sliver-of-soap replacement system and how she’d ruined it. She accused me of being crazy. Well, maybe I was, but she was the one who had driven me crazy!

Then she said, “Dave, weeks ago I switched from the bar soap to body wash. I haven’t touched the soap. Didn’t you notice the body wash container by my shampoo?”

Outraged, I replied, “No, I didn’t notice the body wash! I thought it was a shampoo bottle. Why didn’t you tell me you were switching to body wash?”

My spunky wife shot back, “I assumed you’d figure it out. Why didn’t you tell me weeks ago about the sliver-of-soap issue?”

My point is we didn’t talk to each other. We lived together in the same home for weeks and didn’t talk about the soap issue. Just a few sentences would have prevented it from becoming a conflict.

Obviously the soap sliver was a very minor issue in our relationship. We weren’t going to break up over it. But it is an example of what happens to every couple in the realm of communication. We don’t talk to each other. Not on a deep level. No way.

When we do talk, we keep it superficial and safe. We protect ourselves. It’s too risky to speak specific, detailed, “Here’s who I really am” truth.

We don’t open up and talk honestly. We don’t speak the truth on minor or major issues. We have a long list of things we don’t talk about. We don’t reveal how we really feel and think about anything important: our personal lives, our spiritual lives, the past, current struggles and problems, the relationship, dreams, the future . . .

It is the unspoken things that limit intimacy and eventually kill it. It is what we don’t say that keeps us from the soul-mate closeness that we need and that God wants us to enjoy.

Most couples never break through to honest, revealing communication. As a result most couples never become genuinely intimate. The quality of your communication determines the quality of your intimacy.

If you want to take your relationship to a deeper level, it’s time for real talk about real issues. That’s where I’m going to take the two of you in this book.

To achieve an authentic, robust closeness, you must learn to talk honestly and openly in ten essential areas:

Why are these ten areas essential? Well, because I say they are essential. I’m the doctor, right? In all seriousness, in my experience, both professionally and personally, being honest in these areas will reveal who you really are inside. And when that happens, deep intimacy is the result.

In a hands-on, intensely practical workbook style, I will guide you and your partner through each of these ten essential areas. Each chapter will open with some general context about the subject at hand and then move into the same five practical components:

How Are We Doing?—an initial block of questions that helps you assess how you are doing in the essential area covered in the chapter

Here’s What We Can Do—a teaching section, where you learn the relationship skills taught in the chapter

What Will Block Us?—a second block of questions that helps you identify ways you might be hindered from working on this area together

How Did We Do?—a final block of questions that helps you evaluate how you did when you applied the skills

This book is a how-to road map to lifelong intimacy. My process will teach you the key communication skills needed for closeness and increase your proficiency as a couple in these ten essential areas. It will enable you to talk intimately about any topic for the rest of your life together.

Every step of the way I want you both to read each chapter on your own. Then go through the chapter together and put together your action plan. Talk through the initial “How Are We Doing?” questions, make sure you’re on the same page about the steps I’m outlining for you to take, and then discuss the “What Will Block Us?” questions. After you take the practice steps over a set period of time (usually a week), come back together and answer the “How Did We Do?” questions.

On average it will take you three months to complete all the chapters. Take your time. I bet you’d say your relationship is worth three months!

If you struggle with a chapter and don’t feel able to work through it as described, discuss your hesitation with your partner. Then just move on to the next chapter. As you get deeper into the book and learn more about yourself and your partner, you may find yourself able to come back to the difficult chapter and do the work.

This book is ideal for couples who are not married. If you are seriously dating, engaged, or perhaps even living with your partner, this process reveals far better than any premarital test whether you can achieve full intimacy as a couple. You will know with 100 percent confidence by the end of the book if you ought to consider marriage or break up. If you and your partner develop a greater degree of intimacy through this process, you can marry with confidence. You will be ready to live together as husband and wife, equipped to handle conflict and nurture real intimacy. But if you work through these ten areas together and do not achieve intimacy, end the relationship. Your relationship will have proven itself unable to reach a deeper level. (More instruction for unmarried couples is given in chapter 16.)

This book is also ideal for couples who are married. No matter how long you’ve been married, your journey through these ten essential areas can get you to the intimacy you’re missing. I believe that if both of you are committed to the process and do your best each step of the way, God will bless your marriage with a special closeness. Your marriage is sacred to God, and He wants you to enjoy a forever, intimate love relationship.

However, if your spouse will not go through the entire process with you, I urge you to take a series of tough-love steps. (More on this too in chapter 17.)