FamilyLife Today®

Ron Deal: We live our lives basically waiting for somebody to love us and be trustworthy, rather than being the loving, trustworthy person.

Nan Deal: We, like most people, spent most of our marriage trying to get the other person to be something different so that I would feel loved and safe.

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Okay, so we've got Ron and Nan Deal in Orlando in the studio with FamilyLife Today. It's been 14 months, you said, since you've been in the studio?

Ron Deal: I think so.

Nan Deal: Way too long since we've been back.

Ron Deal: Way too long.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, we are glad you're here.

Ann Wilson: You guys are beloved friends of not only ours but of FamilyLife Today. We always love what you're bringing to the table, what you're learning, what Jesus is showing you, and how he's showing up in your marriage. So I think today's going to be great for everybody.

Ron Deal: Thanks, Ann. That's very kind.

Nan Deal: Yeah, thank you. Good to be here.

Dave Wilson: Walking in here today, we decided let's talk about two pillars of relationships. I know this somewhat comes from *The Mindful Marriage*, by the way—a book you guys should all have if you don't have it. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click on the link in the show notes, and get it. But I've always talked about all kinds of pillars. What are the two that you want to talk about with relationships?

Ron Deal: We're going way back to what is it that everybody wants in their life, in their family, in their marriage, in their relationship with their children, young or adult, whatever the case may be. There are two fundamental things that have to be in place for relationships to be healthy. And by the way, we're going to get there, but I want the listener and viewer to hang on because you're going to learn how this plays into your relationship with God, too. But it's love and trust.

Now, it sounds simple, but unpacking those two concepts—there is so much meat wrapped up in those two ideas. Now, the Beatles said what? "All you need is love." Feel free, get the guitar. There you go. And it's a great, wonderful idea, but the truth is you've got to have trust in the relationship.

Why? Because trust gives you a sense of safety. If all you have is love but you can't trust the person or they can't trust you, you really don't have much. I had a quick little illustration. I was talking with a guy one time—true story. I said, "Do you love your wife?" He said, "Absolutely, with all my heart." I said, "Does she love you?" He said, "I believe that she does." And then I said, "So what are you going to do about the affair she's having?"

Notice love is not enough. You can want somebody and they can want you, but take away trust and you don't have any safety. You don't know where you belong. You don't know what you have. You just have an emotion. You really don't have any substance. It's these two things working in concert with one another that really ultimately provides stability.

We have, in our field, marriage and family ministry, emphasized the love part really, really well. We have not so much emphasized the trust and safety part, but it is absolutely fundamental to any healthy relationship.

Dave Wilson: I mean, what do you say to the guy or gal that says, "Okay, I hear what you're saying, but I've also heard that the Bible teaches that men don't need love; they need respect"? Ephesians 5:33, which it does actually say, husbands love your wives, wives respect your husbands. And so there's even been teaching over the years like a guy doesn't really need to be loved. A woman does, but a guy needs to be affirmed and recognized and respected, which is obviously wrong just to say that.

Ron Deal: Absolutely. I mean, my understanding of Ephesians 5 would not be to say that men don't need love and women don't need respect. I mean, just have a quick conversation with a woman who's being disrespected. And by the way, what that equals—disrespected equals, "I'm not safe. I'm not cherished. I'm not really in this relationship in a way that I can count on, that I can depend on." That's really what that's sort of getting into.

It's not that you don't need the other. It's that maybe what stands out the most to men is that sense of respect. That's how he interprets love, maybe, is the better way of saying that. But it certainly doesn't mean that love's not a part of it.

Dave Wilson: Now what does—let's go to love. What does it look like? How do I know I'm feeling loved? How do I love Ann or anybody?

Ann Wilson: And are we talking about just feelings? Because love is action.

Ron Deal: It's substance.

Ann Wilson: Yeah.

Nan Deal: I think in our relationship, there was always the love there. We always had a foundation that we loved one another. But there was a season in there where trust was not always there. I couldn't trust that you would come back.

Ron Deal: There were some questions about that.

Dave Wilson: What do you mean "come back"?

Nan Deal: Work was a driving force and a love in his life. So he could be gone physically, but he could be gone emotionally. And I learned I couldn't trust whether he'd come back or not. I mean, it was always there. And so even when he's home, he's not necessarily present or with you. He couldn't unhook for sure.

Ron Deal: And so—and this was such a good point, Nan, because ultimately what love gives you—and we can talk about the substances of love: uniqueness, worthiness, belonging—what that gives you is a sense of identity. It tells you who you are.

So for me, my journey for a long, long time that I had no awareness of forever was that the reason I was driving at work is not because I'm a workaholic. That's surface-level stuff. The reason was I was trying to find my identity. I grew up in a situation where performing is how I was guaranteed love and safety with my relationship with my father in particular.

He had high expectations. Not that he ever didn't love me, but I always felt like I was trying to work for that. And so I performed at school, I performed on the athletic field and everywhere in my life. And so I started performing on the job. I just kind of kept that same coping strategy going forward to try to find my identity. The irony is that me trying to find my identity led to lack of safety and trust from her towards me, which completely makes sense. That's a good example of how these two factors bleed into one another.

Dave Wilson: I mean, do you guys find that a lot with men and women? Because your story is our story. I'm sure it can go the other way. I'm sure that women could be so driven, but I was so driven at work, sort of like Ron again. And I didn't realize for decades that I felt loved there because I felt affirmed. They sort of clapped and said—nobody clapped, but they said, "You're good and we value what you do here."

I came home and I felt like, "You're not good. You're not valued here. And why aren't you even here?" And so I felt like I went, "Okay, see ya," and I went back. And I'm not saying every guy does that, but I would never have said, "I feel more loved there than here," but I think I did.

Ann Wilson: Well, and to your point, I would go to the kids or my career teaching. You know, you're off doing this and you're getting those happy feels there. Well, I'm getting happy feels and my endorphins are going off when I'm kind of knocking it out of the park here with the kids and feeling that my identity is wrapped up in that.

Dave Wilson: They love you, they need you.

Ann Wilson: Yes, and I'm doing well at it and I want to pour into that. And so I think we all can have our little niche that we go to.

Dave Wilson: And it becomes your identity. "I'm a good worker" or "I'm a good preacher" or "I'm a good minister" or "I'm a good mom."

Ron Deal: There you go. So again, notice what everybody's chasing is love and safety. And trust is the thing that provides that.

Dave Wilson: What'd you chase?

Nan Deal: I was chasing you so that you would come back to me.

Ron Deal: There's the safety. There it is.

Nan Deal: So that you would feel loved.

Ann Wilson: Yes, and I think that as a listener, you could be pushing back and hear what we're all saying, like, "Yeah, I came home and my wife wasn't happy." And she might be thinking or he might be thinking, "Oh, I'm supposed to now pretend like, 'Oh, you're amazing. Oh, woohoo, you're home.'" No, and we are not saying that at all.

Ron Deal: We're not. We're not. We are saying there are some elements of love, some attributes of love and trust, and we can unpack those. But at the end of the day, that's what's really driving all of us.

Nan Deal: And time and time again, what I see is there's a husband going after it and a wife that's chasing him, but then that doesn't come to fruition. So she gives in and either goes into what feeds her, whether it's herself, her identity, her body, working out, the kids, her career, the house, the home. She finds something. Amazon boxes every day on the doorstep, what have you.

But I could say for me, I wanted at first to applaud. I wanted at first to chase. Me, too. But then it got to a point where I don't want to chase this anymore, so I'll leave you to it. And that's where a huge drift happened for us. So here I am in my camp and here he is in his camp. And what I see with couples is, and then empty nest comes. Career ends because you're retiring. Kids leave one way or the other. And wow.

Ann Wilson: And Nan, that's what I did, too. I got to the point where I didn't care. I don't even care that you're gone. I don't care that you're not with us. And I'm just going to say this to a listener: If you're at that point where you don't really care anymore, that should be a big warning for you.

Nan Deal: Exactly. I agree.

Ann Wilson: I wish that I would have moved into figuring this out before I got to that point. Not that it's too late if you're there.

Dave Wilson: I mean, what do you do? If you're there, what do you do?

Ron Deal: Well, first of all, let me just say *The Mindful Marriage* is not just about that specific dynamic, but it is really a deep dive into now what do we do? How do we work our way out of this poor coping that has led us away from one another?

And one of the things we say in there is I actually believe that people fall out of trust and safety before they fall out of love. So what you just described there is "I don't care" is an "I don't know how to find that love and safety thing I've been chasing, so I'm now retreating back where I do feel a little bit of comfort and less pain. I'm avoiding pain." So I'm retreating away.

The safety part is gone, therefore the love begins to diminish. You've got to begin to unwind where you are, what's driving both of you and how you got here. And by the way, most of us are spending a lot of our relationship trying to change the other person so we find the love and safety. It's really got to come from a different source. It's got to come from within, and that is a different journey than most of us realize. And by the way, that's what *The Mindful Marriage* unpacks for people, is the journey back to one another. That's what happened to us.

Nan Deal: Yeah, I think isolation keeps us from becoming vulnerable. I wish I would have had and kept mentors in my life. I have them now, but I isolated so much that I was just listening to my truth, which was my truth about me and my truth about him, which was false. And I didn't have a mentor that I could go to.

I would say seek wise counsel, godly counsel, a godly mentor that you can be vulnerable and honest with to say, "I am not having this anymore with him. I need you to help me unpack this." To be honest with yourself and be vulnerable in those situations and just seek help and get the help that you need, truly.

Ann Wilson: There's a—I don't know how it happens, but the drift not only happens between you and your spouse, but it can happen with us and God, where that drift of like, "You're not even hearing my prayers. You don't even care. Where are you, God?" And I think to confess the truth of where you are with God is a really big deal, to bring him into it because I found myself just kind of shutting him out.

Nan Deal: I would agree. I would agree that hardness of heart is not just in the situation, circumstances, or towards your partner, but it can be towards God as well. For sure. I was definitely there.

Ron Deal: The irony of what you just said is I think this is so the human experience of that. When a human relationship lets you down and you feel the pain of that, we sort of divert that same pain towards God. Like, "My wife is unreliable right now. I can't depend on her. Therefore I can't trust her, therefore I don't feel safe in this relationship. I don't know what I have. God, you must be the same. You've abandoned me, too."

See, that little leap from the human to the godly, the divine, really doesn't make any sense when you stop and you think about it, but it's sort of the emotional reaction that we do. And really we've got to stop ourselves and say, "Wait a minute. Is God unreliable?" No, as a matter of fact, just search the Scriptures and you're going to see story after story of his incredible faithfulness to his people. That's his trustworthiness that creates safety. We have to go back to that at the end of the day and draw from that source rather than drawing from the human source—our identity.

Ann Wilson: And I love that. And I think the little danger is when you're married to somebody in ministry, there's this little—you know it's not right, but there's this little piece of you that thinks, "But God likes him more than me." I know that, theologically, that's not correct, but there's like—he's doing all these things for God and I'm just here raising my kids, you know? He is esteemed in God's view. And I know that's not right, but there's a little twitch of that that can happen in ministry.

Nan Deal: And for me, not coming from any kind of family of faith, I felt like, "Well, he did, and he's in ministry, so you be the savior. You be the one. I'm going to go to you to fix this." And when he wasn't, I'm like, "What is going on here?" It needed to be in God and in God alone for me first and foremost.

Ron Deal: When we look at the attributes of love and trustworthiness—I mean, let me just hit them real quick and let's just remind ourselves that God is all of these things, or provides all of these things. And then we can sort of say how do we build that into human relationships?

So love is really built on uniqueness: the uniqueness of the person and the relationship; a sense of worthiness: I feel worthy of your love; and that I belong. I'm not alone, I'm with you, we're together, this is where family is. That's the stuff that really rolls up into "I feel loved" and "I know who I am." There's the identity piece: I know who I am in this relationship.

We get all of that. I mean, he describes each one of us as unique and special and his workmanship. I mean, think about that language of that and how special we are. The fact that we're worthy of his love—I don't feel worthy as in I've performed and able, but he makes me worthy because of the blood of Christ.

And because of that I have belonging. I have family. I have brothers and sisters in Christ. I instantly belong in a community, a family that belongs to God. And I'm an heir of the King. I'm a son and daughter. All of that language is a constant reminder of how special and loved that we are.

Dave Wilson: And yet, we live in a world where that is always fractured in some way. Not so much what God says or thinks of us, but I mean—I know I was told this before we got married. I don't think I believed it or understood it: You will be disappointed in your spouse at some point. I'm sure somebody said that. We went to the Weekend to Remember two weeks before our wedding; Dennis Rainey probably said it. I was shocked when I was disappointed in Ann. I thought this would never happen.

Ron Deal: The fog of love when you're falling in love makes you blind to all that stuff.

Dave Wilson: And she was a hundred times more disappointed in me than I was in her. And I think if I'd have just at least understood this is normal, this is—you're not going to get it from her. But you do want a sense of "I want to feel unique and seen and special from your spouse." So when you don't feel that, what do you do?

Ron Deal: By the way, I want to back up for a second because I think it's really important to say that most of us—I hesitate to say all, but it might be all—come into any marriage—first marriage, second marriage, third, whatever—we come into it already with some pain on our heart. Somebody in our life has not completely loved us or has not completely been trustworthy, and we already have residue.

Such that when we then experience that in marriage or with our children, family, or friends, we're going, "Yep, there it is again. There it is again. I can't trust people." And so we're constantly living off of the imperfect. But we attribute that to God. He's the perfect. Like, we really have it backwards because the pain of this life pervades what we know to be true about God. That's part of discipleship, is coming to say, "Quit worshipping the creation—my wife—and get back to the heart of who God tells me I am and live out of that rather than who I feel when I'm with an imperfect person."

Dave Wilson: Now can you live out of that, who God says I am, when you constantly feel like my spouse or others are not seeing that in me?

Ron Deal: The answer is yes, with the caveat of it's really hard. This is the self-control of acting out of who I am in Christ rather than who I feel to be right now in this imperfect relationship. That is a massive self-control moment.

And the driving message of *The Mindful Marriage*, by the way: How do I get back to that self-control? Because we live our lives basically waiting for somebody to love us and be trustworthy, rather than being the loving, trustworthy person.

That right there is the game-changer in our testimony, in our relationship. We, like most people, spent most of our marriage trying to get the other person to be something different so that I would feel loved and safe. The change point is me acting in love, me acting trustworthy, even when I'm unsure about what's going on with us.

Nan Deal: Or we're chasing it in our kids. We're chasing it in our job. We're chasing it in whatever to cope because we're experiencing that pain.

And this morning on the way here, we were listening to the Worship Initiative. And I was so thankful for that 17-minute devotion. It was reminding us of God's love. Scripture after Scripture after Scripture and the song that they did the devotion around.

And I was like, this is how I have to ground myself every day. I have to ground myself in what your love is and what you say about me instead of anything else that happens: circumstances, my adult children, Ron. I need to ground myself in you. And I think that's where we go back and that's where we dive in and that's where we daily surrender to. That's why I have to be in the Word every single day to be reminded of who I am in Christ and who he is.

Ann Wilson: I was thinking of a book signing we were doing at our church years ago for *Vertical Marriage*. We've done like three in our life. No, but this woman came up to me and she said, "You know, for the first 30 years, I basically hated my husband. Raised our kids. I'm a believer, he's not, never has been. I've just been waiting for the day that he would give his life to Christ."

She said, "And I've had so many expectations of what this should look like. And I've come to the point," and she said, "I've kind of realized like it is all about God. When I find my life in him and understand who I am in him and I keep growing in who he is and seeing truly who he is," she said, "I have been more filled up this year and my joy—I can't even contain it. And my husband hasn't changed at all."

And she said, "The crazy thing is I've let him go, like, 'God, he's yours. I surrender him.' And all of a sudden he's like coming around. Like, 'What's happening? Why are you so different now than you were before?'" And she said, "I have found my contentment in my Lord and Savior and I'm happy." And he's like, "How do you get that happiness when I haven't changed?"

Ron Deal: Ann, listen to this, because that is a perfect example of what we're just saying. As long as I'm waiting for the other to make me feel loved and safe, then I'm dependent on somebody who is imperfect and never going to get it right. They're going to get a lot of it right; on their best days they're getting it right, and their worst days they're not getting anything right.

And so that leaves me where? That leaves me dependent and constantly feeling like I'm not loved, I'm not safe. And so I try to manufacture that or manipulate you—that's the coping part of what we do in this pain, is we try to get the other person, we try to manipulate them into being what we need.

And unfortunately, all that does is create this dynamic of pressure and control and power. And that's not freedom and there's no peace in that. The peace comes when I live out of God as my source and I act as if I'm loved. I act as if I am in a safe place because of him. And then I bring that to us. I'm not dependent anymore, I'm now influencing, I'm now bringing. I may have a longing, I may have desire, but I'm not leaning out over my skis constantly falling on my face because you don't show up. That's the upside-down dynamic that ruins love and safety.

Nan Deal: Or that posture of "you've got that speck in the log," you know? You're wanting them to change, but you've also hardened your heart and you're defending yourself against everything and you're really waiting to catch them.

And you've just hardened yourself and it's that posture of staying vigilant to that fight when it's not your fight in the first place—it's God's. My happiness is not dependent upon my spouse's behavior. That is only what Jesus can do. Holy Spirit needs to enter in, and I am not Holy Spirit in Ron's life. I'm a good one though, Nan. I know, I try to be too. I've got some choice words.

Dave Wilson: We're going deep with Ron and Nan, aren't we? We always go deep with Ron and Nan. They are deep people, and we're going to go deeper tomorrow, so come back tomorrow. But if you want to get their book, it's called *The Mindful Marriage*. And we have it at FamilyLifeToday.com. Just click on the link in the show notes, and we'll see you back tomorrow.

Ann Wilson: Before we're done today, I just want to remind our listeners: We know life is full of challenges, and families today need biblical truth more than ever. And as a FamilyLife partner, your monthly gift helps bring the truth into homes every single day through podcasts, events, and resources.

Dave Wilson: So let's make a lasting difference together. Become a partner today. Just go to FamilyLifeToday.com and click the donate button. FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.