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Ashley Willis: There are many things that we want to leave behind as a legacy, but I think the biggest one is that marriage is awesome. Even in the hard moments, marriage is wonderful. It is a gift and there is hope even in the hard times. That is something that we always want to point to.

For every couple, just coming back to that reason that God brought them together. I think in hard seasons, especially those broken seasons we talked about, we lose sight of that because we're just in critical condition and just trying to survive. In order to thrive, we have to think about that bigger picture.

John Fuller: That's Ashley Willis and she and her husband Dave join us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. We're glad you're here. I'm John Fuller.

Jim Daly: John, here's a book title that should grab everybody: "Do Marriage Better." Who doesn't want that book? I have prepped for the show and there is so much good stuff in here. Here's the best part, the subtitle: "Seven Simple Shifts for a Deeper Connection."

Our guests are talking about little things you can do that make big differences. That's been my observation about marriage. When Jean and I hit a tough spot, it's usually because one of us has said something a little off that sets the other one askew. "Why did you say it like that? That kind of hurt my feelings," whatever it might be.

If we could be a little more thoughtful about how we communicate and in other areas of our lives, how we interact with each other, man, you can have a marriage that is the best. That's what we're aiming for today with our guests.

John Fuller: Dave and Ashley Willis are conference speakers, relationship coaches, and podcast hosts. They've been in full-time marriage ministry for quite a long time now. They've got four boys and they've written a terrific book called, as you said Jim, "Do Marriage Better: Seven Simple Shifts for a Deeper Connection." We want to encourage you to go to FocusOnTheFamily.com/broadcast to get the book and learn more about the Willises' ministry.

Jim Daly: Dave and Ashley, welcome back. Good to have you here.

Ashley Willis: So glad to be here.

Dave Willis: Always a pleasure. Good to see you guys.

Jim Daly: Listen, I was serious about that in terms of the seven simple shifts. That's what you guys are talking about, these simple shifts. It can sound too easy, so let's cover those seven quickly and then we'll begin to dive into them. Hopefully, couples can walk away from this and go, "Oh man, we can make a 20% improvement in our marital relationship." That would be good.

Dave Willis: Absolutely, that would be good. That was really the heart of the book. I think sometimes we overcomplicate things. I overcomplicate things. You think you have to lose 100 pounds. It's like, maybe you could start just by losing a couple. Baby steps.

In marriage, it's the same way. We think we have to lose 100 pounds in our marriage to get where we want it to be. Maybe just take smaller, bite-sized steps to make simple shifts that over time really will lead to those big payoffs. The areas and shifts that we're talking about are just those main areas that affect every marriage, areas like money, communication, sex, parenting, and legacy.

These are things that all couples talk about and deal with. We've just put together some tools based on working with couples for many years and, of course, studying what the Bible has to say about marriage. We realized God doesn't want it to be complicated. It doesn't mean that marriage is always easy, but it's not as complicated as we make it. If we'll do these little shifts, it can make a big difference.

Jim Daly: We hit some of those themes as people were listening. It went by fast, but I'm sure they caught it. Ashley, when we start looking at it, communication is really tricky for all kinds of reasons. People tend to want to not recognize that we do have some limitations and gender issues.

What I mean by that is men think differently than women. The culture in some areas is trying to say there's no difference. There is a difference. Researchers show this when they give kids toys. The boys turn them into bombs and explosions, and the girls tend to turn them into a tea party.

There are just basic things that we're already set for at two, three, four years old. Guess what? We pull these things into our teen years, our 20-somethings, and certainly our marriages. In looking at that, what's one first step a couple can take to start talking in a way that really builds each other up? Jean and I work at this, and yet there are days I just get the F grade. How do we do that more consistently?

Ashley Willis: That's such a good question. We can relate, too. We've been married almost 25 years, and it's been a journey. Early in our marriage, I really made the mistake that a lot of couples make in assuming that Dave processes things the way I do and that he should communicate the way I do. We constantly found ourselves bumping heads.

Just to give an example, I tend to process things as I'm talking. I'm talking and I'm processing, and I'm expecting him to do the same. If I had an issue and I would bring it to Dave, I would start talking about it and just kind of drill him with all these different things that I wanted to address. He would look at me kind of stunned.

I would get to the end of my tirade and he would just stare at me. He wouldn't say anything. I took it as, "Oh, you don't care. You don't have anything to say, so you don't care." I would kind of go into the other room. He would come back later, after maybe 30 minutes, and say, "Ashley, I do care. I just needed time to think. It's overwhelming. I just needed time to take this in. I care more than you could imagine."

Dave Willis: I had to process this, but she had watched so many Hallmark movies where the guy has a script and knows what to say every time. The good-looking lumberjack always knows what to say, and he's so sensitive and kind. I didn't have a script. I'm like, "I don't know what to do here."

I'm also very literal. One of the things we had to learn in marriage is she would say things to try to soften a request, but I would take it literally. She would say things like, "Hey, Dave, when you get a minute, could you bring me this?" I thought that meant at any point in the day when I get a minute.

Young husbands, listen to me. If your wife says "when you get a minute," it means now. It means right now. No one told me this. She would say like, "We need to mow the yard." I would think, "How are we going to mow the yard? It's not a two-person job. We have a push mower." I would wait until she was ready to do it with me.

She would say, "Why isn't the yard mowed?" I'd say, "I thought you wanted to do it together." She'd say, "Why would we do it together?" I said, "Exactly." When your wife says "we need to do something," guys, it probably means a gentle way for her saying, "Hey, you need to do this. Can you please do this?" She was being so polite and kind and softening the language, but I was just a Neanderthal that took everything completely literally. It took us a while just to connect on simple things like that, which we laugh about now, of course.

As marriage goes on and communication gets more nuanced and the issues you face might get a little more complex, we need to come at each other with curiosity and compassion. If we can start there and not come at each other with criticism, it changes things. I found myself in those hard years of communication always really having this critical eye.

Ashley Willis: When I shifted to having curiosity, like, "Why is he not speaking? Is it that maybe I've just landed these things on him that he needs to think about? Maybe I'm not being clear about this because clarity is kindness. Maybe I just need to be a little more clear."

When we have curiosity, it's really hard to be angry about that because we're curious instead of critical. Even just that simple way of having curiosity changes how we talk to each other. Have a curious tone, too. It's not just the words you say; it's how you say them. When you're curious in your tone, it's a little softer because you're trying to inquire about what's going on instead of assuming what's going on.

Jim Daly: These are all great concepts. Let me ask you this. You relate to the talk you hear in your head. Again, we learn things from family of origin and all those things that we grow up with. If you had a negative parent, for example, when you hear your spouse say something like, "Oh, the chicken seems a little cool," or whatever it might be.

I know a lot of guys are doing the cooking now, so I don't mean it in that way. It's just whoever says something as an observation can be taken as a demeaning comment, like you're attacking me and my worth, that I'm not good enough or I didn't do it well enough. Speak to that idea of the words we hear in our head and how do we arrest those so that we don't let that fly off the handle inside?

Dave Willis: Ashley's so good at this. In addition to her long resume already, she's also a very gifted biblical counselor and works with people and helps them with these kinds of issues all the time. The voices in our head, that inner monologue, that inner soundtrack, impacts everything that we do.

A lot of times when your spouse responds in a way where they're hurt by something you said or did, it goes much deeper than what you said or did. It goes to a place of woundedness that they have probably from long before you even came into the picture. They're carrying this deep insecurity around a certain area that came from growing up in a home maybe where, like you said, there was potentially a negative parent, or they felt like as a kid they couldn't do anything right.

They're carrying that into the marriage, and you could say something not meaning anything by it, but it touches a wound from way back then. When your spouse responds in a way where it doesn't seem like it fits, you said something that wasn't meant to cause offense and they seem to get offended or emotional, instead of getting defensive yourself, get curious. Lean into that. Say, "Let's talk about that. I didn't mean to hurt you, but let's talk about the nerve that that struck, because I want to help. I want to help not do that again on my part, but I also want to help you process and work through whatever the root cause of that wound might be."

Jim Daly: It sounds like diffusing. That's the word picture I think of, of the bomb, the emotional bomb being diffused with great craft. Cut the right wire. Ashley, let me ask you this. You mentioned tone a while ago. I love the story you had in the book about your dog. Jean and I were laughing when we read that because we could see your boys. Describe for the audience what happened because this is something I'm going to try.

Ashley Willis: Oh my gosh. Well, we have our little dog Chi Chi. She's a "Chiweenie" supposedly. Supposedly that's a Chihuahua and a dachshund mix. Our boys, we say sweet things to Chi Chi all day, but they were wanting to see if they said mean things in a nice tone if she would have the same response.

She did. They'd be like, "Chi Chi, you're the ugliest dog there is on earth and we really don't like you." Chi Chi would wiggle over to them and she's just smiling and wagging her tail. She didn't care at all what they were saying. They're like, "See, it's the tone, Mom, it's the tone."

Dave Willis: Then they'd say nice things in a mean tone. "You're the best dog ever and we love you so much!" She'd get scared.

Ashley Willis: Tone made the difference, not the words. Exactly. As human beings, we need to pay attention to our tone because it matters. I think sometimes we can find ourselves in what I like to refer to as a "sandpaper season" where maybe our spouse didn't do a thing, but we're in a rough season where we already feel wounded. We feel raw. They could just say something that isn't even meant to be hurtful, but we take it that way because maybe the tone hit us wrong.

Jim Daly: How do we diffuse that? I've had that experience where I'm just saying something almost like a journalist would say. "Four people went off the road yesterday and struck a pole and everyone survived and everyone's good." "Why would you say that to me like that?" I'm going, "What did I just say?" How do we honor our spouse to give us that feedback of how that comment may have wounded them? Inside our head, talk is, "What in the world is she talking about? All I did was state a fact. I didn't have a tone with it at all." Where's the referee call in that? How do I back off of that and say, "Okay, obviously it didn't work for her." What do you coach couples with in that regard?

Ashley Willis: I love that you said you've got to get a hold of your own self-talk. I do think if we're just stewing all day and having assumptions like, "She's just emotional and she just doesn't get me and what's wrong with her," if we're just stewing on that all day, when we have that next conversation with our spouse, we're going to come off really negatively too because we've assumed the worst of them.

First of all, we've got to rein in those thoughts and assume the best and then ask questions. Ask questions if you don't know. If you're really like, "What's going on there?" I would go up to your spouse and say, "Listen, I can tell that really struck a nerve in you. I want you to know I'm for you and not against you. What went on there? What did I say or do, or maybe it wasn't even me? What's going on here?"

Jim Daly: You know, in that regard, that's a great point. We make the assumption that you did it on purpose. I would say 95% of the time, that's probably not accurate, both directions. We do assume that you threw that dart at me and it hit its mark, and you're going, "What dart? What mark?"

There might be times where you are throwing a dig, and you've got to be careful with that obviously. There's healthier ways to do that. But again, that's how with that communication we've got to be mindful and maybe make the assumption that she didn't know what she was saying, or vice-versa.

This is a good thing. I'm having a lot of a-has lately and I've been married almost 40 years. That's trouble. But just that idea of before I react emotionally like that, make the assumption that Jean didn't know what she was saying, or vice-versa. But how do you train yourself to do that, to say, "Okay, I'm not going to assume the worst first"?

Dave Willis: In the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, when the Apostle Paul gives us this great list of what love is, the very first adjective he uses is patient. Love is patient. Love is patient, love is kind. I think that's the part the Bible lists first because that's the part we struggle with the most: the patience of really taking a breath and leaning in and staying curious.

Ephesians 4:32 talks about be kind and compassionate to one another. Then it uses a word that I love: tenderhearted. Forgiving one another. I think that tenderness in marriage is usually what we need to lean into when there's a pattern of offense. How can I, in my tone, in my words, in my pursuit of my spouse, in my thoughtfulness, just be tender with them, not rough with them, but just tender with them?

If we'll take that posture, it will change the way we talk. All of us know how to do this. You look at somebody that might be harsh with their spouse and they think, "Well, I'm just not a flowery person with my words," and then they'll get their dog and they'll be like, "I love you so much, you're so precious!" They clearly know how to be tender. We all do, but we just need to direct that where it matters the most and be tender and patient with our spouse.

Ashley Willis: I want to say this too, just practically. Take at least five seconds. Just count to five, take a deep breath before you say anything. If at that five, at number five, if you're still rearing to go, ready to say something mean, count to five again. If you can't get yourself regulated, dismiss yourself and say, "I love you, I'm going to go take a minute, I'll be right back, I promise I won't leave you hanging, I just need a minute." So many times we just don't advocate. We don't take the time because we let the emotions take over. We need to take the time because our relationship is worth it.

John Fuller: This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and our guests today are Dave and Ashley Willis. We're talking about their book, "Do Marriage Better: Seven Simple Shifts for a Deeper Connection." We have that at our website.

I'm also going to mention our free marriage assessment. It was developed here by our marriage team. Over a million people have taken it, and it is a terrific tool. You just spend five or 10 minutes with that assessment and you'll have hours of talking points. It's free. It's on our website and it's going to show you how you're doing well in your relationship and the areas you might improve. Look for that assessment and the book by Dave and Ashley at FocusOnTheFamily.com/broadcast.

Jim Daly: Let's move to prioritizing your marriage. This is one, especially for young couples, that can be difficult in the busy season. But you have this concept of concentrating on your marriage. Why do we say a marriage-centric family is critical over a child-centric family? How do we do that?

Dave Willis: The simplest reason why we do that is because that's the way God designed it. When you look at Scripture, you look at how he orchestrated the family from the very first couple on, that's his design: that the most important human relationship we have on earth, if we're married, is with our spouse. It's God first, then our spouse, then our kids.

When we get that out of balance, when we put our kids first, it creates codependency. It creates a lot of difficult things. It's one of the reasons why the divorce rate is spiking among empty nesters. People are good at co-parenting and paying bills and running kids to practice and being focused on the kids. Once the kids are out of the house, they look at each other and realize they're married to a stranger.

Sadly, there's an epidemic of divorce among people who've been married 20, 30-plus years. We're trying to just help people—we're not saying anything really new or novel in this—we're trying to point people back to the timeless truth of God's design for putting marriage first. When you give your kids the gift of seeing a healthy marriage, it is a gift to them because a lot of young people are scared to get married right now. They're cohabitating, they're dating around, they're scared of marriage. The reason why is they grew up in a household where they never saw a good example of it. If we can give our kids a good example, that's one of the greatest gifts we can give them as they go out on their own and start their own families.

Jim Daly: That's really good. Now how did Oreos teach this to your family? This is what I want to know. I love a good Oreo.

Dave Willis: Cookies and sweets find their way into all of our family stories. We just have a lot of sweet-tooth people in the house. But there was an Oreo story.

Ashley Willis: Oh my gosh, it grosses me out every time I tell it, but it's also kind of a funny story. I remember this is when we were in the thick of raising four boys. At the time, our youngest was probably one and a half and our oldest was maybe 10. There was this quiet in the house all of a sudden. That rarely happened at that time.

We were enjoying it for a moment. I think I was folding laundry. You were doing some other kind of chore and it was just a quiet moment. I realized I don't know where Chadam is, our littlest one. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, where's Chadam?" Dave's like, "I thought you knew where Chadam was."

All of a sudden, we look at the kitchen and at the time we had a great room, but our kitchen light was off. There was one little light coming from the half-bath that was right off the kitchen. He was kind of in the midst of potty training and I'm like, "Did he actually go to the potty?" We go over to the bathroom. At first I'm relieved. "Oh my gosh, there's Chadam. We found him. He's safe and sound."

Then I realize there's this dark ring around his mouth. I'm like, "What is that? That's weird." Then I look and see his soggy hand with a soggy Oreo. He is smiling ear-to-ear, dipping an Oreo in the toilet and eating it. He was so proud of himself.

Dave Willis: This is why we don't get invited to speak at parenting conferences. Lots of marriage stuff, but they hear these stories and they're like, "We're good on the parenting." No, but we immediately swiped him up and cleaned him. We're gagging. Everybody's gagging. It was—we laugh about it now—but it was crazy.

Jim Daly: Help me with why that reinforces marriage.

Dave Willis: Jim, I'm not sure. I think honestly it's, first of all, having a sense of humor, right? But also being a team. I think just being a team and handling things and getting in there and tackling things together because parenting is hard.

Why we talked about it in the book with that story, too, is when you take your eyes off of something that's important for too long, it's going to veer someplace it shouldn't. That happened with our kid, but we see that over and over happen with people's marriages where you put it on autopilot. You don't really take time to check in and say, "Where are we? How are we?"

You're just assuming everything's fine because there's not this big crisis or there's not this big explosion, just like we did in that moment where things seemed fine because they were quiet. But quiet doesn't always mean healthy. You need to be proactive and lean in and say, "How are we doing? What can I do to be a better spouse to you? Are we prioritizing each other enough? Do we need to make sure we have that date night on the book consistently?" Just checking in because, left on autopilot, every marriage will crash eventually.

Jim Daly: Even in that circumstance, there's an illustration there, I'm sure, of different parenting styles and how you handle these things because Deena and I would always approach some of the problems quite differently. But you had the wisdom to seek out help from somebody because of those differences. I thought that was really an important part of what you shared because there's an accountability, there's a willingness to grow. Who did you seek out and what did you learn?

Ashley Willis: I will just tell you this is Dave. Dave had a lot of wisdom because we found ourselves just getting along in most areas of marriage. When it came to parenting, there was a growing resentment and a tension that we could feel. We weren't fighting and calling names or anything like that, but you could feel the tension. You could cut it with a knife and we just found that we just could not get on the same page with parenting.

I was much more black and white and Dave was just nicer. I was like, "Between the two of us is a balanced parent. We've got to figure this out." Dave one day came to me and he said, "Ashley, I know that we have all these areas of marriage where there's not tension." He said, "But this tension, I just feel like it's getting—it's growing. I feel that you resent me and I hate that."

He goes, "But I feel like I don't even know what it is." He's like, "And in the conversations we've had, I can tell that you feel a bit like you don't know what it is either. You can't put your finger on it." He goes, "I have this idea. Let's pray about asking God to bring to mind a couple that we know that has a thriving family, not a perfect family because those don't exist, but a family that we admire that's maybe a little bit 10 years ahead of us, and let's have them over for dinner and talk to them and just learn from them."

I was like, "Okay, I'll do it." We prayed. God brought to mind the same couple, the same family. Then I started saying, "Oh no, they're so busy. We shouldn't ask them. This is probably not a good idea." He looked at me and grabbed my hand and he said, "Ashley, you can't say no for people. The worst that can happen is they can't do it and we'll pray about it and we'll think of another couple. God will bring to mind another couple and we'll go from there, but we need to do this."

We approached the couple at church and they were more than willing. They were so honored that we would even ask and they were like, "We would love to teach you what we know." We had them over for pizza and spent two or three hours just talking through all these issues we'd been facing with parenting. They gave us new thoughts and new practical skills to consider and to use that we had never thought about, nor would we have thought about without talking to them. We went back to them over the years, but it was a real game changer for us.

Dave Willis: Just being willing to ask for help and seek help is sometimes one of the wisest things you can do for any part of life, but certainly for marriage. In marriage, for whatever reason, we just clam up and we're like, "No, I don't want people to know our business." You can't think that way. You have to think there are people out there who've been where we are, who've walked through this and can teach us what they know. Let's lean into that. I'm so thankful that we did and that couple became great friends and great mentors. It wasn't like formal; we weren't meeting every week. But they were there in our corner from then on and that made a huge difference.

Jim Daly: In that context, you do point out it's important to create a healthy family culture in this area of marriage and it reinforces that, but a place where children even feel like they can be heard. Speak to that idea and maybe you have some traditions in your family that helped you build that culture.

Dave Willis: Lean in with curiosity the same you do with your spouse instead of leaning with criticism. I think as parents sometimes we think our go-to needs to be criticize, like, "That's wrong, I got to correct it, that's what parenting is." But really, we should come alongside as teachers, mentors—that's what parenting is as well—and say, "Okay, tell me why you did that." A lot of times you'll hear them answering their own question of why it was wrong that they did what they did, and you can just help lovingly point it out. If kids know that you're there with them and for them and you want them to win, then they're much more willing to share their struggles and their losses with you.

Ashley Willis: Exactly, because we put a high value on honesty in our family. From a very young age, we always told them, "You're going to get in less trouble if you're honest first before us finding out than if we find out because there's going to be consequences regardless, but they're going to be less if you can just come forth and be honest." I think when you put those kind of things in place as a family, it breeds more honesty. Over the years, as our kids got to be young adults, they still come to us and sometimes, when they're asking certain questions, I have to watch my face because I'm like, "Oh my gosh, where is this question coming from?" Dave will grab my hand and he's like, "This is what we wanted. This is what we wanted."

Jim Daly: This has been a great start. These are great tips. What a concept: "Do Marriage Better: Seven Simple Shifts for a Deeper Connection." We've just scratched the surface. We can never cover it adequately, so you need to get a copy of the book. You could do that just by giving us a call or connecting with us online. "Do Marriage Better"—if you can make a gift of any amount, we'll send it to you as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. Whatever you can do, $5, $10 is great. We'll send you the book. We'll do ministry together and do more.

Let me also reiterate something you said, John. We have a marriage assessment. It takes about 10 minutes to do. It'll show your strengths and then point out some areas you could probably improve in. That's coach talk, right? But it is quite good. I think we've had 1.2 or 1.3 million people do that survey. Join them. It's free. You can get some guidance there and it might start making you more aware of some of these areas that maybe you're not an A student in. That's a great thing.

Last year alone, 530,000 marriages were strengthened and helped through the efforts here at Focus on the Family by doing a broadcast like this one with the Willises. It's just a wonderful way to participate. That's the benefit of getting the book through us and providing a donation so we can do this great work. People's lives are changed.

John Fuller: You can donate today and request your copy of the book, "Do Marriage Better." You'll find the link to that marriage assessment at FocusOnTheFamily.com/broadcast or call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY (800-232-6459). On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.