Military Marriages: The Telephone Game

The other night when my husband Cliff and I were teaching our second grade choir class on Sunday night, we were working on learning a new song titled “Speak to Me.” As a way of illustrating how important it is to really listen for God’s voice, Cliff had the kids play the Telephone Game. Did you ever play that? The kids all lined up and Cliff whispered something in the ear of the first kid. That kid then whispered it in the ear of the next kid until the last kid in line got to say out loud what everyone else had said.

Except what started out as “In November, my family and I are going to Disney World” somehow ended up as “The Disney Channel is a lot of fun to watch.” Something definitely got lost in translation!

Though we laugh about it when we’re playing the Telephone game, the miscommunication we can experience in marriage sometimes isn’t always so funny. Sometimes it can lead to hurt feelings. Sometimes it can cause anger, resentment, and even worse reactions.

Communication between ourselves and our husbands can be tough enough when they’re with us, but adding deployments to the situation can cause us double trouble sometimes!

We get phone calls that sound like he’s really tired – but is he REALLY tired? Or does he just not want to talk to me? What if he’s not feeling as strong about me as he used to? What if he doesn’t care anymore? What if he’s just forgetting about me and there’s nothing I can do to stop it?!

See what I mean? It’s the Telephone Game, except we’ve created our very own version – the Military Wife version, where we hear what’s not there and miss what’s actually said. We (mis)read into things and before long, we are absolutely convinced that our marriage is on the brink of disaster. And deployment doesn’t have to be in the mix. Our husbands could be sitting in front of the television in our living room and we may think the same thing.

Take a deep breath. Now, let’s talk about how we can keep the static interference to a minimum…

1. Keep God first in your marriage. It is very easy to get swept up in the emotions and your feelings, especially when you feel like you’ve been wronged or that your husband isn’t responding the way you want him to. 1 Cor. 13:12 reminds us that we don’t see things clearly sometimes, that we’re often “squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.”

This means, ladies, that-I know it’s hard to believe-but sometimes we can misread things! Because as much as we think we understand and know our husbands, they can still surprise us, and quite often, we actually make it more complicated than it is. He sounds tired because, well, he is.

This is why, when something has the potential to set us off and get us upset, that we really need to take it to God in prayer and ask Him to show us how to respond.

It’s been said many times, but it is really true, and I can testify to this in my own marriage, that marriage only can truly work when it follows a spiritual triangle. You’re on one side, your husband is on the other, and God is at the top, at the point. When both of you move closer to God, both of you move closer to each other. When you’re pulling away from God, chances are you are also pulling away from each other. When you keep God as the focus in your marriage, you are less likely to get upset at the little things and you will have more discernment to know how to deal with the bigger things.

2. The way you say something often says more than what you say. My husband can always tell when I’m mad at him about something. I may say “I love you” but it sounds nothing like when I really mean it. I may say “yeah, everything is fine” but the tone of voice I use and my body language can often reveal a completely different truth. But the potential for problems can become even bigger when our marriage is separated by an ocean or two.

He may hear what he thinks is distraction in my voice and think I don’t care enough to focus completely on our conversation, not realizing that he’s called in the middle of me fixing dinner and trying to get our son to eat before he has to be at the ballpark for his baseball game. I may read an email he’s written and be disgusted that it’s so short and think he doesn’t care enough about our relationship to write more than a couple of sentences, not realizing that he’s been up for 20 hours straight and my email was the last thing he did before crashing to bed, so tired he didn’t even bother to remove his boots.

So how do you solve the misunderstandings? Make your communication crystal clear by repeating back something when you think you may be taking it the wrong way. Ask him, you sound tired, are you? Tell him that you’re so glad to be talking to him but hope he understands that you’re trying to get his son out the door. The more you both can make clear to each other, the less chance there is that either of you will lose when it comes to the Telephone game.

3. Take a note from James. He reminds us to “be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” (James 1:19). Good advice for our marriages, that’s for sure! You know, when I am patient with my husband, I notice that I feel different, I don’t just act different. When I intentionally say, I’m going to give Cliff the benefit of the doubt, I’m less stressed, less crabby, more loving. And it has nothing to do with his actions or his words or his behavior. It just has to do with mine.

Try an experiment. Take a week to follow and apply this verse to your marriage. Be quick to listen when your spouse wants to talk. Be slow to speak – don’t interrupt him! – and ask more questions than statements. And limit your anger. Let things roll off your back. Ask if something really is worth getting angry about and if it isn’t, let it go. See what happens. You may be absolutely amazed at what God can show you if you ask Him to.

Tomorrow: Taking the Me out of We.

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1. Military Marriages
2. How can Military Marriages Stay Strong?
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4. The Grocery Game

Tagged as: Christian military wives, communication, military marriage