10 Questions to Jumpstart

Communication With Your Husband

There was once a season (okay fine, multiple seasons) in my marriage when communication and conversation felt complicated.

Have you ever been there?

You want so desperately to connect and communicate with your spouse, but when you attempt to lean in and chat, your words come across empty and stale, or are misinterpreted.

Questions like: “How was your day?” or “How are you doing?” were quickly answered with “Fine.” Or, sharp words are returned, and conversation ceased.

My heart and mind have circled in this storm of frustration. I loved my husband. I knew he loved me. But there had to be more to marital conversations than kid’s schedules and class projects. We used to spend hours on the phone in conversation while dating. What had happened?

I knew exactly what happened.

We had traded our nights of deep conversations for turns in the nursery room rocking babes to sleep. And by the time we came back to the land of the living – you know well rested adults with a full six hours of sleep – our marriage had shifted. Gone was the focus on our relationship. We were consumed with keeping tiny humans alive and safe.

Can you relate?

So I stopped wishing for a dream marriage and began working on our own. I shifted from asking about how my husband was doing to asking questions about what my husband wanted to do. I redirected my focus from the facts of our lives onto the foundation of our lives.

Once we got away from rote answers we had been conditioned to respond with, we began to unlock a sweet level of communication that has kept growing and growing. Soon, what had been became again. But it wasn’t without a lot of intentionality and a great deal of patience.

If you’re where we were, have no fear, girlfriend, you don’t have to stay there.

Here are a few questions you can use (or tweak) to help jumpstart communication.

1. What was the high point and low point of your day today?
2. What dream or aspiration would you like to pursue in the coming months?
3. What makes you feel respected and appreciated in our marriage?
4. Has there been something in your life you have been wrestling with that I can help support you in?
5. Which area of your life do you feel the strongest in right now: emotionally, spiritually, physically, mentally?
6. Which area of your life (emotionally, spiritually, physically, mentally) do you feel is suffering the most right now? What is one thing I can do to be a helper to you in this area?
7. What would you like me to be praying about for the next week for you?
8. If I were to plan a date night for us, what would you consider a perfect date? (Then make an effort to plan this date-to the best of your ability and within your means!)
9. How satisfied are you with our sex life right now? (It’s amazing how you can get a man’s attention in a conversation when you talk about sex.)
10. What do you want the atmosphere of our home to be like?

Sometimes all it takes to reset communication is adjusting what we ask and how we communicate. Being intentional about rediscovering our husbands and their hearts is important in building healthy communication.

Wife Step: Print off the above questions and keep them where you’ll often see them.

Natalia Drumm is a writer, speaker and teacher with a passion for building community and engaging women in the Word of God. She is married to her high school sweetheart, and they are raising three little boys in their home town of North Port, FL. Natalia and her husband serve in their local church as marriage small group leaders and life group coaches. They have a passion for healthy marriages as they have seen the restorative power of God in their own marriage and family.

Natalia is an assignment writer for Lifeway Women and serves as the Bible Study Content Editor at Living by Design Ministries. She also volunteers at Proverbs 31 Ministries on their proofreading team and leads a COMPEL Discovery Group. Natalia writes over at www.nataliadrumm.com where she creates devotional study books on issues relevant to womanhood and living in the fullness of God’s design for womanhood.

When not writing, or serving at church, Natalia spends her time running, reading and enjoying a good Netflix binge. She’s also not be one to turn down a cold Coke and hot chocolate chip cookie.