The First Commandment Of Communication by John Hagee

We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
The First Commandment Of Communication Is This: If I Am Willing To Risk Exposing Myself Emotionally To You, Don’t You Dare Make Me Feel Ashamed!

No one likes to be ridiculed or rejected by someone they love.  If you are afraid of ridicule or rejection, you will refuse to communicate your true feelings.

When you start belittling the other person, communication stops, and emotional murder begins.

Emotional murder will change the partners in a relationship into what sociologists call married singles.  You live under the same roof, but you are divorced from each other emotionally.  You have the same name, but you have separate lies.  You go through a marital routine, bumping into each other occasionally, but you have no more than a cursory relationship.  What you had between each other is dead.

Our society jabbers about how meaningful it is to be honest with each other.  The truth is, most of us are not honest, we’re liars.  We put on masks and play our designated roles.

Listen, it’s all right to be real.  If things are not going well over at your Ponderosa, it’s all right to say “We’re hurting over here.  We need help.”  That’s being honest.

We’re human beings, with faults and failures and weaknesses.  The Bible says that those who are strong are to pick up the weak Romans 15:1.  I think it needs an insert—those of you who are strong at the time, pick up those who are weak.  Pick them up, and together we can get to the kingdom of God because together our strengths in Christ Jesus are greater than the powers and principalities of hell itself.

Source:  Communication In Marriage