Caring for the Heart

Caring for the Heart Video

Round Table Video

Caring for the Heart of Your Spouse

 

What Does It Mean to be Caring? (Merriam-Webster)

• Painstaking or watchful attention

• Maintenance (of another’s emotions. GHH)

• Making someone the object of attention

• Demonstrating personal interest

• Thoughtful or hovering attention toward another person

• To feel and demonstrate interest and concern

• To have a liking or fondness for

• To be concerned about (opposite = “I could not care less about you.”)

(Webster’s New World Thesaurus) Care for ~ Caring

• To protect, attend to or give concern • To look out for, listen to (heedfulness)

• To cherish, hold dear, thoughtfulness

• To concentrate on another’s heart A wonderful way to care is to show up and pray for someone.

Greg H. Hubbard November 15, 2022

 

 

Need:

We each have emotional needs that we want our spouse to care about.

We desire him/her to help bear a burden we have on our heart or to care about a wound or painful issue in our heart.

We desire to be a priority to our spouse and to be treated as someone important to him/her.

Marriage was designed to meet such needs.

Emotional connection takes continual effort.

 

Solution:

First, we need to take the time to focus our attention on our spouse on a regular basis. This has to be a commitment made by each person. We should actively hear what is going on in his/her heart. This brings us closer emotionally to each other, giving us security and causing us to know we are loved.

 

A. Be emotionally connected to his/her heart: (Chart 52.1) • Focus on each other’s eyes. • Focus on his/her heart. • Emotionally connect. (Be available, attentive, and interested in him/her.) • Be excited about him/her and the time you have together. • Connect with touch. • Hold on to that emotional connection while caring. • Speak focused on your spouse’s heart.

B. While caring for your spouses’ heart:

 Ask questions directed to his/her heart. (See below p. 2, A) 

Accept his/her feelings without judging.

 Understand what he/she is struggling with.

 Identify what is causing the problem, pain, or worry. •

Use the pain words sheet to help identify the pain. (Chart 18.3)  Care about the issue he/she has.

 Lead him/her in prayer to ask Jesus to heal the issue in his/her heart.

C. While listening to his/her heart do not do any of the following:

 Don’t correct what they say they feel.

 Don’t scold them for what they feel.

 Don’t try to fix the problem unless asked to. You are there to care.

 

D. Caring for your spouse’s heart means taking the time to emotionally connect and listen to his/her heart.

 Speak first and say, “I would like to care about your heart right now.”

 “Can I open my heart to care about yours?”

 “What can I care about for you right now?”

 Genuinely care about what your spouse shares with you.

 

Take the time to love his/her heart.

E.  What caring for your spouses’ heart will look like.

Take 5 minutes to ask questions directed to his heart.

Then spend 10 minutes meeting his deepest emotional need.

Then he will do that for her.

During and after counseling you will be asked to care about your spouses’ heart concerning the issues that were discovered during the week of counseling using this method. (C.F. Workbook pp. 141-143 if no specific issue has been identified to care about.)

 

Some Extra Thoughts:

A.  Here are some things you can ask to your spouse:

 “Tell me how that made/makes you feel inside.”

 “What did that do to your heart?”

 “Did that revive the pain you felt as a little boy/girl?” (Or young man or woman?) 

   “Revive” = Inflame, reignite, open that wound, recreate.

 “Tell me what happened to cause you to hurt inside?”

B.  The whole idea is that you have “we” time together without distractions.

 

 Here the idea is that there is nothing else in the world besides you and me right now.

 In our culture we are too busy and too distracted to stop and really care about the feelings and emotions that our spouse is going through.

 

We need to be the person who takes the time to focus on her/his heart to help bear the burden and share the joys that they have. A majority of caring for a person’s heart is just taking the time to listen sympathetically.

 Be that person who cares enough to ask about the pain in her heart or just takes the time to see how he is doing inside. Affairs begin by someone outside the marriage caring for the feelings of your spouse more than you do. We need to connect so that this doesn’t happen.

 

A final word: This is not about solving marital disagreements; it is for caring about your spouses’ feelings and pain. ( Disagreements often have elements involved that revive old pain in your spouses’ heart. Take care not to bring that pain back to life in a disagreement.)

 

Greg H. Hubbard Kardia Bibilcal Counseling