How to Stop Giving Opinions and Start Offering Solutions in Marriage

Key takeaways

• Opinions come easily. Adam says many people want their view heard in marriage, and fewer want to do the work of finding a fix.
• Thinking comes first. Adam says a good solution starts with pondering the problem alone, then deciding what would help.
• Selfishness sits underneath. Both hosts agree that a spouse who only wants an opinion heard is thinking about self.
• Dysfunction can look like peace. Adam warns that a couple can build a habit around a problem and call it normal.
• Impossible standards leave you alone. A story from Adam's father shows where endless pickiness ends.
• Small choices show the pattern. Even deciding what to have for dinner can reveal who is willing to give.

Back at the table after two months

Pastor Adam Mesa and his wife, Ashley, open this Beyond I Do episode by announcing that the show is back after about two months off. They spent the break upgrading their studio and filming in 4K, and Adam says the new setup lets him record from a hotel room when he travels. He also mentions that pastors and others told him they had missed the show, and that it will keep dropping on Thursdays.

Adam says the feedback he hears most often is about how he and Ashley talk to each other. Listeners tell him it sounds like the conversations they would like to have in their own marriages. The couple jokes and teases through the whole episode, and underneath the banter a serious question comes up: what does a spouse bring to a disagreement?

Think about the problem before you talk about it

Adam starts with what makes a good podcaster, and the point carries over to marriage. He compares it to a comedian: Jerry Seinfeld, he says, got his airplane peanuts material by wondering why that was the snack. People who do this well, Adam says, spend time alone asking why things are the way they are, including why so many marriages fight.

Wondering is only the first step. Adam says you then have to work out what you think would fix the problem, and that second step takes real effort. He says most people skip it, and he applies this directly to marriage. Many people, he says, want to state an opinion and leave the solution to someone else.

Opinions are easy and selfish

Ashley is quick to say she is the example. She describes herself as very opinionated, with plenty to say on anything and little interest in solutions. When Adam asks what the answer is for a spouse who only wants their opinion heard, the couple jokes that such a person ends up alone with their thoughts. Both agree it is selfish.

Ashley turns the question back on her husband. As she told Adam, "you always say, don't bring the problem, bring the solution." Then she asks, "Why can we do that at work, but we can't do that in a marriage?"

Ashley says she believes husbands are meant to lead the household and offer solutions most of the time. She says that if her husband never speaks up, she will keep giving opinions and nothing will get settled. Adam agrees that men are to lead, and both admit that some women are strongly solution minded.

When the roles swing too far

Adam says he has seen the problem from both directions in counseling. In one pattern, a wife says her husband does not lead, and the husband answers that every time he does, she tells him to be quiet. In another, a husband gives in on everything and says "she's the boss" to avoid making his wife angry. Adam notes that some men say it as a joke, while for others it describes a passive habit.

He names the pairing that causes the quickest trouble: a high opinion wife and a low drive husband. In that marriage, he says, nobody wins in her eyes and the husband stops trying. He gives an example of a couple married twenty years where the wife plans the anniversary and buys her own gift each year.

Adam does not say such an arrangement is always wrong. If a couple is healthy and unified, he says, that is fine. But if either spouse says they wish the other would do more, they are not unified. In his words, "You've just created a habit or a practice for your relationship that deals with dysfunction."

Nobody wants to be the one who gives

Adam says he hears from couples where the wife wishes her husband would plan dates and the husband wishes his wife would take the lead romantically. They miss each other, he says, because "no one's making an effort to be selfless." Each person waits for the other to move first.

He puts it bluntly: "Everybody wants to have their cake and eat it too." You cannot order a spouse the way you would order a burger, he adds, with every detail the way you want it.

The department store with no one on the top floor

Adam retells a story his father uses in sermons, and says he is not sure he has every detail right. A woman who wants a husband goes to a department store called Find a Husband. A salesperson takes her up one floor at a time. The first floor holds men whose fathers were not active in their lives, and she says she would like to see the next floor. The next holds men under six feet without six-packs, then men who earn under six figures, then men who only take their wives on a date once a month. She keeps going up.

At the top, the salesperson congratulates her and tells her she is impossible to please. No one on any floor will do. Adam says his father tells the story in reverse too, about a man shopping for a wife, and that it always ends the same way.

Even dinner shows the pattern

Ashley says the same issue shows up in the simplest decisions. When they discuss dinner, Adam asks what she wants, she says she does not know, and he offers three options she turns down. The conversation starts around six and the food is not ordered until eight, so they end up hungry.

Adam says that when he suggests they each order their own food, Ashley objects, because she does not want that either. They laugh about it, but the pattern is clear. Someone has to be willing to pick an answer and live with it.

What this means for your marriage

You may not argue about anniversaries or department stores, but you can look for the same habit in your own home. The next time you feel the urge to tell your spouse what is wrong, stop and ask what you think would help. Then say that part out loud too.

Ask yourself a few honest questions. Do you spend more time describing what your spouse should do than offering something you will do? Is there a pattern in your marriage that you have stopped noticing because it has been there for years? Adam and Ashley do not claim to have mastered any of this, and they are open about their own habits. Their conversation suggests that unity starts when one person stops waiting for the other to move first.