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Emerson, you claim to have the secret to marriage communication. What is it?

Many of us experience that like a bad cell phone call: Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? [laughs] We are forever it seems having conflict in communication. That is not unlike meeting someone who doesn't speak English and you're trying to get directions, and the more you engage them, the more you realize they have no idea what they're saying. So you get louder. The same thing in marriage, we tend to get louder with our spouse.

I take the position that communication is not the key in marriage. Instead I take the position that mutual understanding is the key. I speak Spanish perfectly, but if you don't speak Spanish I can be conveying to you everything exactly correctly about what I think, but if you don't speak Spanish, you won't understand it. The same thing in marriage: I believe women speak primarily through the love language and I believe men speak primarily through a respect talk or respect language. This is based on Ephesians 5:33 which is the summary to the greatest treatise in the New Testament Jim, on marriage. We might say these are God's last words to the church.

Imagine if my dad is dying and on his deathbed he said, Emerson, I have something to say. Come close. Jim, you know whatever my dad is about to tell me is the most important thing he's ever spoken. The words come from deep within his soul and he intends for the words to go deep within my soul. Well, Aba Father is not dying, but he has spoken his last word — I believe — on marriage to the church, and it's simple: It's Ephesians 5:33, Husbands must love and wives must respect. If we don't learn how to listen in their language, we will not understand one another and when there isn't understand, we'll get louder with each other and not communicate.

I believe the secret to communication is discovering each language: the language of love for her and the language of respect for him.

Emerson, you use color metaphors to describe the differences between men and women...

I believe God made us male and female and created us pink and blue, so to speak. The woman looks at the world through pink sunglasses, she listens through a pink hearing aid, and she speaks through a pink megaphone. And men have blue sunglasses, a blue hearing aid, and speak through a blue megaphone. Not wrong, just different.

If an art teacher got up in front of the class and said, I have two paintings, a blue painting and a pink painting. Now, let me begin with the pink painting. The pink painting is perfect — the hue, the texture, the color— this painting and all pink paintings are perfect. But this blue painting— blue is always wrong because it's blue. Now, you might say, wait a minute art teacher, that's ridiculous. Blue isn't wrong, it's just different.

Romans 14 teaches there's a ton of gray areas: areas of preference; areas of personal opinion; areas of interest. We can have conflicting preferences, conflicting opinions, and conflicting interests. Romans 14 is clearly teaching that neither of us are in sin; each must remain true to their own conscience and conviction. Much of marriage is involved in preference issues. Men lean toward certain areas and women lean toward others.

One of the points we're challenging couples with is that much of what goes on in marriage is not an immoral or biblical issue — it's a grey area issue. But we tend to pass judgment on the other in severe ways. We're making the point in the book: come and appreciate this difference between pink and blue. Get to a place where you can say, my spouse isn't wrong, he is just different. That might not solve the argument, but it removes that critical, judgmental spirit of saying, what matters to me doesn't matter to you, therefore there's something seriously wrong with you and I'm offended that you disagree with me.

This pink and blue perspective removes that negativity and I find that to be encouraging to many couples.

What is Talking the Jesus Way?

The person who wants to have that loving and respectful relationship needs to realize that you must talk the Jesus way. The reason I say the Jesus way is because Paul said, you did not learn Christ this way — you learned him this way. In other words, Paul had taught them how Jesus had taught. There we see truthful speech, uplifting speech, forgiving speech, thankful speech, and scriptural speech. In the book, Cracking the Communication Code, we encourage the follower of Christ that there is a Jesus way of talking.

What's beautiful about that is: I can talk the way Jesus wants me to talk in my marriage even if my spouse doesn't positively respond. We're not talking about perfection; we're talking about a guideline.


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