The Emotionally Intelligent Marriage

One of our greatest needs in marriage is emotional connection.  But that's impossible if you're not first emotionally intelligent.

In this episode we're going to look at the two parts of the brain - the emotional and the logical - and discuss how we can make sure the emotional side of us stays healthy and strong so we can remain connected to our spouse.

We'll also talk about the four parts of emotional intelligence and the research that shows how our emotional intelligence far outweighs our cognitive intelligence when it comes to success in life.

When we're done, you'll be equipped with tools that will not only help you to understand yourself better, but connect with your spouse on a deeply personal level.

And for Tori's jokes, they weren't quite as good in this episode, but she tried hard - and for that, she gets an "A+!"  Ha Ha Ha

* Learn more about Jason and Tori HERE

* Purchase a copy of their book, Beauty In Battle - click HERE

* Follow on socials @JasonAndTori - Twitter / Instagram / Facebook

Transcript

THE EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT MARRIAGE

By Jason & Tori Benham

www.BeautyInBattle.com 

All right. I'm excited about this episode. I've kind of been waiting to do this. I will have been wanting to talk about the emotionally intelligent marriage for a while, but I knew we had some other podcast episodes we needed to get through first, but today we are talking about how to be emotionally intelligent inside your mind.

 This is, this is so good because emotional intelligence, , th th research is coming out and showing that the people who are emotionally intelligent or they're calling it E Q, which is emotional quotient, people who are high in ETQ outperform people who are high in IQ, 70% of the time. Wow. So the smart people who know concepts and who know things.

Can't perform as well as people who understand people who understand emotions, which makes so much to me, cause that's how God created us to be relational. And so we're going to talk to you about the four different aspects of emotional intelligence, how you can apply that in your marriage. But before we do that, uh, my wife slash girlfriend slash life partner slash soulmate soul might.

Uh, she's got some things that she really wants to say, and there's some things on her heart. Tell us what's on your heart. Right? What did the left eye say to the right eye? Uh, I have no idea between you and me, something smells. What do you get it? I totally, between you and me, so things, um, where do you find a cow with NOLA?

Um, in the meat aisle, right where you left it, he can't walk. Oh, I didn't get that one. I could tell. Okay. Um, pickup line, you have a, to me life without you is like a broken. Pointless. Hmm that's do you feel that? Yeah, I did. That felt good. You should write that on the mirror of my mirror, in our bathroom.

Somebody better call God because he's missing an angel. Ooh. A little cheesy cheeseball cake Torah. Good job. Okay. Air DAP, a little fist bump. Okay. We just fist bumped each other. All right. Now we're ready to jump in to talk about emotional intelligence. You know, well, you know, one of our greatest needs in, um, marriage is an emotional connection, emotional connection.

Uh, so there was this really crazy, um, research project that was done and they put a monkey in a cage and they played loud, like up noxious li loud headbanger type music, and they monitored the heart rate of the. And the heart rate was sky rock. It literally skyrocketed like the monkey was just like completely, it was just chaos in the body.

Right. Then they turn the music. They opened up the cage and they brought him a buddy monkey and then those two monkeys sat right next to each other and they turn that music on after they closed the cage up, they turn that music on loud, obnoxious music, and they monitored their heart rates. And the heart rate of that monkey who, when he was on his own, his heart rate was just strolling crazy stress out of his mind.

It was kind of. Oh, that's cute. That's cute. Yeah, but it's emotional connection. Yeah. Yeah. And to do life alone. No, we're not that's. I mean, that's the whole premise of beauty and battle is fighting together. Draws you together. Like you need a battle, buddy. You need that. Like you need a friend, but you know, obviously we all know that the saying best friends, best married, but to be a really good friend, you have to feel for that person.

Right. Right. You have to feel if you don't feel. For that person, then your rent, not really friends, your acquaintances. Right? So how are we going to, uh, learn how to manage our emotions so that they draw us closer to our spouse? Right? Well, you got two parts of the brain and all this stuff is stuff that I've.

I'm not like the expert. I know tour. You think I'm the expert? Give it to me. Go ahead. I was waiting for you to say, but you are so smart, but there's two parts of the brain. I have discovered the logical and the emotional, the stuff that we experience with each other 99% of the time hits the emotional first.

Wow. So it's. Guy come home at like last night I got home from watching our son, Trey played basketball in Nashville. I walked into the house, Tori had it spotless. It was late at night and she had these homemade, healthy donuts sitting on the counter. There was a candle going and it was just so inviting and instantly I felt any emotion, like gratitude towards you.

And I was like, she's amazing. That kind of thing. So it hits the emotion first. So. We need to make sure that we're managing our emotions the right way. Well, I was just going to say, I remember when I was taking, um, the emotional intelligence course, um, they had each of us write down, um, the people who were the most important, made the greatest influence in our lives right down like three people.

Yeah. And then write the qualities in them that come to mind when you think of that person. Yeah. They were all emotional qualities. It was like compassionate, caring. Um, you know, they were all, there was not one person in that class that wrote down the person that, that influenced them more than anybody.

Yeah. Um, anything that wasn't emotional and she said, you know, we are all emotional beings and it's really, really important that we understand emotions well, so we can understand each other. Well, then we need to define what an emotion is, an emotion here's definition. It's an impulse to act. That's what, any emotion God gave us emotion.

So if we're made in God's image, then that means that he. Emotions, just like we do, because we're made in his image. Right. And so any motion actually gives power over a person in that moment. So it gives power to a person, excuse me. So emotion gives power to a person, right?

So I'll give you an example. Um, if somebody off the street walked in and said, Dude, you're an idiot. Nothing that you ever do works. I'm going to say to him, okay, what do you want? You want some money? What do you want? Like, it's not going to bother me. I'm not going to get emotional about that. But now, if Tori came in and said that to me, I would feel it deep.

Like there would be any emotion and that emotion in me would be an impulse to act. And that action would be, create that connection with her. If she said that, then we need to reconnect. You know, like I, I would feel that emotion, right. But what I've done is I've given power to Tori to make me feel that.

That's why we say like, you remember that old state saying sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Well, that's a lie, right? It's a lie. Oh my word. It's such a lie. But there is a point where certain people who are not in our inner circle will say things and we can't let that, we can't give power to them and let them have that emotional control over us.

It's by the fact that it might hurt it, can't destroy us. So emotion is an impulse to act like. You know, it's an, it's an impulse and, you know, anchors purpose because it's an impulse impulse to act anger's purpose is to see that justice is done. That's why people feel. The only time you'll feel angry is when justice hasn't been done and you need justice done like something isn't right.

And you're feeling angry. And so that's why we have to line up our emotions with God, because when it comes to anger, it's gotta be that his justice is done right. So anger is an emotion with a purpose and that purpose is to see that justice is done.

And, uh, and so when Cain got mad with Abel, remember that he got mad with Abel and he got mad at him and killed him. So what Cain wanted was justice done, but he defined justice for himself rather than God's justice. So we need to make sure is that we're paying attention. To the emotions going on inside of us because a cane, when he acted like that, he was not very emotionally intelligent, right?

Like he probably didn't even realize the anger that he was feeling towards his brother that turned into murder in his heart. Well, when you're emotionally intelligent, it's really going to help you. Right. So Tori got her coaching certificate in emotional intelligence. I've done a lot of study in emotional intelligence when I was doing my master's degree, all sorts of stuff, learning about these.

So, let me give you a quick definition of emotional intelligence. And then we're going to talk about how you can apply this to your own marriage, and it's gonna help you a lot. So here's emotional intelligence or people call it. EEQ like emotional quotient. So your emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions in myself and others to move in a positive direction.

And. Like we said at the beginning, those who are high in emotional intelligence, they will, I mean, seven out of 10 times outperform those who are high in cognitive intelligence or IQ IQ over IQ all day long. Right? So there's four quadrants, four quadrants to emotional intelligence. You won't tell us what they are.

And then we dive into each of them. There's self-awareness self-management social awareness and relationship manner. So that's the four. So you've got, self-awareness becoming aware of why I do what I do. 95% of our thoughts are unconscious. So being self-aware means bringing pausing long enough to take an unconscious thought and say, what am I thinking about?

What am I feeling right now? Take. To decide what that emotion is. And then only then can you manage it? Then you go to self-management now I know I'm irritated, I'm irritated, I'm angry. I'm sad. What am I going to do with it? Then you, we have some sense of power yeah. With our emotions. Right. That's right.

And then, um, social awareness is the ability to see emotions in others. To sense emotion and others. And, um, to label them to be able to say, oh, I know what that is. Yeah. But not, this is, this is something that's been really challenging for me is I'm very socially aware. I know what everybody's feeling, but I'm terrible at relationship management because I'm overwhelmed by knowing what everybody's feeling.

I'm like, oh my gosh. Like I, if I walk into a room and I noticed that there was. You know, for four different girls and I can sense some of them are really sad. And then some of them, you know, if I, when I read their emotions, sometimes I feel overwhelmed in knowing how to, what I can do. What kind of power do I have in that room?

You know what I'm saying? For our key self-awareness so just, I mean, if you're in a place where you can write this down, you need to write it down. If not, don't worry about it. I've got it in our book. Beauty and battle go pick up our book at Amazon, but, um, you've got self awareness, self management, social awareness, and relationship management.

Now those four, the first two are about me. So it's about me. It's what I can do with me. And you know, when it comes to self-awareness, the Harvard business review did a, a study. Actually they published a study that was done on, um, the, the five top things that may. People successful in business. And the number one thing was self-awareness that those people who were successful in business, the number one quality that they all had across the board when they did this research project was self-awareness where these people understood their motivations.

They understood what they were doing. They understood why they were doing it. And they recognize the emotions that they were feeling inside themselves that self-awareness and alone. It is not really where it's at because here's here's and I've done this so many times in, in Bible studies where I've said the key to self-awareness is God awareness, right?

Like God getting to know God, your creator is what's going to help you understand yourself because he created you. So diving into the word, diving into prayer, listening, prayer, getting alone with. Really, uh, it just living a life of worship. Your whole life is worship making your work worship, like as you're growing close with the.

He's going to reveal things about you that you never even knew. I think of that verse in Psalms that says, search me O God and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting to me, that's the verse for emotional intelligence.

That's good. What was the reference to that? Psalms 1 39, 34 or 24. So I'm 1 39, 24. That's a really good one, but it is true. Like God knows more about you than, you know, So this, this, um, mindset of self-awareness today and all the books that can help you become self-aware, it's all about you. It's like self-help man, a lot of this stuff is going to lead you straight down the wrong path.

What you need is to dive in to the Bible and dive into scripture and then bring your spouse along with you. And you guys talk about these things that will help you discover. What's going on inside of you. Right. And there's a big difference between self-awareness and self-consciousness. Oh yeah. I think that's a really good place to start.

Yeah. Self-conscious self-awareness is simply no. What you're feeling self-consciousness is knowing what other people are feeling and assuming that they're feeling certain things about you and therefore you're not able to do or say the thing that you should do or say, right. Cause you're, self-conscious, it's like everybody else sees this thing and doesn't like it, or everybody else heard what I said and doesn't like it, and therefore I'm not going to do it.

Self-consciousness is of the devil. It really is. There are self-awareness, but then there's, self-management, that's where self control comes in. You've got to be able to manage the emotions that you're feeling. We've got this little, a little three step process that we teach in seminars that we've done before, where we talk about how to manage your emotions.

And, and you know, one of the, one of the first things that you have to do is you have to let it, you have to let. Right. You've got to let it out, which means don't bottle up your emotions. You do not want to keep your emotions inside of you. There was this research project that was done with these cancer patients and, uh, it wasn't, it was actually a doctor who came in and told people that he had been serving in T uh, serving terminally ill cancer patients for like 35.

And he would always give them, uh, a survey that they had to take before they started treatment with him. And, uh, and he said, uh, not one single one of these patients that he's had in 35 years, who came in with cancer ever answered in the affirmative, which says, they said yes to this one question that he would ask, do you have any.

With whom you can share your deepest wounds and emotions with, I remember all of them said, no, I don't, I don't have that person. So they were bottling it all, all that emotion and just share it with anybody. They couldn't, they couldn't get it out and it was killing them. So step one is let it out. Step two is let it go.

Like either grant forgiveness or receive forgiveness. If it's something stupid that you did ask God for forgiveness and then receive it, let it go. Like it's okay. It's, it's done. It's for been forgiven. Or if somebody is wrong, Jew, that's where you walk through forgiveness and you know what? We need to do a podcast on forgiveness because there's a unique way.

We look at forgiveness it's different than, than a lot of teachings that you've heard in the past, but you got to let it go. And the last thing is to let it happen when we're talking about emotion. Let it go and then let it happen. You know what we mean? By let it happen, create an environment for emotion, and then allow yourself to be drawn to your spouse because we're talking about marriage here.

Like let it happen. Like if I walk in and Tori's got slow music, slow country music on the lights down, low, a little candle going, or whatever, chances are good. I'm going to give her a hug and we're going to do a little dance in the kitchen, you know, just dance, a little slow dance in the kitchen, you know?

And then, you know, if she's. Then she might get lucky. So there's always that, right, but you're creating an environment for your marriage to flourish. So you're, you're letting it out. It's not bottling up emotions. You're letting things go. You're not holding things against your spouse. You know, you're making sure that you are an open book to your spouse.

You have to be. So, and then you're then thirdly, you're letting it happen, but that's, that's all in the context of, uh, what I would say self management, right? It's dealing with the emotions that are going inside you. So you got self-awareness, you've got self self-management. Those are about me. Right?

Social awareness is about you. It's about me being so tuned in to what you're feeling that I'm able to do something about it. Right. It's not me just so focused on myself. And, and obviously marriages, they have to, they have to learn this right. You know, and women are typically really good about paying attention to the emotions that their husband may be having or whatever, or their kids, men.

On the other hand, we're just so focused on other things that we don't have time, but I'm telling you one of the best things that I've ever done is allowed Tory to be my emotional intelligence code. And she's walked me through these things. Not, not necessarily in like classroom format, but just in the, in our own relationship and letting her talk to me and asked me questions.

Like, what do you think you're feeling about that? Well, why would you say that? When, when, when you say that, do you feel this I'm like, I don't know, girl, you're asking me all these things, but she's paying attention to what I'm feeling. And she'll start asking questions and then it makes me want to pay attention to what she's feeling, right?

Yeah. And what we have found through emotional intelligence is the Enneagram, because that has been the greatest tool for understanding ourselves that we have used in understanding our motivations. And so we, when we discovered emotional intelligence and we're, you know, just kind of poured into that for awhile, we found the Enneagram and that's when we started to realize, okay, so there is a framework.

Out there that can help us to understand ourselves better and make us more aware. I can become more aware of why I do what I do. And then I can become more aware of why you do what you do. And then we can start working on the management piece. Yeah, that's exactly right, because you've got self-awareness self-management it's about me.

You got social awareness, which is about you. And then finally a relationship management, which is about us. It's managing that relationship. Right. It's making sure that you're putting the relationship above yourself. That you're considering the other, before you consider yourself, I mean, that's scriptural, right?

It's real. It's, it's making sure that, that that relationship that you've got is important enough for you to actually work on it. So, but you will not, if you're not self-aware you're not going to be self-made. If you're not self-managed, you're not going to be socially aware. You don't have to be paying attention to what other people are feeling because you don't even know what you're feeling.

And then you're not going to be end up managing relationships. Well, and if you do that, if you've got these four quadrants going, you will be in an emotionally intelligent person. And guess what? It's going to make you a better spouse, but now here's the key. And Tori already alluded to. You can be self-aware you can be self-managed right.

You can be socially aware and you can know how to manage relationships and you can be a complete manipulator. That's right. If, if you don't have the right motivation, Which is to know God, make him known and to glorify God in your marriage and your relationship or whatever, then you're going to use emotional intelligence and you're going to get what you want.

You're always going to get what you want. You're going to know how to make people, get you what you want. Right. Right. The motivation is the key. That's why Tory alluded to the Enneagram earlier. I was like, that's one, that's one simple tool that can help you discover motivation. And it will help you get to the bottom of it, especially when it's founded, when you're doing that on the foundation of the Bible and scripture and listening to the holy spirit.

But when you've got the right motivation, which is I have given my life so that I can glorify Jesus and I can know God make him known. And one of the ways that I can do that is have a thriving relationship. I can have a thriving marriage. That's my. Now, because of that. Now I'm going to go through the four quadrants of social intelligence or emotional.

What passage in the Bible I think is one of the greatest lessons on emotional intelligence is Matthew seven. When he talks about first, take the plank out of your own eye, and then you can see it clearly into your, to take the flake out of your book out of your brother's eye. That to me has been the greatest lesson.

On understanding people because it's so easy to, to, um, to look from the outside, looking in, right. It's so much easier to see a situation and to be like, oh my goodness, like you it's like the awareness is there. It's like, oh my goodness. I see exactly what they're doing. I know what they're doing wrong.

Right. But what, if you pause every time you saw something in someone else that seems so glaring and you're like, do I do that? Ask that question. Do I do that? I do that. Or have I done that? That will bring awareness very quickly because nine times out of 10, you do do that. You do it different than the person that you're looking at, but I promise you, if you look long enough and you ask that question, God will say, yeah, you do it in this way.

Like that has been huge for me. It's like, um, cause you and I do, um, some marriage counseling, uh, couples, and a lot of times I walk away and I'm like, thinking how in the world does this, you know, husband not see this or how. Right. And, and I began to take this verse and be like, no, I, you know, what do I do this?

And I'm telling you nine times out of 10, you do it. And, or your husband does it. Yeah. Or I just tell you, you do it, but it has become really helpful. If you can see it in someone else, pause long enough to ask, do you do it? And God will show you. And that brings awareness. That brings self-awareness like none other, that actual passage, because that passage, ultimately, isn't just about judging it's about surgery.

And he says, if, if you. Want to take the speck out of your brother's eye. And a brother is somebody that you're related to somebody that you have a deep relationship with. Right. You're not supposed to take the speck out of a stranger's eye. Right. But if there's somebody that you're deeply related to, so let's put it in the context of marriage and you see a spec.

The first thing that you do is do surgery on yourself, remove the log from your eye. Yes. Okay. Then it says you can see clearly to do what to remove the speck from your brother's eye, which means. You have to do surgery on your brother, but you can't do surgery on somebody if they're not willing. So in a, in a marriage relationship, first thing we say is you got to be willing for your spouse to correct you and you need to be correct.

But the spouse, you need to make sure that you're correcting yourself first that's self-awareness and self-management. So then when social awareness comes in and you do recognize there's a speck there, you have to be willing to go, not as a judge with a gavel, but as a surgeon with a scalpel that says, let me help you.

Right. And it's like, and in doing that, have you done the surgery on yourself? Then, you know how sensitive you need to be. You're like, trust me. I know, I know this feels like I just did it keep your eye open. Hold on. I'm just gonna touch it real quick. But yeah, because it comes with that empathy of, I have just went through this.

I am I'm here with you. I totally get how this feels and yeah. Yeah. But that's the emotionally intelligent marriage. So be encouraged. You can be an emotionally intelligent spouse if you operate through self-aware. You're making sure that you're, self-managed, you're paying attention to social awareness, which means that you're paying attention to the other people that are out there, your spouse in particular.

And then you've got relationship management. I mean, these four quadrants will help you more than anything when you've done it on the foundation of, yeah. And I would say if you're, if you wonder if you are a self-aware person, if you see things in other people and then you pause and you say, do I do. And you are not able to see it.

And you're like, no, I totally don't. You're not a self-aware person.

and it doesn't have to be the specific thing. I mean, yeah. Yeah. There may be somebody that struggles with drinking and they're an alcoholic and you're not an alcoholic, but, but yet you have something in your life that you struggle with just as bad. Any addiction is, there's a root except the chocolate addiction.

That doesn't count. That's what I'm getting at. Like, you could see someone like someone who's an alcohol. And they go, I don't struggle with alcohol. Well, do you struggle with any kind of addiction? Like you, you can't go to bed without a block of dark chocolate. It's just hypothetically speaking, like, you know, I'm not asking for a friend asking for a friend.

Okay. Uh, emotional, intelligent marriage. We are done with that. Now. Tori let's do. I do or I don't, you know what, we're not really. Yeah. Would you rather, that's what we're doing. Give me a, would you rather, would you rather wear footie pajamas everywhere you go or constantly wear a diaper as pants? Footie pajamas.

Everywhere you go. Yeah, I'll do the footie pajamas because I can always just put pants right over it. But if you wear a diaper, you're going to hear the yeah. That's yeah, that's crazy. I don't know. You tell me I'm going footie pajamas for the rest of your life. Footie pajamas. Yeah. Or a diaper. I feel like you can cover diaper more.

Well, I, you know, I'd have to say, does it sound like you're wearing a, a bag, like one of those plastic bags from a grocery store every time. Diaper final answer diaper diaper finalize. Okay. I think I might change mine to diaper. All right. That was very important. And we are so glad that you guys chose diaper as well.

So thank you for listening. Don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and follow us on socials. I don't think I've told you to do that yet at Jason. And I only put Jason before Tori because J come before T and there was a website out there that was Tory and Jason. So we couldn't do that. So we had to do Jason and tori.com.

So there's that until next time, make sure you continue to fight together and watch how you'll draw together. .