The message is simple: If we’re too distracted to listen or too busy flapping our gums, we’ll miss the voice of the Holy Spirit (who wants to weigh in on our choice of a mate), and we’ll set ourselves up for poor communication in marriage.

The ready listener, as described in James 1:19, makes a conscious decision to have healthy communication. The word communicate comes from a root word meaning “to hold in common.” To communicate means you take what is in your heart and place it in another person’s heart, and he or she does the same with you. So when you speak, you’re giving away important pieces of yourself, and when you listen, you’re receiving what’s in the other person’s heart. (And you didn’t think talking was romantic!)

Communication Meets a Deep Need in Us
Philippians 2:3-4 says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” For a relationship to be successful, the needs of both people must be met. To do this, each partner must think about the other person’s interests before his or her own. What does this have to do with communication? Everything. When God the Father sent us Jesus, He communicated His deep love for us by meeting our need for spiritual connection. By creating Eve, God met the need in Adam for a mate. God was looking out for our interests and anticipating our needs, communicating how much He cared for us.

Most of us want to be in a relationship with someone who understands our deepest emotions of joy, fear and excitement — someone who really “gets” us. Sadly, this is hard to find, even in marriage. The problem seems more acute for women than for men. In one population- based study, about 90 percent of women surveyed said they were their spouse’s closest confidante, but only 75 percent said that their husband was theirs. Most women also named a relative, usually another female, as their primary source of social support, while men named their wives as this source much more often.

Unmet emotional needs are one of the biggest causes of divorce. Don’t let this happen to you! Learn to become a good listener and a slow speaker now, before you get married. This will help you discover two things: what your potential mate’s emotional needs are and how you can meet those needs. Now is the time to find out, not later.

Mistakes Most Girls Make
Teen girls can sometimes vent to their boyfriends in such a dramatic, emotion-packed manner that their guys become desensitized to what’s really important and what’s not. This is particularly true if the drama is routine. A wise wife-in-training keeps in mind that girls communicate for rapport, while guys communicate for report. Talking too much about small things reveals an element of selfishness and shows a lack of respect for the other person’s wiring, time and opinion. Those of us reared in a two-parent home may have talked with Dad only when it came to the big issues in our life. (You remember, “Go tell your father!”) There was a reason for that! Dad probably wasn’t wired to hear every detail of the story, as Mom might have been.

Again, we can learn something about guys and girls and communication from the Genesis 2 story of creation. Here we see that Adam was first given a task: tend the garden and name the animals. He lived a bachelor lifestyle. Eve was first given a relationship: be a helper to Adam. She never got to be a bachelorette. Adam didn’t have to talk to anyone in order to complete his job, but Eve certainly did! Could this be why girls tend to want to talk, and guys tend to want to work?

For all of us fast talkers, here’s some good advice to follow. The Slow Speaker . . .

• is sensitive to not data-dump on others indiscriminately.

• stays open to hearing the truth, even if it goes against what she wants to hear.

• avoids retelling an old story in detail if it isn’t related to the issue being discussed.

• makes an effort to speak clearly, calmly and concisely.

• recognizes the importance of timing when talking about certain topics.

• doesn’t press for a response before the other person has had a chance to digest and process what was said.

• shows appreciation for feedback with nonverbal signals (rather than interruptions).

• views conversations as sacred communication.

Is That You, God?
Another reason it’s important to listen to your potential Mr. Right is that God may want to speak to you through that person. This takes real listening. But many Christians don’t even try. Why? Pride can be a major stumbling block.

God wants us to be able to hear and pick up what He may be saying to us through our significant other. If we’ll make the effort to listen, we’ll hear Him speaking, even if that person doesn’t always approach us correctly. Usually when God speaks to us through another person, we won’t “get it” until later when He reinforces it. But a major barrier is in the way if you weren’t listening in the first place. God will often use the person closest to you to reveal things about yourself. Do you have an ear for it? Or do you dismiss it before the sentence even comes out?

Now, not everything said will be “on point,” accurate or from the throne. Some things won’t even be worth listening to. But the person is worth listening to and can be used by God to help us grow.

The Bottom Line
Don’t settle for a relationship with poor communication. You can’t really become intimate with someone unless you communicate effectively with him, and you can’t communicate effectively if you’re not willing to listen to that person’s character, interests and heart.

God used 66 love letters and more than 30 different authors to make sure He communicated well with us — that’s how important He thought it was that we “get Him.” The Bible is called the Word of God, not the Thought of God. A word is something that’s alive, something you hear, interact with and can understand.

Hearing is for our own sake; listening is for the sake of someone else. If each half of a godly couple practices this, you’ll both win.