It's amazing how God can use marriage to help you mature.

I'm Jean Fuller joined by my focus colleagues Aaron and and Greg Smalley, and Aaron, can we be gender specific

about this? How do you think marriage helps men grow and how does it help women grow?

It's an interesting question because marriage absolutely makes us both grow.

I think of, you know, we're called to grow up in Ephesians and so, you know, what is the impact of marriage on men what I've noticed

is my son-in-laws after a year or two of marriage I see more

more tenderness no just softer just softer just more tender in general

but I think it also helps men grow with managing emotions,

identifying them, communicating emotions, caring for emotions,

because let's be real, if they don't grow grow in that then there's going to be some

disconnection in the relationship you know really growing in emotional

intelligence women I think often come into marriage so aware that they're feeling stuff, but they don't know what it is and they don't know often what I didn't know what to do with my emotions and so Greg really helped me to

delve into what am I feeling and then what do I need to do? Am I needing to solve a problem? And if I need to solve a problem he's my guy. He knows how to solve a problem and if I need to solve a problem he's my guy he knows

how to solve problems. That's good I was just talking to my brother and he

observed that his son who's got married last year is starting to have some vision, some aspirations for

what life could be together.

And he said it's really fun to watch because it was all about him as a young man living on his own and

now it's about us and how do we grow in this relationship and in life together.

So I think that's a benefit of marriage for both parties. Well

Focus President Jim Daly and I spoke with Matt and Lisa Jacobson about

marriage and they shared about the need to make adjustments in relationships as you grow and all of us have to do that.

Let's go ahead and listen in.

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