God is one, yet God has never been alone. Marriage invites a husband and wife into that same kind of oneness — and good communication is one of the main ways we get there.
Oneness is not built in grand gestures. It grows in ordinary, honest conversation.
God is one — and God is a relationship
The great declaration of Israel’s faith is the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Christians affirm that oneness wholeheartedly. God is not a collection of competing gods. There is one God.
And yet, from the first line of John’s Gospel, we learn that God’s oneness has never meant God being solitary: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” — JOHN 1:1
Notice the two truths held together in a single verse. The Word was God — fully one with God. And the Word was with God — in relationship, face to face, distinct. Before anything was created, there was already communion: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, eternally knowing, loving and delighting in one another.
That matters for marriage, because it means relationship is not something God invented as an afterthought. Relationship is what God has always been.
Marriage was made for oneness
When God made human beings in His image, He made us for relationship — with Him, and with each other. And the closest of those human relationships is marriage: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Jesus repeated those same words and added, “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mark 10:8–9).
God instituted marriage, and He wants husband and wife to keep working towards being one — not just legally one, or living under one roof, but one in heart, mind and purpose. Why? Because He knows it is our best chance of knowing, here and now, something of the joy that Father, Son and Spirit have always known with each other.
That joy does not arrive automatically on the wedding day. Two people bring two histories, two temperaments and two sets of fears into one life. Becoming one is a direction to travel, day by day, for a lifetime. Which raises a practical question: what does that journey actually look like, and what gets in its way?
The Johari Window: a picture of emotional intimacy
Psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham gave us a simple picture that helps here. It is called the Johari Window, and it describes what is known and not known between two people. Imagine a window divided into four panes:
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- 1. Open (Known to my spouse and to me): What we share freely — thoughts, feelings, hopes, everyday life. This is where intimacy lives.
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- 2. Blind (Known to my spouse, but not to me): The tone, habit or reaction my spouse sees clearly, and I do not — until they tell me.
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- 3. Hidden (Known to me, but kept from my spouse): The fears, needs, disappointments and dreams I hold back and do not say out loud.
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- 4. Unknown (Known to neither of us): Buried hurts, unrecognized patterns and parts of our story that only surface over time, often in safe conversation.
In a marriage growing towards oneness, the Open pane keeps getting bigger. More of each person is known, shared and welcomed by the other. That is emotional intimacy.
But two things reliably shrink it: fear and hurts. Fear says, “If I tell you what I really think or need, you will reject me, get angry, or think less of me” — so the real thought moves into the Hidden pane. A hurt says, “Last time I opened up, it went badly” — so we stop risking it.
Unspoken hurts also feed the Blind pane: our spouse feels our withdrawal long before we notice we are doing it.
Communication skills reopen the window
The good news is that the window is not fixed. Panes move. And the main tool that moves them is communication — not just talking more, but talking and listening in ways that make it safe to be known.
Good communication skills work directly on the fears and hurts that block oneness:
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- Listening to understand, not to win. When your spouse believes you have truly heard them, fear drops. Being heard is often what makes it possible to say the next, harder thing — and the Hidden pane starts to empty into the Open.
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- Saying what is in the Hidden pane, gently. Naming a need, a fear or a disappointment in plain, kind words — “I felt lonely when…” rather than “You never…” — turns private weight into shared knowledge.
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- Receiving feedback about the Blind pane. Your spouse can see things about you that you cannot. Hearing that without immediately defending yourself is hard, and it is one of the fastest routes to self-awareness a marriage offers.
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- Repairing after a hurt. Apologizing properly, forgiving, and talking a conflict through to the end stops hurts from hardening into walls. Repaired hurts build trust; unrepaired hurts build distance.
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- Making it safe, over and over. Every calm, honest conversation teaches both of you that openness will not be punished. Safety is what lets the Unknown pane surface too — the deeper patterns neither of you could see alone.
None of this requires a perfect personality. These are skills, and skills can be learned, practised and improved at any stage of a marriage. Couples who have been distant for years can learn to talk in ways that bring them closer — often much closer than they expected.
And notice what is happening spiritually when they do. As two people become more fully known and more fully loved by each other, they are moving towards the oneness God designed marriage for — and tasting, together, something of the joy God has always known within Himself.
Struggling to communicate?
If you and your spouse are having problems with communication — if conversations keep ending in silence, misunderstanding or hurt — you do not have to work it out on your own.
Please contact me. Together we can look at what is getting in the way, and start building the skills that help you become more at one with each other.
Article courtesy of ChristianShrink.com, Written by Troy Todd, MA, LMHC
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” — DEUTERONOMY 6:4 — THE SHEMA
Scripture quotations are from the New International Version. The Johari Window was developed by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham (1955).