Ever play the game “Two Truths and a Lie”? (A person makes three statements, and you guess which two are factual and which one is false.) Well, we get to play that game today on our episode with my guests Sheila Wray Gregoire and her husband Keith (return guests to the Get Your Marriage On Podcast).
The Gregoires completed extensive research, surveying thousands of Christian couples, and recently published their findings in a new book called The Marriage You Want. I’ve read this book and I think it’s really well done, so I invited the Gregoires onto the podcast to share it with you. We talk about a lot of topics: sexual intimacy (of course), finances, sharing the mental load, and more.
I hope you walk away from this episode with a few new insights and fresh ideas to improve intimacy and connection in your own marriage. And if you’d like a little extra help, myself and my team would love to meet with you and coach with you in our Get Your Marriage On Program.
And as always, don’t forget to check out the Intimately Us app.
Disclaimer: The opinions and values expressed by guests on the Get Your Marriage On! podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and values of the host. Appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of the guest or their products by Get Your Marriage On or its host. While we work hard to bring you quality and valuable content, listeners are encouraged to use their own best judgment in applying the information or products discussed on this podcast.
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors or inaccuracies. For the most accurate and complete experience, we recommend listening to the full podcast episode.
Episode 235
Dan: Ever play the game? Two truths and a lie. A person makes three statements. And you guess which two are factual and which one is false? Well, we get to play that game today on our episode. It’s gonna be fun. My guest today is Sheila Ray Gregor and her husband Keith, and they’re returning to the Gay Marriage on podcast today.
They completed extensive research surveying thousands of Christian couples, and recently published their findings in a new book called The Marriage You Want. I’ve read this book and I think it’s really well done. So I invited the Greg Gores onto the podcast to share it with you. It’s gonna be fun. We talk about a lot of topics, sexual intimacy, of course, finances, sharing the mental load, and other things in your marriage.
I hope you walk away from this episode with a few new insights and fresh ideas to improve intimacy and connection in your own marriage. And if you’d like a little extra help, myself and my team would love to meet with you and coach with you in our next level.
Get your Marriage on program.
Sheila and Keith, it is such an honor to have you back on the Get Your Marriage On Podcast. How are you today?
Sheila and Keith: Good. Thank you for having us back. Yeah, doing alright. It’s
nice to be here.
Dan: So good. And now I got a copy of, uh, this amazing book that you just published, the Marriage You Want. And this is why I wanted to invite you on my podcast. I love all of your books. In fact, one of the reasons why I’m so excited to have you on my podcast is eight years ago on my own journey with my wife and I, the very first Christian sex related book we ever read was The Good Girls Guide to Great Sex.
We read it together, well, I should say it came in the mail. We started reading together for a few chapters and my wife dozed off and I stayed up. I had binge read the whole book in one entire night. I finished around three or 4:00 AM and I was so like on fire, like, this is so good, and you just have this style about you.
You’re just so good for pro marriage strengthening marriages, and this is what we get to talk about today. I’m so excited to have you here. You’ve had a tremendous influence on my life, so I’m really honored to have
Sheila and Keith: Ah, thank you, Dan. That’s great.
Dan: So, tell me the story, how this book came to be.
Sheila and Keith: Okay, well, it’s a little bit of a long story. Can I do this one? Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. So, I had been blogging and writing about sex and marriage, including the first edition of The Good Girl Guide, gray Sex for, for like a decade. And, um, I just, I kept writing healthy stuff. People seemed to like it, but they kept getting stuck and I didn’t know why.
Like, if I’m putting in all this healthy stuff, what’s the problem? Why can’t people get. Over their problems. And then one afternoon in 2019, I was procrastinating ’cause I had a headache and it didn’t wanna work. And I was on what was then called Twitter and people were debating whether they needed love or respect and they were referring to Emerson ER’s bestselling Christian marriage book.
Love and Respect. I. And I thought, I have that book. This is a great way to procrastinate. So I went and I got it and I opened to the sex chapter since I mostly write about sex and I freaked out ’cause it said, if your husband is typical, he has a need that you don’t have. The need was just for physical release.
And if he didn’t get physical release, he’d come under Satanic attack. And there wasn’t a single word about. Women’s pleasure or about intimacy or anything. And long story short, but that led us on this journey of, um, becoming a real research powerhouse. And so we did the largest survey of Christian women that’s ever been done. Um. Just looking at how some of the common teachings in Christian books have impacted women’s marital and sexual satisfaction and how we can get back to what God intended. So that was the great sex rescue. And then we updated The Good Girls Guide to Great Sex. We wrote The Good Guys Guide to Great Sex.
We wrote, she Deserves Better about, how teenage girls are often treated in church. But then everyone was saying, okay, but now what do we do about. Marriage in general, so we
sort of feel like we’ve conquered sex, but you know, but we wanted to take a step back and say, but what about the healthy underpinnings of relationships?
And so that’s what the marriage you want is It’s based, it’s our fourth study Yeah. That we’ve done, 7,000 people, including 1300 match pairs, which was really fun. And we’re just looking at what makes a healthy marriage. Mm-hmm.
Dan: is so good. The funny thing about this story is you had the book Love and Respect, but you had never read it
Sheila and Keith: Yeah, I was just so scared
of plagiarizing. So I had all these books in my, in my closet, but
I even, I even, I even recognize like recommended it when, when
we would speak at marriage conferences. ’cause I thought, well, it’s a bestseller. It must be good.
Dan: right? And it has a great title. It’s catchy
Sheila and Keith: yeah. Like they love Jesus. I love Jesus.
Dan: want love
Sheila and Keith: Yeah.
Like we must all be saying the same thing, but then we weren’t and I thought,
oh wow. Maybe this is why people are stay stuck. ’cause it isn’t enough just to give healthy information. You also have to debunk the unhealthy stuff. And
so that’s, that’s a lot of what we’re doing. Yeah. And that’s kind of what I, what I bring is I’m a physician, right? So doctors work in the world of evidence, right? We can’t just prescribe drugs if
we think they’re gonna work, like we have to prove [00:05:00] they work. Right? And so that’s the, the i I, we bought that whole idea of, you know, all truth is God’s truth.
If we can show something in the world works mm-hmm. Then that should give us an idea of what God’s trying to tell us marriage should look like. Yeah. As opposed to some. Person in authority saying, this is what a godly marriage looks like. We don’t care if that works in the field or not. We’re very much, well, if it works in real life, it must be the way God designed it.
So that’s kind the
way we look at it. Yep.
Dan: So why survey so many people, so
Sheila and Keith: Um, to get a large enough sample size so that we can be statistically significant. I dunno. Um, no, I, because we just wanted answers. We really wanted it not to be based on our own opinion. Yeah.
Dan: That’s really important. This is. So you’re showing this is what works great. So, what I love about the book is you do debunk a lot of the things that we may have heard in church or other books, uh, along the way, like the one that you mentioned. So I thought we’d be, have some fun today and play two truths and a lie.
What do you say?
Sheila and Keith: Okay.
Dan: and here’s how it works. You tell me three statements. Two of them are gonna be truths and one of them is gonna be a lie. And I have to guess which one’s the lie.
Sheila and Keith: All right, so here we go. Going to bed at the same time can seriously boost your marital and sexual satisfaction.
Dan: Okay?
Sheila and Keith: Um, if you want to have a good marriage and sex life, it is so important to prioritize how often you have sex with your spouse.
Dan: Okay,
Sheila and Keith: the biggest detractor of marital satisfaction is when mental load and housework isn’t shared.
Dan: you got me stumped. see.
Sheila and Keith: She’s good.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. For sure the mental load. I, I live that. So I think that’s definitely true.
Sheila and Keith: Yep.
Dan: Um, I’m not sure about going to bed together at the same time. I don’t. Or is it frequency? ’cause a great sex life is nothing to do with actual frequency, although it takes a lot of communication and planning.
I don’t think it has to do with frequency. So I’m gonna go on frequency.
Sheila and Keith: yeah. Yay. Good for you.
Dan: All right. Great. So tell us more. How did, how’d you come to that conclusion?
Sheila and Keith: Well, it’s funny, I opened the sex chapter in the marriage. You want, and by the way, writing one chapter on sex when you have already written four books on sex is really hard.
Dan: I bet. Yeah.
Sheila and Keith: So if you wanna know everything, we think about sex like boy, but in short form, it’s in the marriage you want. But we open it by saying, don’t prioritize sex in your marriage. Prioritize the ingredients to great sex.
Dan: Yes. Yes. That is so true.
Yeah, that’s true in my own life too.
Sheila and Keith: Yeah.
Dan: And how’d you come to that conclusion? What was the study like?
Sheila and Keith: Well, here, here’s the problem. Frequency. All that frequency tells you is how often he is reaching orgasm because, you know, we have a 48 point orgasm gap.
So 95% of men almost always are, always reach orgasm in a given sexual encounter compared to just 48% of, Christian women. So that’s a huge orgasm gap, 47 to point orgasm gap. And just because you’re having sex doesn’t mean that that sex is necessarily going to make you feel closer. You
know, 18% of women in our first survey said that their primary emotion after sex was feeling used. And so for them, they would feel closer to their husbands not having sex than having sex.
Dan: Right. They’re worse off
Sheila and Keith: Right,
exactly. So, so we need to figure out how do we have sex that actually benefits the relationship
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Sheila and Keith: and that means that she has to matter too. And often we think, well if, if sex isn’t happening, it’s because she doesn’t want it. Um, but actually if she doesn’t want it, we should treat that with curiosity. ’cause you know,
sex is awesome.
Dan: right? It might be good judgment. She doesn’t want sex.
Sheila and Keith: Yeah, because like, sex is awesome. Why would she not want something? That’s awesome. And so then you need to say, well then maybe it’s not awesome for her. So what else is going on?
Right? Um, and just to give you one simple example, like we took, we took a look at the women who said that their sexual desire level was really low, and we asked them three questions. Just three questions, okay. Do you orgasm usually when you have sex? Do you
have sexual pain? And do you feel emotionally close during sex? And those three questions alone. Explained 85% of women’s low desire. Mm-hmm.
Dan: Why would one wanna participate? If it’s painful? If it’s not pleasurable and they don’t feel closer to their spouse
Sheila and Keith: Exactly, exactly. But unfortunately, a lot of teaching, particularly in the church, has been trying to treat the symptom instead of the disease. Mm-hmm. Right? So there’s
this idea that there’s a crisis, that we’re not having enough sex, so therefore women have more sex. Instead of saying why and what are the reasons for it, because that takes a lot more work, it takes a lot of vulnerability on our part as men. It takes a lot of, laying down. Entitlement takes a lot of saying, I want to put you [00:10:00] first. those things are challenging, especially in a society that encourages you to, you know, feel this is a right or an entitlement to you as a man. Um, and giving that up can be challenging for a lot of men, but that’s what you have to do if you want to have a good sex life. Yeah. You just, it’s just, there’s no other way around it. Yep.
Dan: I like that there was a season in my marriage where, it was all about the number and hitting a goal. I, I’m kind of a, I’m a, I’m an achiever kind of a person. You know,
I wanna conquer, I have goals and whatever, and, It was all about like, did we have it? Did we do it?
Sheila and Keith: Mm-hmm.
Dan: What’s, what’s our streak? Like, what’s our, what’s the number on the scoreboard?
Like, and it wasn’t about love, it wasn’t about tenderness, it wasn’t about closeness. I think that matters way, way more. It’s harder to measure. Of course.
Sheila and Keith: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Dan: I, I, think that’s so, so good.
Sheila and Keith: I would just say like I, and we’re not trying to say that frequent sex doesn’t matter because, you know mm-hmm. When co, when couples are really enjoying sex, then it frequently can really. It can really benefit your marriage mm-hmm. And can make you feel great and make you feel very close.
So we’re, we’re not against that. We just are really encouraging people to see that frequency is not the foundation frequency is the result of, of something else. Mm-hmm. And so. Yeah. If sex is great, then sure. Like, say, say, alright, you know what, are we getting lazy? Are we getting into bad habits?
Are we just watching Netflix at night and then collapsing in bed? You know, maybe we need to turn the TV off earlier in the evening. Like, let’s spend some time together. Like those, those are great conversations to have when sex is great, you know? Um, but if sex isn’t great, then we’re kind, then we’re kind of being great.
So we’re not, we’re not saying it doesn’t matter, we’re just saying we gotta do it in the right order. Mm-hmm.
Dan: Got it. You mentioned those three factors that are common with those with very low desire or don’t enjoy sex have you uncovered any factors that are, part of optimal sexual experiences
Sheila and Keith: Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest ones is, uh, is just that women reach orgasm. You know, when, when women reach orgasm frequently, they tend to want sex more often. And, there’s been a couple of studies that show that your first sexual experience really matters. So if she reaches orgasm, her first time having sex, her libido over time tends to be about the same as her partners. So like that first time matters, and for a
the first time was terrible, and so your body feels like this isn’t for me,
and it takes a time to get over that. Like it’s, it’s, it’s far more difficult to teach your body. No wait. This actually is for you. When it’s learned that it isn’t for you than it is to teach your body.
This is for you from the beginning. And so I would just say to couples like, if she isn’t having fun, you need to stop. Like, stop now. Stop now,
right now. and figure that out. Don’t just keep having sex that isn’t good for her because it, it gets harder and harder and harder to fix down the road. Yeah, because you just kinda solid in her mind.
This is not something for me, this is only something for him and that’s gonna kill your sex drive. Like, yeah. else. Yeah. So you, you just can’t live in that kind of a world, so,
Dan: That’s good. So if you’re in a marriage where she doesn’t orgasm as frequently, hit the reset button
and figure this out. Yeah.
Sheila and Keith: Yes.
And that’s that’s the theme of the whole book. It’s like the marriage has to work for both of you. And so, you know, if, if things are not going well, as opposed to a lot of advice out there, which is figure out who’s not living up to their roles and make sure they do them, which is frankly what we see a lot. We, we challenge people to ask questions. Why are we in this condition? Why have things gotten to be the way they are? How can we do something that’s going to change the dynamic so that we both do better, that we both become healthier, that we both experience what God wants for our marriage? Together if, if it has to be, you lose so I can win. You’ve already lost. Yeah. It needs
something that works for both of you. So, you know, sex is just one example. We talk a lot of ways about how you always want this to be something that causes us both to grow and both to benefit and something that becomes good for both of us. Mm-hmm.
Dan: That’s really good.
Sheila and Keith: messed it
Dan: Hey, let’s do another two truths and a lie.
Sheila and Keith: Okay. Okay. This is my turn, I guess. Okay. Do it. Go for it. Okay. When couples divide up household tasks, about half of them split them 50 50. And the rest, the wife does them all. that’s the first one. The second one is, women are not better at multitasking than men. And the third one is. That one of the ways men can make their marriage better is to, encourage their wife to give them lists so that they can get stuff done.
Dan: Definitely the third one is a lie.
Sheila and Keith: Yes. Yeah. Okay. That
one was too
easy. I
thought that one was hard. ’cause the, the middle one that women are better multitaskers. Everyone believes that, but it’s not true. Mm-hmm. So
I thought I’d say something. That sounds like a lie. Yeah. Yeah. They’ve done, they’ve done experiments where they’ve put both men and women in a totally [00:15:00] new environment.
where there’s multiple things going on at one time and women are just as bad at it as men. Yeah. So it’s not that women are better multitasking biologically, it’s just that they have more practice at home. Yeah. So what
happens to society? Yeah. Society demands women. Mm-hmm. Learn to multitask and so they’re just as frazzled as you are when you try to multitask.
It’s just they
learn how to cope with it. So, yeah. Yeah.
Dan: And man multitasking. That’s one way to really, make it mentally tired,
making the load even worse.
Sheila and Keith: Yes. Well, and and that’s why, and that’s why the listing is not effective, right? ’cause ’cause you absolutely are right. Uh, following what’s on a list is
not the way to grow your marriage because, you know, I. Executing the things that are on that list and just doing those tasks. That’s not the tiring part. It’s the figure out what needs to get done. It’s the organizing. It’s all the stuff behind the scenes that really weighs on you mentally. So if you wanna be a husband that’s proactive in your marriage. You should be making the lists, not asking for lists. Mm-hmm. Uh, and Uh,
and a lot of guys just aren’t trained how to do that, and they don’t even know where to start. so they don’t, they give up. Um, and
that’s another thing that’s kind of sad is like studies have shown that, for instance, uh, there was one study we quote in the book where, uh, in a certain town. The factory shut down. And so the men were all at home now, and the thought was, therefore the household labor would become more equally shared. But this sociologist studying this town found that the men all got outta doing the housework because they said, I’m just not as good at it as she is. so, you can, you can claim that I don’t know how to do this. And that kinda gets you out of doing it. Uh, if you wanna have a marriage that’s really successful. Lean into that and say, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m gonna learn, and I’m gonna take this on and I’m going to know how the house runs and I’m gonna be able to figure these things out, and I’m not gonna have to depend on you to give me a list to know what needs to be done to make this household run.
Yeah.
Dan: And I know a little bit about you two, and this is something you both intuitively do really well in your own marriage. Is there a story or an example you can give me about an aspect where you realize, Hey, we do this really well.
Sheila and Keith: Yeah. Um, well, there’s a couple. I mean, I think, think the one that I think of is just the fact that over our marriage, we’ve just changed back and forth in terms of who’s responsible for what, based upon What’s happened in our marriage, like when I was in medical school and then in residency, you know, I was working over a hundred hours a week and so I didn’t, I didn’t wash a single dish, you know,
Sheila did absolutely everything around the house.
But then as things changed, you know, all the way to now where I’m kind of getting into, you do more than I do semi-retired. I’ve taken on a lot more of that. Um, and I do more than she does because, and we just do that naturally because. We do what works for our marriage as opposed to, you know, falling into these prescribed roles that the husband does this and the wife does that. We are constantly evaluating what is functioning and not functioning, what’s working and not working, what’s fair. Mm-hmm. Um, and just kind of making decisions as a couple what we need to be doing to make sure that everything. Happens that needs to happen. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that works really well is if everyone just owns different aspects of what goes into running a household.
Mm-hmm. Um, and, and if you just own the whole thing, then your spouse never has to think about it. And that is such a tremendous gift. Like, for example, we’re in Canada and so, you know, it’s the law that boys and girls play hockey, right? Like, it’s just you have to, but anyway, um, but if you think, if she says to him, Hey, can you take, can you take Johnny to hockey practice? That sounds like what she’s asking is, can you put Johnny and maybe his equipment in the car, drive him to hockey practice and then drive him home.
But there’s a whole lot more that goes into hockey practice.
There’s also, making sure that his uniform or his, whatever it’s called, you know, is clean every week. Um, maybe last week we borrowed something from Benjamin’s older brother and you need to return it. Maybe it’s your turn to bring snack for the team meeting. So that needs to get ready. There’s fundraising that you have to do. So everyone’s gotta collect all the money from grandpa and all the aunts and uncles. Um, maybe little Johnny isn’t getting on with his coach very well and someone’s gotta go and navigate that relationship. Or maybe there’s some fighting happening with some of the other kids on the team and someone’s gotta navigate that relationship. Like hockey is all of that. Right.
Making sure he is got the right size skates, like it’s all of that. And so if, if he were to own hockey, he’s not just owning, putting Johnny in the car and driving, he’s owning, okay, I gotta make sure we got a snack. I gotta make sure I bring the Tupperware back. I gotta make sure I’ve got collected all the money for fundraising, like I’m doing the entire thing. That’s a lot that she now doesn’t have to think about. Mm-hmm.
Dan: Yeah. Soup to nuts. The whole thing
Sheila and Keith: absolutely. And, and a
lot of times guys get into a, a real trap where, you know, you’re, you’re in a marriage and you know, things are going poorly, but you don’t know why. Because as a guy, I’m doing everything she’s asking me to do. She’s giving me the list and I’m doing everything that’s on the list.
And you feel like a hero, but you just are not seeing everything that’s going in behind the scenes. [00:20:00] Um, so
taking it from the very beginning to the very end and actually caring about all those other steps. you know that that’s really a big deal. It’s a really big deal. Yeah. And you know that, that’s the one big surprising finding that we had in our survey.
Like we kind of knew what we were gonna find. We were very relieved when we did find it, because you’re always nervous. Like, what if the data doesn’t show what we think it’s gonna show? But it pretty much did. But this one was really surprising. the magnitude of it. Yeah. So we knew that mental load was important.
We didn’t realize how important it was ’cause we measured marital satisfaction on a scale of one to a hundred. And
most people are, you know, 70 to 90, like most people are relatively happy.
Um, and so small changes can make a big difference. And if you have money, stress in your marriage, that’s a five point change, which is significant.
You know, if you go from having sex once a month to having sex several times a week, that’s a 10 point change where you’re doing
better. But when you go from doing 50% of the housework to doing 90% of the housework or more, that’s a 30 point shift.
Dan: 30 points in the negative. I guess
Sheila and Keith: Yeah.
Like that is huge. And, and this is really the, the big problem, like a lot of the reasons that women don’t have a libido is because they’re overwhelmed by this and. If you have to, if, if as a woman you’re looking after your husband’s mom, like you have to remember your, her husband’s mom’s birthday. You have to buy your husband’s sister a birthday present. you have to make your husband a list. You have to call for your husband’s doctor’s appointments. Then your husband is kind of like one of your children. Mm-hmm. And that is so not sexy.
Dan: No, absolutely not.
Sheila and Keith: that’s really not sexy. Yeah. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Sheila and Keith: opposed to a person who takes initiative knows what needs to get done and gets it done. Yeah. I mean, isn’t that what we, you know, we just, we should both be functioning partners in this relationship. yeah.
Dan: I read the book Fair Play a few years ago. It’s, it’s a bestselling book on this
Sheila and Keith: Yeah. It’s awesome. Yeah. We reference
it in our book too. Yeah. Yeah.
Dan: Good. Good. And, my wife and I sat down, we got a whole pad of sticky notes, kinda like this. And with the sharpie just wrote, okay, every aspect of our relationship, of our household, let’s figure this out.
We wrote ’em all down. We had about a hundred sticky notes, and then we have ’em on the wall and, okay, let’s see how we can divide this up. And it doesn’t have to be like, you know, if there was a hundred sticky notes, 50 go here and 50 go there. Because of life. And like what you said earlier, Keith, you were in medical school.
There’s seasons of life when you’re gonna go all in on this thing. ’cause it’s, it’s the most important. But it’s, it’s about teamwork here. How can we divide this up and communicate better? And one of the biggest things that I realized in my own marriage is. and I’m so sorry to admit this, I realized I treated my wife as, less valuable than me.
Her time was less valuable than mine because here I am, I work, I earn X amount per hour. She’s at home. She earns. Less than that per hour, therefore, the more menial task should go to her and the more important task should go. To me, I had a little bit of self-importance in there. I didn’t realize it,
and once we really started having this conversation, and I’m like, holy cow, no, no, no, that’s not right.
She earns just as much money as I do. If we’re gonna, like, if we were to get divorced, it’d be 50 50 split anyway, right? Like her contribution should matter just as much as my contribution does. It’s not that one contribution’s more than another. And once I made that big mental shift, it was the biggest thing that helped us with our mental load in our home.
Because an hour of her time is just as valuable as an hour of my time and an hour of her contributions, just my, we’re start with equal footing and that, that made a big shift for
Sheila and Keith: Mm. Yeah. Absolutely. Well said. And I, I think that
one of the big markers you can know if you’re doing that well is if you both have the same amount of downtime. If
one of you gets a lot of time to relax and the other one gets no time to relax, you need to renegotiate. Yep.
Dan: Right, Alright, let’s conclude our talk about, money. Shall we, what did you learn in your study about money?
Sheila and Keith: you know, we found that it mattered. But what really matters more is how you navigate, those kinds of conflicts. Like, are you actually able to talk about things when you’re bothered by things? And that’s true not just with money, but with, um, with anything in your marriage. Like basically having more money does tend to, does tend to have happier marriages, so, yay.
I mean, I don’t think that that is,
I don’t think that that is, it
Dan: a
Sheila and Keith: it, it makes it easier. It makes easier
rocket science, but you know, when it comes to how are we gonna navigate the problems in our marriage? Like if, if someone is spending too much and it really needs to be reigned in, or if someone says, you know, we, you’re, you’re sticking too much to a budget and you never let us have any fun, and we do still have to live, you know, how do you have those conversations?
And that’s actually the more important question. Not just like, is money an issue, but it’s. How do we let our spouse know when I’m bothered by [00:25:00] something?
Mm-hmm.
You know, like, this is bothering me. Because some people are really good at that and some people are not. And some people are really good at accepting it and some people are not.
And part of the problem is, look, if you’re married, what is it that you want? You want your spouse to totally know you and still love you and accept you, and you wanna totally know your spouse and still love them and accept them. You
can’t get to that point if you can’t share what’s bothering you.
’cause if you can’t share what’s bothering you, your spouse doesn’t really know you.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Sheila and Keith: So we have to be able to talk about the stuff that’s bugging us. We don’t need to do that in a mean way. We don’t need to like, you know, punish them. But we do need to be able to get to the point where we can just talk about stuff.
Dan: Uhhuh,
Sheila and Keith: And
that’s, that’s a skill that a lot of people don’t have.
Dan: I heard this marriage advice yesterday. You need to learn how to talk about the things you’re not talking about before. You have to talk about it.
Sheila and Keith: Yes. That’s
very good. That’s good. Yeah,
I
Dan: Is there an example from your own marriage where you’ve had to discuss something difficult?
Sheila and Keith: Um, oh, wow. I, I think it, I mean, I can’t think of a specific example off the top of my head, but I just know that part of our growth was, for me at least anyway, was learning to be mature enough to not see, a person. Bringing something forward as a criticism of me as a person. So
if, if, if things aren’t working in our marriage and Sheila’s concerned and she wants to address up an issue, I naturally had a tendency to feel like I was being attacked as opposed to, you know, bringing this as an issue. And we
talk a lot in the book about how to. Work through that. And, but a lot of it in the end is really just becoming mature enough to say, Hey, we’re a team. If you’re bringing up a problem, it’s because the team could do better. And, and
how do we, how do we as approach, okay. Yeah. You know what, yeah, I am. Leaving my dirty underwear around the house too much or whatever the issue
is. Right, Like, just, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I’m, I don’t feel attacked. We gotta figure a way to make this work better or whatever the issue is. and just being able to do that. And I think that’s, that’s the, the thing that helped me.
Yeah. And a lot of this stuff really relates to, um, just emotional maturity and emotional connection. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, all of us enter marriage with baggage.
Right. Like we all have stuff in our past that’s gonna color how we see things. It’s like our
own stories, right? And so learning to recognize your own story, learning to recognize, okay, I feel attacked right now.
My spouse isn’t actually attacking me. But what happened was in when I was a kid, every time I did anything wrong, people would give me the silent treatment or they would tell me that. I’m worthless, and so whenever I hear anything negative, I feel like I go immediately into fight and flight mode. I feel panicked.
And that is, that is something I need to recognize about myself and learn not how to react that way, you know? And, and so we give a lot of really practical things in chapter eight about how to calm down our nervous system so that we can have these kinds of conversations. ’cause I think a lot of
times people forget we’re really complex beings. Yeah. And we do
react to things in ways that we even don’t want to react to them that way, but. This is ev. Both of our histories are coming to the fore here, and we’re we’re, and so how do we as adults and as a couple, take a deep breath and put a pause on some of the panicky feelings that we’re having or some of the anger feelings that we’re having, and realize that’s not actually about what’s going on right now, but I need to learn to deal with those things so that I can deal with what’s going on right now.
Hmm. And that’s one of the things that, you know, I haven’t seen a lot in other Christian marriage books, uh, about the idea that to have a healthy marriage, we need to both try to be more healthy people. Uh,
and that’s something we really lean into at the end
Dan: But it just seems so obvious, right?
Sheila and Keith: yeah.
But, but you don’t see it talked about very much.
At least in
my experience. Yeah. Uh, and we also have a study guide for the book too, if you wanna do it like in a church, small group or, or
things like that as well too. and and each chapter in that has specific exercises that are helped to design, that are designed to help you learn how to have these kind of conversations.
How to do the sort of. Calming yourself. Mm-hmm. Kind of put a distance between your emotional reaction, uh, and how you respond and those kind of
Dan: Yeah.
Right, right. That is so good. So good. In fact, I, I believe in that concept. You’re teaching so much. And I talk about on my podcast frequently enough, a listener gifted me the sign it’s called, uh, calm the Heck Down.
Sheila and Keith: Yeah,
Dan: can see that.
But
Sheila and Keith: yeah.
I love it.
Dan: phrase I use all the time, and I don’t mean it ever to like, to tell your spouse, you need to calm the heck down.
It’s, it’s, I call it calming the heck down inside
Sheila and Keith: Yes. Yeah.
Dan: Dr. John Gottman talks about when people are emotionally agitated or, stimulated. He, he uses the term flooded.
Sheila and Keith: Yes. Mm.
Dan: You have a 0% chance of solving the conflict,[00:30:00]
Sheila and Keith: Yep, yep,
Dan: a 0% chance, because solving conflicts require the thinking part of your brain. And that goes offline when you’re emotionally stimulated.
So these exercises and practices, you need to take it seriously in practice calming that down so that you can be, have a productive relationship.
Sheila and Keith: Yep,
exactly.
Dan: That’s good. That’s good. Well, I’m glad you’re bringing so much, truth. To an audience that absolutely needs to hear this. So you’re doing great work.
As we conclude, is there any final thoughts or nuggets you wanna leave our listeners?
Sheila and Keith: you know, I think the big thing is just to remember that marriage is not about getting your needs met, and it’s not about getting your spouse’s needs met. It’s about getting the couple’s needs met. And if we can get that kind of a perspective that, hey, it’s not just about what I need, it’s what the marriage needs. And the marriage needs you to be healthy and whole. And the marriage needs your spouse to be healthy and whole. And the marriage needs you guys to have fun and the marriage needs a great sex life, and the marriage needs all of these things. But if we can start looking at what the marriage needs more than just what I want, we will be so much healthier. Because the key really is partnership and teamwork. It’s seeing that we are in this together. and that’s, that’s just what we’re hoping for, is that people can get that partnership mindset. cause it really does, it’s beautiful and it creates wonderful marriages. Mm-hmm.
Dan: That’s good. How about you, Keith?
Sheila and Keith: Oh, I couldn’t say it any better than that. That’s, that’s, that’s the
wrap, Dan, come on. That was
awesome.
Dan: Very good. Very good, Thank you very much. Where can people go to learn more about your work, find your books and
Sheila and Keith: Yeah, so the marriage you want is everywhere. Books are sold. Um, our, our website is bear marriage.com, that’s BARE, and our podcast is Bear Marriage. It’s at every Thursday. And if you go to bear marriage.com, you’ll see links to all my social media. I have fun on Instagram where I fix all kinds of like terrible quotes all the time.
And, um, we have lots of videos out and stuff like that too. So just go to bear marriage.com and you’ll find links to everything.
Dan: Very good. Thank you.
Sheila and Keith: Thank you. Super.
Dan: Thank you for listening to this episode, please share it along with our apps and timidly us. And just between us with their married friends. I promise they will thank you for life. If you want a more meaningful sexual and intimate connection in your marriage, I invite you to check out my, get your marriage on program.
Over a hundred couples have said this program packs tremendous value and has helped their intimacy grow to the next level. Now go get your marriage on.
