July 19, 2025 • 44 mins
When Ron and Nan Deal suffered the devastating loss of their child, their marriage was nearly shattered by destructive cycles. On this summer best-of Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, you’ll hear how a different approach to their conflict patterns helped break those cycles and bring them together. Hear about their “mindful marriage” and how it could help yours on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman.
Featured resource: The Mindful Marriage: Create Your Best Relationship Through Understanding and Managing Yourself
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:00):
The wheels on their marriage bus nearly came off. How
did they manage to survive? Find out. Straight ahead.
S2 (00:06):
There's a lot of self control moments, but when you
figure it out, when you get the pathway. I'm telling you,
35 years I've been in marriage and family ministry. Nothing
has impacted my walk with Christ or my marriage more
than this.
S1 (00:25):
Welcome to building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman, author of
the New York Times best seller The Five Love Languages
Today Practical help for couples who are struggling. Rondale will
talk about the mindful marriage and how neuroscience and the
Bible can help you stop the painful patterns in a
troubled relationship.
S3 (00:42):
You know Ron, from his writing about the blended family
and answering questions about step parenting. On today's summer Best
of broadcast, we're going to dive into this resource that
will help couples build a stronger connection. You can find
that book by Ron and his wife, Nan at Building relationships.
And Gary, it strikes me that this two pronged approach
(01:03):
of understanding yourself and how you respond to your spouse
goes right along with the love language concept.
S4 (01:10):
Well, I think it does. I think there are parallels there, certainly.
This book, however, is a really great in-depth study. I
think any couple working through this book, it'd be like
sitting down with a counselor and working through some stuff.
So I'm excited about our discussion today.
S3 (01:26):
Well, let's welcome back the director of Family Life Blended
and president of Smart Stepfamilies, Ron Deal. He's the most
widely read and viewed author on blended families in the country.
He and his wife, Nan, were married in 1986, and
they've written this new book together, The Mindful Marriage. Create
your best relationship through understanding and Managing Yourself. You can
(01:50):
find out more at Building Relationships.
S4 (01:53):
Well, Ron, welcome back to Building Relationships.
S2 (01:56):
It's good to be with you again, Gary. Um, you're
a good friend, and, uh, always enjoy talking with you.
S4 (02:02):
Well, I feel the same way. Enjoyed writing a book
with you earlier. We can mention that later, perhaps, but, uh,
this book I'm really, really excited about. Warren. I think
there are many of our listeners who have never heard
the story of your and man's struggle in your marriage,
in which you really got to the place where you
felt like things were falling apart. I've told my story
many times, of course, with Carolyn, but, uh, tell us
(02:24):
about that and the road that you've been on since then.
S2 (02:29):
You know, through the years, um, we have told many
people privately that story. And on occasion, when it made sense,
it's entered into my public teaching. Um, but we just
really felt like it was time to go all out. Uh,
not that we were hiding it all along, but that
we just didn't really know how to verbalize the story.
(02:52):
And candidly, we were still working on us in a
way that we wanted to get further in our journey
before we could really share it. And so four years ago,
we went to our therapist, Doctor Terry Hargrave, who in
this book we, uh, tell everybody how he has been
developing a strategy and approach to working with couples for
(03:16):
many years. And it's used around the world at this point.
But mostly the academic community is the only people who
know about it. And we went to him and said,
you know, you changed our life and we're absolutely in
love with everything that you've done. We've been teaching it
and counseling and using it for years and years at
this point, and we just want to share it with
(03:37):
the world. Can can we partner with you and your wife, Sharon?
And can the four of us write this book and
make it accessible for the average person? And that's what
the mindful marriage has become. It is our testimony and
his testimony of our mess and how the Hargraves changed
all that with their principles that they are now teaching
(03:59):
and have been has been taught academically for years, and
we're just trying to make it accessible to everybody because
we know how powerful it really is.
S4 (04:10):
Yeah. Well, you know, I think when we share our
own journey, it does help people because they realize, oh,
they're not perfect. Oh, they've been there.
S2 (04:21):
That's exactly right, Gary. And people are attracted to that.
S4 (04:24):
Absolutely. And I'm encouraged that you've chosen to do that.
You know, it turns out that your counselor, Doctor Terry Hargrave, uh,
has innovated a model of therapy that you've talked about
that is beginning to gain recognition. Tell us about restoration therapy,
which is the term that you used and how does
(04:45):
it relate to this book, Mindful Marriages.
S2 (04:48):
Well, first of all, let me just say it is
deeply Christian. Restoration therapy has its roots in the New
Testament language of old self and new self. We've all
heard a good sermon about how we should take off
our old self and put on our new. That's the
language Paul uses over and over and over again. And
if you're like me, you you go, yeah, that's right.
I need to go do that. And then you go
(05:09):
home and you have another bad moment where you just
do the same thing again and you're like, how do
I take it off and put it on? And that's
the core of what Restoration Therapy really does. But it
also integrates the best of what we know from neuroscience
and how the brain body works. Over the last 20 years,
we've learned so much that's integrated what we know about
(05:31):
what we call attachment. That is the emotional, psychological connection
that we all have in important relationships. How that gets
flushed out in a, in a marriage context specifically. So neuroscience, attachment, uh,
self-regulation big term. We can unpack that a little bit.
But the biblical word for that is self-control. That's not
(05:52):
a new idea, but it turns out learning how to
do it just takes a huge discipline. And then there's
this issue of pride and humility and how pride works
against our relationships, and humility works for it. All of
those concepts are rolled up into this what's called restoration therapy,
the mindful marriage. At the end of the day, mindfulness
(06:15):
is a word. A lot of people kind of go, well,
what's that? That sounds a little new agey. No, no, no,
no it's not. It's the Bible is replete with using
the term in the form of what Romans 12 be
transformed by the renewing of your mind. Like that's what
we're helping people to actually do not just know what
they should do, but actually take off that old self
(06:38):
and put on the new and start doing it. That's
what this approach is really, really great at.
S4 (06:46):
Well, in the book you use the term us us ness.
What is that and how does emotional dysregulation affect it?
S2 (06:57):
Well, yeah, your essence is that thing that you created
on the day you got married. It's it's a living,
breathing organism that exists as a result of marital commitment,
love and trustworthiness to one another. It's what you are
together that is far more than the sum of the
two people. You know, I've often thought we do the
(07:18):
unity candle maybe a little bit backwards. Um, you know,
he takes his candle, she takes hers, and they light
the center candle. And then, you know, traditionally you blow
yourself out at that point and it's like, whoa, wait
a minute, where did you go? You don't actually die.
You don't. You don't stop becoming a person or being
a person. As a matter of fact, you should keep
those individual candles lit and then step back from the
(07:41):
unity candle and go, okay, there's you, there's me, and
there's our essence. This. That's the thing in the middle
that we have created that we are committed to, to
use the biblical language that we're going to feed and
nurture and care for. It's like a child, Gary. It's
it results because of your love and dedication to one another.
But you do got to feed that child. You better
(08:01):
take care of it. You better teach it. You better
instruct it. You better pour into it. And then that
helps that child grow up. And your US ness is
exactly the same when your essence is at peace. Each
partner is being fed by it, and each partner thrives
within it. You feel safe. You feel whole. And here's
the thing you naturally give the best of yourself back
(08:22):
to the essence. So you get fed and you turn
around and feed it. But when your essence is in pain,
here's what we know one or both partners is sort
of neurologically dysregulated, and we can flesh that out in
a minute. And essentially it means you feel insecure. You're
feeling anxious about your worth, about how much they want
you or how much you want them. And do you
feel safe to give of yourself in this relationship. That's
(08:47):
what the dysregulation is about the US. It feels like
our flame is about to blow out. It feels like
the flame is getting smaller. And I'm not feeling great
about that. And here's what's crazy about dysregulation. It comes
in a heartbeat. All of us listening right now who
have ever been in any sort of close, intimate relationship,
(09:07):
especially a marriage you've had those days where everything's clicking
and you are just loving one another, and then one
of you makes a remark and in a nanosecond you
are against each other. Like, it's like what just happened
in that moment. Maybe I meant it. Harsh, but you
heard harsh, and now you got your heels dug in,
(09:28):
and I'm defensive. Where did our US ness go in
that moment? We can all relate to this. There's something
happening in those moments that brings out the worst of us.
When we're at peace, It brings the best of us
when we're in pain. It brings out the worst of us.
We all know it. We've all been there. We all
(09:48):
feel it. And it doesn't mean our relationship is horrible.
It just means that moment something's off. There is a
beauty in that. And there is a challenge and an
art to learning how to feed and care and nurture
that essence in a way that keeps it at peace.
S4 (10:07):
And it's a journey, right? Yes.
S2 (10:10):
Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. And I and here's
the thing I've learned about dysregulation. Everybody on the planet
gets dysregulated. Everybody feels a little anxious and insecure and nervous.
And in other word, is triggered. Discombobulated where you just
don't feel like things are going well in your relationship,
even if it's just for a few moments or sometimes
(10:30):
it's a season. For us, it rose to the to
the point where nanny's like, I'm done, I don't know,
whatever we've got is I don't want it anymore. I mean,
that was our crisis moment in 2007 that led us
into Doctor Hargreaves office, and we tell that whole story
in the book. Like that was a huge dysregulated moment
(10:51):
for us. We all do this. We all know what
it feels like. And the question is why then? You know,
when that happens, I become my worst self. How do
I stay? How do I stay in my Christ? Mature
new self? In those moments, that's what we are getting at.
And so it really is core to how we do marriage.
S3 (11:15):
Can I jump in and ask you how bad it got?
I know Nan said, I don't want, but was it,
you know, from your perspective, what were those days like? And,
you know, the darkness that you were in?
S2 (11:32):
Well, it was deeply frightening. Um, at the end of
the day, I can tell you now that she didn't
really want a divorce. She didn't really want to leave.
She was just sick and tired of what we had.
That she didn't know how to live with it. And
by the way, I really think that's a common experience.
What I've learned is, well, we talk about in the
book the two pillars that every relationship needs to have.
(11:54):
It's got to have love. Love gives you a sense
of identity, a sense of your worth and belonging and
value in the relationship. But you also have to have trust.
And trust gives you safety. It gives you a sense
that I'm safe within your arms, within this relationship. Most people,
when they before long before they get a divorce, they
(12:16):
fall out of safety with one another and then fall
out of love with one another. I would say in 2007,
Nan had fallen out of safety with me. She didn't
believe that I was there for her, that she could
count on me, that our relationship was being fed and nurtured. And,
you know, we were trying and we had plenty of
wonderful moments, but we had more and more and more
(12:39):
dysregulated moments, and that just grew to a place where
she was like, I don't know how to live with this.
So she didn't really want to end our marriage, but
she didn't know how to live with it either. And
so it was that moment of and of course, that
hit me between the eyes like, oh, wow. I knew
we were struggling. Didn't realize it was that bad. On
your side. I don't think it's that bad. You know
(13:00):
which one of us is right now we're arguing about
how bad we are, you know? That's a fun little
place to be. And so it was like, clearly, something's
got to change. Clearly, we need some outside help. And
that's where we saw it. I will say this, um,
I didn't think we were that bad off. Now you
can go. Was that denial? Was that. And I've learned
(13:22):
that I'm really good at counter blame. So in my mind,
it's not nearly as bad as it is in her mind.
And so I can make her. The problem with that
and and that's what I did initially. and it was
only when I ended up in Terry's office that I
began a journey that he unfortunately and fortunately forced me into, uh,
(13:46):
where I had to look deeply into the mirror at
my own pride and discover that man, I'm blind to me.
And if I don't wake up, uh, what what Nan
and I have is just going to keep getting worse.
And Nan had a whole side on, you know, she
would tell you she had a whole lot that she
had to work on, too. This is not a one
person problem. This was a two person problem. But I
(14:09):
was not willing to look at myself until that moment.
S4 (14:12):
Yeah, because by nature, all of us, when a situation
like that, we're really thinking it's the other problem. It's
the other person. If they would, if they would change.
But you're right, it has to be. It has to
be both of us. Because we're we're the essence is there.
S2 (14:30):
Exactly. And we're both responsible for our sins and to it.
S4 (14:34):
Yeah. Now, you talk a lot about neurology of interpersonal relationships.
Explain that. And why is it important?
S2 (14:44):
Well, um, you know, I think there's a the experience of,
you know, having bad moments and just becoming upset or
angry at your partner or critical of them or feeling
their criticism, and you get defensive, like, those are the
words that we all put on it. But in the
last 25 years, we've learned what's going on below the surface.
(15:05):
That is what's embodied in our mind, body and and brain.
And it kind of goes like this as we experience
moments in our childhood and adulthood where we don't quite
feel loved or don't quite feel safe. Those two pillars
we talked about, when one or both of those is off,
(15:26):
either from how we were parented, moments at home, or
an early relationship, or maybe even a first marriage, that
our brain writes a little story about what that means
for us. Oh, what this means is the way this
is Ron's story that I've learned about myself. What this
means is the way Ron shows his adequacy is by
(15:47):
excelling at his work, by performing really well, by doing
his best. And so I was driven and I drove
so hard at my work and career and life and
marriage and trying to be a good husband and father
all at the same time. But at the end of
the day, the husband part really suffered. And that's what
Nan was really reacting to in an, in a, in
(16:09):
a big way at that season of our life. And, well,
what's that about for me? Well, for for me, it's
about I don't want to feel inadequate. I don't want
to feel like I'm not enough. Well, what's that about? Well,
that pain came from the question that I had in
my childhood about how I get my dad's love. And
he had high expectations. And he's. He was an evangelist
and a wonderful man. I had great parents. And at
(16:32):
the same time, I also knew if I didn't live
up to the standards, that I might just lose their affection,
their love. At least I sort of. That's the story
I wrote for myself. I don't think that was actually
true on any level, but I made it true. And
so the story of my pain is if I'm inadequate,
then I may not be loved and may not be safe.
(16:53):
So you just perform really well. All right. Fast forward
a little bit. That's the story of my brain knows.
So any time, any time in my marriage that I
felt like I saw Nan's disappointment about me, I panicked.
I went right into, oh, I'm not enough. And she's
not going to be satisfied with me, so I better
get busy. And I would get busy in two ways. Um,
(17:16):
by the way, this is a fight or flight reactivity.
This is neurological. We all do fight or flight. Fight
or flight takes four forms blame, shame, shame, control or escape.
Those are the four ways it comes out of us.
I'm a good Blamer I can counter blame. I can
figure out what Nancy doesn't have right? And I can
take her argument apart and, you know, go turn it
(17:38):
around and make it about her. I'm also a control person,
so I can control by performing, by doing and exceeding.
I can also control by criticizing her at the end
of the day. Blame and control tactics just make things
worse because she doesn't feel heard. She doesn't feel understood.
She just feels attacked. And oh, by the way, she
(17:59):
has her own pain narrative from her childhood where nobody
really listened to her ever. She just felt abandoned and
all alone most of her life as a kid. And
so whenever I would go into the mode of defending
myself and proving her wrong, she basically heard, yep, I
still don't have anybody on my side. And so our
(18:20):
two pain narratives collide in our blame, shame, control and
escape strategies. And that just makes things really ugly. Now
here's you know, what's crazy about this is you can
map this. I mean, once you understand this and we
take people in the mindful marriage through some exercises where
you will map your pain cycle and you'll map their
(18:43):
pain cycle and you'll see how these two things collide.
It is amazing when you put it on paper and
you go, oh my goodness, when we are great, we
are fabulous. We are not like anything. What we're seeing
on this paper. But in our bad moments, this is
exactly who we are. And you now know what your
old self is, and it's just as plain as day.
Now you have the challenge of saying, how do I
(19:04):
take that off and put on self control and become
what God has designed me to be? And we lead
people through that process of discovering how you move toward peace.
But it the neurological component here is important because at
the end of the day, here's what it is that
your brain wants to do what it knows to do,
(19:26):
and you have to overcome that by renewing your mind.
Now notice what I just said. Romans 12 does not
say be transformed by the renewing of your brain. It
says to renew your mind. Your mind tells your brain
and your body what it should do, not what it
knows to do, not what it's got. A neurological rut
(19:47):
that it loves to run down this rut towards blame
and control. But this time, Ron, we need to move
towards compassion and kindness and softness and gentleness and take
off the blame and control. That's my mind telling my
brain how to act. And that's when we get transformed.
Like all of a sudden that old neurological self is
(20:09):
slowly being pushed away by sinful nature is being pushed away.
That's what is transformative. And we've just we're just amazed
at how far this has brought us, not just in
our marriage, but at the end of the day, this
is helping me walk with Christ.
S4 (20:26):
Yeah, I think many of our listeners, and maybe most
people really don't think about the neurological, the neurological aspect
and the what you're calling the pain narrative. We just
know how we're responding, but we don't know, you know,
the part that the brain is playing in all of that.
So I think that that alone is is very, very
(20:48):
helpful to people.
S2 (20:49):
And I'll just add this, Gary. It is a fascinating endeavor.
The point is this is a part of me and
it is my job to manage me. Once I identify
that neurological component, if you will, to my old self,
then it's still my job in humility before God to
(21:10):
start managing that. Most of us spend our entire life,
as you said earlier, very insightfully. By the way, most
of us spend our entire life trying to get our
spouse to love us, or do something different in such
a way that the pain I feel goes away. Now
notice that is Matthew seven. That is me focusing on
the little tiny speck in your eye while I've got
(21:31):
this huge log in my eye that I'm totally ignoring.
And so I obsess over the speck in your eye. Well,
that doesn't help either one of us deal with the log.
I can't get Nan to love me in such a
way that I. That I feel adequate. She can't love
that into me. It's not up to her. It's up
(21:52):
to me. And I really think this is so vital
to the Christian walk and how we portray our lives
with one another in marriage. That I, I I'm just
telling you, I don't think we talk this talk very well.
We we inadvertently sort of blame the victim. We say
to the spouse, well, what can you do to help
(22:13):
Ron not feel inadequate and insecure about himself? Well, she
can be kind and nice and do certain things that
help me, but that is neurological. It is in my brain.
It's in my. It's embodied in me. She can't love
it out of me. It's inappropriate for us to assume
she can. What needs to happen is Ron needs to
(22:33):
take responsibility for Ron, and that's when I can grow
up in Christ. And so as this message pours out,
it's sort of like, wow, okay, stop blaming the victim, Ron.
Start dealing with yourself. And we write about how people
misuse your love language principles with what I'm talking about.
How many times have you heard somebody say, well, my
(22:55):
love language is and you got to get my wife
to love me that way. No, the whole point in
your principles is to for me to be selfless and
start looking at how I can serve my spouse rather
than demand that they serve me. But I know you've
had people misuse that for years and years and years.
(23:16):
What is that? That is what I've been talking about.
We want the other to love me in such a
way that I don't feel any pain in my heart
and life anymore. That will never, ever work. I'm the
one who has to deal with the log in my eye.
And here's what Doctor Hargrave has taught me. There is
a quick fix about. Oh, if you'll just, you know,
(23:38):
love me in a certain way, then my my, my
log will leave my life. Well, no, that's like cotton candy.
Your spouse can make you feel good for a few minutes.
But what is neurological in your brain, in embodied in
your soul you are going to hang on to until
the day you reckon with it, until you start taking
(24:00):
charge of it. It's not even up to God. And
let me explain that. Uh, we all know better than
we act. Why is that? Because we understand God's will
for our life. But that doesn't mean we actually do it.
Discipleship is about me aligning my will with God's will.
That's when I get transformed. That's when God's really in
charge of my life. That's when I make him king
(24:22):
is when I align my will with his. And that
means I have to deal with what my body brain,
soul wants to do. So until I take charge of that,
I'm just going to walk around with a log in
my eye, blaming everybody else for all the stuff they
do wrong. That that that makes me what I am.
And that is a losing game for any marriage.
S1 (24:49):
You're listening to the podcast Building Relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman.
Find out more about the program, when Gary might be
coming to your area, and our featured resource at Building Relationships.
Our guest today is Ron Deal, co-author with his wife, Nan,
of the new book, The Mindful Marriage. Just go to building.
Just go to building relationships us to find out more.
S4 (25:14):
Well, we talked about the old self and the new self.
You know, the biblical concept. But putting off the old
self and the role that the patterns in our brain,
how they influence us. And unless we're really thinking about it,
we don't we don't see that. How does humility fit
into to this whole thing of understanding the other person,
(25:36):
understanding yourself and and processing all those?
S2 (25:41):
So in the mindful marriage, we're going to walk people
into an understanding of their pain cycle and the story
of pain in their life and what it leads them
to do, how they react and blame, shame, control and escape.
We're then going to lead them to a place where
they understand the peace cycle. That is, what does it
look like to live out of God's truth rather than
out of your pain? And once they've identified that, they
(26:05):
have a very tangible map of how to change their life,
how to be transformed by the renewing of their mind.
And here's what we've learned. People won't do it unless
they put on humility. At the end of the day,
humility is the attitude that says, yeah, it's my job
to deal with me. It is me and God working
(26:26):
on me through the spirit power of the Holy Spirit.
And and unless I, I bow the knee to the
King every single day and say, Lord, help me, I
won't actually change what I do. I'll just stay stuck
in it. I may have the greatest knowledge I got
this map in front of me. I now know me
better than I've ever known me. And I won't change
(26:46):
anything in real life because I still think in pride
that I don't deserve this or I deserve better, or
it's somebody else's fault or, you know, whatever it is
that pushes it away from me. Humility is that posture
that says, I'm getting really serious about who I am,
and I'm bringing that before God and asking for his help.
(27:08):
It's what activates the change in us. And without it,
we're just stuck. And let me just pull back for
a second and say there's an amazing principle taught in
Scripture that, uh, I just continue to ponder and chew
on and we talk about it in The Mindful Marriage,
and it's repeated. I've lost track, I think, more than
35 times throughout the Bible, but it goes like this
(27:30):
God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.
In a very simple way, here it is. If you
come before God saying, hey, I got life figured out.
I don't need you and your rules. That's pride. He's
going to oppose you. He's not going to let you
stand before him with that attitude and get away with it.
He just won't. He'll let you suffer the consequences of
your choices. He'll bring something to your life that challenges
(27:52):
your pride. Something is going to show up in form
of opposition. And we can just think of a character
in the Bible, and you can probably identify those who
did that and and how God opposed them. But the
opposite is also true. Stand before him in humility and say, Lord,
I don't got. I don't got anything. I don't have
anything figured out. I am nothing without you, I need you.
(28:13):
And he runs to our side like the father and
the prodigal son, and throws a coat around and said,
you got it all. I'm here for you. Uh, you're
my child. Grace abounds. Now, here's what I want people
to hear today. I believe that principle doesn't just work
vertically spiritually with God. It works horizontally with every relationship
(28:36):
in our life, most notably in marriage. But it also
works in parenting and leadership and pastoral care, whatever it is.
I think politicians stand before people in pride and they
will oppose you. Stand before your wife in pride and
she will be sick and tired of you in a hurry.
And next thing you know, she is pushing back somehow.
(28:57):
But stand in humility when you make a mistake. When
you find yourself getting. You know what? I feel inadequate
right now, and it's my job to put guardrails on that,
and I'm not going to take it out on you
when I say that sort of thing out loud in
front of my wife. She breathes a sigh of relief,
and she, more likely than not, has grace for me.
(29:20):
She softens. She has more compassion. She's more forgiving. She'll
go the extra mile. Why? Because she sees Ron putting
on humility and taking charge of himself. And when Ron
does that, he is far more safe to be around.
He's more approachable. But the opposite is also true. If
I put on pride and go, hey, babe, this is
(29:41):
your problem, not mine. All of a sudden she's in
opposition to me and I am undoing myself. And I
am undoing our looseness in pride. At the end of
the day, this is the core thing that either makes
the love languages helpful or not helpful. The mindful marriage
(30:01):
principles helpful or not helpful? Just because you know it
doesn't mean you'll do it. And humility is the thing
that's going to activate your ability to follow through.
S4 (30:12):
I'm thinking about John 15 verse five where Jesus said,
I am the vine, you're the branches. You stay connected
to me. You bear fruit. And then this statement, without me,
you can do nothing.
S2 (30:27):
That's right.
S4 (30:28):
And I learned that early in my life. I'm glad
that I did. That's why every day I'm crying out
for wisdom. God. In what? In this situation. This situation,
this situation. I can't I can't do this. You know.
S2 (30:43):
Every single day that has to be our wake up posture.
I often say, I've learned the hard way that we
come to you, to Christ in humility. Lord, help me,
I need you. Um. We walk with him in humility.
You know, what does the Lord require of you? Act justly,
love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. Micah six eight.
(31:04):
And someday when he comes, every knee will bow and
every tongue confess that Christ is. We're going to bow
in humility when he comes. It's the before, it's the during,
and it's the after of discipleship. And if we don't
do that, then we really cannot learn any of the
other virtues, a character, qualities that, uh, that we need
(31:26):
to have to become more like Christ.
S4 (31:29):
Ron, in the book you use the term called phubbing.
S2 (31:33):
P.
S4 (31:33):
U b b I n g. What is.
S2 (31:36):
It's a new word. It's a new word.
S4 (31:39):
And how might it affect all of this?
S2 (31:41):
Yeah. Well, you know, because of our mobile phone world, um,
psychologists have come up with a new term. This is
partner phone snubbing. Phubbing is when you snub your partner
for your phone. And everybody listening right now knows exactly
what I'm talking about. This has either happened to you.
(32:01):
You've seen it. You've been in a restaurant, and you
see two people or a family sitting there and nobody's
talking to one another because they're all looking at their phone,
or you've been in bed at night and you're about
to turn to your spouse and have a conversation, but
they're looking at Facebook and you're like, huh? Well, I
guess they're interested in that. Not so interested in me.
And there you go. Phubbing is a micro affair. And
(32:25):
what it says to the partner on the receiving end
of that is you're not as important as this thing is.
And you feel their disaffection, and it will dysregulate in a,
in a micro moment because you're like, wait a minute,
wait a minute. Do I have you or do I
not have you? Am I important? Am I not important?
That's a form of dysregulation. And the next thing you know,
(32:47):
you're probably going into blame, shame, control or escape. Escape.
Looks like. Well, fine. I'll just look in my phone
or I'll watch TV, or I'll go in the other
room or I'm not talking to you either. That's the
withdrawal thing. Uh, you know, the shame factor. We haven't
talked about shame yet. Talked about blaming control a little bit.
Shame is, um. Oh, there must be something wrong with
me that I'm uninteresting or not attractive or. Why would
(33:11):
that draw your attention? And I don't. And so it's
this downgrading yourself talk that that's what shame does. So
again everybody's a little different in how they respond in
that moment. But you feel the lack of us ness
and it's going to be a real problem. There's already research.
(33:32):
We haven't been doing the phone thing very long in
our society. But, uh, there's already research, Gary, that tells
us that these little moments of disaffection can add up
to a greater sense of insecurity within relationships. And and
by the way, this is affecting parenting, too. The parenting
version of this they call techno ference. That's where it's
(33:52):
interfering with the process of of parenting your children. You
ask your child, would you please go clean your dishes
and put them in the dishwasher? And and you turn
to your phone and you stare into that in 20
minutes later, you sort of pop out and you go, oh,
your dishes are still there. Did you not finish it?
And you've lost track of your child. You're not doing
the behavioral management of your child because you got lost
(34:13):
in your phone, and therefore you're more angry. You go
find your child. You you know, you you're a little
harsh because you were the one who got interfered with
and didn't follow through. We're already seeing how this affects
mothers and their nursing infant. Instead of staring into the
eyes of the infant while the baby nurses a mother
(34:34):
staring at her phone, looking away from the child, they're
already seeing the brain chemistry changes in infants because of
techno ference phubbing. My message to people today is in
terms of your sins, this is not helpful. We've got
to put on self control. We've got to put on
(34:55):
the discipline of saying not now. We, you know, let's
have a conversation about when we're going to look at
our phones and when we're not and when it's okay
and when they need to be off and no responses
and turn off the ring in the ding, because that's
just going to interfere with our us. Like that's a
discipline we have to bring or the phone will get
the better of us.
S4 (35:15):
I can hear a lot of our listeners thinking, maybe
saying out loud, oh oh yeah, 0000, this me?
S2 (35:22):
Yes, please call my husband, call my husband and tell him.
S4 (35:28):
Oh well, no, I think you're exactly right. And I'm
glad to hear that there's research being done in that
area to demonstrate it, because we see it all the
time and feel it. You know, we do.
S3 (35:41):
Ron, is there a way to know what my dysregulation
or my style of reacting or interacting with my spouse is.
S2 (35:51):
Yes, absolutely. Um, the book The Mindful Marriage is going
to walk you through a process. Uh, it's a little
bit of a workbook. There's some working exercises in it,
and it's very revealing. And I guarantee you you're going
to learn a lot about yourself. So that's one way.
Just get the book and start in. But if you
want to just do a quick assessment, we've pulled the
(36:11):
assessment out and we've put it online. People can go
to Worthy Pub. That's Worthy Pub as in Worthy publishers,
who's doing our book assessment. And you're going to be
able to figure out your reactive coping style. Every person
on the planet does this. And we've talked about blame, shame,
control and escape. You're going to sort of discover which
(36:34):
you're prone to. And I'll just tell you, some people
just do one for the most part. Some people are
all for Nan would tell you she's all for and
that she does them all really, really well. I have
a couple of them that I'm exceedingly good at, That, um,
you'll discover who you are. And here's the interesting thing
about it. And the important thing about this, it's like
(36:55):
once you identify that, you can start seeing it show
up when you're driving down the highway and somebody cuts
you off and you do the quick, there's your one
of your four is going to show up right there.
In that moment when a child disobeys or disrespects, you're
going to feel that dysregulation. When you feel like you've
lost connection with your spouse or a family member or
(37:16):
your mother offered another criticism, you're going to feel it
and you're going to notice this thing showing up in you.
That's the beginning of the journey to saying, that's my
old self, Lord, how do I find my new self
and put it on in this moment and take charge
of this pain? Because that's where the discipline comes in
and we're where we get transformed. And so the work
(37:39):
starts just by doing that little assessment.
S4 (37:42):
Well, one of the most powerful aspects I think of
the book is how you're so vulnerable, you and Nan
and dealing with your own pain cycles. Uh, we talked
about this a little to begin with, but why are
you so honest?
S2 (37:55):
Yeah, well, you know, it's a good question, Gary. And honestly,
I think our profession has not done a good job
of this. I, I see pastors and marriage and family
teachers and Bible teachers who maintain a really good image.
And I get it. I did that for a long time.
I kind of think we think we're going to lose
(38:17):
our ministry or something. But at the end of the day, um,
what's attractive about humbling down is that other people go, oh,
it's not just me. If that's wrong, and he's that
guy doing that thing right in those books, doing that,
speaking that, whatever, then it's not just me and I'm
(38:38):
not so horrible. And we're all on this journey together.
And I just think the church needs this Exist desperately.
How is it that we've had so many high profile
church leaders fall in the last ten years? Pride. And
we sort of let them get away with it. And
nobody's saying we got to be humble. Every single one
of us has got to fall on our knees before
(39:00):
the Lord every single day of our life. So, Nana
and I, through our journey, we've just decided we're going
to be real. We're doing a mindful marriage conference for churches.
And in that conference, often we are working through on
stage something that happened while we traveled to that event.
Because travel happens to be one of my triggers. And
(39:22):
so I kind of get dysregulated. And then we have
to deal with it. And we've decided we're not going
to be phony. We're going to be as real as
we can be and show people how we're making use
of this in real time, so that they, too, can
find hope in that and find the ability to to
emulate it. And so I just think it's time we
(39:42):
lead out. And here's the thing I've learned. And I
know you know this, Gary. I'm preaching to the choir
right now. But when somebody is vulnerable and honest and humble,
first in a small group, in a Bible study, in
a church, when somebody goes first, other people will immediately follow. Yeah,
but if nobody goes first, everybody pretends. And everybody keeps
(40:04):
the face and the appearance and and the. And we
lose that deep intimacy and connection that God wants us
to have as his children. And so somebody's got to
go first.
S4 (40:17):
Ron, as we come near the end of our time together,
let's talk a little bit more about how we can
help the church be more open to the kind of
things we're talking about here and understanding, you know, the
brain and all of these things and how they affect us,
even though we're not even thinking about it so much
of the time.
S2 (40:37):
Yeah. Well, we know from Communio that 80% of churches
don't spend a dime on marriage, education or ministry in
a given calendar year, and 75% of churches, uh, do
don't do more than three activities in a given year.
Even if a church doesn't spend any money, they do
a small group. They have a retreat. They do three
(41:00):
or less. That's 75%. Only 25% of churches will do
more than that. In other words, we really don't seem
to be that invested in helping couples thrive, let alone
stay married. And I don't get that. Uh, you and
I both know that the context in which we live
(41:21):
our most intimate relationships is where God is also growing
us up into the image of Christ. You want to
talk about discipleship? Everything we've been talking about today is
is discipleship. It is growing me. It is maturing me
to be more like Jesus. And marriage is the avenue
through which God does that. I yes, we got to
study the Bible. Yes, we need to teach it. And yes,
(41:42):
we need to figure out how to do relationships. And
the church really needs to get more active in that way.
And not just fun, you know, sermons that make people
laugh or date nights. I'm all for date nights and
good entertainment and a good laugh. And let's go out
and have a good time, honey. But if that's all
(42:03):
we ever get to in our marriage ministry, then I'm
not really being challenged. I'm not really growing. I'm just
allowed to laugh and stay as I am. Yeah, no,
we can mature. We can do more than that. Um,
I want to invite church leaders and couples, because often
the couples listening to us right now are the ones
(42:24):
that are going to go to their pastor and say, hey,
we got an idea, let's do more. Let's dive in.
Let's get into the deep end with people's lives and relationships,
in particular marriage and parenting and family. Because so much
good happens when we help people do that, and the
next generation comes to know the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord.
S4 (42:49):
Yeah, well, I think this book is going to help
that process. And I just want to encourage our listeners,
if you're a lay leader in a church and you
lead small groups, this is a book you want to
get yourself. You want to process it yourself, work through
it in your own marriage, and I think you'll want
to be using it in small groups in your church. So, Ron,
(43:09):
thanks for being with us today and thanks to you
and Ann for putting this together and sharing your own,
your own journey in such a practical way. Thanks again
for all that you have done and are doing.
S2 (43:21):
Well, you endorse this book and we are very grateful. And, uh,
we just pray the Lord will use it.
S3 (43:28):
Well, Ron mentioned that assessment a few minutes ago, and
if you didn't get that website, let me give it
again if you'd like to discover your reactive coping style,
go to. Worthy. Worthy. Assessment. And if you go to
(43:49):
our website, you'll see the book The Mindful Marriage. Create
your best relationship through understanding and managing yourself. Find out
more at Building Relationships. Again, that book is written by
Ron and Nan Deal.
S4 (44:04):
And next week, what does it mean to be pro
Abundant life?
S1 (44:08):
The president and CEO of Cornette, Rolland Warren, will join us.
A big thank you to our production team today. Steve
Weick and Janice backing building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman
is a production of Moody Radio in Chicago in association
with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks
for listening.
The wheels on their marriage bus nearly came off. How
did they manage to survive? Find out. Straight ahead.
S2 (00:06):
There's a lot of self control moments, but when you
figure it out, when you get the pathway. I'm telling you,
35 years I've been in marriage and family ministry. Nothing
has impacted my walk with Christ or my marriage more
than this.
S1 (00:25):
Welcome to building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman, author of
the New York Times best seller The Five Love Languages
Today Practical help for couples who are struggling. Rondale will
talk about the mindful marriage and how neuroscience and the
Bible can help you stop the painful patterns in a
troubled relationship.
S3 (00:42):
You know Ron, from his writing about the blended family
and answering questions about step parenting. On today's summer Best
of broadcast, we're going to dive into this resource that
will help couples build a stronger connection. You can find
that book by Ron and his wife, Nan at Building relationships.
And Gary, it strikes me that this two pronged approach
(01:03):
of understanding yourself and how you respond to your spouse
goes right along with the love language concept.
S4 (01:10):
Well, I think it does. I think there are parallels there, certainly.
This book, however, is a really great in-depth study. I
think any couple working through this book, it'd be like
sitting down with a counselor and working through some stuff.
So I'm excited about our discussion today.
S3 (01:26):
Well, let's welcome back the director of Family Life Blended
and president of Smart Stepfamilies, Ron Deal. He's the most
widely read and viewed author on blended families in the country.
He and his wife, Nan, were married in 1986, and
they've written this new book together, The Mindful Marriage. Create
your best relationship through understanding and Managing Yourself. You can
(01:50):
find out more at Building Relationships.
S4 (01:53):
Well, Ron, welcome back to Building Relationships.
S2 (01:56):
It's good to be with you again, Gary. Um, you're
a good friend, and, uh, always enjoy talking with you.
S4 (02:02):
Well, I feel the same way. Enjoyed writing a book
with you earlier. We can mention that later, perhaps, but, uh,
this book I'm really, really excited about. Warren. I think
there are many of our listeners who have never heard
the story of your and man's struggle in your marriage,
in which you really got to the place where you
felt like things were falling apart. I've told my story
many times, of course, with Carolyn, but, uh, tell us
(02:24):
about that and the road that you've been on since then.
S2 (02:29):
You know, through the years, um, we have told many
people privately that story. And on occasion, when it made sense,
it's entered into my public teaching. Um, but we just
really felt like it was time to go all out. Uh,
not that we were hiding it all along, but that
we just didn't really know how to verbalize the story.
(02:52):
And candidly, we were still working on us in a
way that we wanted to get further in our journey
before we could really share it. And so four years ago,
we went to our therapist, Doctor Terry Hargrave, who in
this book we, uh, tell everybody how he has been
developing a strategy and approach to working with couples for
(03:16):
many years. And it's used around the world at this point.
But mostly the academic community is the only people who
know about it. And we went to him and said,
you know, you changed our life and we're absolutely in
love with everything that you've done. We've been teaching it
and counseling and using it for years and years at
this point, and we just want to share it with
(03:37):
the world. Can can we partner with you and your wife, Sharon?
And can the four of us write this book and
make it accessible for the average person? And that's what
the mindful marriage has become. It is our testimony and
his testimony of our mess and how the Hargraves changed
all that with their principles that they are now teaching
(03:59):
and have been has been taught academically for years, and
we're just trying to make it accessible to everybody because
we know how powerful it really is.
S4 (04:10):
Yeah. Well, you know, I think when we share our
own journey, it does help people because they realize, oh,
they're not perfect. Oh, they've been there.
S2 (04:21):
That's exactly right, Gary. And people are attracted to that.
S4 (04:24):
Absolutely. And I'm encouraged that you've chosen to do that.
You know, it turns out that your counselor, Doctor Terry Hargrave, uh,
has innovated a model of therapy that you've talked about
that is beginning to gain recognition. Tell us about restoration therapy,
which is the term that you used and how does
(04:45):
it relate to this book, Mindful Marriages.
S2 (04:48):
Well, first of all, let me just say it is
deeply Christian. Restoration therapy has its roots in the New
Testament language of old self and new self. We've all
heard a good sermon about how we should take off
our old self and put on our new. That's the
language Paul uses over and over and over again. And
if you're like me, you you go, yeah, that's right.
I need to go do that. And then you go
(05:09):
home and you have another bad moment where you just
do the same thing again and you're like, how do
I take it off and put it on? And that's
the core of what Restoration Therapy really does. But it
also integrates the best of what we know from neuroscience
and how the brain body works. Over the last 20 years,
we've learned so much that's integrated what we know about
(05:31):
what we call attachment. That is the emotional, psychological connection
that we all have in important relationships. How that gets
flushed out in a, in a marriage context specifically. So neuroscience, attachment, uh,
self-regulation big term. We can unpack that a little bit.
But the biblical word for that is self-control. That's not
(05:52):
a new idea, but it turns out learning how to
do it just takes a huge discipline. And then there's
this issue of pride and humility and how pride works
against our relationships, and humility works for it. All of
those concepts are rolled up into this what's called restoration therapy,
the mindful marriage. At the end of the day, mindfulness
(06:15):
is a word. A lot of people kind of go, well,
what's that? That sounds a little new agey. No, no, no,
no it's not. It's the Bible is replete with using
the term in the form of what Romans 12 be
transformed by the renewing of your mind. Like that's what
we're helping people to actually do not just know what
they should do, but actually take off that old self
(06:38):
and put on the new and start doing it. That's
what this approach is really, really great at.
S4 (06:46):
Well, in the book you use the term us us ness.
What is that and how does emotional dysregulation affect it?
S2 (06:57):
Well, yeah, your essence is that thing that you created
on the day you got married. It's it's a living,
breathing organism that exists as a result of marital commitment,
love and trustworthiness to one another. It's what you are
together that is far more than the sum of the
two people. You know, I've often thought we do the
(07:18):
unity candle maybe a little bit backwards. Um, you know,
he takes his candle, she takes hers, and they light
the center candle. And then, you know, traditionally you blow
yourself out at that point and it's like, whoa, wait
a minute, where did you go? You don't actually die.
You don't. You don't stop becoming a person or being
a person. As a matter of fact, you should keep
those individual candles lit and then step back from the
(07:41):
unity candle and go, okay, there's you, there's me, and
there's our essence. This. That's the thing in the middle
that we have created that we are committed to, to
use the biblical language that we're going to feed and
nurture and care for. It's like a child, Gary. It's
it results because of your love and dedication to one another.
But you do got to feed that child. You better
(08:01):
take care of it. You better teach it. You better
instruct it. You better pour into it. And then that
helps that child grow up. And your US ness is
exactly the same when your essence is at peace. Each
partner is being fed by it, and each partner thrives
within it. You feel safe. You feel whole. And here's
the thing you naturally give the best of yourself back
(08:22):
to the essence. So you get fed and you turn
around and feed it. But when your essence is in pain,
here's what we know one or both partners is sort
of neurologically dysregulated, and we can flesh that out in
a minute. And essentially it means you feel insecure. You're
feeling anxious about your worth, about how much they want
you or how much you want them. And do you
feel safe to give of yourself in this relationship. That's
(08:47):
what the dysregulation is about the US. It feels like
our flame is about to blow out. It feels like
the flame is getting smaller. And I'm not feeling great
about that. And here's what's crazy about dysregulation. It comes
in a heartbeat. All of us listening right now who
have ever been in any sort of close, intimate relationship,
(09:07):
especially a marriage you've had those days where everything's clicking
and you are just loving one another, and then one
of you makes a remark and in a nanosecond you
are against each other. Like, it's like what just happened
in that moment. Maybe I meant it. Harsh, but you
heard harsh, and now you got your heels dug in,
(09:28):
and I'm defensive. Where did our US ness go in
that moment? We can all relate to this. There's something
happening in those moments that brings out the worst of us.
When we're at peace, It brings the best of us
when we're in pain. It brings out the worst of us.
We all know it. We've all been there. We all
(09:48):
feel it. And it doesn't mean our relationship is horrible.
It just means that moment something's off. There is a
beauty in that. And there is a challenge and an
art to learning how to feed and care and nurture
that essence in a way that keeps it at peace.
S4 (10:07):
And it's a journey, right? Yes.
S2 (10:10):
Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. And I and here's
the thing I've learned about dysregulation. Everybody on the planet
gets dysregulated. Everybody feels a little anxious and insecure and nervous.
And in other word, is triggered. Discombobulated where you just
don't feel like things are going well in your relationship,
even if it's just for a few moments or sometimes
(10:30):
it's a season. For us, it rose to the to
the point where nanny's like, I'm done, I don't know,
whatever we've got is I don't want it anymore. I mean,
that was our crisis moment in 2007 that led us
into Doctor Hargreaves office, and we tell that whole story
in the book. Like that was a huge dysregulated moment
(10:51):
for us. We all do this. We all know what
it feels like. And the question is why then? You know,
when that happens, I become my worst self. How do
I stay? How do I stay in my Christ? Mature
new self? In those moments, that's what we are getting at.
And so it really is core to how we do marriage.
S3 (11:15):
Can I jump in and ask you how bad it got?
I know Nan said, I don't want, but was it,
you know, from your perspective, what were those days like? And,
you know, the darkness that you were in?
S2 (11:32):
Well, it was deeply frightening. Um, at the end of
the day, I can tell you now that she didn't
really want a divorce. She didn't really want to leave.
She was just sick and tired of what we had.
That she didn't know how to live with it. And
by the way, I really think that's a common experience.
What I've learned is, well, we talk about in the
book the two pillars that every relationship needs to have.
(11:54):
It's got to have love. Love gives you a sense
of identity, a sense of your worth and belonging and
value in the relationship. But you also have to have trust.
And trust gives you safety. It gives you a sense
that I'm safe within your arms, within this relationship. Most people,
when they before long before they get a divorce, they
(12:16):
fall out of safety with one another and then fall
out of love with one another. I would say in 2007,
Nan had fallen out of safety with me. She didn't
believe that I was there for her, that she could
count on me, that our relationship was being fed and nurtured. And,
you know, we were trying and we had plenty of
wonderful moments, but we had more and more and more
(12:39):
dysregulated moments, and that just grew to a place where
she was like, I don't know how to live with this.
So she didn't really want to end our marriage, but
she didn't know how to live with it either. And
so it was that moment of and of course, that
hit me between the eyes like, oh, wow. I knew
we were struggling. Didn't realize it was that bad. On
your side. I don't think it's that bad. You know
(13:00):
which one of us is right now we're arguing about
how bad we are, you know? That's a fun little
place to be. And so it was like, clearly, something's
got to change. Clearly, we need some outside help. And
that's where we saw it. I will say this, um,
I didn't think we were that bad off. Now you
can go. Was that denial? Was that. And I've learned
(13:22):
that I'm really good at counter blame. So in my mind,
it's not nearly as bad as it is in her mind.
And so I can make her. The problem with that
and and that's what I did initially. and it was
only when I ended up in Terry's office that I
began a journey that he unfortunately and fortunately forced me into, uh,
(13:46):
where I had to look deeply into the mirror at
my own pride and discover that man, I'm blind to me.
And if I don't wake up, uh, what what Nan
and I have is just going to keep getting worse.
And Nan had a whole side on, you know, she
would tell you she had a whole lot that she
had to work on, too. This is not a one
person problem. This was a two person problem. But I
(14:09):
was not willing to look at myself until that moment.
S4 (14:12):
Yeah, because by nature, all of us, when a situation
like that, we're really thinking it's the other problem. It's
the other person. If they would, if they would change.
But you're right, it has to be. It has to
be both of us. Because we're we're the essence is there.
S2 (14:30):
Exactly. And we're both responsible for our sins and to it.
S4 (14:34):
Yeah. Now, you talk a lot about neurology of interpersonal relationships.
Explain that. And why is it important?
S2 (14:44):
Well, um, you know, I think there's a the experience of,
you know, having bad moments and just becoming upset or
angry at your partner or critical of them or feeling
their criticism, and you get defensive, like, those are the
words that we all put on it. But in the
last 25 years, we've learned what's going on below the surface.
(15:05):
That is what's embodied in our mind, body and and brain.
And it kind of goes like this as we experience
moments in our childhood and adulthood where we don't quite
feel loved or don't quite feel safe. Those two pillars
we talked about, when one or both of those is off,
(15:26):
either from how we were parented, moments at home, or
an early relationship, or maybe even a first marriage, that
our brain writes a little story about what that means
for us. Oh, what this means is the way this
is Ron's story that I've learned about myself. What this
means is the way Ron shows his adequacy is by
(15:47):
excelling at his work, by performing really well, by doing
his best. And so I was driven and I drove
so hard at my work and career and life and
marriage and trying to be a good husband and father
all at the same time. But at the end of
the day, the husband part really suffered. And that's what
Nan was really reacting to in an, in a, in
(16:09):
a big way at that season of our life. And, well,
what's that about for me? Well, for for me, it's
about I don't want to feel inadequate. I don't want
to feel like I'm not enough. Well, what's that about? Well,
that pain came from the question that I had in
my childhood about how I get my dad's love. And
he had high expectations. And he's. He was an evangelist
and a wonderful man. I had great parents. And at
(16:32):
the same time, I also knew if I didn't live
up to the standards, that I might just lose their affection,
their love. At least I sort of. That's the story
I wrote for myself. I don't think that was actually
true on any level, but I made it true. And
so the story of my pain is if I'm inadequate,
then I may not be loved and may not be safe.
(16:53):
So you just perform really well. All right. Fast forward
a little bit. That's the story of my brain knows.
So any time, any time in my marriage that I
felt like I saw Nan's disappointment about me, I panicked.
I went right into, oh, I'm not enough. And she's
not going to be satisfied with me, so I better
get busy. And I would get busy in two ways. Um,
(17:16):
by the way, this is a fight or flight reactivity.
This is neurological. We all do fight or flight. Fight
or flight takes four forms blame, shame, shame, control or escape.
Those are the four ways it comes out of us.
I'm a good Blamer I can counter blame. I can
figure out what Nancy doesn't have right? And I can
take her argument apart and, you know, go turn it
(17:38):
around and make it about her. I'm also a control person,
so I can control by performing, by doing and exceeding.
I can also control by criticizing her at the end
of the day. Blame and control tactics just make things
worse because she doesn't feel heard. She doesn't feel understood.
She just feels attacked. And oh, by the way, she
(17:59):
has her own pain narrative from her childhood where nobody
really listened to her ever. She just felt abandoned and
all alone most of her life as a kid. And
so whenever I would go into the mode of defending
myself and proving her wrong, she basically heard, yep, I
still don't have anybody on my side. And so our
(18:20):
two pain narratives collide in our blame, shame, control and
escape strategies. And that just makes things really ugly. Now
here's you know, what's crazy about this is you can
map this. I mean, once you understand this and we
take people in the mindful marriage through some exercises where
you will map your pain cycle and you'll map their
(18:43):
pain cycle and you'll see how these two things collide.
It is amazing when you put it on paper and
you go, oh my goodness, when we are great, we
are fabulous. We are not like anything. What we're seeing
on this paper. But in our bad moments, this is
exactly who we are. And you now know what your
old self is, and it's just as plain as day.
Now you have the challenge of saying, how do I
(19:04):
take that off and put on self control and become
what God has designed me to be? And we lead
people through that process of discovering how you move toward peace.
But it the neurological component here is important because at
the end of the day, here's what it is that
your brain wants to do what it knows to do,
(19:26):
and you have to overcome that by renewing your mind.
Now notice what I just said. Romans 12 does not
say be transformed by the renewing of your brain. It
says to renew your mind. Your mind tells your brain
and your body what it should do, not what it
knows to do, not what it's got. A neurological rut
(19:47):
that it loves to run down this rut towards blame
and control. But this time, Ron, we need to move
towards compassion and kindness and softness and gentleness and take
off the blame and control. That's my mind telling my
brain how to act. And that's when we get transformed.
Like all of a sudden that old neurological self is
(20:09):
slowly being pushed away by sinful nature is being pushed away.
That's what is transformative. And we've just we're just amazed
at how far this has brought us, not just in
our marriage, but at the end of the day, this
is helping me walk with Christ.
S4 (20:26):
Yeah, I think many of our listeners, and maybe most
people really don't think about the neurological, the neurological aspect
and the what you're calling the pain narrative. We just
know how we're responding, but we don't know, you know,
the part that the brain is playing in all of that.
So I think that that alone is is very, very
(20:48):
helpful to people.
S2 (20:49):
And I'll just add this, Gary. It is a fascinating endeavor.
The point is this is a part of me and
it is my job to manage me. Once I identify
that neurological component, if you will, to my old self,
then it's still my job in humility before God to
(21:10):
start managing that. Most of us spend our entire life,
as you said earlier, very insightfully. By the way, most
of us spend our entire life trying to get our
spouse to love us, or do something different in such
a way that the pain I feel goes away. Now
notice that is Matthew seven. That is me focusing on
the little tiny speck in your eye while I've got
(21:31):
this huge log in my eye that I'm totally ignoring.
And so I obsess over the speck in your eye. Well,
that doesn't help either one of us deal with the log.
I can't get Nan to love me in such a
way that I. That I feel adequate. She can't love
that into me. It's not up to her. It's up
(21:52):
to me. And I really think this is so vital
to the Christian walk and how we portray our lives
with one another in marriage. That I, I I'm just
telling you, I don't think we talk this talk very well.
We we inadvertently sort of blame the victim. We say
to the spouse, well, what can you do to help
(22:13):
Ron not feel inadequate and insecure about himself? Well, she
can be kind and nice and do certain things that
help me, but that is neurological. It is in my brain.
It's in my. It's embodied in me. She can't love
it out of me. It's inappropriate for us to assume
she can. What needs to happen is Ron needs to
(22:33):
take responsibility for Ron, and that's when I can grow
up in Christ. And so as this message pours out,
it's sort of like, wow, okay, stop blaming the victim, Ron.
Start dealing with yourself. And we write about how people
misuse your love language principles with what I'm talking about.
How many times have you heard somebody say, well, my
(22:55):
love language is and you got to get my wife
to love me that way. No, the whole point in
your principles is to for me to be selfless and
start looking at how I can serve my spouse rather
than demand that they serve me. But I know you've
had people misuse that for years and years and years.
(23:16):
What is that? That is what I've been talking about.
We want the other to love me in such a
way that I don't feel any pain in my heart
and life anymore. That will never, ever work. I'm the
one who has to deal with the log in my eye.
And here's what Doctor Hargrave has taught me. There is
a quick fix about. Oh, if you'll just, you know,
(23:38):
love me in a certain way, then my my, my
log will leave my life. Well, no, that's like cotton candy.
Your spouse can make you feel good for a few minutes.
But what is neurological in your brain, in embodied in
your soul you are going to hang on to until
the day you reckon with it, until you start taking
(24:00):
charge of it. It's not even up to God. And
let me explain that. Uh, we all know better than
we act. Why is that? Because we understand God's will
for our life. But that doesn't mean we actually do it.
Discipleship is about me aligning my will with God's will.
That's when I get transformed. That's when God's really in
charge of my life. That's when I make him king
(24:22):
is when I align my will with his. And that
means I have to deal with what my body brain,
soul wants to do. So until I take charge of that,
I'm just going to walk around with a log in
my eye, blaming everybody else for all the stuff they
do wrong. That that that makes me what I am.
And that is a losing game for any marriage.
S1 (24:49):
You're listening to the podcast Building Relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman.
Find out more about the program, when Gary might be
coming to your area, and our featured resource at Building Relationships.
Our guest today is Ron Deal, co-author with his wife, Nan,
of the new book, The Mindful Marriage. Just go to building.
Just go to building relationships us to find out more.
S4 (25:14):
Well, we talked about the old self and the new self.
You know, the biblical concept. But putting off the old
self and the role that the patterns in our brain,
how they influence us. And unless we're really thinking about it,
we don't we don't see that. How does humility fit
into to this whole thing of understanding the other person,
(25:36):
understanding yourself and and processing all those?
S2 (25:41):
So in the mindful marriage, we're going to walk people
into an understanding of their pain cycle and the story
of pain in their life and what it leads them
to do, how they react and blame, shame, control and escape.
We're then going to lead them to a place where
they understand the peace cycle. That is, what does it
look like to live out of God's truth rather than
out of your pain? And once they've identified that, they
(26:05):
have a very tangible map of how to change their life,
how to be transformed by the renewing of their mind.
And here's what we've learned. People won't do it unless
they put on humility. At the end of the day,
humility is the attitude that says, yeah, it's my job
to deal with me. It is me and God working
(26:26):
on me through the spirit power of the Holy Spirit.
And and unless I, I bow the knee to the
King every single day and say, Lord, help me, I
won't actually change what I do. I'll just stay stuck
in it. I may have the greatest knowledge I got
this map in front of me. I now know me
better than I've ever known me. And I won't change
(26:46):
anything in real life because I still think in pride
that I don't deserve this or I deserve better, or
it's somebody else's fault or, you know, whatever it is
that pushes it away from me. Humility is that posture
that says, I'm getting really serious about who I am,
and I'm bringing that before God and asking for his help.
(27:08):
It's what activates the change in us. And without it,
we're just stuck. And let me just pull back for
a second and say there's an amazing principle taught in
Scripture that, uh, I just continue to ponder and chew
on and we talk about it in The Mindful Marriage,
and it's repeated. I've lost track, I think, more than
35 times throughout the Bible, but it goes like this
(27:30):
God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.
In a very simple way, here it is. If you
come before God saying, hey, I got life figured out.
I don't need you and your rules. That's pride. He's
going to oppose you. He's not going to let you
stand before him with that attitude and get away with it.
He just won't. He'll let you suffer the consequences of
your choices. He'll bring something to your life that challenges
(27:52):
your pride. Something is going to show up in form
of opposition. And we can just think of a character
in the Bible, and you can probably identify those who
did that and and how God opposed them. But the
opposite is also true. Stand before him in humility and say, Lord,
I don't got. I don't got anything. I don't have
anything figured out. I am nothing without you, I need you.
(28:13):
And he runs to our side like the father and
the prodigal son, and throws a coat around and said,
you got it all. I'm here for you. Uh, you're
my child. Grace abounds. Now, here's what I want people
to hear today. I believe that principle doesn't just work
vertically spiritually with God. It works horizontally with every relationship
(28:36):
in our life, most notably in marriage. But it also
works in parenting and leadership and pastoral care, whatever it is.
I think politicians stand before people in pride and they
will oppose you. Stand before your wife in pride and
she will be sick and tired of you in a hurry.
And next thing you know, she is pushing back somehow.
(28:57):
But stand in humility when you make a mistake. When
you find yourself getting. You know what? I feel inadequate
right now, and it's my job to put guardrails on that,
and I'm not going to take it out on you
when I say that sort of thing out loud in
front of my wife. She breathes a sigh of relief,
and she, more likely than not, has grace for me.
(29:20):
She softens. She has more compassion. She's more forgiving. She'll
go the extra mile. Why? Because she sees Ron putting
on humility and taking charge of himself. And when Ron
does that, he is far more safe to be around.
He's more approachable. But the opposite is also true. If
I put on pride and go, hey, babe, this is
(29:41):
your problem, not mine. All of a sudden she's in
opposition to me and I am undoing myself. And I
am undoing our looseness in pride. At the end of
the day, this is the core thing that either makes
the love languages helpful or not helpful. The mindful marriage
(30:01):
principles helpful or not helpful? Just because you know it
doesn't mean you'll do it. And humility is the thing
that's going to activate your ability to follow through.
S4 (30:12):
I'm thinking about John 15 verse five where Jesus said,
I am the vine, you're the branches. You stay connected
to me. You bear fruit. And then this statement, without me,
you can do nothing.
S2 (30:27):
That's right.
S4 (30:28):
And I learned that early in my life. I'm glad
that I did. That's why every day I'm crying out
for wisdom. God. In what? In this situation. This situation,
this situation. I can't I can't do this. You know.
S2 (30:43):
Every single day that has to be our wake up posture.
I often say, I've learned the hard way that we
come to you, to Christ in humility. Lord, help me,
I need you. Um. We walk with him in humility.
You know, what does the Lord require of you? Act justly,
love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. Micah six eight.
(31:04):
And someday when he comes, every knee will bow and
every tongue confess that Christ is. We're going to bow
in humility when he comes. It's the before, it's the during,
and it's the after of discipleship. And if we don't
do that, then we really cannot learn any of the
other virtues, a character, qualities that, uh, that we need
(31:26):
to have to become more like Christ.
S4 (31:29):
Ron, in the book you use the term called phubbing.
S2 (31:33):
P.
S4 (31:33):
U b b I n g. What is.
S2 (31:36):
It's a new word. It's a new word.
S4 (31:39):
And how might it affect all of this?
S2 (31:41):
Yeah. Well, you know, because of our mobile phone world, um,
psychologists have come up with a new term. This is
partner phone snubbing. Phubbing is when you snub your partner
for your phone. And everybody listening right now knows exactly
what I'm talking about. This has either happened to you.
(32:01):
You've seen it. You've been in a restaurant, and you
see two people or a family sitting there and nobody's
talking to one another because they're all looking at their phone,
or you've been in bed at night and you're about
to turn to your spouse and have a conversation, but
they're looking at Facebook and you're like, huh? Well, I
guess they're interested in that. Not so interested in me.
And there you go. Phubbing is a micro affair. And
(32:25):
what it says to the partner on the receiving end
of that is you're not as important as this thing is.
And you feel their disaffection, and it will dysregulate in a,
in a micro moment because you're like, wait a minute,
wait a minute. Do I have you or do I
not have you? Am I important? Am I not important?
That's a form of dysregulation. And the next thing you know,
(32:47):
you're probably going into blame, shame, control or escape. Escape.
Looks like. Well, fine. I'll just look in my phone
or I'll watch TV, or I'll go in the other
room or I'm not talking to you either. That's the
withdrawal thing. Uh, you know, the shame factor. We haven't
talked about shame yet. Talked about blaming control a little bit.
Shame is, um. Oh, there must be something wrong with
me that I'm uninteresting or not attractive or. Why would
(33:11):
that draw your attention? And I don't. And so it's
this downgrading yourself talk that that's what shame does. So
again everybody's a little different in how they respond in
that moment. But you feel the lack of us ness
and it's going to be a real problem. There's already research.
(33:32):
We haven't been doing the phone thing very long in
our society. But, uh, there's already research, Gary, that tells
us that these little moments of disaffection can add up
to a greater sense of insecurity within relationships. And and
by the way, this is affecting parenting, too. The parenting
version of this they call techno ference. That's where it's
(33:52):
interfering with the process of of parenting your children. You
ask your child, would you please go clean your dishes
and put them in the dishwasher? And and you turn
to your phone and you stare into that in 20
minutes later, you sort of pop out and you go, oh,
your dishes are still there. Did you not finish it?
And you've lost track of your child. You're not doing
the behavioral management of your child because you got lost
(34:13):
in your phone, and therefore you're more angry. You go
find your child. You you know, you you're a little
harsh because you were the one who got interfered with
and didn't follow through. We're already seeing how this affects
mothers and their nursing infant. Instead of staring into the
eyes of the infant while the baby nurses a mother
(34:34):
staring at her phone, looking away from the child, they're
already seeing the brain chemistry changes in infants because of
techno ference phubbing. My message to people today is in
terms of your sins, this is not helpful. We've got
to put on self control. We've got to put on
(34:55):
the discipline of saying not now. We, you know, let's
have a conversation about when we're going to look at
our phones and when we're not and when it's okay
and when they need to be off and no responses
and turn off the ring in the ding, because that's
just going to interfere with our us. Like that's a
discipline we have to bring or the phone will get
the better of us.
S4 (35:15):
I can hear a lot of our listeners thinking, maybe
saying out loud, oh oh yeah, 0000, this me?
S2 (35:22):
Yes, please call my husband, call my husband and tell him.
S4 (35:28):
Oh well, no, I think you're exactly right. And I'm
glad to hear that there's research being done in that
area to demonstrate it, because we see it all the
time and feel it. You know, we do.
S3 (35:41):
Ron, is there a way to know what my dysregulation
or my style of reacting or interacting with my spouse is.
S2 (35:51):
Yes, absolutely. Um, the book The Mindful Marriage is going
to walk you through a process. Uh, it's a little
bit of a workbook. There's some working exercises in it,
and it's very revealing. And I guarantee you you're going
to learn a lot about yourself. So that's one way.
Just get the book and start in. But if you
want to just do a quick assessment, we've pulled the
(36:11):
assessment out and we've put it online. People can go
to Worthy Pub. That's Worthy Pub as in Worthy publishers,
who's doing our book assessment. And you're going to be
able to figure out your reactive coping style. Every person
on the planet does this. And we've talked about blame, shame,
control and escape. You're going to sort of discover which
(36:34):
you're prone to. And I'll just tell you, some people
just do one for the most part. Some people are
all for Nan would tell you she's all for and
that she does them all really, really well. I have
a couple of them that I'm exceedingly good at, That, um,
you'll discover who you are. And here's the interesting thing
about it. And the important thing about this, it's like
(36:55):
once you identify that, you can start seeing it show
up when you're driving down the highway and somebody cuts
you off and you do the quick, there's your one
of your four is going to show up right there.
In that moment when a child disobeys or disrespects, you're
going to feel that dysregulation. When you feel like you've
lost connection with your spouse or a family member or
(37:16):
your mother offered another criticism, you're going to feel it
and you're going to notice this thing showing up in you.
That's the beginning of the journey to saying, that's my
old self, Lord, how do I find my new self
and put it on in this moment and take charge
of this pain? Because that's where the discipline comes in
and we're where we get transformed. And so the work
(37:39):
starts just by doing that little assessment.
S4 (37:42):
Well, one of the most powerful aspects I think of
the book is how you're so vulnerable, you and Nan
and dealing with your own pain cycles. Uh, we talked
about this a little to begin with, but why are
you so honest?
S2 (37:55):
Yeah, well, you know, it's a good question, Gary. And honestly,
I think our profession has not done a good job
of this. I, I see pastors and marriage and family
teachers and Bible teachers who maintain a really good image.
And I get it. I did that for a long time.
I kind of think we think we're going to lose
(38:17):
our ministry or something. But at the end of the day, um,
what's attractive about humbling down is that other people go, oh,
it's not just me. If that's wrong, and he's that
guy doing that thing right in those books, doing that,
speaking that, whatever, then it's not just me and I'm
(38:38):
not so horrible. And we're all on this journey together.
And I just think the church needs this Exist desperately.
How is it that we've had so many high profile
church leaders fall in the last ten years? Pride. And
we sort of let them get away with it. And
nobody's saying we got to be humble. Every single one
of us has got to fall on our knees before
(39:00):
the Lord every single day of our life. So, Nana
and I, through our journey, we've just decided we're going
to be real. We're doing a mindful marriage conference for churches.
And in that conference, often we are working through on
stage something that happened while we traveled to that event.
Because travel happens to be one of my triggers. And
(39:22):
so I kind of get dysregulated. And then we have
to deal with it. And we've decided we're not going
to be phony. We're going to be as real as
we can be and show people how we're making use
of this in real time, so that they, too, can
find hope in that and find the ability to to
emulate it. And so I just think it's time we
(39:42):
lead out. And here's the thing I've learned. And I
know you know this, Gary. I'm preaching to the choir
right now. But when somebody is vulnerable and honest and humble,
first in a small group, in a Bible study, in
a church, when somebody goes first, other people will immediately follow. Yeah,
but if nobody goes first, everybody pretends. And everybody keeps
(40:04):
the face and the appearance and and the. And we
lose that deep intimacy and connection that God wants us
to have as his children. And so somebody's got to
go first.
S4 (40:17):
Ron, as we come near the end of our time together,
let's talk a little bit more about how we can
help the church be more open to the kind of
things we're talking about here and understanding, you know, the
brain and all of these things and how they affect us,
even though we're not even thinking about it so much
of the time.
S2 (40:37):
Yeah. Well, we know from Communio that 80% of churches
don't spend a dime on marriage, education or ministry in
a given calendar year, and 75% of churches, uh, do
don't do more than three activities in a given year.
Even if a church doesn't spend any money, they do
a small group. They have a retreat. They do three
(41:00):
or less. That's 75%. Only 25% of churches will do
more than that. In other words, we really don't seem
to be that invested in helping couples thrive, let alone
stay married. And I don't get that. Uh, you and
I both know that the context in which we live
(41:21):
our most intimate relationships is where God is also growing
us up into the image of Christ. You want to
talk about discipleship? Everything we've been talking about today is
is discipleship. It is growing me. It is maturing me
to be more like Jesus. And marriage is the avenue
through which God does that. I yes, we got to
study the Bible. Yes, we need to teach it. And yes,
(41:42):
we need to figure out how to do relationships. And
the church really needs to get more active in that way.
And not just fun, you know, sermons that make people
laugh or date nights. I'm all for date nights and
good entertainment and a good laugh. And let's go out
and have a good time, honey. But if that's all
(42:03):
we ever get to in our marriage ministry, then I'm
not really being challenged. I'm not really growing. I'm just
allowed to laugh and stay as I am. Yeah, no,
we can mature. We can do more than that. Um,
I want to invite church leaders and couples, because often
the couples listening to us right now are the ones
(42:24):
that are going to go to their pastor and say, hey,
we got an idea, let's do more. Let's dive in.
Let's get into the deep end with people's lives and relationships,
in particular marriage and parenting and family. Because so much
good happens when we help people do that, and the
next generation comes to know the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord.
S4 (42:49):
Yeah, well, I think this book is going to help
that process. And I just want to encourage our listeners,
if you're a lay leader in a church and you
lead small groups, this is a book you want to
get yourself. You want to process it yourself, work through
it in your own marriage, and I think you'll want
to be using it in small groups in your church. So, Ron,
(43:09):
thanks for being with us today and thanks to you
and Ann for putting this together and sharing your own,
your own journey in such a practical way. Thanks again
for all that you have done and are doing.
S2 (43:21):
Well, you endorse this book and we are very grateful. And, uh,
we just pray the Lord will use it.
S3 (43:28):
Well, Ron mentioned that assessment a few minutes ago, and
if you didn't get that website, let me give it
again if you'd like to discover your reactive coping style,
go to. Worthy. Worthy. Assessment. And if you go to
(43:49):
our website, you'll see the book The Mindful Marriage. Create
your best relationship through understanding and managing yourself. Find out
more at Building Relationships. Again, that book is written by
Ron and Nan Deal.
S4 (44:04):
And next week, what does it mean to be pro
Abundant life?
S1 (44:08):
The president and CEO of Cornette, Rolland Warren, will join us.
A big thank you to our production team today. Steve
Weick and Janice backing building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman
is a production of Moody Radio in Chicago in association
with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks
for listening.
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