April 14, 2025 • 33 mins
What determines marital satisfaction more than sex or money? What if "compromise" actually makes things worse? How do you create a marriage you love? Sheila Wray Gregoire unpacks the results of her latest research with thousands of married couples, calling out harmful evangelical teachings and sharing a surprising new data on what it takes to build the marriage you want.
Buy Sheila's new book: The Marriage You Want: Moving beyond Stereotypes for a Relationship Built on Scripture, New Data, and Emotional Health
Sheila Wray Gregoire is the face behind BareMarriage.com as well
as a sought-after speaker and award-winning author of nine books. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing
the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to make it healthy,
evidence-based, and biblical. She and her husband, Keith, live in Ontario,
Canada.
Learn more at BareMarriage.com.
More books by Sheila Wray Gregoire (paid links):
- The Marriage You Want
- The Good Guy's Guide To Great Sex
- The Good Girl's Guide To Great Sex
- The Great Sex Rescue
- She Deserves Better
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- Step 1: Listen to this podcast or watch on YouTube
- Step 2: Join the private Husband Material Community
- Step 3: Take the free mini-course: How To Outgrow Porn
- Step 4: Try the all-in-one program: Husband Material Academy
Thanks for listening!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where
we help Christian men outgrowporn.
Why?
So you can change your brain,heal your heart and save your
relationship.
My name is Drew Boa and I'mhere to show you how let's go.
Hey man, thank you forlistening to my interview with
(00:21):
Sheila Rae Gregoire aboutmarriage.
Sheila is one of the voices Itrust the most when it comes to
healthy, evidence-based, solidteaching on marriage sex
relationships.
So in this episode, you aregoing to unlearn some common
evangelical teachings aboutmarriage and you're going to get
(00:42):
some really unexpected insightsbased on Sheila and her team's
new research project that theydid with over 7,000 people 1,500
matched couples about whatmakes the biggest difference in
marital satisfaction.
It's probably not what youthink, so listen to this episode
to get a great introduction toSheila and Keith's new book, the
(01:07):
Marriage you Want.
Enjoy the episode Today.
I'm excited to welcome SheilaRae Gregoire back to the show.
She is the founder ofBareMarriagecom and she and her
husband, keith, have written yetanother amazing book for the
evangelical Christian communitycalled the Marriage you Want
moving beyond stereotypes for arelationship built on scripture,
(01:30):
new data and emotional health.
Hi, sheila.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Hi Drew, it's great to be back.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, it's good to see you again.
You've written so much onmarriage and sexuality and
teachings that really need tochange.
What are some of the badteachings about?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
marriage that made you passionate to write this
book.
Well, you know, I don't evenknow that I knew what teachings
were bad at the beginning.
I just knew that things weren'tworking, and I noticed it
mostly with sex.
You know, I had been writingabout marriage and sex for years
and I had just been saying whatI thought was healthy.
(02:16):
And then, when one day in 2019,when I was procrastinating and I
had a headache, I ended upreading Love and Respect, and
when I saw in that book that hesaid to women if your husband's
typical, he has a need that youdon't have, and the need is for
physical release, and if hedoesn't get physical release,
he'll come under satanic attack,I freaked out and I thought, oh
my gosh, this is so unhealthy.
And that's what started ourteam doing these massive
(02:39):
research projects and trying toidentify.
You know, what teachings do wehave in the church that really
mess stuff up?
And we did that for sex withthe Great Sex Rescue and with
the Good Guys Guide to Great Sex.
But now we've done it formarriage in general and we've
just seen that, yeah, there aresome things that we teach that
do not result in good fruit andwe need to change that.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
What are some of the other examples of bad marriage
advice that keep coming up?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah.
Well, one of the big thingsthat we found was really key is
partnership.
Okay, so marriages work bestwhen you are a team, when you
each put in effort, when youeach show up with everything you
have, when you're eachcommitted to making this work
and when you're each putting inabout the same amount of effort.
And the way that you measurethat is that you each should
have roughly equal downtime.
Okay, so one of you should notbe significantly more exhausted
than the other.
So you really want teamwork.
But a lot of our teachingsactually detract from teamwork,
(03:36):
and one of the big ones is theidea that a husband should have
the tie breaking vote.
Or, you know, when you'rehaving a disagreement, the
husband ultimately gets todecide.
And we found that that beliefis highly correlated with bad
sex lives, with not feeling likeyour close friends, with not
(03:56):
having shared hobbies, even witha lot of emotional immaturity
and dysregulation.
So when you believe that he hasto have the tie-breaking vote,
your marriage really suffers.
But when you believe, hey, wecan work things out together,
you know, we put ourselves underGod, we're partners and we
figure it out together, thosemarriages flourish.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, you talk about the triangle image of marriage
being husband and wife runningtoward Jesus together, which is
a beautiful concept, and yetyour understanding has evolved.
What is your take on what itreally looks like to run toward
(04:34):
Jesus together in marriage?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I think there's a lot of different ways that we can
mess that image up, becauseKeith and I were told this when
we were getting married.
You know, it's just sobeautiful because the closer you
move to God, the closer youmove to each other.
And it does sound verybeautiful, it does sound very
idyllic, but the problem is wefocus so much on God being at
(04:58):
the center, which is veryimportant, but we forget there's
two other elements of thetriangle and, yes, we need to
focus on God, but for a marriageto work, you both need to show
up and you both need to makeroom for your spouse to show up.
And sometimes we don't show upor sometimes we overshadow our
spouse.
And it's just so important tobe there with everything that
(05:20):
you are.
And often what happens is thatwe're given all of these ideas
of what it means to be a husbandin marriage and what it means
to be a wife in marriage andthen, instead of showing up with
everything you are, you kind oftry to fulfill these roles that
aren't really you and that canlead to a lot of shame and a lot
of hiding.
You know, like I'm someone whois a very logical person, my
(05:42):
husband is way more emotionalthan I am.
He's also a physician, he'ssuper smart, but he's just.
He's more emotional, he's moretouchy, feely than I am, and
that can make it sound like,well, we're not very
stereotypical, like there'ssomething wrong with us, because
almost every sermon that youhear will be oh, the guy is so
logical, he needs to listen tohis wife's feelings.
Well, we're the opposite.
(06:03):
But a lot of couples are theopposite.
Like, for instance, theMyers-Briggs personality type
inventory.
They actually measure thinkingversus feeling and what they
find is that I think it's 56% ofmen are thinkers, so it is the
majority of men, barely themajority, but it is the majority
.
But 73% of women are feelers,so that's more.
(06:24):
In both cases it matches thestereotype.
But if you're trying to figureout the chance of a guy who is a
thinker marrying a woman who isa feeler, if you go back in
time to middle school math, youknow that the way you do that is
you multiply the percentagestogether and when you do that,
you get about 42%.
So that means that every sermon, every piece of marriage advice
(06:48):
you have ever heard about a guybeing a thinker and a woman
being a feeler does not apply toaround 58% of marriages Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
And there are so many issues like that.
For example, the man is thehigher desire partner.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yeah, there's all kinds.
Yeah, that one's one, or youknow, men are visual in a way
that women aren't.
A lot of women are visual tooand some meta-analyses have
shown that actually men are notmore visual.
Women just have a more arousal,non-concordance, which I can
explain more about later, if youwant.
That's kind of a side issue.
But you know, like like thesethings that we think men are
like this, women are like this.
(07:26):
They don't necessarily match upall the time and when we, when
we present it that way, it'slike we feel like we're totally
different species and we can'tunderstand each other.
That actually really detractsfrom intimacy.
Plus, it makes you feel like,well, I'm not enough of a guy
because I hate doing financesand I'm supposed to do the
finances and my wife's betterdoing finances, so I guess I'm
(07:48):
not a mature Christian man.
And it's like, well, maybeyou're really good at cooking or
maybe you're awesome at yardwork or something Like who cares
, for pity's sake?
Who cares?
As a couple, we have all thesethings that need to get done.
Who cares?
Who does what, as long as theyget done?
As a couple, we have all thesethings that need to get done.
Who cares?
Who does what, as long as theyget done.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Thank you for giving us permission to just be
ourselves.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, because marriage isn't going to work.
What is it that we want frommarriage?
Why do we get married?
It's so that we can be trulyseen, and still truly known and
accepted.
And how can you be truly seenif you?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
don't get to be who you are If we're trying to fit
into some standard of biblicalmasculinity.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Right, and when we put all that pressure on us, it
causes a lot of shame, it cancause us to retreat, it can
cause us to get involved inreally dysfunctional coping
mechanisms that don't work,instead of just saying you know,
this is who I am and thatdoesn't mean that we don't grow.
For pity's sake, I'm not sayingthat we don't grow.
We have a whole chapter in theMarriage you Want on how, yeah,
we're supposed to grow ourcapabilities.
We're supposed to, you know,work on ourselves, and that's a
real gift we can give our spouse.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
But we still get to show up with who we are, and in
order to be able to do that, wehave to have our needs being met
to a reasonable degree.
I really like the pyramid youcreated called the marriage
hierarchy of needs.
Can you say more about that?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, so this really resonated with our launch team
too, which is fun.
So, okay, I'm going to tell youa story, because it's the
easiest way to describe it.
So I use this story in the bookof Gabriella and Brad.
So they've been married for 10years, they have three little
kids and Gabriella works as anurse part time.
So she does a lot of shift work, she's up a lot overnight,
she's often exhausted, she'sconstantly trying to figure out
(09:39):
childcare and her husband worksfull time.
So Brad works full time, um,but he's not super hands-on with
the kids.
And Brad disclosed six monthsago that he's been using porn
their whole marriage and thisjust devastated Gabriella and
their sex life was already onlife support and now it's
basically gone down to nothingand they've been fighting about
this a lot Cause he's like look,I said I was going to quit and
(10:02):
you're not forgiving me, andthis isn't right.
So he says, gabriella, I wasgoing to quit and you're not
forgiving me, and this isn'tright.
So he says, gabriella, we needto go talk to the pastor.
So they go in and talk to thepastor and they tell their story
and the pastor says, okay, look, what Brad needs is more sex.
And so, gabriella, you giveBrad sex again.
But what Gabriella needs is forthe kids to be looked after a
little bit more, and she needs alittle bit more time off.
(10:23):
So, brad, you do bath time, youknow, and you do some of the
homework, and then Gabriellewill give you more sex.
And that sounds like the kindof advice we often hear right,
just figure out what your needsare and you each meet each
other's needs.
That's how we compromise.
The problem is that compromiseonly works if you're starting on
an even playing field.
(10:44):
And Gabrielle and Brad were noton an even playing field
Because, as we, as you justmentioned, we have a marriage
hierarchy of needs, and we wrotethis based on something that
Maslow wrote, and if anyonewho's ever taken psychology in
college will have heard of this.
But humans have a pyramid ofneeds where your biggest needs
(11:04):
are on the bottom of thispyramid Things you can't do
without food, water, safety,shelter, etc.
You will die without thesethings.
And then you have the thingsthat you would like to just make
life better.
You know friendships, a goodjob, you know things that you
like, and then we have thosethings that give life meaning,
right, like self actualization,feeling like you're fulfilling
(11:24):
your calling.
And marriage has somethingsimilar.
At the bottom is just thingsthat we need to get through the
day right.
We need to make sure the rentis going to be paid, we need to
get the kids out of the door toschool, we need to get the
laundry done, we need to get thefood made All of those just
survival things.
And then we get into the thingsthat make life nice right
Working on our friendship,having date nights, finding a
(11:45):
job that you don't hate, findinga church that you like All of
those things are nice.
That's when we start to live.
But then we start to thrivewhere we really feel known in
our marriage.
We really feel intimate, wefeel like we're fulfilling our
calling from God and that's allwonderful stuff.
Well, what was going on inGabriella and Brad's marriage is
that Gabriella was living onthat bottom tier, she was barely
surviving, and Brad is up hereliving and living and maybe even
(12:09):
trying to thrive.
He's trying to get everythingthat he wants to make life great
, but he isn't getting in thetrenches with Gabriella.
And if they're going to gettheir marriage met, their
marriage to grow, he needs toget in the trenches with her and
do those survival things.
He needs to help with the kids.
He needs to help with that andhe needs to help his wife feel
safe, because she doesn't feelsafe right now, you know,
(12:32):
because he confessed to the pornuse and then all he's been
doing ever since is bugging herfor sex.
So she doesn't feel safe.
So let's get those securityneeds met and then we can work
on everything else.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, I hear from a number of guys that they want
more of a compromise in theirmarriage.
They feel like I'm workingreally hard in recovery reading
all these books, I'm doing allthis healing work and she's not
doing any of that healing workfor the wounds that I've caused
(13:06):
to her.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And that's hard it is the wounds that I've caused to
her, and that's hard it is.
But you need to understand thatif she feels trauma, it takes a
long time to heal from traumaand the biggest thing she needs
is to see that you'retrustworthy over time.
And I think a large part ofrepentance and truly earning
back that trust is understandingthe harm that you have caused.
It really depends, too, on thelevel of intimacy that you
(13:31):
already had in your marriage,because some people were never
close.
Some guys spent so much timerunning away from themselves and
retreating into pornographythat they never really developed
any kind of emotionalconnection with their wives.
They were never really able tobe emotionally vulnerable at all
, and that's going to take a lotmore time to recover from than
(13:52):
a couple that was emotionallyvulnerable.
This was just a habit that hebrought into marriage that he
needed to quit, you know, and hedealt with it.
But he already had beenvulnerable with her.
He already had shown her who hereally was.
He already had shown that, yeah, you know you can trust me
emotionally and that's mucheasier to rebuild there.
(14:14):
So you have to ask yourselfwhat's the foundation that we're
building on on our marriage,because it could be that we
never had much of one in thefirst place, and so we've got to
do far more than just work onforgiving or healing from trauma
.
We've got to actually buildthat emotional foundation we may
never have really had.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
You talk about how important it is to have fun
together, to have emotionalconnection, a passion, an
affection.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, and you know, this is a fun chapter to write.
Chapter three on just enjoyingbeing together, because I
thought I was going to hatewriting it because it's like
like there's nothing else to say.
Just spend time together.
I mean that is so boring, justspent like what else is there to
say.
But then when we looked at ourdata because because we had so
much data and this, this book isso packed full of charts it's
super fun if you're, if you'relike a visual person and you
(15:05):
like charts and you like graphsand and maybe you've read the
Great Sex Rescue, this is likethe Great Sex Rescue on steroids
.
There are so many charts okayand we found we surveyed 7,000
people for this book and 1,300matched pairs, which was really
cool, Because with the matchedpairs we could see if he
answered one way, how did thataffect his wife, or if she
answered this question that way,how did that affect her husband
(15:27):
.
So we get lots and lots ofreally cool insights, but we
found a lot of things that leadto a feeling of friendship and a
feeling of closeness that weweren't expecting to be so
influential or important, andI'll mention just a few.
Prayer helps and everyone'slike.
Well, obviously, that you know.
You can just picture yourpastor saying that.
Yes, we all know that prayerhelps, but prayer helps
(15:50):
especially for couples whoaren't that emotionally close in
other ways, like those are thepeople that get the most benefit
from prayer, which we thoughtwas super interesting.
It's almost like prayer isemotional intimacy on training
wheels.
So if you're reallyuncomfortable sharing your
feelings with your spouse maybethat's something you never
really got used to and you'restill learning when you can pray
(16:11):
together, it helps you get morecomfortable.
That's awesome, so I thoughtthat was cool.
The other thing we found isthat talking about spiritual
things is actually moreimportant for marital
flourishing than prayer.
So I'm not saying you shouldn'tpray, okay, but people who can
talk about spiritual things,that usually means they're
connecting emotionally too,right, so just being able to
(16:36):
talk about those things.
But one of the things I thoughtwas so funny is the importance
of shared bedtimes.
This is something I figured wasimportant, but I didn't realize
how important it was.
I'm Gen X, so I'm old, and Iremember when I was first
married, everybody went to bedeither at 10, 20 or 11, 20.
So it was either after thelocal news was over on the TV or
it was after Johnny Carson'smonologue on the Tonight Show,
(16:58):
and then because there wasnothing else to do, like after
that, what else are you going todo?
Like, there's nothing else todo, there's, you know, there's
nothing else good on TV and wedidn't have the internet, so you
just go to bed.
But today there is nothingtelling you go to bed, right.
There's nothing external sayingwell, now I'm bored, so I may
as well go to bed.
Right, the internet is 24 seven, video games are 24 seven Like,
(17:22):
we have this stuff all the time.
So a lot fewer couples are goingto bed together than used to go
to bed together, and going tobed together means you tend to
have more sex, because a lot ofsex happens when it's not
planned, and anytime you makethings a little bit more
difficult, it's not going tohappen as often.
Okay, it's like raising theprice on something.
(17:44):
When you raise the price, it'snot going to be bought as much.
Well, when you're not in thebedroom at the same time as your
spouse, when you're going tosleep, sex is not going to be
bought as much.
Well, when you're not in thebedroom at the same time as your
spouse, when you're going tosleep, sex is not going to
happen as much.
And you're not going to talk asmuch together.
Because a lot of going to bedtogether is just unwinding after
the day and just talking aboutyour plans for tomorrow, or just
low key conversation.
That's comfortable, and so it'sjust a natural time to have
(18:07):
those conversations.
That was kind of cool.
Now, it's not that you can'thave a good sex life if you
don't go to bed at the same time, but people who don't go to bed
at the same time, it's likemaybe you should think about
that.
Maybe you should reconsiderthat.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, I'm taking notes on this.
That's really helpful stuff.
I also was quite interested inwhat you found about
housekeeping and the mental load.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
This one blew me away .
I think of everything we found,this was the most surprising to
me because I knew it wasimportant, but I didn't realize
how important.
So normally, when you thinkabout what are the two biggest
things the couples fight about,Money sex.
Money and sex.
Right, that's what we alwayshear.
It's money and sex.
Okay, so we measured maritalflourishing on a scale of one to
100.
(18:54):
If anyone cares, if anyone's adata geek, we used previously
validated question sets.
So we used a maritalflourishing scale and it was out
of 100.
And if you have money problems,your marital flourishing falls
by about five points.
Okay, so it is statisticallysignificant.
It's not huge, but rememberthat most people's marital
flourishing is between 60 and 90.
So five points is fairlysignificant.
If you go from having sexseveral times a week to having
(19:18):
sex just once a month, yourmarital flourishing falls by
about 10 points.
So, more important than money.
That sounds pretty bad.
But if you go from doing 50% ofthe housework to doing 90% of
the housework, your maritalflourishing falls 30 points.
Like that is big.
So that's three times asimportant as sex, six times as
(19:39):
important as money and nobodytalks about it.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
My goodness.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, and this applies whether or not the
person who's doing the 90% worksoutside the home, like even
stay-at at home.
Moms can't, or stay at homedads can't, sustain that, and we
did find that this was true forwomen and men.
It's just that women are farmore likely to be doing the 90%.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, for those who have never heard the term mental
load, how would you define it?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Let's imagine a couple.
And he says to her you knowwhat, hon, you've been working
so hard this week and I knowyou're really exhausted.
Go out on Saturday morning,Just go out, have fun, do
whatever you want.
I've got the kids, I'm going tohold the fork down.
So she goes out, Maybe she goesto the gym, she grabs a coffee,
she reads a book.
She's having a great time.
(20:30):
She comes home at noon and youknow the kitchen's dirty, but
the kids are super happy,They've got a high from pancakes
, Everything's great, and soshe's happy about this.
And she goes into the kitchen.
She notices that the birthdaypresent that for the birthday
party they have to go to at twoo'clock is still there unwrapped
.
So that's okay.
She goes to get the wrappingpaper and on her way to get the
wrapping paper she sees herson's science fair project has
not been worked on and it's dueon Monday.
And then she worries well, Iwonder if Kristen practiced
(20:53):
piano, because the recital is onTuesday.
And she goes in and she asksher husband and he said well, no
, you didn't tell me.
And she said there is a familycalendar with it right there,
with a big star and a big circle, and we talked about this last
night at dinner.
But he's like, oh well, I justdidn't think about it.
Talked about this last night atdinner, but he's like, oh well,
I just didn't think about it.
And so she starts yelling atthe kids to go to the science
(21:15):
fair project and go to thepractice piano and then he says,
oh, my sister called and shewants to know what we're doing
for mom's birthday.
And she's like they are yourparents, you figure it out, you
know, and that's mental load.
It's the fact that she'scarrying everything for
everybody and he gets to notcarry it.
You know that idea that men havea nothing box and women don't.
It's not actually true.
(21:37):
It's not that men, biologically, are capable of thinking about
nothing while women are notcapable of thinking about
nothing.
It's just that women arecarrying a lot more stuff in
general about caring for thehousehold than men are.
When you look at men who aresuper involved with their kids,
they have just as many thingsgoing through their heads as
women do.
So it's not that men have anothing box, it's just that a
(21:59):
lot of men don't necessarilycarry the mental load the way
that women do.
So they can have thatconversation at dinner about the
science fair project being dueon Monday, but he assumes he's
not responsible for that.
So it just doesn't register tohim.
And he does.
He thinks I don't have, I don'tactually have to do anything
about that.
So that's the kind of idea ofmental load.
Or here's another example If sheasks him to drive Benjamin to
(22:23):
hockey practice, I'm in Canadaso hockey is the law right.
So if you have to driveBenjamin to hockey practice,
what does he think is beingasked?
He thinks he's being asked toput Benjamin in the car, maybe
get his equipment and then driveto hockey and then put Benjamin
back in the car and then drivehome.
But as they're heading out thedoor she's yelling did you get
the check from grandpa for thefundraiser?
(22:43):
And remember that there's aTupperware container you have to
pick up to bring home, becauseI brought it last week for snack
and forgot to get it.
And remember that you knowJimmy's cleats or Jimmy's knee
pad, whatever it was that weborrowed last week they have to
go to.
And so she's got all of thesethings in her head and he
doesn't.
And that's mental load, and sothe more that guys can share it,
(23:04):
even just by saying you knowwhat I'm going to take on hockey
.
I own hockey.
And by me owning hockey itdoesn't mean I just drive
Benjamin to hockey and drive himhome.
It means I make sure that hishis equipment is clean, I make
sure that his equipment is ready, I make sure that if we're
carpooling, I know where we'recarpooling, I figure out the
snacks, I figure out thefundraisers.
(23:25):
If he's not getting along withsome teammates or if he's not
getting along with the coach,I'm the one who intervenes and I
figure that out.
You know, I do the emotionallabor.
If he seems to be gettingbullied, I figure that out.
So if you take on hockey, youtake on all of it, not just
driving him, and then all ofthose other details she can
forget about, and that's a hugegift.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
That's huge.
So sharing in housework andchores and daily logistical
tasks is not just about puttingin the busy work.
It's also about anticipatingand predicting everything that
needs to happen in a more mutual, reciprocal way.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Exactly Because even when he says look, honey, I'd be
glad to help, just give me alist.
If you say give me a list, theproblem is she still has to
carry it all, she still has toremember what, what needs to be
done.
So instead of saying give me alist, let's say I own these
different things.
You know, maybe you own laundry, which means you keep track of
when we are running out oflaundry detergent and put it on
the grocery list.
Right?
(24:26):
If there's dry cleaning, you'rethe one who goes and picks up
the dry cleaning.
Like you, if you own laundry,you own the whole thing.
You notice if the kidsunderwear is getting too small
and we need to buy moreunderwear or whatever.
Like you, own the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
It's so interesting that this has been conspicuously
absent from marriage books.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, I know, and in fact the only, the only time
it's mentioned is in books likeHis Needs, her Needs or Marriage
on the Rock by Jimmy Evans.
When they talk about housework,they talk about it in the sense
of God gave men a need fordomestic support and so God
intends women to do thehousework.
So it's like it's so stupid.
So God, so men have a God givenneed for women to do the dishes
(25:05):
, or something so weird yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
And sad.
I mean weird is not the rightword, it's tragic.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
It is and honestly I think that there's a lot of men
who kind of feel useless becausethey've never learned to do a
lot of these things.
You know, they don't know whatallergies my kid has or how to
get them to eat, and that cancause a huge rift in the
marriage too, because she seemsto be carrying it all and you
(25:35):
kind of feel like you'resuperfluous and she doesn't
really appreciate me becauseshe's not including me in
anything.
And those are the kind ofproblems that over time, build
and build and build.
So the more you can just takeon, jump in and take on huge
areas, the better it is foreverybody.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Own something, and then everything related to that
thing is my responsibility.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Sheila, what do you and Keith mean when you say
don't make things harder thanthey need to be?
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah, we found this, especially when it comes to
things like spending timetogether or enjoying each other.
I remember when we got married,there was this advice you need
a date night a week, you need anight away a month and you need
a week away a year for yourmarriage to survive.
Do you know how expensive thatis?
(26:24):
Like that's seriously expensive.
And then, once you have kids,that's even more expensive and
difficult because you need toget babysitters Like it's
seriously expensive.
And then, once you have kids,that's even more expensive and
difficult because you need toget babysitters Like it's insane
.
And I think a lot of the advicethat we're given on how to make
marriages work are just thingsthat we need to add to our
budget and add to our calendar,and nobody has enough time or
money.
(26:44):
So, you know, I think we justneed to take a chill pill and
say wait a minute.
What can we just do to enjoyeach other and spend more time
together?
That doesn't necessarily costmore money or time.
How can we just be moreinvolved in each other's lives?
You know, let's take a walkafter dinner.
Let's do chores together at thesame time.
(27:05):
You know, let's do puzzlestogether.
I don't know, but it doesn'tneed to be something super,
super difficult.
Now, if you're the kind ofcouple that loves date nights,
more power to you.
There is nothing wrong withthat.
But when we measured this, whatwe found is that couples who
enjoy being together, they do somany different things.
It isn't like doing oneparticular thing results in
(27:28):
marital flourishing.
Everyone is different and somepeople are going to like the
super involved date nights, butI love what one couple said to
us, which is marriage is the artof being boring together.
You know, like I want someone Ican be boring with.
That's awesome, and you'reallowed to be boring together if
that's what you enjoy and youjust want to kick back and chill
(27:49):
.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
That's so good being boring together, being
unimpressive, beinguninteresting, but just being
real.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
You had this great quote from the movie Shall we
Dance.
That really moved me.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, it's one of my favorite movie quotes of all
time.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
In Shall we Dance.
Susan Sarandon says we need awitness to our lives.
There are 8 billion people onthe planet.
I mean, what does any one lifereally mean?
But in marriage you'repromising to care about
everything the good things, thebad things, the terrible things,
the mundane things, all of it.
All the time, every day, you'resaying your life will not go
(28:31):
unnoticed because I will noticeit.
Your life will not gounwitnessed because I will be
your witness.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Isn't that beautiful.
I just think that's so lovely.
We've been married for 33 yearsnow and, through good times and
bad times, I know I can neverleave him times.
I know I can never leave him,even if he totally bugged the
crap out of me one day becausehe walked with me through one of
the worst times in our liveswhen our son died.
There's nobody else on thisplanet who will ever understand
(29:00):
that the way he did.
This week, as we're recordingthis, I'm walking with him
through the death of his fatherand I knew his dad.
I've known his dad for 36 yearsand so we know the things that
matter.
You know it's like I've seen it.
I've seen you at your worst.
(29:20):
I've seen it your best.
I've celebrated with you, I'vemourned with you.
I understand why thatparticular song makes you cry.
I understand why you just can'twatch that TV series because it
freaked something, freaked youout when you were six and you've
never gotten over it.
You know, I understand allthose things about you, and
isn't that?
What we just want is to be seen, and it doesn't mean that we're
(29:41):
perfect.
You know, a lot of us have alot of things to overcome and we
have hurt each other and wehave to grow from that.
But even in the growing, youknow, we're saying I love you
and I want to do this for youand I want to do this with you,
and that is a gift that we cangive each other.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
That's how it's supposed to be, where the
relationship is the center, notsex, not something on the
surface level.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
We do talk about sex in the marriage you want, which
was very difficult for me to dobecause when you've written four
books on sex, to try to writejust one chapter on it is really
hard.
But yeah, sex grows from a goodrelationship.
It doesn't replace one and it'snot the foundation.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
In your chapter on sex.
This sentence caught me offguard.
Why do you say you shouldn'tprioritize sex in your marriage?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Right, because we hear that all the time.
Right, you need to prioritizesex.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, youdon't, you don't, you don't.
You need to prioritize theingredients of great sex,
because those are two verydifferent things.
When we prioritize sex, what weusually mean is we try to make
sure that we have sex frequently, but having sex frequently, the
only thing that guarantees isthat he has an orgasm.
It does not guarantee that shedoes.
(30:52):
It does not guarantee that youfeel emotionally close during
sex.
It does not guarantee that shewanted to have sex or that he
wanted to have sex.
The only thing it guarantees isthat he has an orgasm, because
in 95% of cases, men report thatthey almost always are always
orgasm during sex, compared toonly 48% of women in evangelical
marriages.
(31:12):
So if we want to have a goodsex life, we have to stop
focusing on frequency and wehave to start focusing on the
ingredients of great sex.
You know, making it pleasurablefor her, making sure that we're
emotionally close, getting ridof porn and the pornified style
of relating, getting rid of thetransactional idea of sex and
really, yeah, focusing on how toawaken desire, and when you do
(31:33):
that, sex gets good.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Amen, that's awesome and, guys, if you want to hear
more about that, go back andlisten to my interview with
Sheila about the Great SexRescue, and I'll put a link to
that in the description.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
But if you want the Great sex rescue encapsulated
into one chapter, you can readthe marriage you want.
But if you want more, get thegreat sex rescue.
Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
So the marriage you want is available now.
You can find it at a link inthe show notes.
Sheila, what is your favoritething about marriage?
Sheila, what is your?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
favorite thing about marriage oh gosh you know I
probably already said it whichis the art of being boring
together.
I really like that, not so much20 years ago, but now that I'm
in my 50s it's just really niceto be able to relax.
But also now that I'm in my 50s, I think my favorite thing
about marriage is beinggrandparents together.
Oh my gosh, that's fun.
(32:29):
It's so much better than havingyour own kids.
Oh, it's awesome.
And being grandparents whenwe're young is super fun.
But yeah, just new adventuresand realizing there's always new
adventures with each age, asKeith isn't working as hard as
he used to work now and he'ssort of semi-retired and we're
doing a lot more of this.
So our lives are changing andwe've got grandkids, and so our
lives look really different nowthan they did five years ago or
(32:50):
than they did 10 years ago.
So it's like there's alwayssomething new and I like that
too.
I guess that's more than onething.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
But yeah, I'm glad you're enjoying it and thank you
for being such a consistentadvocate for healthy,
evidence-based, good teaching onmarriage and sex.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
So get a copy of the Marriage you Want, and you can
get more amazing free resourcesfrom Sheila and her team at
baremarriagecom.
Always remember you are God'sbeloved son and you he is
well-pleased.
Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where
we help Christian men outgrowporn.
Why?
So you can change your brain,heal your heart and save your
relationship.
My name is Drew Boa and I'mhere to show you how let's go.
Hey man, thank you forlistening to my interview with
(00:21):
Sheila Rae Gregoire aboutmarriage.
Sheila is one of the voices Itrust the most when it comes to
healthy, evidence-based, solidteaching on marriage sex
relationships.
So in this episode, you aregoing to unlearn some common
evangelical teachings aboutmarriage and you're going to get
(00:42):
some really unexpected insightsbased on Sheila and her team's
new research project that theydid with over 7,000 people 1,500
matched couples about whatmakes the biggest difference in
marital satisfaction.
It's probably not what youthink, so listen to this episode
to get a great introduction toSheila and Keith's new book, the
(01:07):
Marriage you Want.
Enjoy the episode Today.
I'm excited to welcome SheilaRae Gregoire back to the show.
She is the founder ofBareMarriagecom and she and her
husband, keith, have written yetanother amazing book for the
evangelical Christian communitycalled the Marriage you Want
moving beyond stereotypes for arelationship built on scripture,
(01:30):
new data and emotional health.
Hi, sheila.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Hi Drew, it's great to be back.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, it's good to see you again.
You've written so much onmarriage and sexuality and
teachings that really need tochange.
What are some of the badteachings about?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
marriage that made you passionate to write this
book.
Well, you know, I don't evenknow that I knew what teachings
were bad at the beginning.
I just knew that things weren'tworking, and I noticed it
mostly with sex.
You know, I had been writingabout marriage and sex for years
and I had just been saying whatI thought was healthy.
(02:16):
And then, when one day in 2019,when I was procrastinating and I
had a headache, I ended upreading Love and Respect, and
when I saw in that book that hesaid to women if your husband's
typical, he has a need that youdon't have, and the need is for
physical release, and if hedoesn't get physical release,
he'll come under satanic attack,I freaked out and I thought, oh
my gosh, this is so unhealthy.
And that's what started ourteam doing these massive
(02:39):
research projects and trying toidentify.
You know, what teachings do wehave in the church that really
mess stuff up?
And we did that for sex withthe Great Sex Rescue and with
the Good Guys Guide to Great Sex.
But now we've done it formarriage in general and we've
just seen that, yeah, there aresome things that we teach that
do not result in good fruit andwe need to change that.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
What are some of the other examples of bad marriage
advice that keep coming up?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah.
Well, one of the big thingsthat we found was really key is
partnership.
Okay, so marriages work bestwhen you are a team, when you
each put in effort, when youeach show up with everything you
have, when you're eachcommitted to making this work
and when you're each putting inabout the same amount of effort.
And the way that you measurethat is that you each should
have roughly equal downtime.
Okay, so one of you should notbe significantly more exhausted
than the other.
So you really want teamwork.
But a lot of our teachingsactually detract from teamwork,
(03:36):
and one of the big ones is theidea that a husband should have
the tie breaking vote.
Or, you know, when you'rehaving a disagreement, the
husband ultimately gets todecide.
And we found that that beliefis highly correlated with bad
sex lives, with not feeling likeyour close friends, with not
(03:56):
having shared hobbies, even witha lot of emotional immaturity
and dysregulation.
So when you believe that he hasto have the tie-breaking vote,
your marriage really suffers.
But when you believe, hey, wecan work things out together,
you know, we put ourselves underGod, we're partners and we
figure it out together, thosemarriages flourish.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, you talk about the triangle image of marriage
being husband and wife runningtoward Jesus together, which is
a beautiful concept, and yetyour understanding has evolved.
What is your take on what itreally looks like to run toward
(04:34):
Jesus together in marriage?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I think there's a lot of different ways that we can
mess that image up, becauseKeith and I were told this when
we were getting married.
You know, it's just sobeautiful because the closer you
move to God, the closer youmove to each other.
And it does sound verybeautiful, it does sound very
idyllic, but the problem is wefocus so much on God being at
(04:58):
the center, which is veryimportant, but we forget there's
two other elements of thetriangle and, yes, we need to
focus on God, but for a marriageto work, you both need to show
up and you both need to makeroom for your spouse to show up.
And sometimes we don't show upor sometimes we overshadow our
spouse.
And it's just so important tobe there with everything that
(05:20):
you are.
And often what happens is thatwe're given all of these ideas
of what it means to be a husbandin marriage and what it means
to be a wife in marriage andthen, instead of showing up with
everything you are, you kind oftry to fulfill these roles that
aren't really you and that canlead to a lot of shame and a lot
of hiding.
You know, like I'm someone whois a very logical person, my
(05:42):
husband is way more emotionalthan I am.
He's also a physician, he'ssuper smart, but he's just.
He's more emotional, he's moretouchy, feely than I am, and
that can make it sound like,well, we're not very
stereotypical, like there'ssomething wrong with us, because
almost every sermon that youhear will be oh, the guy is so
logical, he needs to listen tohis wife's feelings.
Well, we're the opposite.
(06:03):
But a lot of couples are theopposite.
Like, for instance, theMyers-Briggs personality type
inventory.
They actually measure thinkingversus feeling and what they
find is that I think it's 56% ofmen are thinkers, so it is the
majority of men, barely themajority, but it is the majority
.
But 73% of women are feelers,so that's more.
(06:24):
In both cases it matches thestereotype.
But if you're trying to figureout the chance of a guy who is a
thinker marrying a woman who isa feeler, if you go back in
time to middle school math, youknow that the way you do that is
you multiply the percentagestogether and when you do that,
you get about 42%.
So that means that every sermon, every piece of marriage advice
(06:48):
you have ever heard about a guybeing a thinker and a woman
being a feeler does not apply toaround 58% of marriages Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
And there are so many issues like that.
For example, the man is thehigher desire partner.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yeah, there's all kinds.
Yeah, that one's one, or youknow, men are visual in a way
that women aren't.
A lot of women are visual tooand some meta-analyses have
shown that actually men are notmore visual.
Women just have a more arousal,non-concordance, which I can
explain more about later, if youwant.
That's kind of a side issue.
But you know, like like thesethings that we think men are
like this, women are like this.
(07:26):
They don't necessarily match upall the time and when we, when
we present it that way, it'slike we feel like we're totally
different species and we can'tunderstand each other.
That actually really detractsfrom intimacy.
Plus, it makes you feel like,well, I'm not enough of a guy
because I hate doing financesand I'm supposed to do the
finances and my wife's betterdoing finances, so I guess I'm
(07:48):
not a mature Christian man.
And it's like, well, maybeyou're really good at cooking or
maybe you're awesome at yardwork or something Like who cares
, for pity's sake?
Who cares?
As a couple, we have all thesethings that need to get done.
Who cares?
Who does what, as long as theyget done?
As a couple, we have all thesethings that need to get done.
Who cares?
Who does what, as long as theyget done.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Thank you for giving us permission to just be
ourselves.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, because marriage isn't going to work.
What is it that we want frommarriage?
Why do we get married?
It's so that we can be trulyseen, and still truly known and
accepted.
And how can you be truly seenif you?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
don't get to be who you are If we're trying to fit
into some standard of biblicalmasculinity.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Right, and when we put all that pressure on us, it
causes a lot of shame, it cancause us to retreat, it can
cause us to get involved inreally dysfunctional coping
mechanisms that don't work,instead of just saying you know,
this is who I am and thatdoesn't mean that we don't grow.
For pity's sake, I'm not sayingthat we don't grow.
We have a whole chapter in theMarriage you Want on how, yeah,
we're supposed to grow ourcapabilities.
We're supposed to, you know,work on ourselves, and that's a
real gift we can give our spouse.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
But we still get to show up with who we are, and in
order to be able to do that, wehave to have our needs being met
to a reasonable degree.
I really like the pyramid youcreated called the marriage
hierarchy of needs.
Can you say more about that?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, so this really resonated with our launch team
too, which is fun.
So, okay, I'm going to tell youa story, because it's the
easiest way to describe it.
So I use this story in the bookof Gabriella and Brad.
So they've been married for 10years, they have three little
kids and Gabriella works as anurse part time.
So she does a lot of shift work, she's up a lot overnight,
she's often exhausted, she'sconstantly trying to figure out
(09:39):
childcare and her husband worksfull time.
So Brad works full time, um,but he's not super hands-on with
the kids.
And Brad disclosed six monthsago that he's been using porn
their whole marriage and thisjust devastated Gabriella and
their sex life was already onlife support and now it's
basically gone down to nothingand they've been fighting about
this a lot Cause he's like look,I said I was going to quit and
(10:02):
you're not forgiving me, andthis isn't right.
So he says, gabriella, I wasgoing to quit and you're not
forgiving me, and this isn'tright.
So he says, gabriella, we needto go talk to the pastor.
So they go in and talk to thepastor and they tell their story
and the pastor says, okay, look, what Brad needs is more sex.
And so, gabriella, you giveBrad sex again.
But what Gabriella needs is forthe kids to be looked after a
little bit more, and she needs alittle bit more time off.
(10:23):
So, brad, you do bath time, youknow, and you do some of the
homework, and then Gabriellewill give you more sex.
And that sounds like the kindof advice we often hear right,
just figure out what your needsare and you each meet each
other's needs.
That's how we compromise.
The problem is that compromiseonly works if you're starting on
an even playing field.
(10:44):
And Gabrielle and Brad were noton an even playing field
Because, as we, as you justmentioned, we have a marriage
hierarchy of needs, and we wrotethis based on something that
Maslow wrote, and if anyonewho's ever taken psychology in
college will have heard of this.
But humans have a pyramid ofneeds where your biggest needs
(11:04):
are on the bottom of thispyramid Things you can't do
without food, water, safety,shelter, etc.
You will die without thesethings.
And then you have the thingsthat you would like to just make
life better.
You know friendships, a goodjob, you know things that you
like, and then we have thosethings that give life meaning,
right, like self actualization,feeling like you're fulfilling
(11:24):
your calling.
And marriage has somethingsimilar.
At the bottom is just thingsthat we need to get through the
day right.
We need to make sure the rentis going to be paid, we need to
get the kids out of the door toschool, we need to get the
laundry done, we need to get thefood made All of those just
survival things.
And then we get into the thingsthat make life nice right
Working on our friendship,having date nights, finding a
(11:45):
job that you don't hate, findinga church that you like All of
those things are nice.
That's when we start to live.
But then we start to thrivewhere we really feel known in
our marriage.
We really feel intimate, wefeel like we're fulfilling our
calling from God and that's allwonderful stuff.
Well, what was going on inGabriella and Brad's marriage is
that Gabriella was living onthat bottom tier, she was barely
surviving, and Brad is up hereliving and living and maybe even
(12:09):
trying to thrive.
He's trying to get everythingthat he wants to make life great
, but he isn't getting in thetrenches with Gabriella.
And if they're going to gettheir marriage met, their
marriage to grow, he needs toget in the trenches with her and
do those survival things.
He needs to help with the kids.
He needs to help with that andhe needs to help his wife feel
safe, because she doesn't feelsafe right now, you know,
(12:32):
because he confessed to the pornuse and then all he's been
doing ever since is bugging herfor sex.
So she doesn't feel safe.
So let's get those securityneeds met and then we can work
on everything else.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, I hear from a number of guys that they want
more of a compromise in theirmarriage.
They feel like I'm workingreally hard in recovery reading
all these books, I'm doing allthis healing work and she's not
doing any of that healing workfor the wounds that I've caused
(13:06):
to her.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And that's hard it is the wounds that I've caused to
her, and that's hard it is.
But you need to understand thatif she feels trauma, it takes a
long time to heal from traumaand the biggest thing she needs
is to see that you'retrustworthy over time.
And I think a large part ofrepentance and truly earning
back that trust is understandingthe harm that you have caused.
It really depends, too, on thelevel of intimacy that you
(13:31):
already had in your marriage,because some people were never
close.
Some guys spent so much timerunning away from themselves and
retreating into pornographythat they never really developed
any kind of emotionalconnection with their wives.
They were never really able tobe emotionally vulnerable at all
, and that's going to take a lotmore time to recover from than
(13:52):
a couple that was emotionallyvulnerable.
This was just a habit that hebrought into marriage that he
needed to quit, you know, and hedealt with it.
But he already had beenvulnerable with her.
He already had shown her who hereally was.
He already had shown that, yeah, you know you can trust me
emotionally and that's mucheasier to rebuild there.
(14:14):
So you have to ask yourselfwhat's the foundation that we're
building on on our marriage,because it could be that we
never had much of one in thefirst place, and so we've got to
do far more than just work onforgiving or healing from trauma
.
We've got to actually buildthat emotional foundation we may
never have really had.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
You talk about how important it is to have fun
together, to have emotionalconnection, a passion, an
affection.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, and you know, this is a fun chapter to write.
Chapter three on just enjoyingbeing together, because I
thought I was going to hatewriting it because it's like
like there's nothing else to say.
Just spend time together.
I mean that is so boring, justspent like what else is there to
say.
But then when we looked at ourdata because because we had so
much data and this, this book isso packed full of charts it's
super fun if you're, if you'relike a visual person and you
(15:05):
like charts and you like graphsand and maybe you've read the
Great Sex Rescue, this is likethe Great Sex Rescue on steroids
.
There are so many charts okayand we found we surveyed 7,000
people for this book and 1,300matched pairs, which was really
cool, Because with the matchedpairs we could see if he
answered one way, how did thataffect his wife, or if she
answered this question that way,how did that affect her husband
(15:27):
.
So we get lots and lots ofreally cool insights, but we
found a lot of things that leadto a feeling of friendship and a
feeling of closeness that weweren't expecting to be so
influential or important, andI'll mention just a few.
Prayer helps and everyone'slike.
Well, obviously, that you know.
You can just picture yourpastor saying that.
Yes, we all know that prayerhelps, but prayer helps
(15:50):
especially for couples whoaren't that emotionally close in
other ways, like those are thepeople that get the most benefit
from prayer, which we thoughtwas super interesting.
It's almost like prayer isemotional intimacy on training
wheels.
So if you're reallyuncomfortable sharing your
feelings with your spouse maybethat's something you never
really got used to and you'restill learning when you can pray
(16:11):
together, it helps you get morecomfortable.
That's awesome, so I thoughtthat was cool.
The other thing we found isthat talking about spiritual
things is actually moreimportant for marital
flourishing than prayer.
So I'm not saying you shouldn'tpray, okay, but people who can
talk about spiritual things,that usually means they're
connecting emotionally too,right, so just being able to
(16:36):
talk about those things.
But one of the things I thoughtwas so funny is the importance
of shared bedtimes.
This is something I figured wasimportant, but I didn't realize
how important it was.
I'm Gen X, so I'm old, and Iremember when I was first
married, everybody went to bedeither at 10, 20 or 11, 20.
So it was either after thelocal news was over on the TV or
it was after Johnny Carson'smonologue on the Tonight Show,
(16:58):
and then because there wasnothing else to do, like after
that, what else are you going todo?
Like, there's nothing else todo, there's, you know, there's
nothing else good on TV and wedidn't have the internet, so you
just go to bed.
But today there is nothingtelling you go to bed, right.
There's nothing external sayingwell, now I'm bored, so I may
as well go to bed.
Right, the internet is 24 seven, video games are 24 seven Like,
(17:22):
we have this stuff all the time.
So a lot fewer couples are goingto bed together than used to go
to bed together, and going tobed together means you tend to
have more sex, because a lot ofsex happens when it's not
planned, and anytime you makethings a little bit more
difficult, it's not going tohappen as often.
Okay, it's like raising theprice on something.
(17:44):
When you raise the price, it'snot going to be bought as much.
Well, when you're not in thebedroom at the same time as your
spouse, when you're going tosleep, sex is not going to be
bought as much.
Well, when you're not in thebedroom at the same time as your
spouse, when you're going tosleep, sex is not going to
happen as much.
And you're not going to talk asmuch together.
Because a lot of going to bedtogether is just unwinding after
the day and just talking aboutyour plans for tomorrow, or just
low key conversation.
That's comfortable, and so it'sjust a natural time to have
(18:07):
those conversations.
That was kind of cool.
Now, it's not that you can'thave a good sex life if you
don't go to bed at the same time, but people who don't go to bed
at the same time, it's likemaybe you should think about
that.
Maybe you should reconsiderthat.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, I'm taking notes on this.
That's really helpful stuff.
I also was quite interested inwhat you found about
housekeeping and the mental load.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
This one blew me away .
I think of everything we found,this was the most surprising to
me because I knew it wasimportant, but I didn't realize
how important.
So normally, when you thinkabout what are the two biggest
things the couples fight about,Money sex.
Money and sex.
Right, that's what we alwayshear.
It's money and sex.
Okay, so we measured maritalflourishing on a scale of one to
100.
(18:54):
If anyone cares, if anyone's adata geek, we used previously
validated question sets.
So we used a maritalflourishing scale and it was out
of 100.
And if you have money problems,your marital flourishing falls
by about five points.
Okay, so it is statisticallysignificant.
It's not huge, but rememberthat most people's marital
flourishing is between 60 and 90.
So five points is fairlysignificant.
If you go from having sexseveral times a week to having
(19:18):
sex just once a month, yourmarital flourishing falls by
about 10 points.
So, more important than money.
That sounds pretty bad.
But if you go from doing 50% ofthe housework to doing 90% of
the housework, your maritalflourishing falls 30 points.
Like that is big.
So that's three times asimportant as sex, six times as
(19:39):
important as money and nobodytalks about it.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
My goodness.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, and this applies whether or not the
person who's doing the 90% worksoutside the home, like even
stay-at at home.
Moms can't, or stay at homedads can't, sustain that, and we
did find that this was true forwomen and men.
It's just that women are farmore likely to be doing the 90%.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, for those who have never heard the term mental
load, how would you define it?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Let's imagine a couple.
And he says to her you knowwhat, hon, you've been working
so hard this week and I knowyou're really exhausted.
Go out on Saturday morning,Just go out, have fun, do
whatever you want.
I've got the kids, I'm going tohold the fork down.
So she goes out, Maybe she goesto the gym, she grabs a coffee,
she reads a book.
She's having a great time.
(20:30):
She comes home at noon and youknow the kitchen's dirty, but
the kids are super happy,They've got a high from pancakes
, Everything's great, and soshe's happy about this.
And she goes into the kitchen.
She notices that the birthdaypresent that for the birthday
party they have to go to at twoo'clock is still there unwrapped
.
So that's okay.
She goes to get the wrappingpaper and on her way to get the
wrapping paper she sees herson's science fair project has
not been worked on and it's dueon Monday.
And then she worries well, Iwonder if Kristen practiced
(20:53):
piano, because the recital is onTuesday.
And she goes in and she asksher husband and he said well, no
, you didn't tell me.
And she said there is a familycalendar with it right there,
with a big star and a big circle, and we talked about this last
night at dinner.
But he's like, oh well, I justdidn't think about it.
Talked about this last night atdinner, but he's like, oh well,
I just didn't think about it.
And so she starts yelling atthe kids to go to the science
(21:15):
fair project and go to thepractice piano and then he says,
oh, my sister called and shewants to know what we're doing
for mom's birthday.
And she's like they are yourparents, you figure it out, you
know, and that's mental load.
It's the fact that she'scarrying everything for
everybody and he gets to notcarry it.
You know that idea that men havea nothing box and women don't.
It's not actually true.
(21:37):
It's not that men, biologically, are capable of thinking about
nothing while women are notcapable of thinking about
nothing.
It's just that women arecarrying a lot more stuff in
general about caring for thehousehold than men are.
When you look at men who aresuper involved with their kids,
they have just as many thingsgoing through their heads as
women do.
So it's not that men have anothing box, it's just that a
(21:59):
lot of men don't necessarilycarry the mental load the way
that women do.
So they can have thatconversation at dinner about the
science fair project being dueon Monday, but he assumes he's
not responsible for that.
So it just doesn't register tohim.
And he does.
He thinks I don't have, I don'tactually have to do anything
about that.
So that's the kind of idea ofmental load.
Or here's another example If sheasks him to drive Benjamin to
(22:23):
hockey practice, I'm in Canadaso hockey is the law right.
So if you have to driveBenjamin to hockey practice,
what does he think is beingasked?
He thinks he's being asked toput Benjamin in the car, maybe
get his equipment and then driveto hockey and then put Benjamin
back in the car and then drivehome.
But as they're heading out thedoor she's yelling did you get
the check from grandpa for thefundraiser?
(22:43):
And remember that there's aTupperware container you have to
pick up to bring home, becauseI brought it last week for snack
and forgot to get it.
And remember that you knowJimmy's cleats or Jimmy's knee
pad, whatever it was that weborrowed last week they have to
go to.
And so she's got all of thesethings in her head and he
doesn't.
And that's mental load, and sothe more that guys can share it,
(23:04):
even just by saying you knowwhat I'm going to take on hockey
.
I own hockey.
And by me owning hockey itdoesn't mean I just drive
Benjamin to hockey and drive himhome.
It means I make sure that hishis equipment is clean, I make
sure that his equipment is ready, I make sure that if we're
carpooling, I know where we'recarpooling, I figure out the
snacks, I figure out thefundraisers.
(23:25):
If he's not getting along withsome teammates or if he's not
getting along with the coach,I'm the one who intervenes and I
figure that out.
You know, I do the emotionallabor.
If he seems to be gettingbullied, I figure that out.
So if you take on hockey, youtake on all of it, not just
driving him, and then all ofthose other details she can
forget about, and that's a hugegift.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
That's huge.
So sharing in housework andchores and daily logistical
tasks is not just about puttingin the busy work.
It's also about anticipatingand predicting everything that
needs to happen in a more mutual, reciprocal way.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Exactly Because even when he says look, honey, I'd be
glad to help, just give me alist.
If you say give me a list, theproblem is she still has to
carry it all, she still has toremember what, what needs to be
done.
So instead of saying give me alist, let's say I own these
different things.
You know, maybe you own laundry, which means you keep track of
when we are running out oflaundry detergent and put it on
the grocery list.
Right?
(24:26):
If there's dry cleaning, you'rethe one who goes and picks up
the dry cleaning.
Like you, if you own laundry,you own the whole thing.
You notice if the kidsunderwear is getting too small
and we need to buy moreunderwear or whatever.
Like you, own the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
It's so interesting that this has been conspicuously
absent from marriage books.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, I know, and in fact the only, the only time
it's mentioned is in books likeHis Needs, her Needs or Marriage
on the Rock by Jimmy Evans.
When they talk about housework,they talk about it in the sense
of God gave men a need fordomestic support and so God
intends women to do thehousework.
So it's like it's so stupid.
So God, so men have a God givenneed for women to do the dishes
(25:05):
, or something so weird yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
And sad.
I mean weird is not the rightword, it's tragic.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
It is and honestly I think that there's a lot of men
who kind of feel useless becausethey've never learned to do a
lot of these things.
You know, they don't know whatallergies my kid has or how to
get them to eat, and that cancause a huge rift in the
marriage too, because she seemsto be carrying it all and you
(25:35):
kind of feel like you'resuperfluous and she doesn't
really appreciate me becauseshe's not including me in
anything.
And those are the kind ofproblems that over time, build
and build and build.
So the more you can just takeon, jump in and take on huge
areas, the better it is foreverybody.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Own something, and then everything related to that
thing is my responsibility.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Sheila, what do you and Keith mean when you say
don't make things harder thanthey need to be?
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah, we found this, especially when it comes to
things like spending timetogether or enjoying each other.
I remember when we got married,there was this advice you need
a date night a week, you need anight away a month and you need
a week away a year for yourmarriage to survive.
Do you know how expensive thatis?
(26:24):
Like that's seriously expensive.
And then, once you have kids,that's even more expensive and
difficult because you need toget babysitters Like it's
seriously expensive.
And then, once you have kids,that's even more expensive and
difficult because you need toget babysitters Like it's insane
.
And I think a lot of the advicethat we're given on how to make
marriages work are just thingsthat we need to add to our
budget and add to our calendar,and nobody has enough time or
money.
(26:44):
So, you know, I think we justneed to take a chill pill and
say wait a minute.
What can we just do to enjoyeach other and spend more time
together?
That doesn't necessarily costmore money or time.
How can we just be moreinvolved in each other's lives?
You know, let's take a walkafter dinner.
Let's do chores together at thesame time.
(27:05):
You know, let's do puzzlestogether.
I don't know, but it doesn'tneed to be something super,
super difficult.
Now, if you're the kind ofcouple that loves date nights,
more power to you.
There is nothing wrong withthat.
But when we measured this, whatwe found is that couples who
enjoy being together, they do somany different things.
It isn't like doing oneparticular thing results in
(27:28):
marital flourishing.
Everyone is different and somepeople are going to like the
super involved date nights, butI love what one couple said to
us, which is marriage is the artof being boring together.
You know, like I want someone Ican be boring with.
That's awesome, and you'reallowed to be boring together if
that's what you enjoy and youjust want to kick back and chill
(27:49):
.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
That's so good being boring together, being
unimpressive, beinguninteresting, but just being
real.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
You had this great quote from the movie Shall we
Dance.
That really moved me.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, it's one of my favorite movie quotes of all
time.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
In Shall we Dance.
Susan Sarandon says we need awitness to our lives.
There are 8 billion people onthe planet.
I mean, what does any one lifereally mean?
But in marriage you'repromising to care about
everything the good things, thebad things, the terrible things,
the mundane things, all of it.
All the time, every day, you'resaying your life will not go
(28:31):
unnoticed because I will noticeit.
Your life will not gounwitnessed because I will be
your witness.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Isn't that beautiful.
I just think that's so lovely.
We've been married for 33 yearsnow and, through good times and
bad times, I know I can neverleave him times.
I know I can never leave him,even if he totally bugged the
crap out of me one day becausehe walked with me through one of
the worst times in our liveswhen our son died.
There's nobody else on thisplanet who will ever understand
(29:00):
that the way he did.
This week, as we're recordingthis, I'm walking with him
through the death of his fatherand I knew his dad.
I've known his dad for 36 yearsand so we know the things that
matter.
You know it's like I've seen it.
I've seen you at your worst.
(29:20):
I've seen it your best.
I've celebrated with you, I'vemourned with you.
I understand why thatparticular song makes you cry.
I understand why you just can'twatch that TV series because it
freaked something, freaked youout when you were six and you've
never gotten over it.
You know, I understand allthose things about you, and
isn't that?
What we just want is to be seen, and it doesn't mean that we're
(29:41):
perfect.
You know, a lot of us have alot of things to overcome and we
have hurt each other and wehave to grow from that.
But even in the growing, youknow, we're saying I love you
and I want to do this for youand I want to do this with you,
and that is a gift that we cangive each other.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
That's how it's supposed to be, where the
relationship is the center, notsex, not something on the
surface level.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
We do talk about sex in the marriage you want, which
was very difficult for me to dobecause when you've written four
books on sex, to try to writejust one chapter on it is really
hard.
But yeah, sex grows from a goodrelationship.
It doesn't replace one and it'snot the foundation.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
In your chapter on sex.
This sentence caught me offguard.
Why do you say you shouldn'tprioritize sex in your marriage?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Right, because we hear that all the time.
Right, you need to prioritizesex.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, youdon't, you don't, you don't.
You need to prioritize theingredients of great sex,
because those are two verydifferent things.
When we prioritize sex, what weusually mean is we try to make
sure that we have sex frequently, but having sex frequently, the
only thing that guarantees isthat he has an orgasm.
It does not guarantee that shedoes.
(30:52):
It does not guarantee that youfeel emotionally close during
sex.
It does not guarantee that shewanted to have sex or that he
wanted to have sex.
The only thing it guarantees isthat he has an orgasm, because
in 95% of cases, men report thatthey almost always are always
orgasm during sex, compared toonly 48% of women in evangelical
marriages.
(31:12):
So if we want to have a goodsex life, we have to stop
focusing on frequency and wehave to start focusing on the
ingredients of great sex.
You know, making it pleasurablefor her, making sure that we're
emotionally close, getting ridof porn and the pornified style
of relating, getting rid of thetransactional idea of sex and
really, yeah, focusing on how toawaken desire, and when you do
(31:33):
that, sex gets good.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Amen, that's awesome and, guys, if you want to hear
more about that, go back andlisten to my interview with
Sheila about the Great SexRescue, and I'll put a link to
that in the description.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
But if you want the Great sex rescue encapsulated
into one chapter, you can readthe marriage you want.
But if you want more, get thegreat sex rescue.
Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
So the marriage you want is available now.
You can find it at a link inthe show notes.
Sheila, what is your favoritething about marriage?
Sheila, what is your?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
favorite thing about marriage oh gosh you know I
probably already said it whichis the art of being boring
together.
I really like that, not so much20 years ago, but now that I'm
in my 50s it's just really niceto be able to relax.
But also now that I'm in my 50s, I think my favorite thing
about marriage is beinggrandparents together.
Oh my gosh, that's fun.
(32:29):
It's so much better than havingyour own kids.
Oh, it's awesome.
And being grandparents whenwe're young is super fun.
But yeah, just new adventuresand realizing there's always new
adventures with each age, asKeith isn't working as hard as
he used to work now and he'ssort of semi-retired and we're
doing a lot more of this.
So our lives are changing andwe've got grandkids, and so our
lives look really different nowthan they did five years ago or
(32:50):
than they did 10 years ago.
So it's like there's alwayssomething new and I like that
too.
I guess that's more than onething.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
But yeah, I'm glad you're enjoying it and thank you
for being such a consistentadvocate for healthy,
evidence-based, good teaching onmarriage and sex.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
So get a copy of the Marriage you Want, and you can
get more amazing free resourcesfrom Sheila and her team at
baremarriagecom.
Always remember you are God'sbeloved son and you he is
well-pleased.
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