December 3, 2024 • 56 mins
Listener note: The content in this episode may not be suitable for young children. Also, please be aware that there is discussion of abuse in this episode. Please take care when listening.
Melissa J. Hogan, joins Amy Fritz to revisit the 1986 marriage book His Needs, Needs by Dr. Willard Harley.
Does it hold up? Did it ever hold up?
What happens when a spouse who is struggling in their marriage and hoping for a way to save it picks up this book?
Melissa's substack: Res Ipsa launches on January 3, 2025. - by Melissa J. Hogan
If you liked this episode, check out these:
43: What We’ve Gotten Wrong About Divorce. Guest: Gretchen Baskerville
79: Domestic Violence & Evangelical Churches. Guest: Neil Schori
Where you can find me:
Subscribe to my newsletter: https://untangledfaith.substack.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Welcome to episode 122 of the Untangled Faith
Podcast. Over the course of several weeks, I'm doing a series of episodes
on influential Christian books from the 80s, 90s and
early 2000s. I've asked some friends to join me for conversations about
these books after reading them again or for the first time.
In today's episode, my good friend and longtime friend of the podcast,
(00:33):
Melissa Hogan, joins me to talk about the marriage book, his
needs, her needs. And just a note, before we get going,
some of this conversation may not be appropriate for young ears
and there is some discussion about abuse. I wanted to
let you know that before we get going so you can decide how to best
listen to this episode. I'm so glad you're here.
(01:02):
I'm Amy Fritz and you're listening to the Untangled Faith
Podcast, a podcast for anyone who has found themselves
confused or disillusioned in their faith journey. If you want to hold onto your
faith while untangling it from all that is not good or true, this
is the place for you.
Welcome back to the podcast, Melissa. It has been a long time since
(01:26):
I've had you on the podcast. A lot of things have happened, but I
wanted to have you back on for this new series I'm doing
kind of talking about do these books hold up? And did they
ever hold up? I don't know about
that. Yes, influential books of like the 80s,
90s, 2000s. And so this is a book
(01:48):
that came to my mind very quickly. His needs,
her needs, building in a Fair Proof marriage
that came out in 1986. So I did a little
bit of research. I'm going to talk a little bit about the background of the
book and then I'm going to have you share your
experience with the book. If you read it previously before you refreshed
(02:09):
your mind on this, and if it was what you
remembered as you revisited it, the highs and
lows and wherever this leads
us and sort of how it influenced how it, you know,
you. It came into your life. You were thinking it would help you. So I'm
not going to spoil anything, but that's sort of how our conversation will
(02:30):
go. So I looked this up. The author
is Willard F. Harley Jr. He's from
Minnesota. I knew of him because I'm a Minnesota
girl. They were in Minnesota. I think he had a counseling practice
there. His wife, Joyce is on the radio
often. And so I had their names
(02:52):
were pretty well heard of in the Minnesota Twin Cities
area, so I didn't recognize. The name at all. I was
surprised that, you know, he wasn't. You
know, the book is so common, but I didn't recognize his name at all.
Yeah, I think he got. I think it's possible that since his wife was on
the radio so much, I, I could. I need to double check this, but I
(03:14):
think she was connected to the local Christian radio station. One thing
that's interesting, it was published in 1986, and like I said, the
subtitle of this book is Building in a Fair Proof
Marriage, but it was revised and updated and
republished in 2022 with a new
subtitle. No longer is it Building an Affair Proof Marriage. It
(03:37):
is Making Romantic Love Last, which
is interesting. Well, what I saw was it. The
subtitle changed over the years and it
was. Was it more than one time that it changed? Yes, it changed like
six times. Holy moly. And what I saw was that
the latest version went back to the Affair
(03:59):
proof Marriage. So. Really? And so who
knows? What I saw was that the latest
version. Yeah. Went back to something related to an affair proof
marriage. So I, I don't know for sure.
Like that. Yeah. The Marriage that Lasts or Love that Lasts
was in there somewhere. Yeah. But
(04:20):
mostly 90% of them were. Something about affair proofing.
Yeah. And one thing, though, I did notice was that it was republished and
2022, which was not that long ago. And So
I asked ChatGPT what's the difference between the 1986
version and the most recent updated version. Now, I don't know if
ChatGPT is right or how well this AI has been trained, but it did
(04:43):
say basically it kind of leaned away from the more very
stereotypical gender role situation, which I
guess I can kind of see that. But I would argue, and here's a spoiler,
that may not be the biggest issue with this book, but it was a big.
It was very, very trad. Gender roles
all over this book. So that's sort of an interesting, you know, history
(05:06):
of the book. So this guy who wrote this as a clinical
psychologist, marriage counselor, it does
look like he's written several books. He also did a
video curriculum for churches and small groups. This seems to be a thing
that people do. They make video curriculums for churches. And
then also he has a mer. Has a website. Did you see that? He has
(05:27):
a ministry called marriage builders.com
and his family's a part of it too, which
initially I was like, is this the same thing as the.
The guy in middle Tennessee that lives here that has a
marriage ministry, that actually his daughter works
with him now? Joe Beam Is he the sex guy? Yes. And I
(05:49):
thought, is he like the same? Is this he working for him? No, this is
a whole different business that family. And once
again, it's a family. Marriage is a money maker.
Yeah. Yes. So. So inside the COVID of the book
says, this book was written to educate you in the care of your
spouse. Once you have learned its lessons, your spouse
(06:10):
will find you irresistible, a condition that's essential to a
happy and successful marriage. So that's from the preface, and then it
said, is your marriage affair proof? Recent studies have
shown that most couples will experience the
agonizing pain of infidelity. However, there are measures you can take
to ensure faithfulness in your marriage. In his needs for
(06:33):
needs, Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr. Shows you how to
affair proof your marriage. You'll learn to build a relationship that
sustains romance, increases intimacy, and
deepens awareness. Year after year,
it goes on a little more. Yeah, so that is the
introduction to the book. That's a very, very strong
(06:55):
promise. Very interesting premise.
And so the idea of this book is it's based on, I
guess, surveys that he has done of clients where he
decided what he discovered were the
number one needs of men and women. And so the five basic
needs, he says of the man is sexual
(07:17):
fulfillment, recreational companionship, an attractive
spouse. Sorry. Domestic
support, admiration. Okay, those are those. And then a woman
needs affection, conversation, honesty and openness,
financial support and family commitment. And he said, once a
spouse lacks. Lacks fulfillment of any of the five
(07:40):
needs, it creates a thirst that must be quenched.
If change does not take place within the marriage to care for that, the individual
will face the powerful temptation to fill it outside
of marriage. Melissa, say something.
That whole premise
is unbiblical.
(08:04):
It's toxic. It is
supportive of unhealthy
patterns in a marriage. Yeah. You
know, I went back and read portions of the
book, and there's. There's some good nuggets, like there
is some truth. But sometimes the problem is when you
(08:26):
have some truth combined with
really unhealthy things,
it's hard to pass through. And, you know, I don't want to throw
the baby out with the bathwater with this book,
but. Or as I like to say, the
chicken and the bones. Yeah. I'm wondering if
(08:48):
this is poop and brownies. Yeah, it's more poop and brownies.
I don't think it's. I don't think it's easy to say, I'm going to eat
the chicken and throw out the bones of this, because it's. It kind of
seeps in. It's kind of like a virus. Yeah. And the
idea that one person in
a relationship can do things
(09:10):
that then affair proof the marriage
and a fair proof the other person, that's a misassignment of
responsibility. Yeah. And if you follow some
marriage, health and relationship, you know, therapists,
one of the foundational premises of abuse, for
example, is the misassignment of
(09:32):
responsibility and saying that. So, for
example, if you have the phrase, you know, you made
me do that, like, look what you made me do. There's actually
a book about abuse called look what you made me do. You know, I hit
you, you made me do that. This is the same
flavor of that. I had an affair
(09:54):
because you didn't meet my needs. Yeah. And
that's really what we're talking about here, that you can do the
things that satiate someone
else's needs to keep them from having an affair. Right.
The thing that makes me really sad is I know how these
books are marketed. I know how. I know who
(10:17):
buys them. I know that.
Okay. I don't know. I'm going to suggest that this is the
likely outcome. A woman is
in a marriage and she's like, this is terrible.
I need to fix it and I need to figure out a way to
save my marriage. She goes and looks for
(10:40):
something, any resource that will help her, and she finds this
book. This is the book that's going to help her and
she's going to bring this home and she's going to read it.
Yeah. And that. Tell me about that from your
perspective as somebody who's had a hard. Who had a hard
marriage. Can I tell you how many marriage books I had on my
(11:01):
shelf? Yes, lots. Lots of marriage
books. I had this book on my shelf.
Actually got it from my mom, who was also in a
hard marriage and had this book.
And then I, you know, we repeat the patterns that
we know. Right. So I had this book. I had,
(11:24):
you know, what are some of the other. In 86. Were your parents
still together in 1986? My mom
was married to my stepdad at that
time and they got
married maybe not long after
or before that book came out. And so then
(11:45):
she had that book and then I had that
book. I had some of the other books, the five love
languages, A lot of these same
vein of books. Because you're trying, you're going, well, what
can I do? And that's the lie. The
lie is that one person
(12:08):
can do something to affair proof
or save a marriage. Affairs or bad
behavior are the deficiency of the Person
committing those things. Now, of course there
are, there are things we can do and should do that are the
responsibilities of us in our, in our marriage and to, to keep things
(12:30):
alive. But our actions are our own
choices. Yeah. And to set this up
as. That's just a terrible way to do
this. To set this up as your affair. Proofing of marriage.
Now, he did have this sentence in there that I took note
of, but I feel like it could have been a
(12:51):
whole. He should have spent an entire chapter on it. He said, this
is for married people who want to be happily married. But
here's the thing. If you're, if you're trying to have a good
marriage and you're buying this book. Yeah. You usually
don't know that that other person is not
on the same page with you. So one of the things
(13:13):
that I would say about this book is
it assumes that you have two people
that are acting in good faith and are
acting honestly that are somewhat
emotionally healthy and emotionally aware
or self reflective. And often
(13:36):
what I have seen is if there is a
partner who is deceitful,
unhealthy, abusive, they're going to
act like that they're at that same place with the other person and that
other person then cannot figure out you're like a, you know,
running on a treadmill or on a wheel. Yeah. And you can't figure out what
(13:59):
you're doing wrong. Yeah. It is interesting because somebody that's an
unhealthy person, they oftentimes don't want to
go far enough to say, I really don't want to be in a happy marriage.
Because there, you know, if, if we talk about needs here,
right. If both people have needs, that person is
getting some of their needs met and they're like, whether
(14:21):
that need is, I need to project an image that
I'm happily married or I'm getting domestic,
free domestic labor from this partner. I'm,
they gave me, you know, allowed me to have children. They're keeping the
house, taking care of the kids while I can go do these things over here.
So they're getting some of these needs met,
(14:43):
but they've decided they're going to get other needs met in
other places. And, and back to that,
like assuming that one, that both parties are
healthy, it also assumes that
people have needs that can be met
and that those needs are healthy needs. So
(15:06):
I'm just here to tell you there are people in the
world that are unhealthy to the extent that their needs are a
black hole. Another person
cannot, you know, do Enough to
ever meet those needs. And that's that
spinning wheel thing. Yeah. Even the word needs is really
(15:27):
interesting to me because it, it's so loaded. It's. It's
sort of a get out of jail free card, I think, for women or men
who read this and say, look, this is my need.
And throughout this entire book, there is this theme that
if somebody isn't getting that need met, that it
is basically an excuse to have an
(15:49):
affair. And like, like
I. That is wild to me. And I think it's
wild to me probably because my parents are happily
married and I'm in a happy marriage
that, I mean, I. I kept reading this and hollering upstairs to my husband.
Cause I was sitting down, I was like, honey, is this a
(16:13):
need you have for me to be more
attractive? I'm so sorry. Because, like, there's this.
I mean, it feels so. I don't know, I don't love the
word need in this because it has like this
value judgment on it. Like, how
can you have a need that involves
(16:34):
somebody else doing something with
their body like that their ne. You have a need for your
wife to lose the baby weight or you're gonna
cheat on her. Well, and I'll give two. Two angles of this one. We
also often have a double standard that women
have to be thin and well
(16:56):
kept and all of these things. And, you know,
men are running around looking however the heck they want. Well, that's because it's
not in the top five basic needs, according to Dr. Willard F. Harley
Jr. For Women. Women don't care because we need affection,
conversation, honesty, financial support, and family commitment. Well, and
I'm like, you know, if we're saying that attraction is a lot of different things
(17:18):
and companionship and blah, blah, you know, a person
who is kind and nice and you do things with, you
know, maybe, maybe part of the need is to
be. Not a need, a desire for them to be in shape so you can
do things together. That's very different than I want them to
look good so I can look good to my friends that I have an attractive
(17:39):
spouse. So that's one issue. Another issue is,
say, for example, my own experience
weight going up and down. That can happen for lots of
reasons, including medical issues, including
medications, including, you're now changing
jobs and you don't have as much time to work out a kind,
(18:02):
thoughtful, understanding spouse. You. You
realize those things and you communicate about them.
So, you know, I was in an experience where
I had a spouse who
I find out much later was very
derogatory about my body, but also
(18:25):
when I was thin, that also wasn't
good. And so what I'm talking about is like
insatiable needs. Somebody who needs
their spouse to be thin or a
certain weight, frankly, that's a bottomless
pit, at least in my experience and what I've experienced with other people because that's
(18:47):
a superficial need
for themselves and we shouldn't have
that. And so, you know, that person could, they're
never going to look good enough or never going to be
right enough for that other person's supposed
need. Yeah. As you read through the chapter, so
(19:09):
there's a chapter for each need. So it alternated between
a woman's need and a man's needs. So we start with
affection for the woman and then we go to sexual fulfillment for the man and
then conversation. What do you get from that? We
get that in some of the other books that somehow it's actually not
normal or expected for women
(19:31):
to desire sexual fulfillment. I mean,
you know, we've, we've seen that in a number of the other Christian marriage
books that that's, you know, it's never even thought
of that women would desire that. And that
perpetuates that whole scenario that he
says he's trying to avoid. Yeah. And I think, I mean,
(19:52):
I, I'm curious, like what sort of research he did, how
he surveyed people. And I mean, it could be some people are
coming to him because their marriage is in trouble. And then he asked them this
and then you have sort of a self fulfilling, self selecting
group of people that are in trouble. And you know, he did very
much lean into stereotypes. And so I would
(20:14):
say probably men or women could have any one of these 10 needs
to varying degrees. And to give the benefit of the
doubt, to be in a healthy marriage relationship or any
healthy relationship, you need to be willing to think
about needs that someone else has that you aren't necessarily.
That aren't your top thing and that just feels like being a
(20:36):
good person, you know. Right. And I
would argue it's not being a great spouse or a great
partner to somebody to just pick up a book like that and lay all
of those on your spouse. Well. And you
know, I would challenge to the fact that if, if
we are falling in love or entering a
(20:58):
relationship with someone whose needs are so
different from our own. Yeah. Wouldn't it be better
to highlight the fact that actually identifying
someone that, whose needs are somewhat similar to ours.
Yeah. And not being swung into this
emotional infatuation relationship
(21:21):
and actually being healthy enough to say, hey, do we at least have
somewhat similar needs in some of these areas? Like, that's a
better use of our. Really interesting thing to
say, Melissa, because I wonder if a lot of people end up in marriage
trouble because they have chosen a partner
with very different needs. So very. So the people whose
(21:43):
needs more align aren't showing up in his office.
Yeah. I mean, I can say that now being in a healthy relationship
with someone who's. Who has a lot of
similar interests and similar needs
and similar, frankly, emotional health. Yeah.
And experiences is very, very
(22:06):
different. And also someone who has integrity
and honesty. That's. That's pretty much better. Baseline,
Baseline, baseline. Level of honesty.
If you are in a healthy relationship, you take that for
granted. Like, of course I have that. It wouldn't, we wouldn't even got to
this point if we didn't have that. But depending on your background, you don't
(22:29):
recognize it right away if somebody has it or not. Or like, you know,
you get into patterns of things that are comfortable to you because you're. You've
seen that in your life. You saw that. I had the benefit of a
mom who even was aware of this book in 1990 and was
like this. I know from Working with Women, this is the most returned book at
our local Christian bookstore. Wow. I mean, that says
(22:51):
something for you, that you were primed to realize that
certain Christian texts or certain marriage
texts may not actually be healthy. Whereas
we've talked about this before, one of the premises that
I know is that if you grew up with certain
patterns in your family of origin,
(23:14):
with your parents, certain red flags,
those are normal to you, so they don't become red flags when you
start dating or looking for a partner. So if
you grew up in a. In a
family where someone you know regularly
lied or cheated or gaslit other people
(23:36):
or guilt tripped, you're not going to think that's weird in your
relationship. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm really very thankful
for that. I think my mom even helped talk a local church out of
hosting an event with this guy. Maybe it was our
church. I don't know. You were, you were born for this
podcast, Amy. I was born for this.
(23:57):
But as you were saying about. I was talking about, you know, relationships being
really hard in a lot of work and how that can sort of be
a red flag. I mean, not that you should, if you're married, that if you're
like, this is hard, we're done. I'm out. No, I'm not arguing that, but I'm
saying that if you're early on in a relationship. I learned this from my
reading specialist friends. When you are teaching reading
(24:19):
to somebody, when you're teaching your kid to read and they are
like struggling over every word, it's really hard for them.
What you need to do is you need to back up a little bit to
the, you know, those CVC
consonant, vowel consonant words that are like cat and bat,
where 95% of the words they're reading are just
(24:41):
so easy. Don't have to think about it. And that's kind of how it should
be. As they're learning and going along, you're only introducing some new things so that
when they're reading, they are not struggling over every
syllable. You're going too fast, you're in the wrong book, you're in the wrong
curriculum. If everything they're doing is a fight,
is a struggle. And it's the sort of thing, I think that applies
(25:03):
to marriage relationships too. Like if you are in a dating
relationship and every last thing is a struggle, maybe
it's. Maybe they're not the one. If you're dating or in the early
parts of the relationship, that's when things should be super easy.
Yes. Like they should feel amazing. And if
you're encountering problems at that
(25:25):
point or like serious
disagreements, invalidations.
I, of course, can think back now to, you know, serious
red flags in my, in my. The dating portion
of my marriage relationship. And if I knew then what I
(25:45):
knew now, I would. Or if I had somebody, you know, that
knew about those things, I, of course, wasn't telling anyone. I
would never marry this person.
But, yeah, you only know what you know. But I
think the thing about this book is it
ignores talking anything
(26:06):
about red flags. It doesn't talk about
boundaries or communication. There's several
anecdotes that talk about, oh my gosh,
there's so many crazy anecdotes. And it's talking about like
one, oh, gosh, a woman
wanted to go back to school and get her degree.
(26:29):
And so she's back in school.
She's has lost
time to, you know, do as much
for her husband or do as many activities together, play tennis
together. And she's tired because she's
both keeping the house, keeping the child,
(26:50):
and she's going to classes and she's doing
homework. So she's often too tired to have sex.
And so it talks about how he starts becoming
friendly with this woman at work and, you
know, she listens to him and she has more time for
him. And then all of a sudden they're having sex in the office, like, boom.
(27:13):
It's so wild. It's so. And you just sit here and go,
wait a second. That guy did not have
boundaries in his relationship with. With
work or with other people, with women who were
not his wife. And I'm not. I'm not even supportive of the Billy Graham
role like that. You can't. But you. We all should
(27:36):
have boundaries emotionally, you know,
with. With anyone outside of our primary
relationship, whether it's, you know, same, same sex, opposite sex,
you know, friends, you know, friends, husbands, you know, whatever.
But it doesn't at all talk about the fact that this. This guy did not
have appropriate boundaries. He also didn't communicate these needs
(27:58):
to his wife or how he was feeling about any of this.
And then when she finds out, it talks
about that, you know, she finds out about this affair
that he has had, and she realizes that her
drive for a degree was
what caused this, and she's so sorry. And
(28:20):
it equates these two things that, you
know, her love bank was still filled because he was supporting her
in this. In this effort to get a degree, but
his had depleted because she wasn't meeting these needs that he wasn't
communicating about and that he didn't have boundaries with the person,
you know, at his office. And, I mean, that
(28:43):
does a number on women to
read things like that. And, you know, and every one of these
chapters was, here's the need and here's when it failed,
and it always led to an affair. Every last one of these.
And no, it's. Let me give you another example. Let's. Let's
say one of the spouse becomes physically disabled.
(29:05):
Yeah. Let's say one of the spouses has Alzheimer's.
How. How do we deal with that? Because you know what? That other spouse
is not getting those needs met. They're probably
not having sex. They're. Or, you know, I mean, there's
a wide spectrum. Things are different. Yeah. Especially, you know, as a
parent to a child with a progressive debilitative
(29:28):
disease, which can be likened in some ways to, like,
Alzheimer's in a child. You know, if you become
a caregiver to your spouse, guess what? A
lot of your needs may go unmet. And according to this
book, I guess you can have an affair, and I guess that's completely
fine. It's understandable. It's wild. Now for
(29:50):
a quick break. Now back to the show. I mean, it feels
like infantilizing people and
like saying you don't have any agency, you know, like,
you have no choice. Because they did not hold up
their end of the bargain. That's just so
very sad. I had. I had marked a couple of pages.
(30:12):
John and Mary's fifth anniversary in the Love bank
chapter where he's here.
I'm gonna read part of it here. Critical changes start
taking place in that sixth year. Mary is still the
joy of John's life, but he notices an increase in his down
times. While Tiffany is a little doll and John loves her dearly, their
(30:35):
baby, she still creates new demands and negative
experiences. Taking his turn to change baby's diaper in the middle of the night
is not John's idea of a pleasant time. Also, Mary's
decision not to nurse Tiffany leaves John with his share of
responsibilities to walk her and hold the bottle. In
addition, Mary has a tough time losing the weight she gained while she was
(30:56):
pregnant as a net result of all these common
visitors. Little annoyances. Mary's little annoyance is what
it calls it. Mary's balance in John's Love bank drops by a
hundred points over the year. John, get yourself
together. Goodness gracious. I
mean, her decision not to
(31:18):
nurse was a problem, was a
burden for him. I mean, what in the world.
The idea to get himself together. The idea
that caring for your child, which actually should. Something
that Be something that is joyful. For both a
mother and a father.
(31:40):
Family commitment. Yeah. And of course, of course,
there are changes in your life when you have kids
for both people and, you know,
communicating, you know, what is expected in that.
Yeah, I remember that section because it called them common little
annoyances. Her weight gain, you know,
(32:02):
the fact that he changed diaper and used, you
know, did the bottle. Well, in my version, it said
vicissitudes. Nobody must have known what that meant.
They changed it. Two annoyances.
Okay, Here, here, though, here is the next part of that chapter.
Maybe you're asking yourself, should I be concerned about my
(32:25):
spouse having an affair if I don't meet her needs? Should my
spouse fear that I might have an affair if my needs are not being
met? In reference to the needs described in this book,
answer yes. Can I tell you how many stories I've
heard from women whose
husbands demanded sex
(32:48):
in the recovery period from a vaginal birth
or a C section, and they were then blamed
for these needs that he had in an area
that was extremely painful? And we're
validating that. This book validates that. Instead of
saying, hey, you know what? That's. That's a lot.
(33:10):
Like a truly caring partner
wants their partner to be comfortable, wants them to
not have pain. Wants them to recover from a
serious procedure. Yeah. Like, like birth
or a C section. Yeah. Not, not have a justified
reason for then, you know, viewing porn or going out
(33:32):
and having an affair. And here's the thing. Yeah.
It's just a spectrum. So, so maybe it wasn't two weeks after. It's the
mentality. It's the mentality that this justifies.
The other thing this book says and Harley suggests is
that basically at least 50% of people are having an affair.
And I don't know if that is actually
(33:55):
accurate. It very much normalizes it as of course it's going
to happen. I mean, what else would happen if you aren't happy? Well, and it
also, what, it also normalizes. It talks about falling into an
affair. Yeah, falling into an affair. When what,
What I personally experienced and
other women I know who have been in really
(34:16):
difficult marriages is that this is a pattern.
It's a pattern of behavior. Because what it doesn't deal with also is
the deception that's involved in,
in an affair. And from my personal experience,
actually the, the most painful parts was
not actually the affair, it was the
(34:39):
long standing patterns of deception. Because
you know, when someone is willing to have an affair,
there's. You have to deceive first. I always say the first lies
to yourself, first lies to yourself and then you start lying
to other people. And the thing is your conscience
becomes dulled to that lying and you
(35:01):
know, then you know, if that affair ends, you know, your conscience is
dulled, you got away with it, you have another one. And for, for
some people, and from my experience this can just be long standing decades
of affairs that are then forgiven. And then you buy marriage books
like his needs, Her Needs and then forgiven. Then you buy love
languages and you know, it doesn't contemplate that. And it
(35:23):
also does not deal with that. The damage
to this, the spouse who
didn't have the affair and the damage to the spouse who's having affairs.
And that dulled conscience and that
dulled conscience to deception, it bleeds. It
never just stays in.
(35:45):
I'm having an affair and I've watched this, I've
talked to many, many women in these types of situations.
My own personal experience that that ability to
lie generally existed before
even having that first affair. Right. Because your conscience
is dulled, you're lying to yourself and then it bleeds out into
(36:08):
other areas of their life. And so you know,
there's other things they're likely lying about by the time, you
know, the affair comes to light. Yeah. One of
the Quotes from the. The chapter on the man
needing to have an attractive spouse.
It was on page 117 of my book. A wife's
(36:30):
attractiveness is often a vital ingredient to the success
of her marriage. And any wife who ignores this notion for
whatever reason risks disaster.
I read and then, like, the end of that book, you know, the end of
the chapter, there was, like, these questions to talk about with your spouse.
And one of the things it suggested was get out of. Get out pictures from,
(36:53):
like, your wedding or whatever and, like, I don't know,
talk about how you looked then. And it basically was. The
questions were leading in such a way even the guys to,
like, you need to admit that you. You're not happy with
your wife's body. Really? Are you really? Are you ready to,
like, own that? What is wrong with this
(37:15):
guy? What if the woman has a medical
condition? I'm so
sorry. But this also has incorrect assumptions
about body and about weight.
Genetics. Yeah, Genetics is a huge
component in weight. This basically says
(37:36):
you can love your spouse less and be more justified in having an
affair if they develop some medical condition where,
you know, they can't move as easily. They
can't, you know, go do, you know, go
run and go do calisthenics and, you know, all the different things. And it's
just. It's a completely warped sense
(37:59):
of how a loving, healthy relationship would work.
Yeah. You know, one of the quotes from the
book, I think that encapsulates the most. The
worst, most insidious thing about this. The theme throughout this whole book
is I try to point
out that the straying spouse is not
(38:21):
the only guilty party. Yeah.
No, no, no, no, no. Dr.
Harley, I have some thoughts about
that. Everyone's responsible for their own actions. I mean. Yeah. In the world
of us all being sinners. Absolutely. We're all sinners.
But it is not the husband's
(38:44):
fault if the wife chooses to have
an affair. It's not the wife's fault
the husband chooses to have an affair. I mean, these
are grown adult people. Yeah. That
are not being forced at gunpoint to cheat
on their spouse. I have even heard women saying, you know, that.
(39:06):
Whose husbands were terrible, cheated on them. Be like, well, you know, I wasn't perfect.
And I'd be like, can you just. I hate that you have to say that.
I hate that you have to feel like, well, I need to own my
part in this. Well, and here's. Here's the thing. Like, in any
dysfunctional relationship, which, I mean, I would say, like an
abusive relationship, is a dysfunctional relationship.
(39:30):
You have the abuser and you have the victim and the
victim stays often because what's been normalized for them or
because their self esteem has been so beaten down by the
abuser, it's still dysfunctional. And you can
explain that behavior. You can explain why the
victim got into that relationship by what was normalized in
(39:51):
their family of origin, why they've stayed. You can explain
it without excusing the abuser's
behavior. Same thing with an affair, which those things often
go together. You know, you can causation,
correlation, situation. Some things can happen in the same place, but they didn't
cause. Yeah, yeah, you, there can be dysfunction
(40:13):
that is unhealthy. You staying with someone and keep keeping, trying to keep
them from having an affair without it being in any
way your fault. And to equate the two, like
everybody, I will say I experienced that
in early on, someone
in leadership saying, well, there's two.
(40:35):
Everybody has a role to play and there's two people in
a relationship. And this was, you know, 10,
15 years back, but by the end,
you know, when I said, hey, that was really harmful
that you said this 10, 15 years ago,
they apologized because they then knew
(40:58):
that that's not how this works. Yeah.
So that was very. I wish everybody could get that
apology from their church
leaders, Christian leaders, for at any point
saying, well, you know, it takes two to tango. If this
person's having an affair, they're abusive, you know, you've got some
(41:19):
responsibility there too. It's not, that's not how it works. If
you were the editor on this book or someone came to you and pitched,
I want to write a book called His Needs, Her Needs, or like a marriage
book on how to keep your marriage strong, what would your,
what would your response be and what would you say would make this book palatable
or a better way of approaching it?
(41:41):
First, it would have a lot more nuance. I mean, I did
find, you know, one paragraph at the beginning that says, well, you
know, really in counseling, people are individuals
and relationships are individual. And then it goes on. The rest of
the book to not treat it that way does the same. Thing at the end
of the book where like you could maybe these needs aren't yours, kind of a
(42:02):
throwaway sentence. Take this survey. Yeah, right. Yeah.
So I mean, it would be much more nuanced.
It needs to talk about this issue that,
hey, if you're reading this book
and these other things are happening or
this isn't your first rodeo with this kind of thing,
(42:24):
there's probably some other things going on. And, you know, I
think almost any marriage book that doesn't
contemplate that the person picking up the book
might be the healthier one, might be the more honest
one, might be the one acting in good faith, and the other person might
not be. Is doing a disservice to your
(42:47):
reader. Because if. If you look at that, you know the
statistics of people who have experienced abuse
or sexual assault or different things,
I'd say you have a good number of people that are likely to pick up
that book that are in those situations. And if you don't contemplate that audience, you.
You're actually actively harming people. Yeah. Yeah. I love
(43:09):
that. I think that's really helpful. I think there's probably two audiences for the book.
The one is the person's marriage in trouble. The other is the person getting ready
to get married and is giving. And somebody's giving a stack of books. Like, these
are your. These are your books you need to read to have a good marriage.
And I. It just makes me sad that somebody would start their
marriage with the foundation of
this, really, this book
(43:32):
that might give you a lot of bad
ideas about what marriage is all about and what you can expect. I would
be really sad coming into marriage, reading something like that,
thinking, oh, no, at any moment I
could fail and be in an affair myself. Or at
any moment I could fail and my husband would be
(43:54):
having. Yeah, it's like this scare tactic like this. You need to do this.
And so. I don't
love that. I don't love that. Would you
recommend this book, Melissa? I would not.
I would not recommend it. Not in your friend's library. What would you do? Would
you hide it? Would you take it? No, I
(44:17):
would initiate a conversation about it and say, hey,
what's. What's going on? If. If they're
close enough to me. What's going on that. That made you buy this book?
Um. Because I know for me, the. The hard
things. This is a crack. We're not things. I. Yeah, I didn't talk
about them. Yeah. I didn't even talk about them to my family
(44:39):
until the end. Yeah. And so, you know,
we didn't talk about them till after the.
No, we did not. So, yeah, I would initiate a
conversation because I think we're scared sometimes to know what's going
on. And, you know, if you. If someone is in a marriage
where it feels like a betrayal of their spouse
(45:02):
to have, you know, confidences with
people, to talk about some things that. That's a. A warning sign. That's a
red flag, too, because it's,
you know, a healthy spouse wants
their partner to have good sounding boards and to have people that
they can process things with or wants them to go to therapy. And
(45:25):
so it's not a betrayal to talk about
those things in an effort to actually improve and have a better
relationship. So, star rating from
1 star to 10, how many stars did you give this?
I would give it two. Okay. And I would give it two
(45:45):
because I think there are good nuggets in here. I think there
are good things. That's the problem with these books. Yeah.
But I think the assumptions, the
very. The equating of
responsibility. Like I said, this actually actively
perpetuates the misassignment of responsibility, which is the base basis for
(46:08):
abuse and justification for abuse. I think there's just
actively harmful things in the book. Yeah. I think I would be with you.
I would be either a 2 or a 1. And also
I. I agree with that. That there are. The idea
that we need to be sensitive to the needs of our
spouse is a good thing.
(46:30):
Yeah. That it isn't going to always be. The things that
we would think are the things that are
most important to us that make us feel loved isn't necessarily the thing that
our spouse most. Makes them most feel loved.
Um, so I think that those are the good, Good things in it.
Right. It's a very small amount. A very
(46:52):
small amount of good things.
So. And it's just the
recognition that there's no formula. Like, we cannot
love formulas. We love them. We do. And you had a
podcast episode about this at one point that we
look for. It's easier to almost turn
(47:14):
over our. Our thinking brain, our
discernment in favor of some formula, and we can go,
ha. You know. Right. Okay, now I know exactly. I probably got that from you,
Melissa. I probably got that from you and all the conversations that we've had, you
know, and I talked to Nathan in a recent podcast, you know, about politics, you
know, and there's just so many shortcuts we want to take. Like, oh,
(47:35):
I don't have to think about this. If I think this team is the right
one, I must. I'm always going to do what they say. I don't even have
to think about it. Or this denomination is the one I'm a part of. I
don't have to think about anything beyond that.
They've figured that out. You know, I think we've talked about sort of like,
outsourcing our. That's it. Doing our
wrestling is hard. Due diligence. Wrestling with and
(47:59):
wrestling with so many things in our life like that is.
It is hard. And of course, we all want, like, the
easy way. But encouraging people to, hey, wrestle in your
own faith, wrestle in your relationship
for what it means to serve and love well,
and don't turn it over to a book. Yeah. Now, I
(48:21):
don't know what he's saying these days. I don't know, like, if he has
said. I wish I had said this differently. I have not read the most
recent versions, but all these. There's a lot of them out
there. When this book was published that I have in my hands, it
said more than 500,000 copies in print. So there are a lot of that have
this message out in the world. But I do want to say,
(48:44):
to Dr. Harley's credit, I was looking at his
website, Marriage Builders, and
there was like an FAQ or maybe articles, like a list
of articles he'd written. And one was about abuse. And
he said, with no equivocation, if there's
any violence, you call the police. You get out of that
(49:06):
situation. It is dangerous. And I
thought, thank you for saying.
I'm glad he said that. I would not have expected it from some of these
outdated. Right. Ideas in this book.
And I don't know if something changed from the time in 1986 until now, but,
like, he was very clear. Although I would say it's a very low bar.
(49:28):
That's a very low bar. If there's physical violence.
Yeah. If you're. If you're in that,
it can be very hard to see that that's even abuse
or problematic. And what I wish he would
have incorporated into the book is this understanding that,
you know, emotional abuse and blame, the
(49:51):
blame shifting that he's actually engaging in in the book is
actually. It's combating that very thing. Because abuse is
not physical violence. I mean, well, physical. All physical violence
in that way would be abuse, but, like, abuse is much broader
and it's supported by the mindsets.
It's a mindset of misassignment, of responsibility, of power
(50:13):
and control. And so when his book actually engages in
that very behav, It's. It's hard for somebody then to see their
way out of that and go, oh, man, by the time they hit me,
it's okay to leave. When you believe all these other things,
the hardest part about
emotional abuse before they hit you is even recognizing that it's there because you say,
(50:37):
they haven't hit me. And you're like, well, you know, but then is that
really. And so engaging in some type of nuanced
conversation about, well, when are these
needs not appropriate? Like I
said, a bottomless pit of need
where you can never fill. And you keep trying, keep trying.
(50:59):
Like that's a sign that something is wrong. And I wish he
had more. He had talked about that like, or if your
partner has an excessive need for admiration,
that's not a healthy need. You can't, as a wife or a
spouse, like, you're never going to feel that. And that's a sign
that something's actively problematic.
(51:21):
Yeah. Well, I'm so glad we were able to talk. I also wanted to give
you a chance to kind of tell the world what you're, what you've been doing
lately. Like you have restarted a law practice. Say whatever
you want to say about what you're up to and what's coming. Yeah, yeah. Well,
yes, I've always been a lawyer. I've been a lawyer for 25 years. But
I always say I've been lots of different lawyers and
(51:43):
God has, you know, taking me on this
different journey. You know, I'd
founded a nonprofit and had run that for a number of
years and. But then after
my divorce, I was approached to do
work in the area of abuse and trauma. And I'd
(52:05):
written a book about trauma, about medical trauma specifically.
But, you know, it's an area that I was really passionate about. So I've
been working in the field of abuse and trauma, doing
investigations into allegations of abuse in faith communities.
And I also do work in my law
practice related to that and
(52:27):
different cases. And I'm also launching a
substack on January 3rd
on the intersection of the law and abuse
and faith. So I'm going to be talking about
different cases, talking about, you know,
areas where abuse and the law
(52:48):
intersect, things that might come into play in
institutional abuse like non disclosure and non disparagement
agreements. Another area that relates to abuse and
laws like no fault divorce. You know, how do we look at that as a
community of faith, but also to care and protect
for. Yeah, for, for women in those kinds of marriages.
(53:10):
Um, and you know, another thing that. One of my
beefs with this book was that it. In
one page, in one page of the introduction, it called
divorce a failure. Four times. Four
times in one page. That divorce is a failure,
which is, that is another
(53:32):
layer of shame to put on people who,
many of whom for which divorce is a rescue.
You know, if we, and if we look in the Bible, you
know, God actually, you know
rescues some of these women and tells men to give them a
certificate of divorce because they aren't caring for them or
(53:54):
providing for them. And for me, divorce was
a rescue from God. And so for this book to
create and perpetuate this notion that
divorce is a failure heaps shame
on people who, many of whom never wanted to get
divorced to begin with, never intended to get divorced and actually
(54:17):
struggled in many ways to even
get out of a very difficult or harmful marriage.
So, so that's I'll be on my
soapbox about no fault divorce and the role that that
plays in Christian
(54:37):
faith and in abuse and things like that. So people can find
me, like, find me on all my socials at Melissa J. Hogan and
on substack on that as well. The new substack is called Res
Ipsa, which is the thing itself. That's so cool.
I will link to it in the show notes. But I just want to say
I'm so proud of you, Melissa. And I'm really excited
(54:57):
as your friend and as somebody who's seen you.
I mean, I remember in conversations from four years ago where you're like, I am
afraid that I'm gonna have to do anything
in this field and that you. And you were like, I this
is the last thing I ever wanna do. And somehow you're doing
something that overlaps, but it isn't the last thing. Yeah,
(55:21):
I mean, God has done, you know, I didn't walk into this
field actually wanting to.
And this is often the case in my life. God just keeps
nudging. I'm like, no. No. Really? No. And
I say no a bunch of times. And then God's like,
this is a problem. You need to say yes. And
(55:43):
so I've gotten better at being willing to say
yes, you know, before God, you know, blows the
door. Yes. And so, yeah, so now I'm in this field,
I'm passionate about it and I'm just waiting to see what God's going to do.
It's going to be good. Thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it.
Thanks, Amy. Thanks, Melissa.
(56:04):
It was great to have Melissa on the podcast again. I hope you'll check
out her new substack, Res Ipsa. I'll link that in the show
notes and you can find those show notes in your favorite podcast
app. Or you can go to untangledfaithpodcast.com
and click on Episodes and find all the show notes
there. If you want to connect with me, you can find me on threads
(56:26):
as Amy Heming Fritz or Amy Fritz on blue sky
and I'm untangled faith on Instagram. If you'd prefer
email, send me A note to
amymtangledfaithpodcast.com thanks,
everybody. I'll see you next week.
Welcome to episode 122 of the Untangled Faith
Podcast. Over the course of several weeks, I'm doing a series of episodes
on influential Christian books from the 80s, 90s and
early 2000s. I've asked some friends to join me for conversations about
these books after reading them again or for the first time.
In today's episode, my good friend and longtime friend of the podcast,
(00:33):
Melissa Hogan, joins me to talk about the marriage book, his
needs, her needs. And just a note, before we get going,
some of this conversation may not be appropriate for young ears
and there is some discussion about abuse. I wanted to
let you know that before we get going so you can decide how to best
listen to this episode. I'm so glad you're here.
(01:02):
I'm Amy Fritz and you're listening to the Untangled Faith
Podcast, a podcast for anyone who has found themselves
confused or disillusioned in their faith journey. If you want to hold onto your
faith while untangling it from all that is not good or true, this
is the place for you.
Welcome back to the podcast, Melissa. It has been a long time since
(01:26):
I've had you on the podcast. A lot of things have happened, but I
wanted to have you back on for this new series I'm doing
kind of talking about do these books hold up? And did they
ever hold up? I don't know about
that. Yes, influential books of like the 80s,
90s, 2000s. And so this is a book
(01:48):
that came to my mind very quickly. His needs,
her needs, building in a Fair Proof marriage
that came out in 1986. So I did a little
bit of research. I'm going to talk a little bit about the background of the
book and then I'm going to have you share your
experience with the book. If you read it previously before you refreshed
(02:09):
your mind on this, and if it was what you
remembered as you revisited it, the highs and
lows and wherever this leads
us and sort of how it influenced how it, you know,
you. It came into your life. You were thinking it would help you. So I'm
not going to spoil anything, but that's sort of how our conversation will
(02:30):
go. So I looked this up. The author
is Willard F. Harley Jr. He's from
Minnesota. I knew of him because I'm a Minnesota
girl. They were in Minnesota. I think he had a counseling practice
there. His wife, Joyce is on the radio
often. And so I had their names
(02:52):
were pretty well heard of in the Minnesota Twin Cities
area, so I didn't recognize. The name at all. I was
surprised that, you know, he wasn't. You
know, the book is so common, but I didn't recognize his name at all.
Yeah, I think he got. I think it's possible that since his wife was on
the radio so much, I, I could. I need to double check this, but I
(03:14):
think she was connected to the local Christian radio station. One thing
that's interesting, it was published in 1986, and like I said, the
subtitle of this book is Building in a Fair Proof
Marriage, but it was revised and updated and
republished in 2022 with a new
subtitle. No longer is it Building an Affair Proof Marriage. It
(03:37):
is Making Romantic Love Last, which
is interesting. Well, what I saw was it. The
subtitle changed over the years and it
was. Was it more than one time that it changed? Yes, it changed like
six times. Holy moly. And what I saw was that
the latest version went back to the Affair
(03:59):
proof Marriage. So. Really? And so who
knows? What I saw was that the latest
version. Yeah. Went back to something related to an affair proof
marriage. So I, I don't know for sure.
Like that. Yeah. The Marriage that Lasts or Love that Lasts
was in there somewhere. Yeah. But
(04:20):
mostly 90% of them were. Something about affair proofing.
Yeah. And one thing, though, I did notice was that it was republished and
2022, which was not that long ago. And So
I asked ChatGPT what's the difference between the 1986
version and the most recent updated version. Now, I don't know if
ChatGPT is right or how well this AI has been trained, but it did
(04:43):
say basically it kind of leaned away from the more very
stereotypical gender role situation, which I
guess I can kind of see that. But I would argue, and here's a spoiler,
that may not be the biggest issue with this book, but it was a big.
It was very, very trad. Gender roles
all over this book. So that's sort of an interesting, you know, history
(05:06):
of the book. So this guy who wrote this as a clinical
psychologist, marriage counselor, it does
look like he's written several books. He also did a
video curriculum for churches and small groups. This seems to be a thing
that people do. They make video curriculums for churches. And
then also he has a mer. Has a website. Did you see that? He has
(05:27):
a ministry called marriage builders.com
and his family's a part of it too, which
initially I was like, is this the same thing as the.
The guy in middle Tennessee that lives here that has a
marriage ministry, that actually his daughter works
with him now? Joe Beam Is he the sex guy? Yes. And I
(05:49):
thought, is he like the same? Is this he working for him? No, this is
a whole different business that family. And once
again, it's a family. Marriage is a money maker.
Yeah. Yes. So. So inside the COVID of the book
says, this book was written to educate you in the care of your
spouse. Once you have learned its lessons, your spouse
(06:10):
will find you irresistible, a condition that's essential to a
happy and successful marriage. So that's from the preface, and then it
said, is your marriage affair proof? Recent studies have
shown that most couples will experience the
agonizing pain of infidelity. However, there are measures you can take
to ensure faithfulness in your marriage. In his needs for
(06:33):
needs, Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr. Shows you how to
affair proof your marriage. You'll learn to build a relationship that
sustains romance, increases intimacy, and
deepens awareness. Year after year,
it goes on a little more. Yeah, so that is the
introduction to the book. That's a very, very strong
(06:55):
promise. Very interesting premise.
And so the idea of this book is it's based on, I
guess, surveys that he has done of clients where he
decided what he discovered were the
number one needs of men and women. And so the five basic
needs, he says of the man is sexual
(07:17):
fulfillment, recreational companionship, an attractive
spouse. Sorry. Domestic
support, admiration. Okay, those are those. And then a woman
needs affection, conversation, honesty and openness,
financial support and family commitment. And he said, once a
spouse lacks. Lacks fulfillment of any of the five
(07:40):
needs, it creates a thirst that must be quenched.
If change does not take place within the marriage to care for that, the individual
will face the powerful temptation to fill it outside
of marriage. Melissa, say something.
That whole premise
is unbiblical.
(08:04):
It's toxic. It is
supportive of unhealthy
patterns in a marriage. Yeah. You
know, I went back and read portions of the
book, and there's. There's some good nuggets, like there
is some truth. But sometimes the problem is when you
(08:26):
have some truth combined with
really unhealthy things,
it's hard to pass through. And, you know, I don't want to throw
the baby out with the bathwater with this book,
but. Or as I like to say, the
chicken and the bones. Yeah. I'm wondering if
(08:48):
this is poop and brownies. Yeah, it's more poop and brownies.
I don't think it's. I don't think it's easy to say, I'm going to eat
the chicken and throw out the bones of this, because it's. It kind of
seeps in. It's kind of like a virus. Yeah. And the
idea that one person in
a relationship can do things
(09:10):
that then affair proof the marriage
and a fair proof the other person, that's a misassignment of
responsibility. Yeah. And if you follow some
marriage, health and relationship, you know, therapists,
one of the foundational premises of abuse, for
example, is the misassignment of
(09:32):
responsibility and saying that. So, for
example, if you have the phrase, you know, you made
me do that, like, look what you made me do. There's actually
a book about abuse called look what you made me do. You know, I hit
you, you made me do that. This is the same
flavor of that. I had an affair
(09:54):
because you didn't meet my needs. Yeah. And
that's really what we're talking about here, that you can do the
things that satiate someone
else's needs to keep them from having an affair. Right.
The thing that makes me really sad is I know how these
books are marketed. I know how. I know who
(10:17):
buys them. I know that.
Okay. I don't know. I'm going to suggest that this is the
likely outcome. A woman is
in a marriage and she's like, this is terrible.
I need to fix it and I need to figure out a way to
save my marriage. She goes and looks for
(10:40):
something, any resource that will help her, and she finds this
book. This is the book that's going to help her and
she's going to bring this home and she's going to read it.
Yeah. And that. Tell me about that from your
perspective as somebody who's had a hard. Who had a hard
marriage. Can I tell you how many marriage books I had on my
(11:01):
shelf? Yes, lots. Lots of marriage
books. I had this book on my shelf.
Actually got it from my mom, who was also in a
hard marriage and had this book.
And then I, you know, we repeat the patterns that
we know. Right. So I had this book. I had,
(11:24):
you know, what are some of the other. In 86. Were your parents
still together in 1986? My mom
was married to my stepdad at that
time and they got
married maybe not long after
or before that book came out. And so then
(11:45):
she had that book and then I had that
book. I had some of the other books, the five love
languages, A lot of these same
vein of books. Because you're trying, you're going, well, what
can I do? And that's the lie. The
lie is that one person
(12:08):
can do something to affair proof
or save a marriage. Affairs or bad
behavior are the deficiency of the Person
committing those things. Now, of course there
are, there are things we can do and should do that are the
responsibilities of us in our, in our marriage and to, to keep things
(12:30):
alive. But our actions are our own
choices. Yeah. And to set this up
as. That's just a terrible way to do
this. To set this up as your affair. Proofing of marriage.
Now, he did have this sentence in there that I took note
of, but I feel like it could have been a
(12:51):
whole. He should have spent an entire chapter on it. He said, this
is for married people who want to be happily married. But
here's the thing. If you're, if you're trying to have a good
marriage and you're buying this book. Yeah. You usually
don't know that that other person is not
on the same page with you. So one of the things
(13:13):
that I would say about this book is
it assumes that you have two people
that are acting in good faith and are
acting honestly that are somewhat
emotionally healthy and emotionally aware
or self reflective. And often
(13:36):
what I have seen is if there is a
partner who is deceitful,
unhealthy, abusive, they're going to
act like that they're at that same place with the other person and that
other person then cannot figure out you're like a, you know,
running on a treadmill or on a wheel. Yeah. And you can't figure out what
(13:59):
you're doing wrong. Yeah. It is interesting because somebody that's an
unhealthy person, they oftentimes don't want to
go far enough to say, I really don't want to be in a happy marriage.
Because there, you know, if, if we talk about needs here,
right. If both people have needs, that person is
getting some of their needs met and they're like, whether
(14:21):
that need is, I need to project an image that
I'm happily married or I'm getting domestic,
free domestic labor from this partner. I'm,
they gave me, you know, allowed me to have children. They're keeping the
house, taking care of the kids while I can go do these things over here.
So they're getting some of these needs met,
(14:43):
but they've decided they're going to get other needs met in
other places. And, and back to that,
like assuming that one, that both parties are
healthy, it also assumes that
people have needs that can be met
and that those needs are healthy needs. So
(15:06):
I'm just here to tell you there are people in the
world that are unhealthy to the extent that their needs are a
black hole. Another person
cannot, you know, do Enough to
ever meet those needs. And that's that
spinning wheel thing. Yeah. Even the word needs is really
(15:27):
interesting to me because it, it's so loaded. It's. It's
sort of a get out of jail free card, I think, for women or men
who read this and say, look, this is my need.
And throughout this entire book, there is this theme that
if somebody isn't getting that need met, that it
is basically an excuse to have an
(15:49):
affair. And like, like
I. That is wild to me. And I think it's
wild to me probably because my parents are happily
married and I'm in a happy marriage
that, I mean, I. I kept reading this and hollering upstairs to my husband.
Cause I was sitting down, I was like, honey, is this a
(16:13):
need you have for me to be more
attractive? I'm so sorry. Because, like, there's this.
I mean, it feels so. I don't know, I don't love the
word need in this because it has like this
value judgment on it. Like, how
can you have a need that involves
(16:34):
somebody else doing something with
their body like that their ne. You have a need for your
wife to lose the baby weight or you're gonna
cheat on her. Well, and I'll give two. Two angles of this one. We
also often have a double standard that women
have to be thin and well
(16:56):
kept and all of these things. And, you know,
men are running around looking however the heck they want. Well, that's because it's
not in the top five basic needs, according to Dr. Willard F. Harley
Jr. For Women. Women don't care because we need affection,
conversation, honesty, financial support, and family commitment. Well, and
I'm like, you know, if we're saying that attraction is a lot of different things
(17:18):
and companionship and blah, blah, you know, a person
who is kind and nice and you do things with, you
know, maybe, maybe part of the need is to
be. Not a need, a desire for them to be in shape so you can
do things together. That's very different than I want them to
look good so I can look good to my friends that I have an attractive
(17:39):
spouse. So that's one issue. Another issue is,
say, for example, my own experience
weight going up and down. That can happen for lots of
reasons, including medical issues, including
medications, including, you're now changing
jobs and you don't have as much time to work out a kind,
(18:02):
thoughtful, understanding spouse. You. You
realize those things and you communicate about them.
So, you know, I was in an experience where
I had a spouse who
I find out much later was very
derogatory about my body, but also
(18:25):
when I was thin, that also wasn't
good. And so what I'm talking about is like
insatiable needs. Somebody who needs
their spouse to be thin or a
certain weight, frankly, that's a bottomless
pit, at least in my experience and what I've experienced with other people because that's
(18:47):
a superficial need
for themselves and we shouldn't have
that. And so, you know, that person could, they're
never going to look good enough or never going to be
right enough for that other person's supposed
need. Yeah. As you read through the chapter, so
(19:09):
there's a chapter for each need. So it alternated between
a woman's need and a man's needs. So we start with
affection for the woman and then we go to sexual fulfillment for the man and
then conversation. What do you get from that? We
get that in some of the other books that somehow it's actually not
normal or expected for women
(19:31):
to desire sexual fulfillment. I mean,
you know, we've, we've seen that in a number of the other Christian marriage
books that that's, you know, it's never even thought
of that women would desire that. And that
perpetuates that whole scenario that he
says he's trying to avoid. Yeah. And I think, I mean,
(19:52):
I, I'm curious, like what sort of research he did, how
he surveyed people. And I mean, it could be some people are
coming to him because their marriage is in trouble. And then he asked them this
and then you have sort of a self fulfilling, self selecting
group of people that are in trouble. And you know, he did very
much lean into stereotypes. And so I would
(20:14):
say probably men or women could have any one of these 10 needs
to varying degrees. And to give the benefit of the
doubt, to be in a healthy marriage relationship or any
healthy relationship, you need to be willing to think
about needs that someone else has that you aren't necessarily.
That aren't your top thing and that just feels like being a
(20:36):
good person, you know. Right. And I
would argue it's not being a great spouse or a great
partner to somebody to just pick up a book like that and lay all
of those on your spouse. Well. And you
know, I would challenge to the fact that if, if
we are falling in love or entering a
(20:58):
relationship with someone whose needs are so
different from our own. Yeah. Wouldn't it be better
to highlight the fact that actually identifying
someone that, whose needs are somewhat similar to ours.
Yeah. And not being swung into this
emotional infatuation relationship
(21:21):
and actually being healthy enough to say, hey, do we at least have
somewhat similar needs in some of these areas? Like, that's a
better use of our. Really interesting thing to
say, Melissa, because I wonder if a lot of people end up in marriage
trouble because they have chosen a partner
with very different needs. So very. So the people whose
(21:43):
needs more align aren't showing up in his office.
Yeah. I mean, I can say that now being in a healthy relationship
with someone who's. Who has a lot of
similar interests and similar needs
and similar, frankly, emotional health. Yeah.
And experiences is very, very
(22:06):
different. And also someone who has integrity
and honesty. That's. That's pretty much better. Baseline,
Baseline, baseline. Level of honesty.
If you are in a healthy relationship, you take that for
granted. Like, of course I have that. It wouldn't, we wouldn't even got to
this point if we didn't have that. But depending on your background, you don't
(22:29):
recognize it right away if somebody has it or not. Or like, you know,
you get into patterns of things that are comfortable to you because you're. You've
seen that in your life. You saw that. I had the benefit of a
mom who even was aware of this book in 1990 and was
like this. I know from Working with Women, this is the most returned book at
our local Christian bookstore. Wow. I mean, that says
(22:51):
something for you, that you were primed to realize that
certain Christian texts or certain marriage
texts may not actually be healthy. Whereas
we've talked about this before, one of the premises that
I know is that if you grew up with certain
patterns in your family of origin,
(23:14):
with your parents, certain red flags,
those are normal to you, so they don't become red flags when you
start dating or looking for a partner. So if
you grew up in a. In a
family where someone you know regularly
lied or cheated or gaslit other people
(23:36):
or guilt tripped, you're not going to think that's weird in your
relationship. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm really very thankful
for that. I think my mom even helped talk a local church out of
hosting an event with this guy. Maybe it was our
church. I don't know. You were, you were born for this
podcast, Amy. I was born for this.
(23:57):
But as you were saying about. I was talking about, you know, relationships being
really hard in a lot of work and how that can sort of be
a red flag. I mean, not that you should, if you're married, that if you're
like, this is hard, we're done. I'm out. No, I'm not arguing that, but I'm
saying that if you're early on in a relationship. I learned this from my
reading specialist friends. When you are teaching reading
(24:19):
to somebody, when you're teaching your kid to read and they are
like struggling over every word, it's really hard for them.
What you need to do is you need to back up a little bit to
the, you know, those CVC
consonant, vowel consonant words that are like cat and bat,
where 95% of the words they're reading are just
(24:41):
so easy. Don't have to think about it. And that's kind of how it should
be. As they're learning and going along, you're only introducing some new things so that
when they're reading, they are not struggling over every
syllable. You're going too fast, you're in the wrong book, you're in the wrong
curriculum. If everything they're doing is a fight,
is a struggle. And it's the sort of thing, I think that applies
(25:03):
to marriage relationships too. Like if you are in a dating
relationship and every last thing is a struggle, maybe
it's. Maybe they're not the one. If you're dating or in the early
parts of the relationship, that's when things should be super easy.
Yes. Like they should feel amazing. And if
you're encountering problems at that
(25:25):
point or like serious
disagreements, invalidations.
I, of course, can think back now to, you know, serious
red flags in my, in my. The dating portion
of my marriage relationship. And if I knew then what I
(25:45):
knew now, I would. Or if I had somebody, you know, that
knew about those things, I, of course, wasn't telling anyone. I
would never marry this person.
But, yeah, you only know what you know. But I
think the thing about this book is it
ignores talking anything
(26:06):
about red flags. It doesn't talk about
boundaries or communication. There's several
anecdotes that talk about, oh my gosh,
there's so many crazy anecdotes. And it's talking about like
one, oh, gosh, a woman
wanted to go back to school and get her degree.
(26:29):
And so she's back in school.
She's has lost
time to, you know, do as much
for her husband or do as many activities together, play tennis
together. And she's tired because she's
both keeping the house, keeping the child,
(26:50):
and she's going to classes and she's doing
homework. So she's often too tired to have sex.
And so it talks about how he starts becoming
friendly with this woman at work and, you
know, she listens to him and she has more time for
him. And then all of a sudden they're having sex in the office, like, boom.
(27:13):
It's so wild. It's so. And you just sit here and go,
wait a second. That guy did not have
boundaries in his relationship with. With
work or with other people, with women who were
not his wife. And I'm not. I'm not even supportive of the Billy Graham
role like that. You can't. But you. We all should
(27:36):
have boundaries emotionally, you know,
with. With anyone outside of our primary
relationship, whether it's, you know, same, same sex, opposite sex,
you know, friends, you know, friends, husbands, you know, whatever.
But it doesn't at all talk about the fact that this. This guy did not
have appropriate boundaries. He also didn't communicate these needs
(27:58):
to his wife or how he was feeling about any of this.
And then when she finds out, it talks
about that, you know, she finds out about this affair
that he has had, and she realizes that her
drive for a degree was
what caused this, and she's so sorry. And
(28:20):
it equates these two things that, you
know, her love bank was still filled because he was supporting her
in this. In this effort to get a degree, but
his had depleted because she wasn't meeting these needs that he wasn't
communicating about and that he didn't have boundaries with the person,
you know, at his office. And, I mean, that
(28:43):
does a number on women to
read things like that. And, you know, and every one of these
chapters was, here's the need and here's when it failed,
and it always led to an affair. Every last one of these.
And no, it's. Let me give you another example. Let's. Let's
say one of the spouse becomes physically disabled.
(29:05):
Yeah. Let's say one of the spouses has Alzheimer's.
How. How do we deal with that? Because you know what? That other spouse
is not getting those needs met. They're probably
not having sex. They're. Or, you know, I mean, there's
a wide spectrum. Things are different. Yeah. Especially, you know, as a
parent to a child with a progressive debilitative
(29:28):
disease, which can be likened in some ways to, like,
Alzheimer's in a child. You know, if you become
a caregiver to your spouse, guess what? A
lot of your needs may go unmet. And according to this
book, I guess you can have an affair, and I guess that's completely
fine. It's understandable. It's wild. Now for
(29:50):
a quick break. Now back to the show. I mean, it feels
like infantilizing people and
like saying you don't have any agency, you know, like,
you have no choice. Because they did not hold up
their end of the bargain. That's just so
very sad. I had. I had marked a couple of pages.
(30:12):
John and Mary's fifth anniversary in the Love bank
chapter where he's here.
I'm gonna read part of it here. Critical changes start
taking place in that sixth year. Mary is still the
joy of John's life, but he notices an increase in his down
times. While Tiffany is a little doll and John loves her dearly, their
(30:35):
baby, she still creates new demands and negative
experiences. Taking his turn to change baby's diaper in the middle of the night
is not John's idea of a pleasant time. Also, Mary's
decision not to nurse Tiffany leaves John with his share of
responsibilities to walk her and hold the bottle. In
addition, Mary has a tough time losing the weight she gained while she was
(30:56):
pregnant as a net result of all these common
visitors. Little annoyances. Mary's little annoyance is what
it calls it. Mary's balance in John's Love bank drops by a
hundred points over the year. John, get yourself
together. Goodness gracious. I
mean, her decision not to
(31:18):
nurse was a problem, was a
burden for him. I mean, what in the world.
The idea to get himself together. The idea
that caring for your child, which actually should. Something
that Be something that is joyful. For both a
mother and a father.
(31:40):
Family commitment. Yeah. And of course, of course,
there are changes in your life when you have kids
for both people and, you know,
communicating, you know, what is expected in that.
Yeah, I remember that section because it called them common little
annoyances. Her weight gain, you know,
(32:02):
the fact that he changed diaper and used, you
know, did the bottle. Well, in my version, it said
vicissitudes. Nobody must have known what that meant.
They changed it. Two annoyances.
Okay, Here, here, though, here is the next part of that chapter.
Maybe you're asking yourself, should I be concerned about my
(32:25):
spouse having an affair if I don't meet her needs? Should my
spouse fear that I might have an affair if my needs are not being
met? In reference to the needs described in this book,
answer yes. Can I tell you how many stories I've
heard from women whose
husbands demanded sex
(32:48):
in the recovery period from a vaginal birth
or a C section, and they were then blamed
for these needs that he had in an area
that was extremely painful? And we're
validating that. This book validates that. Instead of
saying, hey, you know what? That's. That's a lot.
(33:10):
Like a truly caring partner
wants their partner to be comfortable, wants them to
not have pain. Wants them to recover from a
serious procedure. Yeah. Like, like birth
or a C section. Yeah. Not, not have a justified
reason for then, you know, viewing porn or going out
(33:32):
and having an affair. And here's the thing. Yeah.
It's just a spectrum. So, so maybe it wasn't two weeks after. It's the
mentality. It's the mentality that this justifies.
The other thing this book says and Harley suggests is
that basically at least 50% of people are having an affair.
And I don't know if that is actually
(33:55):
accurate. It very much normalizes it as of course it's going
to happen. I mean, what else would happen if you aren't happy? Well, and it
also, what, it also normalizes. It talks about falling into an
affair. Yeah, falling into an affair. When what,
What I personally experienced and
other women I know who have been in really
(34:16):
difficult marriages is that this is a pattern.
It's a pattern of behavior. Because what it doesn't deal with also is
the deception that's involved in,
in an affair. And from my personal experience,
actually the, the most painful parts was
not actually the affair, it was the
(34:39):
long standing patterns of deception. Because
you know, when someone is willing to have an affair,
there's. You have to deceive first. I always say the first lies
to yourself, first lies to yourself and then you start lying
to other people. And the thing is your conscience
becomes dulled to that lying and you
(35:01):
know, then you know, if that affair ends, you know, your conscience is
dulled, you got away with it, you have another one. And for, for
some people, and from my experience this can just be long standing decades
of affairs that are then forgiven. And then you buy marriage books
like his needs, Her Needs and then forgiven. Then you buy love
languages and you know, it doesn't contemplate that. And it
(35:23):
also does not deal with that. The damage
to this, the spouse who
didn't have the affair and the damage to the spouse who's having affairs.
And that dulled conscience and that
dulled conscience to deception, it bleeds. It
never just stays in.
(35:45):
I'm having an affair and I've watched this, I've
talked to many, many women in these types of situations.
My own personal experience that that ability to
lie generally existed before
even having that first affair. Right. Because your conscience
is dulled, you're lying to yourself and then it bleeds out into
(36:08):
other areas of their life. And so you know,
there's other things they're likely lying about by the time, you
know, the affair comes to light. Yeah. One of
the Quotes from the. The chapter on the man
needing to have an attractive spouse.
It was on page 117 of my book. A wife's
(36:30):
attractiveness is often a vital ingredient to the success
of her marriage. And any wife who ignores this notion for
whatever reason risks disaster.
I read and then, like, the end of that book, you know, the end of
the chapter, there was, like, these questions to talk about with your spouse.
And one of the things it suggested was get out of. Get out pictures from,
(36:53):
like, your wedding or whatever and, like, I don't know,
talk about how you looked then. And it basically was. The
questions were leading in such a way even the guys to,
like, you need to admit that you. You're not happy with
your wife's body. Really? Are you really? Are you ready to,
like, own that? What is wrong with this
(37:15):
guy? What if the woman has a medical
condition? I'm so
sorry. But this also has incorrect assumptions
about body and about weight.
Genetics. Yeah, Genetics is a huge
component in weight. This basically says
(37:36):
you can love your spouse less and be more justified in having an
affair if they develop some medical condition where,
you know, they can't move as easily. They
can't, you know, go do, you know, go
run and go do calisthenics and, you know, all the different things. And it's
just. It's a completely warped sense
(37:59):
of how a loving, healthy relationship would work.
Yeah. You know, one of the quotes from the
book, I think that encapsulates the most. The
worst, most insidious thing about this. The theme throughout this whole book
is I try to point
out that the straying spouse is not
(38:21):
the only guilty party. Yeah.
No, no, no, no, no. Dr.
Harley, I have some thoughts about
that. Everyone's responsible for their own actions. I mean. Yeah. In the world
of us all being sinners. Absolutely. We're all sinners.
But it is not the husband's
(38:44):
fault if the wife chooses to have
an affair. It's not the wife's fault
the husband chooses to have an affair. I mean, these
are grown adult people. Yeah. That
are not being forced at gunpoint to cheat
on their spouse. I have even heard women saying, you know, that.
(39:06):
Whose husbands were terrible, cheated on them. Be like, well, you know, I wasn't perfect.
And I'd be like, can you just. I hate that you have to say that.
I hate that you have to feel like, well, I need to own my
part in this. Well, and here's. Here's the thing. Like, in any
dysfunctional relationship, which, I mean, I would say, like an
abusive relationship, is a dysfunctional relationship.
(39:30):
You have the abuser and you have the victim and the
victim stays often because what's been normalized for them or
because their self esteem has been so beaten down by the
abuser, it's still dysfunctional. And you can
explain that behavior. You can explain why the
victim got into that relationship by what was normalized in
(39:51):
their family of origin, why they've stayed. You can explain
it without excusing the abuser's
behavior. Same thing with an affair, which those things often
go together. You know, you can causation,
correlation, situation. Some things can happen in the same place, but they didn't
cause. Yeah, yeah, you, there can be dysfunction
(40:13):
that is unhealthy. You staying with someone and keep keeping, trying to keep
them from having an affair without it being in any
way your fault. And to equate the two, like
everybody, I will say I experienced that
in early on, someone
in leadership saying, well, there's two.
(40:35):
Everybody has a role to play and there's two people in
a relationship. And this was, you know, 10,
15 years back, but by the end,
you know, when I said, hey, that was really harmful
that you said this 10, 15 years ago,
they apologized because they then knew
(40:58):
that that's not how this works. Yeah.
So that was very. I wish everybody could get that
apology from their church
leaders, Christian leaders, for at any point
saying, well, you know, it takes two to tango. If this
person's having an affair, they're abusive, you know, you've got some
(41:19):
responsibility there too. It's not, that's not how it works. If
you were the editor on this book or someone came to you and pitched,
I want to write a book called His Needs, Her Needs, or like a marriage
book on how to keep your marriage strong, what would your,
what would your response be and what would you say would make this book palatable
or a better way of approaching it?
(41:41):
First, it would have a lot more nuance. I mean, I did
find, you know, one paragraph at the beginning that says, well, you
know, really in counseling, people are individuals
and relationships are individual. And then it goes on. The rest of
the book to not treat it that way does the same. Thing at the end
of the book where like you could maybe these needs aren't yours, kind of a
(42:02):
throwaway sentence. Take this survey. Yeah, right. Yeah.
So I mean, it would be much more nuanced.
It needs to talk about this issue that,
hey, if you're reading this book
and these other things are happening or
this isn't your first rodeo with this kind of thing,
(42:24):
there's probably some other things going on. And, you know, I
think almost any marriage book that doesn't
contemplate that the person picking up the book
might be the healthier one, might be the more honest
one, might be the one acting in good faith, and the other person might
not be. Is doing a disservice to your
(42:47):
reader. Because if. If you look at that, you know the
statistics of people who have experienced abuse
or sexual assault or different things,
I'd say you have a good number of people that are likely to pick up
that book that are in those situations. And if you don't contemplate that audience, you.
You're actually actively harming people. Yeah. Yeah. I love
(43:09):
that. I think that's really helpful. I think there's probably two audiences for the book.
The one is the person's marriage in trouble. The other is the person getting ready
to get married and is giving. And somebody's giving a stack of books. Like, these
are your. These are your books you need to read to have a good marriage.
And I. It just makes me sad that somebody would start their
marriage with the foundation of
this, really, this book
(43:32):
that might give you a lot of bad
ideas about what marriage is all about and what you can expect. I would
be really sad coming into marriage, reading something like that,
thinking, oh, no, at any moment I
could fail and be in an affair myself. Or at
any moment I could fail and my husband would be
(43:54):
having. Yeah, it's like this scare tactic like this. You need to do this.
And so. I don't
love that. I don't love that. Would you
recommend this book, Melissa? I would not.
I would not recommend it. Not in your friend's library. What would you do? Would
you hide it? Would you take it? No, I
(44:17):
would initiate a conversation about it and say, hey,
what's. What's going on? If. If they're
close enough to me. What's going on that. That made you buy this book?
Um. Because I know for me, the. The hard
things. This is a crack. We're not things. I. Yeah, I didn't talk
about them. Yeah. I didn't even talk about them to my family
(44:39):
until the end. Yeah. And so, you know,
we didn't talk about them till after the.
No, we did not. So, yeah, I would initiate a
conversation because I think we're scared sometimes to know what's going
on. And, you know, if you. If someone is in a marriage
where it feels like a betrayal of their spouse
(45:02):
to have, you know, confidences with
people, to talk about some things that. That's a. A warning sign. That's a
red flag, too, because it's,
you know, a healthy spouse wants
their partner to have good sounding boards and to have people that
they can process things with or wants them to go to therapy. And
(45:25):
so it's not a betrayal to talk about
those things in an effort to actually improve and have a better
relationship. So, star rating from
1 star to 10, how many stars did you give this?
I would give it two. Okay. And I would give it two
(45:45):
because I think there are good nuggets in here. I think there
are good things. That's the problem with these books. Yeah.
But I think the assumptions, the
very. The equating of
responsibility. Like I said, this actually actively
perpetuates the misassignment of responsibility, which is the base basis for
(46:08):
abuse and justification for abuse. I think there's just
actively harmful things in the book. Yeah. I think I would be with you.
I would be either a 2 or a 1. And also
I. I agree with that. That there are. The idea
that we need to be sensitive to the needs of our
spouse is a good thing.
(46:30):
Yeah. That it isn't going to always be. The things that
we would think are the things that are
most important to us that make us feel loved isn't necessarily the thing that
our spouse most. Makes them most feel loved.
Um, so I think that those are the good, Good things in it.
Right. It's a very small amount. A very
(46:52):
small amount of good things.
So. And it's just the
recognition that there's no formula. Like, we cannot
love formulas. We love them. We do. And you had a
podcast episode about this at one point that we
look for. It's easier to almost turn
(47:14):
over our. Our thinking brain, our
discernment in favor of some formula, and we can go,
ha. You know. Right. Okay, now I know exactly. I probably got that from you,
Melissa. I probably got that from you and all the conversations that we've had, you
know, and I talked to Nathan in a recent podcast, you know, about politics, you
know, and there's just so many shortcuts we want to take. Like, oh,
(47:35):
I don't have to think about this. If I think this team is the right
one, I must. I'm always going to do what they say. I don't even have
to think about it. Or this denomination is the one I'm a part of. I
don't have to think about anything beyond that.
They've figured that out. You know, I think we've talked about sort of like,
outsourcing our. That's it. Doing our
wrestling is hard. Due diligence. Wrestling with and
(47:59):
wrestling with so many things in our life like that is.
It is hard. And of course, we all want, like, the
easy way. But encouraging people to, hey, wrestle in your
own faith, wrestle in your relationship
for what it means to serve and love well,
and don't turn it over to a book. Yeah. Now, I
(48:21):
don't know what he's saying these days. I don't know, like, if he has
said. I wish I had said this differently. I have not read the most
recent versions, but all these. There's a lot of them out
there. When this book was published that I have in my hands, it
said more than 500,000 copies in print. So there are a lot of that have
this message out in the world. But I do want to say,
(48:44):
to Dr. Harley's credit, I was looking at his
website, Marriage Builders, and
there was like an FAQ or maybe articles, like a list
of articles he'd written. And one was about abuse. And
he said, with no equivocation, if there's
any violence, you call the police. You get out of that
(49:06):
situation. It is dangerous. And I
thought, thank you for saying.
I'm glad he said that. I would not have expected it from some of these
outdated. Right. Ideas in this book.
And I don't know if something changed from the time in 1986 until now, but,
like, he was very clear. Although I would say it's a very low bar.
(49:28):
That's a very low bar. If there's physical violence.
Yeah. If you're. If you're in that,
it can be very hard to see that that's even abuse
or problematic. And what I wish he would
have incorporated into the book is this understanding that,
you know, emotional abuse and blame, the
(49:51):
blame shifting that he's actually engaging in in the book is
actually. It's combating that very thing. Because abuse is
not physical violence. I mean, well, physical. All physical violence
in that way would be abuse, but, like, abuse is much broader
and it's supported by the mindsets.
It's a mindset of misassignment, of responsibility, of power
(50:13):
and control. And so when his book actually engages in
that very behav, It's. It's hard for somebody then to see their
way out of that and go, oh, man, by the time they hit me,
it's okay to leave. When you believe all these other things,
the hardest part about
emotional abuse before they hit you is even recognizing that it's there because you say,
(50:37):
they haven't hit me. And you're like, well, you know, but then is that
really. And so engaging in some type of nuanced
conversation about, well, when are these
needs not appropriate? Like I
said, a bottomless pit of need
where you can never fill. And you keep trying, keep trying.
(50:59):
Like that's a sign that something is wrong. And I wish he
had more. He had talked about that like, or if your
partner has an excessive need for admiration,
that's not a healthy need. You can't, as a wife or a
spouse, like, you're never going to feel that. And that's a sign
that something's actively problematic.
(51:21):
Yeah. Well, I'm so glad we were able to talk. I also wanted to give
you a chance to kind of tell the world what you're, what you've been doing
lately. Like you have restarted a law practice. Say whatever
you want to say about what you're up to and what's coming. Yeah, yeah. Well,
yes, I've always been a lawyer. I've been a lawyer for 25 years. But
I always say I've been lots of different lawyers and
(51:43):
God has, you know, taking me on this
different journey. You know, I'd
founded a nonprofit and had run that for a number of
years and. But then after
my divorce, I was approached to do
work in the area of abuse and trauma. And I'd
(52:05):
written a book about trauma, about medical trauma specifically.
But, you know, it's an area that I was really passionate about. So I've
been working in the field of abuse and trauma, doing
investigations into allegations of abuse in faith communities.
And I also do work in my law
practice related to that and
(52:27):
different cases. And I'm also launching a
substack on January 3rd
on the intersection of the law and abuse
and faith. So I'm going to be talking about
different cases, talking about, you know,
areas where abuse and the law
(52:48):
intersect, things that might come into play in
institutional abuse like non disclosure and non disparagement
agreements. Another area that relates to abuse and
laws like no fault divorce. You know, how do we look at that as a
community of faith, but also to care and protect
for. Yeah, for, for women in those kinds of marriages.
(53:10):
Um, and you know, another thing that. One of my
beefs with this book was that it. In
one page, in one page of the introduction, it called
divorce a failure. Four times. Four
times in one page. That divorce is a failure,
which is, that is another
(53:32):
layer of shame to put on people who,
many of whom for which divorce is a rescue.
You know, if we, and if we look in the Bible, you
know, God actually, you know
rescues some of these women and tells men to give them a
certificate of divorce because they aren't caring for them or
(53:54):
providing for them. And for me, divorce was
a rescue from God. And so for this book to
create and perpetuate this notion that
divorce is a failure heaps shame
on people who, many of whom never wanted to get
divorced to begin with, never intended to get divorced and actually
(54:17):
struggled in many ways to even
get out of a very difficult or harmful marriage.
So, so that's I'll be on my
soapbox about no fault divorce and the role that that
plays in Christian
(54:37):
faith and in abuse and things like that. So people can find
me, like, find me on all my socials at Melissa J. Hogan and
on substack on that as well. The new substack is called Res
Ipsa, which is the thing itself. That's so cool.
I will link to it in the show notes. But I just want to say
I'm so proud of you, Melissa. And I'm really excited
(54:57):
as your friend and as somebody who's seen you.
I mean, I remember in conversations from four years ago where you're like, I am
afraid that I'm gonna have to do anything
in this field and that you. And you were like, I this
is the last thing I ever wanna do. And somehow you're doing
something that overlaps, but it isn't the last thing. Yeah,
(55:21):
I mean, God has done, you know, I didn't walk into this
field actually wanting to.
And this is often the case in my life. God just keeps
nudging. I'm like, no. No. Really? No. And
I say no a bunch of times. And then God's like,
this is a problem. You need to say yes. And
(55:43):
so I've gotten better at being willing to say
yes, you know, before God, you know, blows the
door. Yes. And so, yeah, so now I'm in this field,
I'm passionate about it and I'm just waiting to see what God's going to do.
It's going to be good. Thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it.
Thanks, Amy. Thanks, Melissa.
(56:04):
It was great to have Melissa on the podcast again. I hope you'll check
out her new substack, Res Ipsa. I'll link that in the show
notes and you can find those show notes in your favorite podcast
app. Or you can go to untangledfaithpodcast.com
and click on Episodes and find all the show notes
there. If you want to connect with me, you can find me on threads
(56:26):
as Amy Heming Fritz or Amy Fritz on blue sky
and I'm untangled faith on Instagram. If you'd prefer
email, send me A note to
amymtangledfaithpodcast.com thanks,
everybody. I'll see you next week.
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