Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go. Hey man, thank you for listening to my interview with Sheila Rae Gregoire about marriage.

Speaker 1: 0:24

Sheila is one of the voices I trust the most when it comes to healthy, evidence-based, solid teaching on marriage sex relationships. So in this episode, you are going to unlearn some common evangelical teachings about marriage and you're going to get some really unexpected insights based on Sheila and her team's new research project that they did with over 7,000 people 1,500 matched couples about what makes the biggest difference in marital satisfaction. It's probably not what you think, so listen to this episode to get a great introduction to Sheila and Keith's new book, the Marriage you Want. Enjoy the episode Today. I'm excited to welcome Sheila Rae Gregoire back to the show. She is the founder of BareMarriagecom and she and her husband, keith, have written yet another amazing book for the evangelical Christian community called the Marriage you Want moving beyond stereotypes for a relationship built on scripture, new data and emotional health. Hi, sheila.

Speaker 2: 1:35

Hi Drew, it's great to be back.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Yeah, it's good to see you again. You've written so much on marriage and sexuality and teachings that really need to change. What are some of the bad teachings about?

Speaker 2: 1:55

marriage that made you passionate to write this book. Well, you know, I don't even know that I knew what teachings were bad at the beginning. I just knew that things weren't working, and I noticed it mostly with sex. You know, I had been writing about marriage and sex for years and I had just been saying what I thought was healthy.

Speaker 2: 2:16

And then, when one day in 2019, when I was procrastinating and I had a headache, I ended up reading Love and Respect, and when I saw in that book that he said to women if your husband's typical, he has a need that you don't have, and the need is for physical release, and if he doesn't get physical release, he'll come under satanic attack, I freaked out and I thought, oh my gosh, this is so unhealthy. And that's what started our team doing these massive research projects and trying to identify. You know, what teachings do we have in the church that really mess stuff up? And we did that for sex with the Great Sex Rescue and with the Good Guys Guide to Great Sex. But now we've done it for marriage in general and we've just seen that, yeah, there are some things that we teach that do not result in good fruit and we need to change that.

Speaker 1: 2:59

What are some of the other examples of bad marriage advice that keep coming up?

Speaker 2: 3:12

Yeah. Well, one of the big things that we found was really key is partnership. Okay, so marriages work best when you are a team, when you each put in effort, when you each show up with everything you have, when you're each committed to making this work and when you're each putting in about the same amount of effort. And the way that you measure that is that you each should have roughly equal downtime. Okay, so one of you should not be significantly more exhausted than the other. So you really want teamwork.

Speaker 2: 3:31

But a lot of our teachings actually detract from teamwork, and one of the big ones is the idea that a husband should have the tie breaking vote. Or, you know, when you're having a disagreement, the husband ultimately gets to decide. And we found that that belief is highly correlated with bad sex lives, with not feeling like your close friends, with not having shared hobbies, even with a lot of emotional immaturity and dysregulation. So when you believe that he has to have the tie-breaking vote, your marriage really suffers. But when you believe, hey, we can work things out together, you know, we put ourselves under God, we're partners and we figure it out together, those marriages flourish.

Speaker 1: 4:14

Yeah, you talk about the triangle image of marriage being husband and wife running toward Jesus together, which is a beautiful concept, and yet your understanding has evolved. What is your take on what it really looks like to run toward Jesus together in marriage?

Speaker 2: 4:37

I think there's a lot of different ways that we can mess that image up, because Keith and I were told this when we were getting married. You know, it's just so beautiful because the closer you move to God, the closer you move to each other. And it does sound very beautiful, it does sound very idyllic, but the problem is we focus so much on God being at the center, which is very important, but we forget there's two other elements of the triangle and, yes, we need to focus on God, but for a marriage to work, you both need to show up and you both need to make room for your spouse to show up. And sometimes we don't show up or sometimes we overshadow our spouse. And it's just so important to be there with everything that you are.

Speaker 2: 5:21

And often what happens is that we're given all of these ideas of what it means to be a husband in marriage and what it means to be a wife in marriage and then, instead of showing up with everything you are, you kind of try to fulfill these roles that aren't really you and that can lead to a lot of shame and a lot of hiding. You know, like I'm someone who is a very logical person, my husband is way more emotional than I am. He's also a physician, he's super smart, but he's just. He's more emotional, he's more touchy, feely than I am, and that can make it sound like, well, we're not very stereotypical, like there's something wrong with us, because almost every sermon that you hear will be oh, the guy is so logical, he needs to listen to his wife's feelings. Well, we're the opposite.

Speaker 2: 6:03

But a lot of couples are the opposite. Like, for instance, the Myers-Briggs personality type inventory. They actually measure thinking versus feeling and what they find is that I think it's 56% of men are thinkers, so it is the majority of men, barely the majority, but it is the majority. But 73% of women are feelers, so that's more. In both cases it matches the stereotype. But if you're trying to figure out the chance of a guy who is a thinker marrying a woman who is a feeler, if you go back in time to middle school math, you know that the way you do that is you multiply the percentages together and when you do that, you get about 42%. So that means that every sermon, every piece of marriage advice you have ever heard about a guy being a thinker and a woman being a feeler does not apply to around 58% of marriages Wow.

Speaker 1: 6:59

And there are so many issues like that. For example, the man is the higher desire partner.

Speaker 2: 7:06

Yeah, there's all kinds. Yeah, that one's one, or you know, men are visual in a way that women aren't. A lot of women are visual too and some meta-analyses have shown that actually men are not more visual. Women just have a more arousal, non-concordance, which I can explain more about later, if you want. That's kind of a side issue.

Speaker 2: 7:22

But you know, like like these things that we think men are like this, women are like this. They don't necessarily match up all the time and when we, when we present it that way, it's like we feel like we're totally different species and we can't understand each other. That actually really detracts from intimacy. Plus, it makes you feel like, well, I'm not enough of a guy because I hate doing finances and I'm supposed to do the finances and my wife's better doing finances, so I guess I'm not a mature Christian man. And it's like, well, maybe you're really good at cooking or maybe you're awesome at yard work or something Like who cares, for pity's sake? Who cares? As a couple, we have all these things that need to get done. Who cares? Who does what, as long as they get done? As a couple, we have all these things that need to get done. Who cares? Who does what, as long as they get done.

Speaker 1: 8:06

Thank you for giving us permission to just be ourselves.

Speaker 2: 8:11

Yeah, because marriage isn't going to work. What is it that we want from marriage? Why do we get married? It's so that we can be truly seen, and still truly known and accepted. And how can you be truly seen if you?

Speaker 1: 8:29

don't get to be who you are If we're trying to fit into some standard of biblical masculinity.

Speaker 2: 8:40

Right, and when we put all that pressure on us, it causes a lot of shame, it can cause us to retreat, it can cause us to get involved in really dysfunctional coping mechanisms that don't work, instead of just saying you know, this is who I am and that doesn't mean that we don't grow. For pity's sake, I'm not saying that we don't grow. We have a whole chapter in the Marriage you Want on how, yeah, we're supposed to grow our capabilities. We're supposed to, you know, work on ourselves, and that's a real gift we can give our spouse.

Speaker 1: 9:06

But we still get to show up with who we are, and in order to be able to do that, we have to have our needs being met to a reasonable degree. I really like the pyramid you created called the marriage hierarchy of needs. Can you say more about that?

Speaker 2: 9:16

Yeah, so this really resonated with our launch team too, which is fun. So, okay, I'm going to tell you a story, because it's the easiest way to describe it. So I use this story in the book of Gabriella and Brad. So they've been married for 10 years, they have three little kids and Gabriella works as a nurse part time. So she does a lot of shift work, she's up a lot overnight, she's often exhausted, she's constantly trying to figure out childcare and her husband works full time. So Brad works full time, um, but he's not super hands-on with the kids.

Speaker 2: 9:45

And Brad disclosed six months ago that he's been using porn their whole marriage and this just devastated Gabriella and their sex life was already on life support and now it's basically gone down to nothing and they've been fighting about this a lot Cause he's like look, I said I was going to quit and you're not forgiving me, and this isn't right. So he says, gabriella, I was going to quit and you're not forgiving me, and this isn't right. So he says, gabriella, we need to go talk to the pastor. So they go in and talk to the pastor and they tell their story and the pastor says, okay, look, what Brad needs is more sex. And so, gabriella, you give Brad sex again. But what Gabriella needs is for the kids to be looked after a little bit more, and she needs a little bit more time off. So, brad, you do bath time, you know, and you do some of the homework, and then Gabrielle will give you more sex. And that sounds like the kind of advice we often hear right, just figure out what your needs are and you each meet each other's needs. That's how we compromise. The problem is that compromise only works if you're starting on an even playing field. And Gabrielle and Brad were not on an even playing field Because, as we, as you just mentioned, we have a marriage hierarchy of needs, and we wrote this based on something that Maslow wrote, and if anyone who's ever taken psychology in college will have heard of this.

Speaker 2: 11:00

But humans have a pyramid of needs where your biggest needs are on the bottom of this pyramid Things you can't do without food, water, safety, shelter, etc. You will die without these things. And then you have the things that you would like to just make life better. You know friendships, a good job, you know things that you like, and then we have those things that give life meaning, right, like self actualization, feeling like you're fulfilling your calling. And marriage has something similar. At the bottom is just things that we need to get through the day right. We need to make sure the rent is going to be paid, we need to get the kids out of the door to school, we need to get the laundry done, we need to get the food made All of those just survival things. And then we get into the things that make life nice right Working on our friendship, having date nights, finding a job that you don't hate, finding a church that you like All of those things are nice. That's when we start to live. But then we start to thrive where we really feel known in our marriage. We really feel intimate, we feel like we're fulfilling our calling from God and that's all wonderful stuff.

Speaker 2: 12:00

Well, what was going on in Gabriella and Brad's marriage is that Gabriella was living on that bottom tier, she was barely surviving, and Brad is up here living and living and maybe even trying to thrive. He's trying to get everything that he wants to make life great, but he isn't getting in the trenches with Gabriella. And if they're going to get their marriage met, their marriage to grow, he needs to get in the trenches with her and do those survival things. He needs to help with the kids. He needs to help with that and he needs to help his wife feel safe, because she doesn't feel safe right now, you know, because he confessed to the porn use and then all he's been doing ever since is bugging her for sex. So she doesn't feel safe. So let's get those security needs met and then we can work on everything else.

Speaker 1: 12:45

Yeah, I hear from a number of guys that they want more of a compromise in their marriage. They feel like I'm working really hard in recovery reading all these books, I'm doing all this healing work and she's not doing any of that healing work for the wounds that I've caused to her.

Speaker 2: 13:07

And that's hard it is the wounds that I've caused to her, and that's hard it is. But you need to understand that if she feels trauma, it takes a long time to heal from trauma and the biggest thing she needs is to see that you're trustworthy over time. And I think a large part of repentance and truly earning back that trust is understanding the harm that you have caused. It really depends, too, on the level of intimacy that you already had in your marriage, because some people were never close.

Speaker 2: 13:35

Some guys spent so much time running away from themselves and retreating into pornography that they never really developed any kind of emotional connection with their wives. They were never really able to be emotionally vulnerable at all, and that's going to take a lot more time to recover from than a couple that was emotionally vulnerable. This was just a habit that he brought into marriage that he needed to quit, you know, and he dealt with it. But he already had been vulnerable with her. He already had shown her who he really was. He already had shown that, yeah, you know you can trust me emotionally and that's much easier to rebuild there. So you have to ask yourself what's the foundation that we're building on on our marriage, because it could be that we never had much of one in the first place, and so we've got to do far more than just work on forgiving or healing from trauma. We've got to actually build that emotional foundation we may never have really had.

Speaker 1: 14:32

You talk about how important it is to have fun together, to have emotional connection, a passion, an affection.

Speaker 2: 14:42

Yeah, and you know, this is a fun chapter to write. Chapter three on just enjoying being together, because I thought I was going to hate writing it because it's like like there's nothing else to say. Just spend time together. I mean that is so boring, just spent like what else is there to say. But then when we looked at our data because because we had so much data and this, this book is so packed full of charts it's super fun if you're, if you're like a visual person and you like charts and you like graphs and and maybe you've read the Great Sex Rescue, this is like the Great Sex Rescue on steroids.

Speaker 2: 15:11

There are so many charts okay and we found we surveyed 7,000 people for this book and 1,300 matched pairs, which was really cool, Because with the matched pairs we could see if he answered one way, how did that affect his wife, or if she answered this question that way, how did that affect her husband. So we get lots and lots of really cool insights, but we found a lot of things that lead to a feeling of friendship and a feeling of closeness that we weren't expecting to be so influential or important, and I'll mention just a few. Prayer helps and everyone's like. Well, obviously, that you know. You can just picture your pastor saying that. Yes, we all know that prayer helps, but prayer helps especially for couples who aren't that emotionally close in other ways, like those are the people that get the most benefit from prayer, which we thought was super interesting. It's almost like prayer is emotional intimacy on training wheels. So if you're really uncomfortable sharing your feelings with your spouse maybe that's something you never really got used to and you're still learning when you can pray together, it helps you get more comfortable. That's awesome, so I thought that was cool. The other thing we found is that talking about spiritual things is actually more important for marital flourishing than prayer. So I'm not saying you shouldn't pray, okay, but people who can talk about spiritual things, that usually means they're connecting emotionally too, right, so just being able to talk about those things. But one of the things I thought was so funny is the importance of shared bedtimes. This is something I figured was important, but I didn't realize how important it was.

Speaker 2: 16:44

I'm Gen X, so I'm old, and I remember when I was first married, everybody went to bed either at 10, 20 or 11, 20. So it was either after the local news was over on the TV or it was after Johnny Carson's monologue on the Tonight Show, and then because there was nothing else to do, like after that, what else are you going to do? Like, there's nothing else to do, there's, you know, there's nothing else good on TV and we didn't have the internet, so you just go to bed. But today there is nothing telling you go to bed, right. There's nothing external saying well, now I'm bored, so I may as well go to bed. Right, the internet is 24 seven, video games are 24 seven Like, we have this stuff all the time.

Speaker 2: 17:24

So a lot fewer couples are going to bed together than used to go to bed together, and going to bed together means you tend to have more sex, because a lot of sex happens when it's not planned, and anytime you make things a little bit more difficult, it's not going to happen as often. Okay, it's like raising the price on something. When you raise the price, it's not going to be bought as much. Well, when you're not in the bedroom at the same time as your spouse, when you're going to sleep, sex is not going to be bought as much. Well, when you're not in the bedroom at the same time as your spouse, when you're going to sleep, sex is not going to happen as much. And you're not going to talk as much together.

Speaker 2: 17:55

Because a lot of going to bed together is just unwinding after the day and just talking about your plans for tomorrow, or just low key conversation. That's comfortable, and so it's just a natural time to have those conversations. That was kind of cool. Now, it's not that you can't have a good sex life if you don't go to bed at the same time, but people who don't go to bed at the same time, it's like maybe you should think about that. Maybe you should reconsider that.

Speaker 1: 18:19

Yeah, I'm taking notes on this. That's really helpful stuff. I also was quite interested in what you found about housekeeping and the mental load.

Speaker 2: 18:34

This one blew me away. I think of everything we found, this was the most surprising to me because I knew it was important, but I didn't realize how important. So normally, when you think about what are the two biggest things the couples fight about, Money sex.

Speaker 2: 18:47

Money and sex. Right, that's what we always hear. It's money and sex. Okay, so we measured marital flourishing on a scale of one to 100. If anyone cares, if anyone's a data geek, we used previously validated question sets. So we used a marital flourishing scale and it was out of 100. And if you have money problems, your marital flourishing falls by about five points. Okay, so it is statistically significant. It's not huge, but remember that most people's marital flourishing is between 60 and 90. So five points is fairly significant. If you go from having sex several times a week to having sex just once a month, your marital flourishing falls by about 10 points. So, more important than money. That sounds pretty bad. But if you go from doing 50% of the housework to doing 90% of the housework, your marital flourishing falls 30 points. Like that is big. So that's three times as important as sex, six times as important as money and nobody talks about it.

Speaker 1: 19:42

My goodness.

Speaker 2: 19:43

Yeah, and this applies whether or not the person who's doing the 90% works outside the home, like even stay-at at home. Moms can't, or stay at home dads can't, sustain that, and we did find that this was true for women and men. It's just that women are far more likely to be doing the 90%.

Speaker 1: 20:02

Yeah, for those who have never heard the term mental load, how would you define it?

Speaker 2: 20:09

Let's imagine a couple. And he says to her you know what, hon, you've been working so hard this week and I know you're really exhausted. Go out on Saturday morning, Just go out, have fun, do whatever you want. I've got the kids, I'm going to hold the fork down. So she goes out, Maybe she goes to the gym, she grabs a coffee, she reads a book. She's having a great time.

Speaker 2: 20:30

She comes home at noon and you know the kitchen's dirty, but the kids are super happy, They've got a high from pancakes, Everything's great, and so she's happy about this. And she goes into the kitchen. She notices that the birthday present that for the birthday party they have to go to at two o'clock is still there unwrapped. So that's okay. She goes to get the wrapping paper and on her way to get the wrapping paper she sees her son's science fair project has not been worked on and it's due on Monday. And then she worries well, I wonder if Kristen practiced piano, because the recital is on Tuesday. And she goes in and she asks her husband and he said well, no, you didn't tell me. And she said there is a family calendar with it right there, with a big star and a big circle, and we talked about this last night at dinner. But he's like, oh well, I just didn't think about it. Talked about this last night at dinner, but he's like, oh well, I just didn't think about it. And so she starts yelling at the kids to go to the science fair project and go to the practice piano and then he says, oh, my sister called and she wants to know what we're doing for mom's birthday. And she's like they are your parents, you figure it out, you know, and that's mental load. It's the fact that she's carrying everything for everybody and he gets to not carry it.

Speaker 2: 21:31

You know that idea that men have a nothing box and women don't. It's not actually true. It's not that men, biologically, are capable of thinking about nothing while women are not capable of thinking about nothing. It's just that women are carrying a lot more stuff in general about caring for the household than men are. When you look at men who are super involved with their kids, they have just as many things going through their heads as women do. So it's not that men have a nothing box, it's just that a lot of men don't necessarily carry the mental load the way that women do. So they can have that conversation at dinner about the science fair project being due on Monday, but he assumes he's not responsible for that. So it just doesn't register to him. And he does. He thinks I don't have, I don't actually have to do anything about that. So that's the kind of idea of mental load.

Speaker 2: 22:19

Or here's another example If she asks him to drive Benjamin to hockey practice, I'm in Canada so hockey is the law right. So if you have to drive Benjamin to hockey practice, what does he think is being asked? He thinks he's being asked to put Benjamin in the car, maybe get his equipment and then drive to hockey and then put Benjamin back in the car and then drive home. But as they're heading out the door she's yelling did you get the check from grandpa for the fundraiser? And remember that there's a Tupperware container you have to pick up to bring home, because I brought it last week for snack and forgot to get it. And remember that you know Jimmy's cleats or Jimmy's knee pad, whatever it was that we borrowed last week they have to go to. And so she's got all of these things in her head and he doesn't.

Speaker 2: 23:00

And that's mental load, and so the more that guys can share it, even just by saying you know what I'm going to take on hockey. I own hockey. And by me owning hockey it doesn't mean I just drive Benjamin to hockey and drive him home. It means I make sure that his his equipment is clean, I make sure that his equipment is ready, I make sure that if we're carpooling, I know where we're carpooling, I figure out the snacks, I figure out the fundraisers. If he's not getting along with some teammates or if he's not getting along with the coach, I'm the one who intervenes and I figure that out. You know, I do the emotional labor. If he seems to be getting bullied, I figure that out. So if you take on hockey, you take on all of it, not just driving him, and then all of those other details she can forget about, and that's a huge gift.

Speaker 1: 23:47

That's huge. So sharing in housework and chores and daily logistical tasks is not just about putting in the busy work. It's also about anticipating and predicting everything that needs to happen in a more mutual, reciprocal way.

Speaker 2: 24:06

Exactly Because even when he says look, honey, I'd be glad to help, just give me a list. If you say give me a list, the problem is she still has to carry it all, she still has to remember what, what needs to be done. So instead of saying give me a list, let's say I own these different things. You know, maybe you own laundry, which means you keep track of when we are running out of laundry detergent and put it on the grocery list. Right? If there's dry cleaning, you're the one who goes and picks up the dry cleaning. Like you, if you own laundry, you own the whole thing. You notice if the kids underwear is getting too small and we need to buy more underwear or whatever. Like you, own the whole thing.

Speaker 1: 24:39

It's so interesting that this has been conspicuously absent from marriage books.

Speaker 2: 24:43

Yeah, I know, and in fact the only, the only time it's mentioned is in books like His Needs, her Needs or Marriage on the Rock by Jimmy Evans. When they talk about housework, they talk about it in the sense of God gave men a need for domestic support and so God intends women to do the housework. So it's like it's so stupid. So God, so men have a God given need for women to do the dishes, or something so weird yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:10

And sad. I mean weird is not the right word, it's tragic.

Speaker 2: 25:14

It is and honestly I think that there's a lot of men who kind of feel useless because they've never learned to do a lot of these things. You know, they don't know what allergies my kid has or how to get them to eat, and that can cause a huge rift in the marriage too, because she seems to be carrying it all and you kind of feel like you're superfluous and she doesn't really appreciate me because she's not including me in anything. And those are the kind of problems that over time, build and build and build. So the more you can just take on, jump in and take on huge areas, the better it is for everybody.

Speaker 1: 25:52

Own something, and then everything related to that thing is my responsibility.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Yep.

Speaker 1: 25:58

Sheila, what do you and Keith mean when you say don't make things harder than they need to be?

Speaker 2: 26:04

Yeah, we found this, especially when it comes to things like spending time together or enjoying each other. I remember when we got married, there was this advice you need a date night a week, you need a night away a month and you need a week away a year for your marriage to survive. Do you know how expensive that is? Like that's seriously expensive. And then, once you have kids, that's even more expensive and difficult because you need to get babysitters Like it's seriously expensive. And then, once you have kids, that's even more expensive and difficult because you need to get babysitters Like it's insane.

Speaker 2: 26:34

And I think a lot of the advice that we're given on how to make marriages work are just things that we need to add to our budget and add to our calendar, and nobody has enough time or money. So, you know, I think we just need to take a chill pill and say wait a minute. What can we just do to enjoy each other and spend more time together? That doesn't necessarily cost more money or time. How can we just be more involved in each other's lives? You know, let's take a walk after dinner. Let's do chores together at the same time. You know, let's do puzzles together. I don't know, but it doesn't need to be something super, super difficult.

Speaker 2: 27:12

Now, if you're the kind of couple that loves date nights, more power to you. There is nothing wrong with that. But when we measured this, what we found is that couples who enjoy being together, they do so many different things. It isn't like doing one particular thing results in marital flourishing. Everyone is different and some people are going to like the super involved date nights, but I love what one couple said to us, which is marriage is the art of being boring together. You know, like I want someone I can be boring with. That's awesome, and you're allowed to be boring together if that's what you enjoy and you just want to kick back and chill.

Speaker 1: 27:50

That's so good being boring together, being unimpressive, being uninteresting, but just being real.

Speaker 2: 27:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:59

You had this great quote from the movie Shall we Dance. That really moved me.

Speaker 2: 28:07

Yeah, it's one of my favorite movie quotes of all time.

Speaker 1: 28:11

In Shall we Dance. Susan Sarandon says we need a witness to our lives. There are 8 billion people on the planet. I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in marriage you're promising to care about everything the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it. All the time, every day, you're saying your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.

Speaker 2: 28:37

Isn't that beautiful. I just think that's so lovely. We've been married for 33 years now and, through good times and bad times, I know I can never leave him times. I know I can never leave him, even if he totally bugged the crap out of me one day because he walked with me through one of the worst times in our lives when our son died. There's nobody else on this planet who will ever understand that the way he did.

Speaker 2: 29:06

This week, as we're recording this, I'm walking with him through the death of his father and I knew his dad. I've known his dad for 36 years and so we know the things that matter. You know it's like I've seen it. I've seen you at your worst. I've seen it your best. I've celebrated with you, I've mourned with you. I understand why that particular song makes you cry. I understand why you just can't watch that TV series because it freaked something, freaked you out when you were six and you've never gotten over it. You know, I understand all those things about you, and isn't that? What we just want is to be seen, and it doesn't mean that we're perfect. You know, a lot of us have a lot of things to overcome and we have hurt each other and we have to grow from that. But even in the growing, you know, we're saying I love you and I want to do this for you and I want to do this with you, and that is a gift that we can give each other.

Speaker 1: 29:59

That's how it's supposed to be, where the relationship is the center, not sex, not something on the surface level.

Speaker 2: 30:07

We do talk about sex in the marriage you want, which was very difficult for me to do because when you've written four books on sex, to try to write just one chapter on it is really hard. But yeah, sex grows from a good relationship. It doesn't replace one and it's not the foundation.

Speaker 1: 30:22

In your chapter on sex. This sentence caught me off guard. Why do you say you shouldn't prioritize sex in your marriage?

Speaker 2: 30:31

Right, because we hear that all the time. Right, you need to prioritize sex. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don't, you don't, you don't. You need to prioritize the ingredients of great sex, because those are two very different things.

Speaker 2: 30:41

When we prioritize sex, what we usually mean is we try to make sure that we have sex frequently, but having sex frequently, the only thing that guarantees is that he has an orgasm. It does not guarantee that she does. It does not guarantee that you feel emotionally close during sex. It does not guarantee that she wanted to have sex or that he wanted to have sex. The only thing it guarantees is that he has an orgasm, because in 95% of cases, men report that they almost always are always orgasm during sex, compared to only 48% of women in evangelical marriages. So if we want to have a good sex life, we have to stop focusing on frequency and we have to start focusing on the ingredients of great sex. You know, making it pleasurable for her, making sure that we're emotionally close, getting rid of porn and the pornified style of relating, getting rid of the transactional idea of sex and really, yeah, focusing on how to awaken desire, and when you do that, sex gets good.

Speaker 1: 31:36

Amen, that's awesome and, guys, if you want to hear more about that, go back and listen to my interview with Sheila about the Great Sex Rescue, and I'll put a link to that in the description.

Speaker 2: 31:48

But if you want the Great sex rescue encapsulated into one chapter, you can read the marriage you want. But if you want more, get the great sex rescue. Yeah, awesome.

Speaker 1: 31:59

So the marriage you want is available now. You can find it at a link in the show notes. Sheila, what is your favorite thing about marriage? Sheila, what is your?

Speaker 2: 32:09

favorite thing about marriage oh gosh you know I probably already said it which is the art of being boring together. I really like that, not so much 20 years ago, but now that I'm in my 50s it's just really nice to be able to relax. But also now that I'm in my 50s, I think my favorite thing about marriage is being grandparents together. Oh my gosh, that's fun. It's so much better than having your own kids. Oh, it's awesome. And being grandparents when we're young is super fun. But yeah, just new adventures and realizing there's always new adventures with each age, as Keith isn't working as hard as he used to work now and he's sort of semi-retired and we're doing a lot more of this. So our lives are changing and we've got grandkids, and so our lives look really different now than they did five years ago or than they did 10 years ago. So it's like there's always something new and I like that too. I guess that's more than one thing.

Speaker 1: 32:56

But yeah, I'm glad you're enjoying it and thank you for being such a consistent advocate for healthy, evidence-based, good teaching on marriage and sex.

Speaker 2: 33:11

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 33:13

So get a copy of the Marriage you Want, and you can get more amazing free resources from Sheila and her team at baremarriagecom. Always remember you are God's beloved son and you he is well-pleased.