Sheila: Welcome to The Bare Marriage Podcast. I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to help you get the marriage you want through healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage. And I am joined today by my husband and coauthor of The Marriage You Want, Keith.

Keith: Hey, everybody.

Sheila: And we’re just having fun going through this book.  The Marriage You Want is out March 11, and our launch team is up and running. It’s not too late to join though so if you’ve preordered just send in your preorder receipt to preorder at marriageyouwantbook.com. The link is in the podcast notes as well. And you can be part of that—get access to the book right away, start reading it. We just ask you to write an honest review so super fun. And before we get started today, I just want to say a special thank you to another group online that makes my life wonderful which is our patron group. Our patrons support us on a monthly basis, and for as little as $5 a month, and then they get access to our exclusive patron Facebook group where we have tons of posts every week.

Keith: Oh, yeah. It’s very busy.

Sheila: For this podcast in particular, I brainstormed with them. I said hey I need some ideas for this, and I got a bunch of ideas of examples so yeah, my patron group is just really good for me for that. And it’s just really supportive so come on over and join that, and of course, if you would also like to give a donation to the work that we do in researching, you can give that through the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation. And it is tax receivable within the United States so all those links are in the podcast notes. And today we are going to talk about chapter two of The Marriage You Want. We’re not going through the whole book on this podcast. We are in the preorder launch team, but there’s certain things that I thought were so important to talk about. And today we want to talk about why compromise isn’t necessarily the answer in marriage and how sometimes the idea that we just need to compromise and figure out what each other needs can actually hinder marital intimacy and marital satisfaction, and that’s what we found in our research for The Marriage You Want. And we want to explain what we mean by that today. And to start off, I want to play a clip from Emerson Eggerichs.

Keith: Yeah, because I think it sort of typifies the evangelical marriage response which is very much this idea of find a compromise.

Sheila: Yes.

Keith: Figure out what you each need from each other and then give it to each other and that will be the compromise.

Sheila: Yeah, like the love languages. What love languages does he have? What love language—

Keith: His needs, her needs.

Sheila: Yeah, you just meet each other’s primary need, and then you’re fine. But that doesn’t always work, and so I want to play this clip. So this is from a podcast that Emerson Eggerichs did in 2014. He stopped his podcast in 2016 after—I don’t know—100 odd episodes. And for research purposes for another podcast series we’re doing, I’ve been listening to some of them, and I came across this one which I thought was actually quite funny. So it’s an entire 35 minutes of him saying nothing else but being angry at women for hijacking the conversation. So to set up what happened, he had been posting on social media about how men need to love their wives and give sacrificially to their wives, and that went huge. Women really liked it, but then he followed that up with hey women, you need to give your husbands unconditional respect even in an argument or something like that. And all kinds of women did not like that and really hijacked the conversation in his words.

Keith: Yeah, because they were not having it, and so he needed to rant for 35 minutes about how women are unteachable and need to live—

Sheila: Yes, yes.

Keith: How unfair they are.

Sheila: Yeah, and so I just want to play—I mean I could pull out so many clips from this. It’s actually quite interesting his attitude towards this, but I want to pull out one clip so this kind of just sets the stage for it all.

Emerson Eggerichs clip: —understood, but what we do is we give the women a pass because we know that they’re virtuous and caring. We see most women like our mothers, like our sister, and so we don’t necessarily challenge this, but here’s what happens. When these conversations are hijacked like this where suddenly it goes from the man’s need to hey what about us women? And then launching into the women, men leave the discussion. They don’t stay engaged with it. They just go watch a sports program because men really like sports. They just simply push eject, and this is what’s going to happen with our sons, our brothers, our uncles, and we can say all day long that men ought not to push eject, that men ought to be empathetic, but just as women are saying hey we’re nonexistent when you make a statement that men need respect, and we’re going to put ourselves back on the marital radar screen, we in effect then are making the men nonexistent. And the men don’t typically jump back in and say, “Woah, woah, woah, timeout. We need—what about us?” Men—because what happens is then it gets countered even more. So what’s happening is men are just giving up on these conversations.

Sheila: All right.

Keith: Yeah, oh my gosh. Okay so let me get this straight because I haven’t listened to the podcast that you listened to.

Sheila: The whole thing.

Keith: So except for this clip that you played me so basically he does a series on how husbands need to love their wives, and the women are like yes this is good. And then he goes on and says women need to—Emerson Eggerichs’ definition of respect their husbands, and then they’re upset with him. And he’s saying, “Oh, you’re there for your side of it, but you don’t want to give your part of it, and so you’re selfish and unfair.”

Sheila: Yes.

Keith: That’s what he’s basically saying, right?

Sheila: Yeah.

Keith: At no point does he stop to think that maybe that means he’s presenting unfair—like an unfair deal.

Sheila: Yeah, and that certainly is a point. But what—but I think when we hear his basic argument—and throughout the podcast, he actually sounds quite reasonable. I will say that. He sounds quite reasonable because his point is look. Look, ladies, we told men what you needed, and now we’re telling you what men need. Why aren’t you willing to listen to that?

Keith: Right.

Sheila: We can’t have this double standard here, and you need—and that sounds like a reasonable argument.

Keith: Yes.

Sheila: It really does, but I think it’s indicative of a big mistake that we often make when it comes to marriage counseling and marriage advice is we think the answer to any marriage problem is to figure out what he needs and then figure out what she needs and then you each just meet the need. So whatever you both think you need, let’s just meet it, but that can actually go awry, and that’s what we want to talk about today is how a compromise—how this idea of well I need this and you need this so we’re just going to meet it doesn’t always work if you’re starting from the wrong foundation. And compromise if you’re not having equal asks of each other is not a true compromise.

Keith: Right.

Sheila: It really doesn’t work and doesn’t build intimacy in your marriage, and this is something we actually saw in our data for The Marriage You Want and when you dig deeper is that quite often what was going on is that one person was putting in more effort than the other, and so—

Keith: Or starting from a position where they had it better to start with, and then they were asking for more when the other person is barely treading water, and they’re being asked to give more to the person who is standing up on the rock above them.

Sheila: Exactly, and so what if the situation is not as simple as Emerson Eggerichs is making it out to be? And to give you an example, I want to go to another person who pretty much sees the world the same as Emerson Eggerichs, and that is Kevin Leman.

Keith: Certainly has the same evangelical mindset. We talked about—two podcasts ago we talked about the five things all marriage books, all evangelical marriage books say. They’re in Emerson Eggerichs’ words, and they’re in Leman’s books too so those same concepts.

Sheila: And so this is how Kevin Leman opens his book Sheet Music. This is on page six so it’s like at the very, very beginning of his book. So this is one of the foundational stories that is going to set the stage.

Keith: Set the tone.

Sheila: Yeah, for everything else that follows. So he’s talking about—and we’ve talked about this story before on the podcast, but I want to do a deep dive here. He’s talking about a couple named Mark and Brenda who used to have a really fun marriage, and then they had kids, and Mark’s job was really stressful, and he really needed Brenda to understand how stressful his job was, and he’d had a really bad day at work. And he really wanted to reach out to her, and it was just feeling like that they were just roommates now. And so then Leman writes, “Deciding to make a change, Mark called Brenda and confessed, ‘I had a really crummy day. Can we just go out tonight?’ It was an emotional cry for Mark even more than a physical one, but Brenda didn’t understand. She’d had a rushed day herself, and because she’d lost touch with her husband and wasn’t able to read the emotion in his request, she responded with a curt, ‘Mark, it’s 5:00. I can’t get a babysitter this late. What are you thinking? You never give me any notice.’” Okay, I just want to say that’s actually valid.

Keith: Of course.

Sheila: Like trying to get a babysitter at the last minute isn’t easy.

Keith: You can have a need, but like, this is a whole other podcast, but if I have a need, I expect you to take care of every single part of that need. If I need to go out for dinner tonight, then there’s things that need to happen. Maybe I should take some ownership for that, but whatever, it’s another podcast.

Sheila: Yeah, so he’s like—so Leman is saying she’s not responding to Mark’s need, but why didn’t Mark make babysitting arrangements then?

Keith: If he needs it that bad, but whatever.

Sheila: “Mark wanted to tell Brenda that he missed her. He longed for her to be the eager woman she used to be who was willing to cut classes to fool around for a little bit, but he had already stuck out his neck once today and look where that got him so he went on the defensive. ‘Aw, forget it,’ he said, and he hung up the phone. Mark stopped at a pub on the way home and shot pool until 11:00 pm. He knew—

Keith: (laughs) Okay, sorry. Beep, beep, back the truck up. So this is the thing. There’s no concept of like how we have to take ownership of stuff. Like poor Mark that he abandoned his family until 11:00 pm. He’s never called on that.

Sheila: Oh, it gets better. “He knew he would catch a lot of flack from Brenda for being out so late, but she didn’t understand the stress he was under.”

Keith: Catch flack from Brenda. Mark knew that as a husband and father he had responsibilities to his family to be present so he didn’t stay up until 11:00 pm shooting pool. Anyway, whatever, sorry. I keep interrupting your story. Sorry.

Sheila: No, it’s good. It’s all good. Ready for the next sentence?

Keith: Yeah.

Sheila: “Brenda also didn’t understand that Mark masturbated two or three times a week, and every time he did so he felt his desire for Brenda as a person decline just a little bit more. He was tired of being reluctantly accommodated and never pursued.” Poor Mark being forced to masturbate.

Keith: Yeah, we’ve talked about this before too, right? So again, he’s being pitched as this poor person who’s not getting his needs met when a lot of these needs are number one not legitimate and number two he should be taking care of things himself. He should be becoming a better person rather than relying on his wife to fix it for him.

Sheila: Yeah, and then listen to this. “For her part, Brenda was too busy with the kids to notice,” because Brenda knew that she did not have the luxury of going and playing pool until 11:00 pm because the kids relied on her.

Keith: Exactly.

Sheila: But Mark had the luxury of going and playing pool until 11:00 pm.

Keith: So again they’re not starting on equal footing.

Sheila: “In fact, she was actually thankful that Mark didn’t pressure her for sex anymore. She was too tired to even think about it. It never occurred to her that Mark was taking matters into his own hands and was adept enough at hiding the porn on the computer that she never found it.” Okay, and here is Leman’s conclusion to this story which we talked about in The Great Sex Rescue. “What Brenda didn’t realize was how much the sexual winter was costing them as a couple and how if they didn’t turn things around they’d probably be divorced within another five years.”

Keith: Yeah, and we’ve talked in previous podcasts about how this is the whole thing is that the underlying message here is poor Mark and what does Brenda think is going to happen here? And it’s falling on Brenda to fix this problem instead of Mark taking responsibility for his own behavior. That’s a totally different thing. We’ve talked about that before, but today what we’re going to talk about is the whole idea of compromise is because what’s going to happen here. This is a classic evangelical Christian kind of scenario, and the compromise is I know Brenda you don’t want to have sex with him. I know you’re exhausted with the kids. I know all this stuff, but he needs that so can you compromise and give that to him so he can maybe step up and do other things for you? And then you’ll compromise and then you’ll both be happier. And that’s what gets put forward as the solution to the problem. Let’s take a step back and look objectively about what’s going on here, and again, Mark is living a life of luxury. He can got out for six hours after work and abandon the family, and he’s worried he’s going to catch flack when he gets home. And if she did that, child protective services would be called. She doesn’t have that luxury. She’s drowning, and he’s wandering around on the solid ground above her going, “Oh poor me, my life.” Ridiculous.

Sheila: And he’s watching porn. He’s got a secret sexual life that she doesn’t know about, and he’s being deceitful and betraying her.

Keith: Yeah, and again, he’s never called on this in the book.

Sheila: No.

Keith: Her lack of availability is what is causing him to be like this.

Sheila: Yeah, her sexual—

Keith: And this is what drives me crazy about people who talk about men are supposed to be the leaders. For people who think men are supposed to be the leaders, they sure do a lot of following. It’s the woman’s—the woman is setting the tempo and the pace for the relationship. If he’s using porn, it’s her fault. If he has an affair, it’s her fault. If this happens, it’s her fault. It’s always her fault. She’s the leader then.

Sheila: Yeah.

Keith: That was last week’s podcast.

Sheila: Yeah, if he wants to go out for dinner, then she should take care of everything.

Keith: Yeah, and it isn’t it great that he thought about going out to dinner for them as a family. That’s what a leader he is. So how many of you who are employed who has a boss who comes in and says, “Hey, I need this done for tomorrow,” something that takes six weeks to work and the reason it takes six weeks to get done, but you’re supposed to have it done for tomorrow because your boss forgot to tell you six weeks ago it needed to be done. How many of you think that’s a good leader?

Sheila: Yeah, crazy.

Keith: Crazy.

Sheila: And again as we said last week, we don’t think the husband should be the leader anyway, and we would rather get rid of that word, but these people actually use the word. And they’re still—and this is what they’re saying. So it doesn’t make any sense.

Keith: So how is this related to compromise?

Sheila: Well, here’s the point, when we’re talking about how you each need to meet your own needs—each other’s needs—that assumes that you’re starting from an equal playing field. But let’s say in the marriage, she is doing—she’s working at 90% or she’s doing 90% of the work.

Keith: Or the other way around. He’s doing 90% and she’s only doing 10%.

Sheila: Yeah, let’s change it so one of you is doing 90% and one of you is doing 10%. If the marriage counselor says you know what? You each need to up your game, you each need to put in another 10%, well, now she’s doing 99%, and he’s doing 11%. And I know that doesn’t add up, but you know what I mean.

Keith: You get the concept. You get the concept. Even if he doubles his effort, and she only puts her effort by like a couple percent, she’s still—she’s bearing more of the burden than she was before.

Sheila: Yeah, and this is what Emerson Eggerichs didn’t understand about that outrage from women, and this is why that entire podcast of him complaining about women really doesn’t work because his assumption is that each of them have equal needs and need to listen. But if the marriage is not starting from an equal plane, then telling her that she needs to understand his need for respect isn’t right. And this is the big mindset shift we want people to make, okay, is if we want marriages to thrive, we need to stop asking what does she need and what does he need. And we need to start asking what does the marriage need?

Keith: Correct, that’s right.

Sheila: What does the marriage need? Because for Mark and Brenda, that answer would include Mark stopping watching pornography and Mark getting off of his butt and helping with the children, right?

Keith: Absolutely, absolutely.

Sheila: Before we even start talking about sex, let’s just get back to ground zero here.

Keith: Exactly, because if you’re in a relationship where you can go to a pool hall for six hours after work, you’re not in an equal partnership. You need to go back to last week’s podcast and work that out. And I think it’s funny because a few weeks ago we talked about Jimmy Evans Marriage on the Rock, and they talked about the fundamental needs of women and the fundamental needs of men. So it really illustrates this whole thing perfectly because the fundamental needs for women are to be listened to, to have open communication.

Sheila: Open and honest communication.

Keith: All these things, right, which if you as a husband give that to your wife, you’re both going to be better people, and everything is going to be good. What are the husbands’ needs? Domestic support—

Sheila: So like her doing the dishes.

Keith: Yeah, sex on demand. So her needs are fundamental human needs. His needs are a maid and a person to give him sex when he wants it. They’re not on equal footing.

Sheila: They’re not on the same plane.

Keith: It’s ridiculous.

Sheila: So let’s ask what does our marriage need? What is the state of our marriage? And what does our marriage need to thrive?

Keith: Yeah, and then all these needs come in. We need open, honest communication. We need deep intimacy. We need to keep the house organized. We need to have—to work on our sex lives.

Sheila: We need to make sure the kids are cared for.

Keith: All these things are part of the marriage and what the marriage needs, and when the marriage is strong, we’ll both be strong, and we’ll both be healthy. If we’re working on ourselves and we’re working on our marriage, then we’d be great. But if it’s like I have needs, you’d better give them to me, then it’s counterproductive.

Sheila: And I think what’s happening, and we’re going to talk about this in an upcoming podcast about the unfairness threshold that we found in our book in multiple different areas, but in our survey and our survey was really weighted towards healthier couples. We do have to say that like especially our matched pair. The kind of couples that are going to be willing to fill out a matched pair survey—

Keith: Yes.

Sheila: —are going to be healthier on the whole although we still had quite a few unhealthy couples.

Keith: We had enough people to find statistical significant differences.

Sheila: Of everything, right? But—I’m condensing and I’m generalizing so this isn’t exactly correct, but roughly 50% of marriages are doing great. They really are functioning as partners with teamwork.

Keith: And you’re talking know—you’re referencing right now in terms of household functioning and getting household and domestic labor done. That’s what you’re talking about.

Sheila: Yeah, and not just housework but who makes the repair in the marriage if there’s a problem, who takes care of the in-laws, like all kinds of different areas.

Keith: Sharing the load.

Sheila: On the whole. The couples that share it in one area tend to share it in all the others, right? It’s a package deal, right?

Keith: Yeah.

Sheila: So there’s 50% of marriages that are doing great, and then there’s the 50% where she is putting in a whole lot more work than he is.

Keith: Yeah, because of these teachings from our books that the wife is supposed to provide the domestic support for the man because it’s a need.

Sheila: And it’s not that there aren’t any marriages where he is putting in a lot more support—

Keith: Oh, yeah, we had some of those too.

Sheila: There are some, but it’s overwhelmingly the other way if you look at numbers.

Keith: Yeah, because society gives men the option to feel okay about that.

Sheila: It gives him the option to go to the pool hall until 11:00 at night.

Keith: Whereas if you’re a husband who does that, you get a little bit of a tsk tsk. If you’re a wife who does that, that comes down on you pretty hard.

Sheila: And so here’s the issue is that we can’t start talking about compromise until we are on an equal playing field. Compromise doesn’t work if one person is already putting in a whole lot more work than the other. And so the issue here is to figure out where are we in terms of who’s doing what in the marriage, how are we feeling? Not just well what is it that you need? What is it that I need because we are both equally valid.

Keith: Yeah, and we’re talking about two different ways of visualizing that in our book. The first one is we talk about something called foundations and frills. So if you’re looking for a frill, like I’d like us to be more adventurous in bed, but she is taking care of four kids—

Sheila: Well, let’s keep it with sex because sex is a really good way to explain this.

Keith: Oh, okay.

Sheila: So let’s say that you’re looking for the frill of I want to get more adventurous and do some kinky stuff.

Keith: I wasn’t going to put in that word but whatever.

Sheila: You want to be adventurous, try more things.

Keith: Right, okay.

Sheila: And she is like I just want to have an orgasm or I’m not even going to try it.

Keith: Yeah, exactly.

Sheila: Or I just want sex not to hurt.

Keith: Yeah.

Sheila: He’s looking for a frill when she doesn’t even have her foundations met because foundationally before you even look at frills when it comes to sex you have to have the basic foundations which is it’s pleasurable for both. So it’s not hurting her. It’s intimate. No one is feeling used. We’re feeling emotionally connected, and it’s mutual. We both want this. So until those three things are met, you don’t get to talk about frills.

Keith: Yeah, what do our Christian resources say? We have Christian resources. We’ve talked about where women say they feel like they’re being used by their husbands, and the authors say, “Well, he needs it so you need to give it to him.” So his need for frequency—a frill—trumps her need to feel like a human being which is foundational. That is wrong.

Sheila: Or even her need to have sex not hurt. His need for frequency trumps her need for orgasm even. Maybe there’s no pain involved but she’s not enjoying it.

Keith: So if one of you is not getting your foundational needs met, then it’s not fair of the other person to be asking for—

Sheila: Frills.

Keith: —things that are basically frills. So that’s one of the concepts we talked about.

Sheila: Yeah, another way of looking at it is something we came up with for chapter two of our book called the marriage hierarchy of needs, and we kind of based it on the idea of a psychologist named Maslow who talked about the hierarchy of needs that humans have.

Keith: Human beings have.

Sheila: So think of your hierarchy of needs as a pyramid, and the way Maslow put it is like there’s certain basic needs on the bottom, right, like food, shelter—

Keith: Water, safety—physical safety.

Sheila: Yeah, and then you move up to friendship, like nicer things, and then you move up to the top would be self-actualization, like feeling called, pursuing dreams—

Keith: Spiritual fulfillment.

Sheila: Spiritual fulfillment because you can argue where sex goes. There’s been a lot of debate of where sex goes on his hierarchy of needs, but basically no one is worried about sex when you’re being chased by a bear. So like you’ve got to do the basic foundational stuff first and then you get to move up, and we think the same thing is true of marriage which means—and we divide our hierarchy—our pyramid into three parts. So the bottom is just surviving, like nothing really super good is happening. We’re just trying to get through the day, and then once you’re over that and you move up, you get to living. Like oh we’re actually enjoying life. We can start paying more attention to what things will make our life better. We’re out of that survival mode, and then you hopefully what you want for all of us is to move up to thriving where you really feel seen and heard in your marriage. You get to explore all kinds of things. You get to explore your callings. You get rest and rejuvenation, all of these wonderful things, right? So think of those as the three tiers. So survival. When you’re in the survival mode, what are you worried about?

Keith: That’s like paying the rent, making sure the kids are getting their clothes on and getting to school on the bus, stuff like that.

Sheila: Yeah, just people—kids need to be fed. People need to be fed.

Keith: House needs to be—

Sheila: Laundry is done. House needs to be livable, not clean or anything, but basically we’re just trying to get through the day, and we’re just trying to get basic needs met. We’re not thriving as individuals or a couple. We may not be getting enough rest. We’re probably not exercising, like this is just basic survival. We have no time for ourselves.

Keith: And it’s hard to be in that sort of a mindset, to be in that sort of a place, but when you’re together it’s easier than when you’re apart. When one of you is in that level and the other person is a level up, that’s really tough.

Sheila: Yeah, because the next level—living—that’s when you get to explore. What kind of job do I really want? Like what church am I happier with? Like you get to ask these fundamental questions.

Keith: Some of your preferences get met.

Sheila: Your preferences get met, and then in thriving, it’s like you really feel like I am where I’m supposed to be. The problem is—

Keith: You get to experience everything life has to offer.

Sheila: —when one person gets to experience everything life has to offer but they do it at the expense of their spouse who is now in the survival mode. And the best example of that—

Keith: Yeah, exactly because it can sometimes be that you don’t even realize it. You don’t realize that you’re living on a higher level than your spouse, and that’s neglectful, and you should be recognizing that that’s the case and trying to help it. But sometimes exactly like you said, by us trying to move up and get our needs met, we sometimes push our spouse down lower. Like for instance in the story of Brenda and Mark, if Brenda starts giving Mark more sex because that’s what Mark is asking for, that’s going to kill their sex life because she’s going to become increasingly resentful. He’s not going to deal with the pornographic style of relating that’s causing him to act like this because he’s going to be getting that little itch scratched so he’s not going to be driven to do the self-work to be a better man. And they’re going to get worse and worse and worse. So if you’re living at different levels, you need to get down in the trenches with the person at the lower level and help both of you come up.

Sheila: Yeah, the best story I ever heard is the life of A. W. Tozer who is a very famous Christian writer, a very contemplative, was apparently a great preacher. But he and his wife had a difficult marriage because he would spend hours and hours and hours in prayer and meditation, didn’t spend any time with the kids, didn’t even recognize some of the kids. He was not an involved father at all. He really believed in giving all the money back to the church so they lived in poverty which was fine for him as he walked to work, but his wife had to wrangle like six kids on public transit, do grocery shopping, and everything. It was really difficult for her. And he died early. She remarried. And someone once asked her how do you feel about your husbands? And her reply was, “Aiden loved Jesus, but Leonard loves me.” And I thought that was so telling. Aiden loved Jesus, but Leonard loves me. You don’t want to be the kind of spouse that someone would say that about.

Keith: No, well, even Paul talks about the married man is concerned about the things of the earth, how he can please his wife. I think it’s lovely that people want to serve God, but the Bible itself says if you’re in a marriage, then you have a primary responsibility to your spouse.

Sheila: You do.

Keith: And that’s God-given, right?

Sheila: Yeah, but so often what’s happening is that they aren’t on an even playing field, and one person gets to live this much easier life at the expense of the other. And that’s what Emerson Eggerichs didn’t see, and that’s why these women were reacting to that. It’s like no he already has it really good. We need to get back—the women were saying we need to get to an even playing field, and that’s not there. And I asked on our patron group about some examples of where women are being asked to do way more than men are in marriage, and it’s imbalanced. Someone sent me these quotes from The Power of a Praying Wife, which are so good. So this is the book by Stormie Omartian, O’Martin, I don’t know how you say her last name.

Keith: Omartian. I think it’s Omartian.

Sheila: Okay, sold like 10 million copies, super best-selling book that’s used in Bible studies, and we’ve done a number of podcasts on it, and I have a one sheet download about all the problems with it. It scored very badly on our healthy sexuality rubric, and we talk about it in The Great Sex Rescue, but I want to read you this. She writes, “Even if you the wife are the only one working and your husband stays home to keep house and tend to the kids, you will still be expected to see that the heart of your home is a peaceful sanctuary, a source of contentment, acceptance, rejuvenation, nurturing, rest, and love for your family. On top of this, you will also be expected to be sexually appealing, a good cook, a great mother, physically, emotionally, and spiritually fit. It’s overwhelming to most women, but the good news is that you don’t have to do it all on your own. You can seek God’s help.” This is unironic.

Keith: Yeah, so the context is just talking about this is the way it is for women. If you’re a woman even if your husband is at home and you’re the one earning the money, you still have to do all these things—be appealing, be sexually appealing to him, create a home of—create a haven of peace for him, all this stuff. She is saying all this stuff unironically. This reminds me of the America Ferrera speech from the Barbie movie. So spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the Barbie movie, but basically all the Barbies get caught up in patriarchy, and they’re all like serving the men and losing all of their ability to actually function as adults. And they say this to women and they snap out and say, “Oh, yeah, that’s not fair. That’s not right,” and it snaps them out of this. She’d be immune. She thinks that that’s normal.

Sheila: She thinks this is normal.

Keith: She thinks this is what it’s supposed to be like for women, and no sense of the injustice of that.

Sheila: And then she goes on to say—oh, and then I love that bit, “You can do it with God’s help.” Never with your husband’s help. So your husband is staying at home, even if you work and he’s looking after the home, remember that the home is still your responsibility to do that.

Keith: Yeah, because if your husband helps you, you’re kind of like not doing your job.

Sheila: Yeah, anyway, and then she says, “If your husband is a hard worker, make sure he has times of rest and enjoyment to do things that entertain him and give him a reprieve from the weight of a lifetime of supporting a family. Men need periods of refreshing. If they don’t have them, they are prone to burnout and temptations of all kinds.”

Keith: Right, okay, so women apparently you don’t need times of refreshing and relaxation.

Sheila: Right, even though women suffer from stress at twice the rate of men in today’s society.

Keith: It’s crazy. So men need this.

Sheila: But women don’t.

Keith: Why can’t we just talk about human needs because the whole point is to set it up to be unfair. That’s the whole point is the reason we set up that these are men’s needs, these are women’s needs, is so that we can maintain an unfair system because if we just said there are human needs, and some of them are more pressing than others. Some of them are survival level. Some of them are living level, and some of them are thriving level, and we should evaluate those as a couple, and we should work together so that we both get all of our needs and the needs of the marriage met, wouldn’t that be a lot healthier?

Sheila: It would be.

Keith: But the problem is we would have to give up all the benefits of men getting what they want.

Sheila: Yes, yes, and that’s unacceptable.

Keith: Wouldn’t that be a shame?

Sheila: So then—so as we’ve—in chapter two of The Marriage You Want we talk about this, about how compromise isn’t the answer, and how we give you this tool of the marriage hierarchy of needs. We’re basically saying look your marriage exists on the lowest tier that one of the spouses is on so if one of you is enjoying tier three benefits like you get to have the rest and reprieve, you get to do what you feel is your calling at work like A. W. Tozer did, you get all these things, but your spouse is in the survival mode, your marriage is in the survival mode. Your marriage is at the lower level whichever the lowest level is that you both are at, and the solution is for both of you to get to that level, and then both of you work hard at that level so that you can help.

Keith: Yeah, and to be aware of where your spouse is actually at. The number of times we’ve heard from people who like went to a marriage conference and the husband’s response is, “Well, I don’t really want to go, but she wants me to so I guess I’d better.” And then come to find out the wife went with the attitude of if this doesn’t work, I’m done, and he had no clue. He was going, well, whatever let’s go. He had no clue that she was on the brink because he’s not paying attention. It happens the other way too sometimes. Sometimes it’s wives that are not really realizing how much their husband is giving to the relationship, and they’re unaware of that. If you want to be a team, you need to realize you need to check in which each other. Where are you? What level are you in right now because I want to be there with you?

Sheila: Okay, side note here about marriage conferences. I get so many DMs asking our church is hosting this marriage conference. Is it a toxic one? And most of them I’ve never heard of so I can’t tell you, but what I will tell you is go back and listen to the podcast from around two weeks ago where we talked about the five-point plan that most evangelical marriage resources have and it explains why the advice is toxic. And basically we start from a faulty premise that all kinds of other toxic things follow from that in order to support the toxic premise, and they lead to negative outcomes. And if the marriage conference is built on that faulty premise which I would say 95% of evangelical marriage conferences are, then it’s not going to be a helpful conference. So that’s just my take whatever conference it is. Okay, so we have a concept that I think explains why A. W. Tozer thought he could be in tier three while his wife was in survival mode and that this was okay. That concept is entitlement. And we’re going to bring on Joanna to have our little stats quoted with Joanna about entitlement. We are back with another stats moment with Joanna. Hello, Joanna.

Joanna: Hi, everybody.

Sheila: So let’s talk about entitlement because we measured that.

Joanna: So we didn’t actually quite measure entitlement because that would be quite difficult to do. We measured all sorts of other things that are obviously going to be extremely correlated with entitlement. The problem was that to measure entitlement it would be a lot easier to do it if we had interview data because a lot of it is not just about behavior, it’s about intent. And that gets tricky to do with multiple choice questions, but what we did measure is one of my favorite questions—and you can tell it’s my favorite question because it shows up in every book we will ever do—we will always have this question. But it’s spouses who believe that their opinions don’t matter as much as their spouses. And obviously if you don’t think that your opinions matter as much as your spouse’s do in your marriage, then bad things happen to the shock of zero people. Okay, that’s what we showed over and over again. It’s a bad thing. But this time, we got to take it up a notch because we didn’t just measure women or just measure men and we didn’t also just measure men and women. We did a matched pair survey, and we have been talking about this as a group since I think 2019.

Keith: You’ve been very excited.

Joanna: I’ve been very excited about this because what you do in a matched pair survey is you match people up. You pair them. It’s a matched pair. So you’re looking at wives and their husbands.

Sheila: Yes.

Joanna: Or a matched pair survey could be looking at somebody you take their bloodwork January 1 and you look at that same person’s bloodwork on April 1. That would also be a matched pair data from a statistical perspective, but in our case, we looked at married couples. And we matched them up. And we were able to do that and then to compare if one of them says my opinions don’t matter as much as my spouse’s in my marriage, what does the other person say?

Keith: Yeah, yeah.

Sheila: Right, right.

Keith: I thought it was really neat how you did this because you actually managed to match people—like keep all the data anonymized still because everyone took the survey. Everything was anonymous. Nobody knew what anybody else said.

Joanna: I didn’t have anybody’s email because I didn’t want people to—we’re asking such intimate stuff. We didn’t want people to be worried that we were going to be able to identify them and then change their answers because observer bias is a real thing when it comes to survey research. Anyway—

Sheila: And the spouses also didn’t know how each other answered.

Keith: Yeah, that’s what I was getting at.

Sheila: That was the big thing because you don’t have to be scared that like my husband is going to know—

Keith: Be honest. Say what the reality is.

Joanna: Yeah, yeah, so if one spouse believed that their opinions don’t matter as much as their spouses, the other spouse was 2.8 times more likely to also believe that their opinions don’t matter as much as their spouses.

Keith: And we had a lot of marriages where both people cared more about their own opinions, but also their spouse cared more about their opinions.

Joanna: So they felt that their spouse cares more about—yeah. It creates this—a cycle.

Sheila: Okay, and we explained what we think that means in The Marriage You Want, but Keith and I are now going to talk about it together.

Keith: Yes.

Sheila: So thank you, Joanna. Okay, so why is it that if you feel your opinions aren’t being heard in marriage, your spouse is so much more likely to also say that their opinions are not heard in marriage too? Do two selfish people just happen to marry each other? Is that what’s going on?

Keith: Well, it’s possible. I mean I think the other thing too is if you’re the kind of person who has an overinflated idea of what you deserve in the marriage, you’re going to feel like you’re not getting your share even when you’re getting more than your share.

Sheila: Like Mark.

Keith: Like Mark.

Sheila: Like Mark and Brenda’s story.

Keith: It’s like that whole thing. When you’re used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. That concept. If you’re used to getting more and now you’re expected to be a true, equal partner, that’s going to feel like you’re being asked to pull more than your share because it’s a lot more than you’re used to doing. But you’re actually just being asked to do your share.

Sheila: Yeah, and a lot of us feel like we shouldn’t have to work for something. Like we are entitled to something.

Keith: Yeah, there’s a reason why I don’t have to do this.

Sheila: There’s a reason why I get these benefits that my spouse will provide me even if I don’t do any work, and we can have all kinds of reasons for feeling entitled. Some of them are deeply psychological like I had such a terrible childhood. I am owed, like the universe owes me. God owes me. I am owed a great marriage. I am owed not having to work so much because I worked so much in the past or another one might be God promised me that I would be able to do this or I feel a real calling from God for this so you can’t not give it to me because then you’re going against God.

Keith: Yeah, and I think a lot with sex it becomes a big thing with evangelical teaching too right the concept of this purity culture message that if you abstain before you’re married, when you’re married, God will give you the sex life of your dreams. And then you get married, and you actually have to work those things out, and it’s like you feel robbed that I’m not getting what I want. And so instead of saying oh I guess this is going to be harder. We’re going to have to work together on this as a couple. It’s like I married you because it was going to be amazing, and you’re going to fix my porn problem, and you’re not. You feel like you’re hard done by because—

Sheila: Yeah, because you’re not getting—but it can even be in other areas like even something like homeschooling.

Keith: Right.

Sheila: And we talked about this in The Marriage You Want too. We give this specific example.

Keith: That’s a specific story.

Sheila: Is some people feel really called by God to homeschool, and I was homeschooled or maybe I wasn’t, but I always wanted to, and I want to give my kids the best. And so we need to homeschool, but the finances aren’t there for you to do it or there could be all kinds of reasons. And so yes, you might feel called to this, but if it’s not practically working for your family, the rent does still need to get paid.

Keith: Yeah, and a lot of these like sort of gendered tropes that we have in the church too like the man is supposed to provide and the wife is supposed to give—submit to him and all that kind of stuff so therefore men get entitled because they feel they have the right to their house being cleaned for them, and that kind of stuff. Women also feel like I’m the stay-at-home mom. I have the right—he should be making more money. He should be providing better for us. You can each get into entitlement with that.

Sheila: Yeah, and just in our society, I’m entitled to a nice car, a nice house, like we’re all entitled to all these things, right?

Keith: Yeah.

Sheila: And so what’s wrong with my life?

Keith: Where if you were a team, you wouldn’t have that problem as much because you’d be checking each other’s entitlement.

Sheila: Right, exactly, but when we have these entitlements, it actually makes us treat our spouse badly, and that’s the point that we’re trying to make here because if you—

Keith: And you don’t even realize that. You think you’re the one that’s hard done by.

Sheila: Yes.

Keith: As you’re being unfair to your spouse, you still feel like you’re suffering.

Sheila: Yeah, so Mark goes out and plays pool until 11:00 pm.

Keith: And feels sorry for himself.

Sheila: And feels sorry for himself because Brenda was mad at him about not calling the babysitter, and Brenda didn’t understand what he was going through. But meanwhile he’s leaving Brenda with the kids. That’s major entitlement, right?

Keith: It’s so much easier to live in that sense of entitlement than to actually look inside and go like am I being unfair here?

Sheila: Am I the problem?

Keith: Yeah.

Sheila: Yeah, am I the problem? And oh no, are we the baddies? Where does that come from? Are we the baddies?

Keith: That’s—

Sheila: The Black Adder?

Keith: No, it’s not. Not Fry and Laurie. It’s Webb—it’s a British comedian.

Sheila: Oh, yeah, the Webb guy.

Keith: David Webb says it in—

Sheila: Are we the baddies? Like we need to ask ourselves that because all of us can be prone to—this is going to bother you now, isn’t it?

Keith: Yeah, Mitchell and Webb.

Sheila: Mitchell and Webb.

Keith: Mitchell and Webb thing.

Sheila: All of us can be prone to entitlement and so we need to watch, and the results of entitlement usually are one of us is living on a higher tier and pushing the other one down. So that thing that we think we are owed is pushing the other one down so that we can enjoy a higher tier, but we think we’re owed this.

Keith: Yeah, and that can happen to either people, but the problem is that when you have a belief system which says that men are supposed to be above women and women are supposed to not confront men, you’re creating an environment where entitlement can thrive for men. So that when people then call men out on being entitled, they get called anti-men which is what was happening with Eggerichs. He’s coming from a position of entitlement. I’m entitled to when we’re having an argument you shut up and do what I tell you. I feel entitled to do that, and why won’t you do that, woman? What is wrong with you?

Sheila: Yeah, yeah.

Keith: Instead of saying well I’m being kind of entitled.

Sheila: Yeah, I’m entitled to leave wet towels on the bed, and I get to call my wife disrespectful if she calls me out for it.

Keith: Exactly.

Sheila: Exactly so why is it that when one person feels like their opinions don’t matter the other person often does as well? It’s because the entitled person is making it so that their spouse—

Keith: My thermostat of what I deserve is set wrong.

Sheila: Exactly, exactly. So let me give you another example. We did the Mark and Brenda story. Here’s a perfect encapsulation from the book Intended for Pleasure, okay, which is one of the earliest sex books in Christendom. We looked at this one for The Great Sex Rescue too, and, “When you’re not having intercourse as frequently as you were prior to pregnancy, you should offer manual stimulation to him particularly during the period of abstention.” So hey, ladies, when you’re puking, make sure that you’re still giving him—

Keith: You just pushed a human out your hoo-ha.

Sheila: Yeah, exactly, make sure that you are still giving him manual stimulation because what really matters here is not your wellbeing as you are birthing another human being. What really matters is that he ejaculates as frequently as he did earlier, right? So his entitlement to ejaculation is greater than your need for rest, etc. Now I am not saying there is anything wrong with giving a gift during pregnancy if you want to do that. I think it’s so much better to figure out how you can each have fun during pregnancy, but this idea that she should do it is really harmful.

Keith: Yeah, and again like let’s interrogate our Christian faith when the Bible talks about like after having a baby there’s a long period of time when you’re not supposed to even touch her.

Sheila: Yes, yes.

Keith: This is in our Bible.

Sheila: Yeah, in the Old Testament.

Keith: Paul talks about abstaining. Paul talks about being single for your whole life if you can do it because that’s the ultimate. And we get from that to I can’t go six weeks after a baby because God made men that way.

Sheila: Yeah.

Keith: It’s like maybe our Christian faith is focusing on the wrong things.

Sheila: Yeah, exactly. Okay, here’s another example of entitlement, and this one I want to go into in a little bit more detail is—and this is found throughout Love and Respect—like Emerson Eggerichs talks about this over and over and over again in so many different chapters, but it’s the idea that because a husband must be willing to die for his wife—

Keith: Oh, yes.

Sheila: —therefore, his wife should give him all of these things. And it especially shows up in his chapters on hierarchy and authority so because a husband must be willing to die for his wife, he gets to be in hierarchy over her and he gets authority over her.

Keith: So this is what—I see this all the time. Women out there you don’t want to submit to your husbands. Don’t you know that your husband would take a bullet for you? Your husband would lay his life on the line for you in a second so why won’t you give him submission now, women? I heard that all the time, and it’s like okay so, his theoretical, possible sacrifice one day, now demands your practical continuous sacrifice every day. That’s what it’s saying, and that’s ridiculous.

Sheila: Yeah, yep. Let me just read—let me just read to you.

Keith: What did you find there?

Sheila: Okay, I’m going to read you an excerpt. This is a bit of a longer passage from Love and Respect. He says this, “A man who has basic goodwill will serve his wife and even die for her. There is no expectation of the wife to die for her husband. Of course, there are wives who might push the point a bit. You may have heard the story about the woman who told her husband, ‘You keep saying you’d die for me, but you never do.’ That’s just a story, of course, designed to get a smile or a laugh, but it isn’t funny when men who are willing to die for their wives are treated with contempt and no respect. One woman wrote to me to confess, ‘Although a Bible student for most of my life and a very spiritual person, I had given up. But then I read your statement that says, “Though there is more to love than dying for someone, it is a sad day when a man knows that he’d die for his wife because he loves her yet he hears her continually complain you don’t love me.” The truth hit me powerfully in my spirit like no other thing has hit me concerning our marriage. I felt the kind of shame one feels when she knows she has done terribly wrong, and she knows not even to ask for forgiveness and she knows that this one thing will take a long time to heal, but she knows this is one thing she won’t do again.’” And then he comments, “This lady gets it.” 

Keith: Oh my gosh. So I’m so horrible I shouldn’t even ask for forgiveness. She gets it.

Sheila: Yes, yes.

Keith: Let’s talk about all the heresy in that, but whatever. Oh, my gosh.

Sheila: But here’s the most basic part of this whole thing. Who is most likely to die for his family? 

Keith: Historically, globally, through the entire course of human history, who has died for the family more?

Sheila: She has because pregnancy is dangerous.

Keith: Historically.

Sheila: Historically.

Keith: Yeah, over time. Things are better now, but if you think about the vast majority of human history.

Sheila: And I know many of you listening to this are pregnant—

Keith: Don’t freak out.

Sheila: Don’t freak out. You’re going to do great. Most of us do. Overwhelmingly, a majority of us do, but pregnancy is a more dangerous part of your life. And even if you don’t die, your body can still completely change. Like I couldn’t walk for six weeks after Becca was born. My younger daughter couldn’t walk for longer than that after she had her baby this year. Pregnancy is dangerous, and yeah, historically and worldwide, it kills women. So who is it that dies for their family and that puts their bodies on the line for their family all the time?

Keith: And how many men in this day and age are going to have a call to actually physically die for their wife? So it’s like I said earlier it theoretically might happen so you need to serve me continuously every day. Like come on. Give me a break. That’s crazy.

Sheila: Yeah, because I might one day have to die for you, you need to die for me every day.

Keith: Yeah, because I feel in my heart I would die for you, therefore you should give this to me. But honestly if you really honestly would die for this person, why can’t you put the towels in the hamper yourself?

Sheila: Yeah.

Keith: I would die for you. I just can’t abstain from sex for six weeks with you when you have a baby. Really? How sincere is that?

Sheila: Yeah, okay, let me read some more of what he said.

Keith: I’m going to be angrier then.

Sheila: Yeah, this is how the chapter on hierarchy opens, okay? “Another desire God built into the man is to protect and provide for his wife and family and if necessary to die for them. This desire to protect and provide is part of the warp and woof of a man. An obvious example is life insurance. In the United States alone, billions upon billions are spent on life insurance premiums bought mostly by men. Why? Because of their instinct to provide. They feel a sense of security and restfulness knowing their families will be taken care of if they die.”

Keith: Yeah, that’s crazy.

Sheila: And so because of this, he gets to be in hierarchy over, and then he says, “The problem many women have today including Christian wives is that they want to be treated like a princess but deep down they resist treating their husbands like the king.”

Keith: This is what drives me crazy because this whole idea of being a provider and protector—I think that really does resonate with a lot of men, and I think a lot of men do really feel that. And guys like Emerson Eggerichs have destroyed it for us because they’ve used that as a justification to put themselves in authority over and control and dominate women. So women have now learned protect and provide are dangerous words. Protect and provide are words—if a man uses those words, I need to be scared.

Sheila: Yeah, yeah.

Keith: That’s where we’re at. It makes me so upset. It makes me so angry.

Sheila: What do women need protection from anyway? It’s other men. So how about you change—the best way that men could protect women is to change the culture so that it isn’t so dangerous to women—

Keith: If you want to protect, yeah.

Sheila: We know what makes church dangerous to women. Women and girls who grow up in church who speak modesty messages are more likely to be sexually assaulted in those churches. So if you want to protect your daughters from sexual assault, you will push back against the modesty message. Like if you’re really, truly interested in protecting women, then push back against the messages that hurt women.

Keith: Yeah, including that men are supposed to be over top of women by God’s design.

Sheila: Yeah, listen to this. This is in the authority chapter again. The Question to Wives. “Have I gone on record that because he has the primary responsibility for me even to die for me that I recognize him as having primary authority over me? Do I let him be the leader?” So because he is responsible to die for me even though I am more likely to die for him, do I let him be my authority? And it’s like this is all so backwards. It’s all so backwards, and this leads to entitlement. It really does.

Keith: Instead of having a relationship which is built on partnership and teamwork.

Sheila: And at the end of chapter two, we ask like how do you get out of the entitlement mindset, and over and over again what we found on the peer reviewed literature on how to defeat entitlement is that you approach marriage with a teamwork mindset. So instead of asking what do I need, we say what is the state of our marriage? And what does our marriage need right now? And that’s what we’re asking people to do is stop thinking in terms of compromise—what does he need, what do I need—and start thinking in terms of where is our marriage honestly at? Where are we living on that hierarchy of needs? Who is one what tier and what can we do to make sure that we both get to live and even eventually thrive? How do we get there? So let’s start taking an honest look at us as partners, as teammates, instead of all this craziness because it is craziness.

Keith: Absolutely.

Sheila: It is craziness.

Keith: Better for men, better for women, better for families, better for the world.

Sheila: And, guys, if you want to take your wife out to dinner, make sure you call the babysitter, you know. Just arrange for the babysitter. Super easy. Thank you. So thank you for joining us on The Bare Marriage podcast. Please be sure to preorder The Marriage You Want. It helps us so much. Preorders help us. If you’re going to get it anyway, order it now because that makes sure that Amazon has enough in stock so that when it does go crazy on launch day, they don’t run out. It means that other bookstores will buy it because other bookstores look at what is the top new releases in all the different categories, and they tend to put stuff in stock that’s near the top so the more you preorder, the more other bookstores will buy it, and the more people will see the book. So you really help get the word out, and you can be our partners in this.

Keith: Yeah, and read all of it. It’s a good book.

Sheila: It’s an awesome book. The Marriage You Want. It’s like The Great Sex Rescue but on steroids.

Keith: Except that it’s much more positive. It’s not about tearing things down. It’s just about hey let’s start with good, Christian principles about mutual service, and golden rule stuff, and working together.

Sheila: Yeah, and build a healthy relationship from the ground up. It’s a super fun book. You’ll love it, and it comes with a study guide as well which has premarital curriculums, small group curriculum, questions to work through with your spouse.

Keith: The study guide is awesome. The personal growth exercises in it are just phenomenal.

Sheila: So take a look at the study guide as well, and we will be back here next week as we look at another aspect of The Marriage You Want. And take a look at the podcast notes as well for the links that we mentioned. We’ll see you later.

Keith: Bye.