Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 23

MARRIAGE ON HARD MODE: How Gender Role Ideas Can Backfire

What if our underlying understanding of gender roles makes marriage harder than it needs to be?

We’re talking about doing marriage on hard mode in the month of September–how so often we can make our lives harder, and thus make marriage harder, than it needs to be. And we’re urging everyone to go back to basics and strip away the stuff that isn’t necessary and try to do marriage on as easy a mode as possible!

Today, let me ask you: What is your fundamental understanding of the dynamics of the relationship between a husband and a wife?

There are two main of viewing marriage in the Christian tradition: Marriage as a hierarchy, and marriage as teamwork.

Marriage as a Hierarchy

The husband and wife are made with different roles, and the husband’s role is to lead, while the wife follows her husband. When they can’t decide something, the husband is responsible for making the final decision, and will be held accountable by God for it.

Marriage as Teamwork

The husband and wife, in unity, follow Jesus together. The goal is mutuality and unity, and if they don’t agree, then they’ll pray and seek God’s voice. They are both created to obey God and serve each other. 

Both views use the same Scripture, but interpret it differently.

Now, let me ask you: Based on those two views, what is the expectation of how the genders will tend to relate?

In marriage as hierarchy, the underlying assumption is that there will be disagreement, and the husband will make the final decision.

In marriage as teamwork, the underlying assumption is that, with prayer, you can be unified and work it out together.

One view sees marriage as a battle of wills where the husband’s opinion triumphs; the other sees marriage as mutuality where you seek God’s will together. (I know that’s a simplification, but that seems to be the end result of these teachings).

Okay, now let’s imagine how this plays out with a couple who gets married.

They go through the normal ups and downs of adjusting to marriage. She feels like he paid more attention to her before they were married; he feels like she is more critical since they got married.

She feels like he is hanging out with the boys too much, going out to hang out with his friends on Fridays and Saturdays, and not spending time with her. She brings this up, but he says he’s tired after the work week and he needs this to wind down.

What might a woman in a “marriage as hierarchy” mentality think?

I guess this is an opportunity for me to submit to my husband and love him, because he says this is what he needs, and my role is to support him. So she may say nothing and go on being lonely.

What might a woman in a “marriage as teamwork” mentality think?

Well, this isn’t good! We’re growing apart from each other and I’m lonely. We need to work this out and figure out good guidelines of when we’ll have “me” time and when we’ll have “us” time so that our relationship is the priority. 

You see, in one scenario you feel as if you’re supporting the marriage by giving in to what he wants; in the other you feel as if you’re supporting the marriage by figuring out what will build intimacy and make you feel close. The aim in the marriage as hierarchy relationship is to follow the husband; the aim in the marriage as teamwork is to build intimacy.

This is one of the reasons that, in our survey of 20,000 women for The Great Sex Rescue we found that in marriages where he makes the final decision, even if he consults with her first, the divorce rate increases for 7.4 times, and wives are far less likely to feel heard or as if their opinion matters in marriage.

I realize this is an oversimplification, and things may be different for individual couples. But the simple fact is that the emphasis in both marriages is very different. One aims for intimacy by considering both people’s needs; one aims for unity by the wife deferring to the husband. But as we found in our survey, when women feel as if their opinions don’t matter as much as their husbands’ opinions do, bad things happen. But when women feel as if their opinions matter as much, things turn around! Here’s a chart of some of our findings that appears in chapter 2 of The Great Sex Rescue:

When we think of marriage as hierarchy, we often assume that marriage is full of disagreements.

After all, if the definition of submission is letting him make the decision when we disagree, then it’s assumed you’re going to disagree a lot. As one woman told me on Twitter last week: “My pastor told me that submission only counts when I disagree with my husband’s decision.”

So unless they’re in disagreement, she can’t submit.

This is a misunderstanding of submission. In Ephesians 5:21, all believers are told to submit to one another. Submission is not about decision-making but about serving (as Jesus clearly laid out in Matthew 20:25-28). Then in verse 22, when women are told to submit, the verb “submit” isn’t even there. It’s inferred from verse 21, meaning that it takes on the same connotation in verse 22 directed to wives as it does in verse 21. It can’t mean one thing in verse 21–serve one another–and something else in verse 22–let him decide–especially if the verb only appears in verse 21.

Submission is about serving, not allowing someone to lead, or else verse 21 would make no sense. I encourage you to read my whole submission series for more on this.

When we assume, though, that marriage is full of disagreements, then when we’re upsest at our spouse, or we feel hurt, or we’re just not happy, we may assume that this is just normal marriage. This is what we have to learn to adjust to. And so we take things that are highly solvable, like normal communication problems, and elevate them to a moral issue of her deferring and submitting to him. Instead of working it out and building unity, her needs are suppressed and it’s assumed that the couple is just having normal disagreements.

If, on the other hand, you assume that marriage is about feeling close and having unity, then when these things come up, you think, “well, that’s odd! We better get to the bottom of this and fix it!” And you’re more likely to attack it head on.

Often when I talk about this, people will say, “Oh, but you need someone to make the final decision!”, as if they’ve just played the trump card.

How can I argue with that, after all?

But I just say, “Well, I’ve been married 30 years, and we’ve always just worked it out. We pray more, we talk more, we don’t do anything until we’re in agreement, we seek other advice.” And we figure it out. If you let him make the decision, then how often are you taking a short-cut? How often could you have worked that out if you just prayed longer or talked longer?

Here’s how I introduced the chapter on this in my book 9 Thoughts that Can Change Your Marriage:

From 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage

Unfortunately, instead of understanding this teamwork dynamic, we often see submission in terms of obedience. I was discussing this idea recently with my friend and fellow marriage conference speaker Sharol. Using the “obey your husband” definition of submission, she realized that in her whole four-decade-long marriage, she had submitted only once. On that occasion, her husband felt called to a particular ministry that required relocating to another city. She didn’t feel that calling, but she knew it was important to him, so she decided to go. Within a few months she felt the calling too…

Usually in the marriage, though, when Sharol and her husband don’t agree, they work through it until they do. And they’ve tackled big issues: whether she would quit her full-time job; who should be the stay-at-home parent; whether to pursue a pastoring opportunity. They wanted to agree, so they wrestled together until they did.

I don’t understand why some women take pride in saying, “I let him make all the decisions, even if I think he’s wrong.” If you think your husband is wrong, you have an issue in your relationship. A disagreement by definition means that one of you—or both of you—is not listening to God. Wouldn’t it be better, and more in line with Scripture, to do as Sharol and her husband, Neil, do: wrestle it through together, pray fervently together and individually, and seek counsel until you’re on the same page? If you’re always deferring to your husband without wrestling and talking things through, then you could easily prevent oneness, not enhance it.

If you want a healthier way to build unity, please see 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage instead. 

Do you see how our underlying beliefs about marriage can influence our ability to grow oneness?

Assume conflict is normal and is resolved by her deferring to him, and you may not tackle things that come up in marriage that build distance. Assume that unity is normal and is resolved by talking and praying together and wrestling through together, and you’re more likely to tackle anything that hinders unity. 

So let me ask: Could your fundamental beliefs about marriage mean that you’re doing marriage on hard mode? And how could seeing marriage as teamwork change that? 

Are you PeaceKEEPING or PeaceMAKING?

There’s a huge difference between the two. And if you don’t get it right–you’ll never be able to feel truly intimate in your marriage.

There’s a better way!

Learn more!

What do you think? Can gender roles backfire? Or do you think they’re necessary? Let’s talk in the comments!

Posts in the Marriage on Hard Mode SeriesPodcast: Are We Making Marriage Harder Than It Needs To Be?6 Ways You May Be Doing Marriage on Hard ModeIdentifying the One Thing that's holding back your marriageAre You Doing Too Much as a Family?Why Downsizing Can Be Worth ItPodcast: Are We Doing Sex on Hard Mode? 10 Red Flags about Marriage and SexHow Gender Roles Can Make Marriage Harder than it Needs to beDealing with the Primary Breadwinner Stereotype so it doesn't hurt your marriage

And SIGN UP for my emails to get our end-of-the-series activity to work through this with your spouse! 

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Why Downsizing Can Be Worth It

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The post MARRIAGE ON HARD MODE: How Gender Role Ideas Can Backfire appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Does it Matter Who is the Primary Breadwinner?

We’re used to thinking of the man as being the primary breadwinner in the family. But does it matter if it’s the woman?

Increasingly among millennials the wife earns more than the husband. And the number of stay-at-home dads is increasing as well.

My husband is a pediatrician, and in our town all of the other pediatricians are women. In many cases, their husbands stay home with the kids because she’s making a lot more money and it just makes sense.

I also have several friends who are nurses and make a good salary where they are the ones who work and the dad stays at home.

Should this matter?

I don’t think so. I think each family should do what they want to do–and that’s what over 60% of you said in our survey of 20,000 women too!

At the same time, I think you should endeavour to make things work as a family the way you want them to work.

If she’s making more money because he’s pursuing his dream of music or of writing a novel or he can’t get motivated to look for a decent paying job, and so she has to work when she desperately wants to be home with the children–that’s an entirely different situation. Who stays home with the kids should be decided based on what makes the most sense not based on necessity because one person is lazy or unmotivated. 

I have also known women who work full-time but have the kids in daycare because he doesn’t care for them well if they’re at home.

Basically, my philosophy is that both people should work hard to help the family in the best way they can in a situation that they both decide works best. So whoever is home with the kids (if someone is) will likely do the bulk of the housework and grocery shopping and errands and planning, but both of you should still talk through emotional labor and mental load and ensure everyone does daily grind tasks and everyone has time off.

And check out our emotional labor and mental load series for more!

If you don’t want to do marriage on hard mode–then stop thinking “roles” and start thinking “team”

One of our findings from our survey of 20,000 women for The Great Sex Rescue was that ACTING OUT traditional gender roles wasn’t a problem–but BELIEVING YOU SHOULD was. If you believe that a husband should be the primary breadwinner and the wife should stay at home, then your marital satisfaction goes down. When we make decisions based on stereotypes rather than based on ourselves as individuals, things go haywire, as we explained:

From The Great Sex Rescue

Here’s an interesting finding from our survey: Women who do not believe traditional gender roles are moral imperatives feel more heard and seen in their marriages. In fact, women who act out the typical breadwinner-homemaker dynamic also feel more seen if they see it as a choice and not a God-given role.

Does this mean it’s wrong to have a breadwinner and a stay-at- home spouse? Nope. All three of us writing this book specifically chose careers that would allow us to be home with our kids. But when we unquestioningly buy into gender roles, we create a strange dynamic in marriage in which we view each other as categories rather than as people. We are all made with unique strengths, giftings, and callings, and these do not always fit with traditional gender roles. When a couple makes decisions based on who God created them to be versus who gender roles say they should be, it allows them to live in God’s plan for their lives while feeling known and valued. Trying to live up to gender roles can mean that we’re not fully ourselves; we’re wearing a mask, and sometimes that mask doesn’t fit.

Intimate sex requires that you feel as if your spouse values you not just for what you can give them but for who you are. Sex can’t be about saying, “I want you,” if who you are is being covered up by an expectation of who you should be. In our focus groups, women consistently reported that granting themselves and their husbands permission to live outside of traditional gender roles revitalized their marriages—and their sex lives.

Think of yourself as a team that needs to provide for the family in all ways–financially, emotionally, with caretaking–and then allocate the tasks as makes best sense for you as a couple.

That’s doing marriage on easy mode.

This month, we’re talking about how couples often do marriage on hard mode–they make marriage harder than it needs to be. And this is one way that we do this: by expecting that we’re somehow doing marriage and family “wrong” if we don’t live up to traditional gender roles.

So many of our Christian resources tell women that men have a deep emotional need to provide–adding additional burdens to women who are the primary breadwinner.

Love & Respect and For Women Only, for instance, both talk about the deep emotional need that men feel to be the providers, and neither helps women deal with the very common situation where a man is lazy and refuses to work.

Here’s how Emerson Eggerichs describes men’s emotional need to work and provide:

How deeply men value their inborn desire to work and achieve is graphically illustrated in two friends of mine who faced the threat of cancer. Both men calmly faced death and accepted what they thought would be their end. Through all the chemotherapy and accompanying problems, their optimism and faith remained strong. In the end, both men survived, but both still suffered terribly from a common foe. One of the men chose to sell his company to allow himself to serve God with whatever time he had left. However, for a period of time after the sale, he found he did not know who he was without his work. He told me, “I was never depressed when dealing with cancer and possibly dying, but when I left my work, which was my identity, I went into a depression that was like nothing I had ever experienced before.”

The other man suffered horribly and was at death’s door, but somehow he, too, recovered. He returned to work, and life was wonderful, but then he lost his job. He came to see me, depressed and defeated. He told me that being out of work was harder than dying. Ironically, both of these men were more deeply affected by losing their careers than they were with facing death due to cancer.

Emerson Eggerichs

Love & Respect

What if we’re actually perpetuating emotionally unhealthy approaches to life?

It is important to want to work. Everyone should want to contribute to the family. Everyone should want to be useful. God, after all, has plans for things for us to do and accomplish that he foreordained even before the creation of the world (Ephesians 2:10). We all have a purpose.

But ultimately that purpose is about our calling in Christ. Our ultimate identity is in Christ.

Eggerichs is using this illustration to show how deeply men feel the need to provide–but this is not an example of an emotionally healthy attitude towards the deep blessing of life and calling that Christ has given us.

I’m not saying that retirement or losing one’s job is easy, but we should always see it in relation to God’s ultimate calling on our life to make a difference for Him in whatever situation He places us. By saying that losing your job is worse than death, Eggerichs is showing that he doesn’t understand what it means to live a life with Jesus as the centre.

Yes, we all need to work (women too!). We all need to make sure the family is cared for. Yes, in most families, that will involve the husband working more than the wife or earning more, because she is the one bearing the children and nursing, and often she wants to be home with the children.

But ultimately the reason we work is so that we can fulfill God’s purposes for us on earth, not so that work will fill an empty hole in our identity.

By telling women that men have an emotional need to provide, then women who are primary breadwinners bear two extra burdens

She’s already working hard, but now she learns she must do it in a way that does not make him feel emasculated, since her earning more is impinging on his emotional need. She must go out of her way to let him feel that he is still the main one leading the family (something that male breadwinners do not have to do). She must take on typical feminine roles at home (including doing the housework) so that he doesn’t feel emasculated. Men who work full-time do not feel as if they have to take on extra burdens at home, but most women do.

This leaves women exhausted, as The Atlantic described it:

Breadwinning wives also don’t get parity in how household chores are divvied up. As wives’ economic dependence on their husbands increases, women tend to take on more housework. But the more economically dependent men are on their wives, the less housework they do. Even women with unemployed husbands spend considerably more time on household chores than their spouses. In other words, women’s success in the workplace is penalized at home.

Aliya Hamid Rao

Even Breadwinning Wives Don’t Get Equality at Home, The Atlantic

By telling men that their primary role is to earn money, then when they don’t earn as much, they can feel lost at sea

If a guy feels like he’s less of a man if his wife makes most of the money, that isn’t going to help the family.

Maybe instead of teaching men and women how to make a man feel manly even if he’s not earning all the money, we should teach something emotionally healthy instead:

Let’s all be responsible for the family. Let’s all use our unique giftings, talents, skills and desires to provide for our family in the way that works best for us as a family. Let’s work as a team. Let’s remember that our ultimate identity is in Christ, not in what we do. Let’s not feel guilty for not fitting a mold. 

That’s one way to stop doing marriage on hard mode.

Who is the primary breadwinner in your home? Do you think it matters? What’s the best way to navigate this? Let’s talk in the comments!

Posts in the Marriage on Hard Mode SeriesPodcast: Are We Making Marriage Harder Than It Needs To Be?6 Ways You May Be Doing Marriage on Hard ModeIdentifying the One Thing that's holding back your marriageAre You Doing Too Much as a Family?Why Downsizing Can Be Worth ItPodcast: Are We Doing Sex on Hard Mode? 10 Red Flags about Marriage and SexHow Gender Roles Can Make Marriage Harder than it Needs to beDealing with the Primary Breadwinner Stereotype so it doesn't hurt your marriage

And SIGN UP for my emails to get our end-of-the-series activity to work through this with your spouse! 

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts MARRIAGE ON HARD MODE: Are You Doing Too Much Too Fast?

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The post Does it Matter Who is the Primary Breadwinner? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

PODCAST: Are You Doing Sex on HARD MODE?

Are you making sex harder than it needs to be in your marriage?

We’re in the middle of our doing marriage on hard mode series, and today we’re talking about doing sex on hard mode! (and, yes, I know that’s a double entendre).

We’ve got a lighthearted look via economics and demand and supply curves, and then a more serious look at the harmful ways we can talk about sex and porn (and obligation sex!).

Plus I have a big update that wasn’t in the actual podcast below–so listen in and scroll down!

Listen to the Podcast Here

Browse all the Different Podcasts

See the Last “Start Your Engines” (Men’s) Podcast

Or, as always, you can watch on YouTube:

 Timeline of the Podcast

0:30 The Economics of Sex
10:00 The Inputs of Sex
12:40 Misconception of Sex vs Porn
23:00 Andrew joins us to discuss the pornographic mindset
32:00 Why Porn is the USER’S problem

Are We Making “Sex” too Expensive?

Okay, this one was more tongue and cheek, and it’s really an excuse for me to use Economics 101, which I ended up having to take 3 times (!) not because I failed, but because different programs kept requiring it even though I’d already taken it.

But the thrust of the argument is this: Sex has certain “inputs”–you need to have energy; time; a place to have sex; emotional connection; etc. etc. If the “price” of those inputs rises–meaning they’re harder to get–then sex isn’t going to happen as often.

It’s actually Day 27 of 31 Days to Great Sex, and I take you though a quick quiz of the things that can make sex more “expensive” in your marriage. Sometimes when we think of it that way, it becomes easier to work on frequency. It’s not just about deciding to have sex more often, but rather addressing the things that make it harder to have sex!

Do you find it hard to talk about SEX?

Want to try new things--but don't know how to start?

No more wondering how to talk about what feels good or what you'd like to try. This fun challenge will get you talking and trying new things without the awkward.

Let's try it! Are We Talking about Porn and Sex the Wrong Way?

The largest segment of the podcast today looked at whether we’re making marriage harder by suggesting the wrong way of handling porn use. We often see porn as a substitute for sex and vice versa: so he quits porn, but then she needs to have sex with him so it’s easier for him not to relapse.

This is dangerous thinking, and we covered these issues:

Porn use can cause betrayal trauma in the spouse–even if the spouse doesn’t know it.Often porn use is caused by trauma itself.Telling a porn addict to make a blanket promise that they will only ever ejaculate with their spouse can create a situation where the spouse feels used and degraded.Porn use can create a pornified view of sex. 

Porn use changes how the porn user understands sex and intimacy. Until this is dealt with, sex can’t stop someone, or help someone, not use porn.

We talked with Andrew Bauman about this:

Co-Founder & Director of the Christian Counseling Center: For Sexual Health & Trauma (CCC), Andrew J. Bauman is a licensed mental health counselor with a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

On today’s podcast he shares his thoughts about the pornographic style of relating. You can read more about this in his book The Psychology of Porn. 

Andrew J. Bauman

The Bigger Reason We Talked About This: Gary Thomas wrote a post claiming that your spouse can help you with a porn problem.

He published it last Friday: My Spouse Can’t Cure Me, but Can Help Me (originally titled My Wife Can’t Cure Me, but She Can Help Me).

In it, he gives many caveats that sound verbatim from The Great Sex Rescue, which Gary has read, but chose not to cite or give me credit for.

He then goes on to tell the story of Jay and Christina. Jay had a porn addiction that predated their marriage, and their marriage became virtually sexless. Seven years later they worked at improving their relationship and understanding different libidos, and he quit porn cold turkey. Then he admitted his sex addiction to Christina, and while she was horrified, they decided that she would be more available to him and that he would only ever ejaculate with her.

He found having more frequent sex helped him not to relapse.

Even though Jay had been using porn throughout his adult life, the problem was framed as Christina’s lack of empathy for Jay’s sexual needs.

The abuse recovery groups, and spouses of porn addicts groups, were very hurt by this article–and very stunned.

I know many abuse advocates (some of whom have been on the podcast) who were horrified at this article, because it does not present a proper view of porn’s effects on the spouse. It does not mention betrayal trauma or the pornified view of sex in relation to the anecdote. Though caveats are given repeatedly, the anecdote that the article features blows all the caveats out of the water, and even the conclusion of the article seems to contradict the caveats, leaving the reader confused.

The abuse community has always admired Gary Thomas because they felt that he was one of the evangelical authors that “got it” since he wrote When to Walk Away. They were very, very surprised with this article. (You can see a Facebook Live that Sarah McDugal from Wilderness to Wild and Anne Blythe from Betrayal Trauma Recovery did regarding this article; here’s a shortened version).

Many people expressed this disappointment, confusion and betrayal on Gary’s Facebook page on Friday. They were polite (I saw the comments). Some used emojis, and many pushed back, but it was actually more polite than most debates on my Facebook page. On Saturday morning Gary deleted his Facebook post (though not the blog post) and put up an announcement that a few venemous people had hijacked it and gaslit him (yes, he called survivors venemous).

He claimed that he was the one being gaslighted. To be clear, these are the kinds of comments that he deleted:

People were appalled that he had done this, and on Monday night Rebecca and I had a 90 minute conversation with Gary where we tried to help him understand how and why his article missed the mark and why the abuse community was upset. We asked him to consider that their feelings may matter, and that they may have a perspective worth listening to. After that, he did amend his Facebook post so it made reference to venemous “comments” rather than people.

We then recorded this podcast on Tuesday.

We wanted to address this topic to explain why the original article was off base, but we didn’t want to reference the article because we were hoping that he would take it down by the time this podcast went live, and if he did, then we decided we would not talk about it publicly since he had listened to survivors’ pleas.

Instead, the article is still up Thursday morning when my podcast is going live, and this is the comment that Gary has at the bottom of the article right now:

I had thought, when writing this post, that my many caveats about never blaming the wife for a spouse’s sin (which I repeated several times!) would get through, but apparently in telling the true story of one couple’s experience some came away feeling I was still saying precisely that. One couple’s experience isn’t universal, and using this example perhaps took away from the teaching portion where I was trying to make it so clear that I do not, and have not, ever blamed a spouse for their spouse’s addiction.

I’m leaving the blog post up, however, with a slightly altered and hopefully less triggering title, because it has been so misconstrued by others on their blogs and Facebook and I want people to be able to read the original for themselves. Some attackers take a sentence or two out of the blogpost, which I believe is qualified many times over elsewhere in the blog, and portray it as that’s my point—when it’s exactly the opposite of my point! I’m willing to say I wasn’t as clear as I wanted to be—this is a blogpost, not a book—so I still think if someone reads this fairly, without assuming false motives, they’ll get the point. If not, feel free to stop following the blog.

Gary Thomas

My Spouse Can't Cure Me, but Can Help Me

I can understand why Gary didn’t see the problems with how his article handled porn recovery.

Before I started diving into the research surrounding porn, I could have written something similar. What he’s saying seems like normal advice. But it’s actually not accurate because it doesn’t take into account how porn distorts the relationship–and how betrayal trauma can affect a couple.

The problem is not that Gary didn’t give enough caveats; the problem is that Gary did not talk about porn recovery properly, and left out key points. His post was actually the wrong advice.

When we teach on this, it’s incumbent upon us to listen. When the experts in the field are telling us that we have made a big error, it’s incumbent upon us not to be defensive, but again, to listen. This is doubly true when many of these experts are also victims and survivors who can explain that this is not merely a difference of opinion, but something that harms.

Deleting all comments is not listening.

Gary has not taken it down, and continues to block people on Facebook who challenge him on it and delete their comments and comment threads. I’m finding this very sad, because Gary was one of the few evangelical male authors who did consider abuse victims’ perspectives. I find it very, very sad that he is refusing to listen.

To repeat, here is the order of events:they went to him individually;He deleted their comments and accused them of being venomous and illogical;they came to me;Rebecca and I went to him individually;we gave him time to change.

And now I am letting you all know what is happening.

Again, I never would have put this in this post had Gary taken the blog post down, and I did my utmost to try to convey that this was the right thing to do. 

We hope that with the outcry about this blog post, Gary may reconsider and understand that when people are harmed by teachers, that actually matters.

UPDATE, 2:26 pm Thursday: It looks like, after all the outcry on Facebook after this post came out, Gary has finally decided to do the right thing and take down his post, so the links to it won’t work. I’m glad he’s made this decision; I’m sorry it took so long, and I had hoped it could have been done before having to bring this public.

Things Mentioned in This Podcast:The Great Sex Rescue and 31 Days to Great SexSupport our Patreon for as little as $5 a month! Help fund our peer reviewed research and new social media channels to spread our research.Join our email list!Andrew Bauman’s website, his article on the pornographic style of relating, and his book The Psychology of PornYour Sexually Addicted Spouse by Barbara Steffens–has information about betrayal traumaGary’s article “My spouse can’t cure me, but can help me“2 Hour Facebook Live with betrayal trauma experts talking about the problems with the article–and a shortened version of it

What do you think? Have you known someone affected by the pornographic style of relating? Have you seen betrayal trauma in action? Or do you like economics too? Let’s talk in the comments!

Posts in the Marriage on Hard Mode SeriesPodcast: Are We Making Marriage Harder Than It Needs To Be?6 Ways You May Be Doing Marriage on Hard ModeIdentifying the One Thing that's holding back your marriageAre You Doing Too Much as a Family?Why Downsizing Can Be Worth ItPodcast: Are We Doing Sex on Hard Mode? 10 Red Flags about Marriage and SexHow Gender Roles Can Make Marriage Harder than it Needs to beDealing with the Primary Breadwinner Stereotype so it doesn't hurt your marriage

And SIGN UP for my emails to get our end-of-the-series activity to work through this with your spouse! 

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts What Does It Mean to “Prioritize Your Sex Life”?

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How Do You Feel about Giving “Sexual Favors” While Postpartum/on Your Period?

We’ve talked before about how telling pregnant/postpartum women they should give “hand jobs” to their husbands is just icky and wrong. 

It was something we felt really strongly about, and we wanted to include in The Great Sex Rescue, but it didn’t really fit with any particular bad teaching that we had measured. So we created a separate chapter and called it “Just Be Nice” and said, “this advice doesn’t qualify as kind.”

We found other things that fit in there as well, and a chapter was born.

Here’s part of what we said in The Great Sex Rescue:

From The Great Sex Rescue

One such topic is whether or not wives “owe” their husbands sexual release during inconvenient times, like when she’s on her period or in the postpartum phase. Sheet Music, for instance, says, “The most difficult time for this man [who was tempted by porn] was during his wife’s period, because she was unavailable to him sexually. After about ten years, she finally realized that pleasing her husband with oral sex or a simple ‘hand job’ did wonders to help her husband through that difficult time.”

Leman elaborates on this advice later with,

There are times for whatever reason that a wife may choose to make use of what younger men affectionately refer to as “hand jobs.” A woman with heavy periods that last six or seven days, or who has just gotten through a pregnancy, or perhaps is simply not feeling her best, may genuinely feel that sex is more than she can handle. But with a minimum of effort, she can help her husband who feels like he’s about ready to climb the walls because it’s been so long.

Let’s think this through. Is it kind for a man to ask for a hand job when his wife is unwell? How unwell does she have to be before it’s not kind anymore? How crampy does she have to be for her physical well-being to take precedence over sexual expectations? Do we really believe that the kindness that flows from the Holy Spirit working in our lives would ask an exhausted, torn apart post-partum woman for a hand job?…

Some women have periods that cause cramping, fainting, pain, nausea, and more. Leman’s portrayal of this as a difficult time for the husband, ignoring the far more difficult physical symptoms many wives deal with, is highly problematic. Men, if your wife is feeling unwell or just plain icky, your emphasis should not be that she needs to “help her husband through that difficult time.” Just be kind. Telling a woman who is cramping and whose genitals are engorged in a way that makes touching them feel very off-putting that she should give him a hand job shows no consideration for her experience and is very unkind. Rather, be Christ to your wife and recognize that this is a difficult time for her.

I’ve talked about this on a bunch of podcasts as well–it’s just icky.

But there’s a little twist in the story that I want to get your opinion on.

i’ve read something else recently that gave the same scenario–he has sexual tension but intercourse is off the table because she’s postpartum or having a heavy period. So she gives him a “hand job” (there is no indication that this is reciprocated at all, so it is one-sided).

But it also portrays her as getting physically aroused. 

I have no doubt that giving “sexual favours”, for lack of a better term–bringing your spouse to orgasm in a way other than intercourse–can be arousing. In fact, we’ll be talking about this a little bit next month for the Sexual Confidence series. Seeing the effect you can have on your spouse can be a big boost to your confidence and can make one feel powerful! And especially if abuse is in your past, sometimes taking the reins can help someone feel more in control, and that can be a good thing.

But a very different dynamic than “he has sexual tension and she’s postpartum.”

So I’d love to know–would you find giving hand jobs during the postpartum phase or when you’re having a really heavy period arousing? (and I know some women will! That’s awesome. I just want to see how common it is).

I asked on Facebook and Twitter as well, and some really interesting and heated conversations started.

I’d really love it if marriage/sex books just simply stopped talking about the postpartum phase.

Seriously, just shut up about it.

Why do we even need to talk about it?

When she is postpartum, there should be 0 expectations on her sexually. The main need in the marriage is not for his sexual release.

Besides, a dad who is fully involved and invested will likely be almost as exhausted as the mom! And our need for sleep does come before our need for sex. If mom is absolutely exhausted, but the husband is very sexually frustrated, it could be a sign that he should be doing more with the baby to lighten her load, and take some of that exhaustion on him! 

BUT, on the other hand, some women do have bursts of hormones that make them really sexual. And women who feel hot and bothered can likely figure out something to do without a book needing to tell them to do it, because after all–she did get pregnant in the first place. She knows how this works. And she can likely figure out sexual favors too.

The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now! The only reason to talk about postpartum sex is to convince women who don’t want to do it to do it.

Nothing needs to be said to the women who DO want to do something–except maybe that you should wait for the doctor’s all clear to attempt intercourse; that many women aren’t ready even at the 6 week mark; that postpartum pain affects over 30% of women; and that you have to resume things slowly.

So I just don’t see why this is in books at all. Seriously, if you want to do it, go for it! But by talking about it so much in all these books, we set up the expectation that she WILL do it. And quite frankly, that’s a problem. And then to assume that this will actually be AROUSING for her? That’s just weird.

You may also enjoy:What if my arm hurts when I–you know! (podcast)Do I have to give sexual favors if I can’t have intercourse?10 Things to Know about Old Testament Laws and Periods

I hope one day this is a conversation we can stop having. But in the meantime, I’d love to know what you think! Why do so many books talk about this? What do you think would be the best way to talk about it?

And, of course, would you find giving a hand job while you’re postpartum arousing FOR YOU? Let me know!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts BARE MARRIAGE PODCAST: We’re Supposed to Be a TEAM!

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The post How Do You Feel about Giving “Sexual Favors” While Postpartum/on Your Period? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Why Downsizing Can Be Worth It

Downsizing sounds like a failure–we didn’t live up to our dreams.

Maybe we need to see it a different way!

This month we’re looking at doing marriage on hard mode–are we making marriage, and life, more difficult than it needs to be? And one of the biggest things that contributes stress to marriage is financial problems. So today I’d like to take a step back and ask: could downsizing help your marriage? I first ran this post a few years ago, but it stirred quite the conversation then, and I thought it might be time to revisit it–especially because so many people are moving, relocating, or doing work differently as COVID ends.

Look at this picture of a typical post-war house:

 

Small, isn’t it? And yet the majority of North American families in the 1950s lived in something that looked pretty much like that. After World War II, we radically expanded the idea of home ownership. Instead of renting, people bought these little houses, and by and large, they thrived in them.

Was it tight? You betcha. Often three bedrooms with four or five kids, so 2-3 kids would have to share a bedroom. Bunk beds became major furniture items. The living room was small, so people sat on the couch and the floor to watch TV. Kids did homework at the dining room table.

My husband grew up in a house like that: four boys, one bathroom, small kitchen, under 1000 square feet. And they survived just fine.

In fact, I’ve heard it said that the quality of sibling relationship is inversely proportional to the size of the house.

The smaller the house is, the closer kids turn out to be, because they have to play together!

I think that may be true for families as well. When we first had our children we lived in a tiny apartment in downtown Toronto. The kids would get grumpy if we stayed in that confined space too long, so everyday we’d do an errand: the library; a playgroup; the YMCA; the museum on free days. We didn’t spend money, but we got out of the house. And when we went out, the kids had my total attention. They used up a ton of energy. Then, when we got home, they’d play together better and leave me alone a bit more.

Rebecca and I in our tiny kitchen!

 

Keith with the girls in our bedroom that doubled as an office.

When we moved to Belleville and lived in a medium sized house, suddenly it was easy not to go out everyday. And I noticed we were missing something important. So we resumed our habits of daily outings.

We had a great life when we lived in a small apartment, and we were able to save in those days for a small house. But the most important thing, to me, was that we were together more.

What if you’re missing out on relationships and family time that you could have because you’re focused financially on the wrong thing?

Disposable income, you see, is directly related to expenses almost as much as it is to income. Lower the expenses, and your salary is not as much of an issue. Increase the expenses, and you have to work–a lot.

Some of the thorniest reader questions that I get on this blog have to do with work. Someone’s working 60 hours a week at two different jobs, and someone else is working full time as well to pay off debt, and they have no time together and no time with their kids. Both of them work opposite shifts and have no time for sex. They’re in so much debt that they fight all the time and the kids are picking up on the tension.

Money problems can wreck marriage.

But money problems can be the result of choices–choices that we make about what kind of life we want to live.

What if we could decide to live a smaller life? What if living small could actually help us to love much larger?

Let’s do a little thought experiment here to see what I mean. What was the quality of life like for people growing up in those tiny houses or apartments? Of course, so much depended on the family. But the size of the home was not necessarily bad because people adjusted. It was all they knew. Let’s also remember that in most parts of the world, far more people are squeezed into far smaller spaces than even that house represents. We are the strange ones, living with our huge homes. Our grandparents, in these small homes, were not strange. They were more the norm.

What did people do with less space? The kids played in the living room together, or in the basement. They didn’t hang out in their own rooms, away from their siblings. They went outside more since inside was cramped, and thus they got more exercise, even in the winter. They didn’t spend as much time on television, because families usually only had one, and sometimes Mom and Dad would want to watch their programs, and the kids had to scatter. They played board games together. They made Lego. They used their imagination.

And that was okay.

The two biggest choices that we’ll likely make that will impact our expenses are the kind of housing we want and the city we live in.

Yes, some people, no matter how they choose, will always be strapped for money. But the cost of living is so much cheaper in some cities or towns than it is in others. And often the pace of life is very different too. Can we ask ourselves big questions about what kind of life we want to lead?

When you were 13, did you love bridal magazines? Did you stare at the pictures and imagine what your own wedding would be like? Many of us did. But many of us still do–we just replace the bridal magazines with Home & Garden, and we dream of a beautifully decorated, spacious home. We want to have “arrived”.

But what if that space and luxury comes at the expense of massive amounts of your time–or your husband’s time? And what if there’s another way to peace?

Imagine how we could change the culture if we just said, “Enough!”. Enough working round the clock. Enough stress from living beyond one’s means. Enough of both of you working opposite shifts and never seeing each other. What if instead of valuing our lifestyle we valued our lives?

Now, I understand that some people are barely making ends meet on very limited income, and this post is likely not for you.

But I have known so many couples in their twenties and thirties who have bought huge houses in expensive cities when they also have massive student debt, and life is just very stressful. What if they had stayed in an apartment for ten more years–even if they weren’t building a nest egg? Wouldn’t it have been less stress? Or what if they could have moved to a cheaper city?

The Benefits of Downsizing

For some people, the best financial move you can make, and the move that would add so much less stress to your life, is to sell your home and downsize. In Canada, at least right now, real estate prices are through the roof. It is seriously a great time to downsize!

Or maybe it’s not about a home. Could you get rid of a car payment and buy a used car instead? Could you look into how to save money on your biggest monthly expenses, like electricity, insurance, utilities, car payments. Many spouses basically “earn an income” by staying at home and putting a lot of time into saving money, even on things like groceries!

Is downsizing fun? It can be! Think of it like a challenge to make the money last.

Give up some extracurricular activities with the kids, but replace it with fun family time, where you play family board games or have parties every week. Stop going out for dinner and have people over more. All of these things are “fun”.

Our society cannot go on with so many living beyond their means. We are crushed in debt at every level–personal, state, federal. We have built a beautiful society, but it is built on sand. One day it will come crashing down, as it has already begun to. That’s why, when I was raising our kids, one of my biggest aims was to teach them how not to need a lot of stuff. And they both are the best thrift store shoppers and budgeters and planners that I know!

But let’s go beyond just saving money. Let’s ask: can you change your lifestyle so that you can actually enjoy life more?Can you downsize your house so you’re not as burdened by debt?Can you move to a cheaper neighbourhood?Can you move to a whole different city where the cost of living is much lower?Can you or your husband stop working an insane job and start a small business that you’ve always wanted to?Can you drastically reduce your expenses so that you don’t need to do the shift work anymore?

Because it all comes down to this:

Can money be the vehicle that you help others with, instead of something you’re always desperately worried about?

Again, if you’re already seriously struggling and you don’t feel you have a lot of options, this post is not for you. For many of us, though, changing our habits and our lifestyle could be what helps us live with less stress for the next few decades. Can we dream differently as a society? Can we aim for less, rather than always thinking about moving up? Can quality time with family be our measuring stick, rather than our lifestyle? Just thought I’d throw that out there to think about today!

UPDATE: A Facebook commenter made a good point here: “My ex convinced me to sell our home and pull out the equity and rent. Worst mistake ever. All it did was continue to enable his extremely poor financial decisions.” Yes! This needs to be a decision that you make so that you can be in a better financial position with more breathing room and a better life, not something where you end up doing worse. Financial abuse is a real issue, and if you’re facing this, please see a licensed counselor or call a domestic violence hotline (they can often help with abuse issues even if they aren’t physical). 

Tell me in the comments what you think. Have you ever downsized? Have you ever chosen to forego something big? What did it feel like? Let us know!

Posts in the Marriage on Hard Mode SeriesPodcast: Are We Making Marriage Harder Than It Needs To Be?6 Ways You May Be Doing Marriage on Hard ModeIdentifying the One Thing that's holding back your marriageAre You Doing Too Much as a Family?Why Downsizing Can Be Worth ItAre We Doing Sex on Hard Mode?10 Red Flags about Marriage and SexHow Gender Roles Can Make Marriage Harder than it Needs to beDealing with the Primary Breadwinner Stereotype so it doesn't hurt your marriage

And SIGN UP for my emails to get our end-of-the-series activity to work through this with your spouse! 

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts A Trick to Identifying the Issue That’s Causing your Marriage Problems

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The post Why Downsizing Can Be Worth It appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

MARRIAGE ON HARD MODE: Are You Doing Too Much Too Fast?

We do marriage on hard mode when we make life more difficult than it has to be.

We’re talking about doing marriage on hard mode this month, and last week we looked at the different ways we can make marriage harder than it needs to be.

Today I want to go back to first principles, and then encourage us all to ask questions about how we’re spending our time and our money.

First principles for a fulfilling, rich life:

If you want your marriage to feel close and fulfilling, you need several things:

 

You need time to spend together to connect where you aren’t doing errands or logistical things

You need emotional energy to devote to your marriage, which means it can’t all be drained by everything else in your life. 

Both of those things require a life that isn’t filled with stress or too many demands.

Now, the problem is that life IS filled with a certain number of demands: we all need to make money; we need to care for children or other loved ones who need us; we need to look after our homes and belongings.

And some of us will have more on our plate with others, with special needs children, with sick parents, with a demanding season in our jobs.

But in general, the more that other stuff eats up your time and emotional energy, the more that your marriage will suffer.

When budgeting, we have some fixed costs and we have some variable costs. With life, we need to see things as “fixed” and “variable” too.

We’re familiar with fixed costs in budgeting: insurance, rent or mortgage, car payments, etc. are fixed. You have to pay the same amount every month.

But other costs are variable–you can choose what you spend on things like groceries, clothing, eating out, even utilities to a certain extent. Many of these categories (like “groceries”) can’t be $0, but they can vary tremendously.

You can only find savings from the variable items. You can’t save on the fixed items.

Well, the same principle applies to our lives. Our work hours are often “fixed”. The time and energy we may have to give to caregiving for family members are often “fixed”. But other things are honestly variable–things like extracurricular activities; how much you volunteer; whether you’re taking on extra studying or courses; even how you spend your free time.

The problem is that we often schedule our time with other stuff FIRST, and then our spouse gets the leftovers.

What I’d suggest this year is blocking off time for your marriage first.

That doesn’t mean that you say, “Every Thursday night is date night where we do something romantic.” But it may mean that you say, “Every Tuesday and every Friday we’ll have nothing on the calendar, and every Saturday morning we’ll do all the housework so we’re not as bothered with stuff throughout the week.” Then on Tuesday and Friday you have breathing room, which is what your marriage needs. You can hang out together, sure. But you can also just rest and recharge so that you’re able to invest in each other and be there for each other.

Ironically, when certain “fixed costs” kick in, we often ramp up the variable costs, and make things even busier.

When children come, suddenly your marriage has pressures on it like it never did before. You’re not sleeping. You’re exhausted. Pretty much every waking minute is dominated by the kids to some extent.

And yet it’s often right then that we take on more things that can add stress to a marriage.

We buy the big house that means we have to work harder to pay for it–and often we move out of an apartment in the heart of everything where we could walk places to the suburbs where suddenly we’re more isolated.

We sign children up for all kinds of extracurricular activities that eat into our schedules and our time together.

We take on more roles at work because now we need the money more.

it’s not just kids that make life busier; it’s all of life.

And that’s okay–as long as those are decisions you’re actually making wisely. But often we feel pushed into these things without necessarily picturing what our daily lives will look like once we’ve taken that plunge. It’s not always a bad idea to spend the first few years of the children’s lives with less money in smaller apartments where you also have fewer work hours and less outside stress. It’s a trade-off.

You may also enjoy:Do Kids’ Schedules Make Your Family Life too Crazy?Do You Have a Vision for Your Family? Not all fixed costs are actually fixed.

I’ve shared this story before in 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage and in my post on how Keith and I started to grow apart a few years ago.

Here’s how I explained it:

From Why Keith and I Had a Rough Few Years Keith got a job in a different city.

For years his job in our hometown was so stressful. He had long hours, personality conflicts, and constant crises. They were chronically short staffed of pediatricians, but needed the call schedule covered. What do you do if there aren’t enough pediatricians? If you’re a caring, nice guy like my husband is, you step up to the plate and you do extra call.

But that takes a toll.

And finally he said, “enough”. He took a job at a bigger teaching hospital an hour away.

It was the perfect job. My husband is such a good teacher, and the job entailed teaching medical students and residents. He won some awards. He was having the time of his life.

The problem is that he had to about eight calls a month. Those calls were infinitely easier than the ones he used to do, because instead of going in to the hospital in the middle of the night, residents now took care of things and only phoned him for orders and advice. But it also meant he had to stay in that city for eight nights a month.

There was a long commute–and he had to be at work at 7:30. That means that we no longer had breakfast together.

He was home much later often, especially when he had periodic meetings.

And at the same time I still had speaking engagements.

We tried to work his call around my speaking, because our daughters were still at home.

So think what that did: he’d be gone eight nights a month. I’d be gone maybe five. Take a few more nights for his meetings. Then we had church commitments (we ran the youth quizzing ministry at church which required four weekends a year where we’d take the kids away to a competition. Four weekends doesn’t sound like much until you realize how few weekends we’d have).

Suddenly we had very little time together.

We didn’t realize it would be this bad (he was only supposed to do five calls a month when he took the job). But that first month he had his full call load, plus he had two weekends for conferences and training courses. I spoke for a weekend. We had maybe seven nights together all month. And I started to get scared.

Of course, when your schedules are bizarre like that, you know what always happens, right? When you finally have a week together, in its entirety–that’s when your period comes. It doesn’t come when he’s on call. It doesn’t come when you’re away traveling. It’s when you’re finally together again. And I was having major issues in that department and getting chronically anemic, and the stress was horrible.

And it just got hard. So hard.

I started getting used to living my life alone.

So what did we do? You can read the rest here, but the gist of it is this:

We realized that we couldn’t keep living that way, and Keith ended up letting that job go and working half-time so we could do more together, and speak more together. 

It took a while for that to become a reality; we had to plan and put pieces in place. 

But sometimes you realize that the life that you’re living is not sustainable in the long term. 

It may be sustainable in the short-term, but this isn’t what you want for always. And that’s when decisions have to be made.

My big encouragement for all of you today is this: don’t do life on auto-mode. Really think about things. Each decision you make impacts how much time and energy you’re going to have to spend together. Some things are fixed–but not all. And sometimes even the fixed things can be changed, with time.

It’s your life. You get to choose how to live it. 

God has plans for all of us, and they include growing our relationships first and foremost. He doesn’t want you always frazzled and never connecting. If you find yourself that way, it’s likely either that you’ve filled your life with things that aren’t necessary, or you’re going through a particularly rough season where you may need a lot of help and grace! If it’s the latter, I hope you have a good support system around you (and pray that God will send that to you!). If it’s the former, though, then pray that He will show you what you can let go of, and what you can change.

What are your variable areas where you can prioritize each other? Are there some “fixed” areas that need to be changed? Let’s talk in the comments! (And I’d love to hear from people who did less when the kids were young deliberately, too!)

Posts in the Marriage on Hard Mode SeriesPodcast: Are We Making Marriage Harder Than It Needs To Be?6 Ways You May Be Doing Marriage on Hard ModeIdentifying the One Thing that's holding back your marriageAre We Doing Sex on Hard Mode?10 Red Flags about Marriage and SexWhy Downsizing Can Be Worth ItHow Gender Roles Can Make Marriage Harder than it Needs to beDealing with the Primary Breadwinner Stereotype so it doesn't hurt your marriage

And SIGN UP for my emails to get our end-of-the-series activity to work through this with your spouse! 

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts 6 Ways You May Be Doing Marriage on Hard Mode

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The post MARRIAGE ON HARD MODE: Are You Doing Too Much Too Fast? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

What Does It Mean to “Prioritize Your Sex Life”?

I see advice all the time in both Christian and secular realms telling married couples to “prioritize your sex life.”

And you know what? I agree! That’s why I’ve written three books on sex.

(including 31 Days to Great Sex; I don’t talk about that one enough anymore but it’s an awesome, fun challenge to do with your spouse! And no, you don’t have to have sex for 31 days straight. It’s all about building things into your life that lead to amazing sex. Yes, some spicing up and some technique, but also getting rid of baggage, getting more affectionate, dealing with libido differences, and more.)

That’s why I’ve written courses on orgasms and libido and even how to talk to kids about sex.

Sex is meant to be something AMAZING in your marriage.

With that being said, though, when people say, “prioritize your sex life”, what do they mean?

I was tagged by some of you on Facebook alerting me to an article on XO Marriage called “The Ten Secrets of Happy Couples.” It’s not a bad article, with pretty good advice on what makes a happy marriage, though they don’t go into depth on any one thing. But let’s look at what they say specifically about sex:

Prioritize your sex life.

It takes much more than sex to build a strong marriage, but it is nearly impossible to build a strong marriage without it. Prioritize your spouse’s sexual needs. If your spouse is the one with the higher drive, then work to meet their need since you are the only legitimate source on earth where that need can be met. With prioritizing your sex life, don’t prioritize just the act itself but also more affection, foreplay, flirtation, and celebration of each other. Work to find solutions when you face setbacks in your health or sex life and be patient and tender with each other when insecurities or limitations occur. Sex is a gift from God that’s meant to be enjoyed in marriage, so enjoy it!

Dave Willis

XO Marriage, The Ten Secrets of Happy Couples

Okay, on its face this is fairly good, generic advice. What are we being asked to do?

Prioritize your spouse’s sexual needsThe lower libido spouse should work to meet the higher drive spouse’s needsDon’t prioritize just sex but also put more affection, foreplay, flirtation, and celebration in your sex lifeFind solutions when you face health problems or sex problemsBe patient and tender with each other when limitations occurEnjoy sex

Again, all good advice. And I like how they didn’t assume the higher drive spouse would be the man, either.

But if you were to describe what the MAIN piece of advice was to prioritize your sex life, what would it be?

Likely this, because it’s the only place where they say anything more than something generic:

“If your spouse is the one with the higher drive, then work to meet their need since you are the only legitimate source on earth where that need can be met.”

That’s the main piece of advice. So the big problem that they see is that people aren’t having enough sex, and the high drive spouse is left without their needs met.

The article then goes on to say that you need to increase affection and foreplay and flirting, and you need to find solutions to problems. But it doesn’t say anything more than that.

The reader is left with the feeling that the big problem that needs to be addressed is making sure the lower libido spouse has sex more, and then everything else is a series of tick boxes.

There’s just one problem: As we found in our survey of 20,000 women, frequency and libido are not the issue.

Frequency and libido tend to be symptoms of something else–at least when women are the ones with the lower sex drive, which is more common than the other way around.

I have said this repeatedly, and I’ll say it again:

When women regularly reach orgasm; when they feel connected to their spouse during sex; when they have high marital satisfaction; when he isn’t using porn; when there is no sexual dysfunction–frequency tends to take care of itself.

Findings from The Great Sex Rescue survey of 20,000 women

Why do we talk so much about telling the low libido spouse to have more sex, and we never mention the orgasm gap?

We have an orgasm gap of 47 points, where 95% of men almost always or always reach orgasm during a sexual encounter, compared with just 48% of evangelical women.

If we want to talk about how to prioritize your sex life, I think the very first thing we should talk about, before we talk about frequency at all, is making sure sex is actually good for her. Yes, this article spends one word (!) on foreplay, but only one word. It says nothing about ensuring that BOTH spouses reach orgasm, but only about ensuring that sex is happening frequently enough.

I don’t mean to beat up on this one article, it’s just such a good example of the problems with the way we talk about sex.

We tend to use generic terms (note how they never say arousal, orgasm, etc.), which means that they could claim they were implying that she should reach orgasm, since it did say to meet each other’s sexual needs. But it would be really easy to read that article and come away with the idea that the lower libido wife, even if she never reaches orgasm, should be having sex more; not that the higher libido husband had to figure out how to bring her to orgasm. After all, what do “sexual needs” really mean?

That’s what we’re trying to do in The Great Sex Rescue: reframe sex so that BOTH people’s experiences are prioritized. Biblically, sex is MUTUAL, INTIMATE, and PLEASURABLE for both. A good sex life isn’t one where intercourse happens frequently. It’s one where both people regularly reach orgasm and where both feel intimate and cherished.

The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now! When we talk about prioritizing our sex lives, I would like the church to address the orgasm gap FIRST, before we talk about frequency.

The fact that we are so silent about the orgasm gap is telling. What would happen if we stressed the importance of women’s orgasms as much as we did men’s frequency? We’d change the whole emphasis!

Again–I’m not saying that your sex life is inadequate if you never reach orgasm, or that you’ve failed. So many couples take a long time to get there! And as we found in The Great Sex Rescue, so many women believe things that artificially lower their orgasm rates. You’ve likely grown up in a church culture that has taught you things that have made it much harder for you to reach orgasm, and that is not your fault. 

The good news is that you can get over that! And if you want more help, our orgasm course goes into depth on how to reframe how you see sex and orgasm, and different techniques that can help you reach it!

And if you’re a guy and you are frustrated that your wife doesn’t want sex more, here’s an exercise to take you through to see if you may be contributing to the problem at all (you may not be; but it’s good to check first). 

Another one of my goals for The Great Sex Rescue was to help you all become discerning when you read marriage & sex advice.

Next time you hear someone talk about the importance of “prioritizing your sex life”, listen to what they’re saying. Are they emphasizing women’s orgasm as much as they’re pressuring women to give men more sex? Are they mentioning the importance of making sure that sex is great for both of you BEFORE you start talking about spicing things up or frequency? Because if not, the emphasis is off, and we need to do a course correction.

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts How Our Son’s Death Affected Our Daughter

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The post What Does It Mean to “Prioritize Your Sex Life”? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

BARE MARRIAGE PODCAST: We’re Supposed to Be a TEAM!

In marriage, we’re not supposed to be unequally yoked.

We tend to think of that as meaning that we shouldn’t marry unbelievers. But what if it’s more than that?

In today’s podcast we do a little hip hop across different topics, because we had numerous small things we wanted to cover–including an old article from Brio that made us laugh and an interview with an amazing counselor on how to find a counselor if you need one!

So listen in!

Listen to the Podcast Here

Browse all the Different Podcasts

See the Last “Start Your Engines” (Men’s) Podcast

Or, as always, you can watch on YouTube!

 

Timeline of the Podcast

0:13 Announcements
3:00 When your marriage is equally yoked, you are affected by one another!
10:45 What equally yoked ‘doesn’t mean’!
12:50 How to get your marriage into a good place
19:30 How we view marriage can set us up to not be equally yoked
22:20 An interview with Micah Morgan on healthy counseling
44:30 A great RQ discussion on being single and the dating scene
57:30 Finishing with encouragement!

Main Segment: Don’t Be Unequally Yoked!

Rebecca and I look at how in marriage, we’re supposed to be equally yoked, which means more than just that you’re married to a Christian. It means that you’re a team. A yoke was a wooden apparatus that linked two oxen so they could plow together. They’d each pull in the same direction.

When you’re equally yoked, you’re both working. You’re both aiming for the same thing. You notice if someone else falters or falls down, and it matters to  you. That’s what marriage should be, and it’s okay to call it out if it’s not like that!

How to Find a Counselor with Micah Morgan

I also interviewed the wonderful Micah Morgan, a licensed counselor, about how to find a counselor if you need some counseling, and what to look for to know if they’re going to be a good fit.

And I showed you what a good counselor’s bio should look like–their education; the fact that they know evidence based therapies; the fact that they have specialties, like this:

Micah Morgan earned her master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from CACREP accredited Ashland Theological Seminary. She uses cognitive behavioral, trauma-informed, Family Systems-informed, and attachment-based counseling techniques. She specializes in treating mood disorders, anxiety disorders, stressor-related disorders, couples issues, and family issues. She is skilled in integrating cultural issues like insight concerning the stage of life, family of origin insights, and issues stemming from the Black cultural experience into the treatment process.

Micah Morgan

Apex Counseling

Win a copy of The Orgasm Course!

We’re giving away ONE copy of the Orgasm Course to someone who signs up to our email list this week–and ONE to someone who is already signed up.

Join our list! We read a really weird article from Brio magazine from a guy who thought he was in a relationship–but wasn’t

We’re writing a mother-daughter book right now, which means we’ve been reading a ton of materials that millennial moms would have read growing up. And Rebecca found this gem of an article written by a guy who was surprised when his high school girlfriend called him a few years after graduation to tell him that she was engaged.

He had thought they were going to marry each other, even though:

He wanted to go to a different college and made no effort to go to the same college she went toThey agreed that they wouldn’t continue datingHe only called her every few months to catch upHe had never told her he loved her or that he wanted to marry her

But when she got engaged, he was shocked and disappointed, and somehow it was this girl’s fault.

Anyway, we had fun with that one!

Things Mentioned in This PodcastSign up for our email list to be entered to win an Orgasm course or a parent/child puberty course (your choice)Become a Patreon and get access to our exclusive, active Facebook group and other perks, while supporting our researchOur Marriage on Hard Mode seriesMicah Morgan’s counseling New Research: Connectedness helps ward off dementiaOur articles about dating: Elisabeth Elliot’s courtship, the problem with friendationships, and 14 ways to date well onlineThe Great Sex Rescue

 

Do you have any tips for finding a good counselor? And what do you think of that Brio article? Let’s talk in the comments!

Posts in the Marriage on Hard Mode SeriesPodcast: Are We Making Marriage Harder Than It Needs To Be?6 Ways You May Be Doing Marriage on Hard ModeIdentifying the One Thing that's holding back your marriageAre We Doing Sex on Hard Mode?10 Red Flags about Marriage and SexWhy Downsizing Can Be Worth ItHow Gender Roles Can Make Marriage Harder than it Needs to beDealing with the Primary Breadwinner Stereotype so it doesn't hurt your marriage

And SIGN UP for my emails to get our end-of-the-series activity to work through this with your spouse! 

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts PODCAST: Are We Making Marriage Harder Than it Needs to Be?

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A Trick to Identifying the Issue That’s Causing your Marriage Problems

Sometimes, when life gets stressful, we feel like everything is going wrong.

Everyone is picking at everyone else. You’re late for everything. Your relationship with your mom is messed up. You and your husband never have time alone and your mad at each other constantly.

You look at your life and it seems like the whole thing is one big mess.

But what if there’s a common denominator to a lot of what’s going wrong? What if it’s not that everything is going wrong, but that one thing is spoiling everything else?

We’re talking about NOT doing marriage on hard mode this month. We’re looking at how sometimes we can make marriage harder than it needs to be (and helping people in truly difficult marriages hopefully identify that and see that there’s a big issue that needs to be addressed). 

Today I want to talk about how to identify the big thing that may be causing ripple effects throughout the rest of your relationships. 

I once heard a story about the Ritz Carlton hotel. I don’t remember all the details, but the hotel was trying to be the best in the world. When a problem comes, they’ve trained their staff to ask “Why?” seven times to get to the root cause. They want to get at the source of the issue and solve it.

In one particular case I remember hearing about, rooms weren’t getting cleaned fast enough.

Why? Because there weren’t enough clean towels.

Why? Because they couldn’t move the dirty towels to the laundry on time.

Why? Because the service elevators were clogged.

Why? And so on and so on.

They discovered the kitchen was getting huge deliveries at the same time the laundry needed the elevators. They changed the time of the kitchen delivery and the backlog disappeared.

A tiny change. A big difference.

What if it could be like that in our marriages, too? 

Sometimes there’s one thing that, if we could take care of it, would clear up 80% of the conflicts in our marriage. So what would happen if we asked why? 

Let’s try asking “why” to get to the root of the marriage issue. 

 

Example One: They always pick at each other as soon as he gets home from work. 

Why? Because she’s spent the day exasperated at him.

Why? Because her morning was so hectic and it’s really hard not to be late for work. 

Why? Because she’s always barking orders at everyone to get lunches and get dressed and even though he tries to help, he’s getting ready for work too.

Why? Because the kids won’t behave in the morning and there’s always too much to do.

Why? Because it’s hard to get them out of bed and they’re grumpy.

Why? Because they often go to bed late.

Why? Because we don’t do the bedtime routine well because we’re so exhausted and grumpy with each other. 

What would happen if this couple dedicated the next two weeks to moving the kids’ bedtime routine earlier, and doing it well, rather than rushing through it, so the kids go to bed peacefully? And then they could get up earlier and have a less stressful morning.

Example Two: She’s frustrated that he never initiates sex and expects her to do all the work. 

Why? Because he used to initiate but was always turned down.

Why? Because he initiated in a way that totally turned her off–he’d start pawing at her and grabbing her when she was enjoying a movie, and she found him very intrusive and annoying. 

Why? Because he was desperate to know that she actually wanted him, because it seemed like she was always swatting him away. So he was trying harder to prove that she did want him–and failing.

Why? Because she had stopped kissing him or almost all physical affection.

Why? Because whenever they kissed, he’d try to move it to the next level, and she got tired of always being expected to have sex if she showed him any affection. 

What would happen if this couple took two weeks and just kissed with no expectations of anything else? Or if they talked about the importance of non-sexual touch? Then they could go back to a baseline where she didn’t feel that she always had to run away from him.

Example Three: Despite the best budgets, they always overspend each month.Why? It tends to be on takeout and food, unplanned at the last minute.

Why? Because they’re exhausted and they can’t figure out what to make for dinner. 

Why? Because there’s nothing fast to make in the fridge.

Why? Because they don’t meal plan or grocery shop regularly, so they never know what they’re going to have for dinner until that night. 

Why? Because on the weekends they’re so tired that they want to just relax.

Why? Because all their weekend evenings are taken up with either studying for the next exams or else volunteering on praise band and at church. 

What would happen if this couple cut back on their volunteering activities during this busy season of their school life, and gave themselves a night a week to grocery shop and meal plan and just breathe?

Sometimes asking these why questions can help us unravel why we’re picking at each other or why we’re pulling away from each other.

We can see what started the dynamic and stop it before it gets going.

Lots of times there’s one issue in our marriages that is affecting everything else.

It can be, like in the first example, logistical–we’re simply not organized enough or we’re not getting enough sleep, and that’s flowing over into other areas of our lives. It can be, like in the third example, that they’re just too busy and something’s going to break. It can be about relationship dynamics like in the second couple.

Other times it’s very common issues that come between you, like in-laws, money, video games or hobbies, mental load, or something else.

If you already know what the issue is, rather than asking why, ask, “then what?”

Help your spouse see what happens when the issue isn’t resolved, like this:

An example of a “Then What?”Trigger: She talks with her mom for hours on a Saturday and when she gets off the phone she’s grumpy because her mother is very difficult. 

Then What? She tries to fix something in the house in a frenzy–rearrange furniture, clean a ton, get super organized–because she feels inadequate after talking to her mom.

Then What? She gets upset because the family doesn’t buy in to the changes that she wants to make. 

Then What? She starts snapping at the kids and at her husband, and gets sad. 

Then What? The kids start snapping at each other and won’t do their homework or chores. 

Then What? Her husband often wants to retreat by going for a jog or doing errands to get out of the house.

Then What? She feels abandoned and that her family doesn’t love her, and her family feels distant from her. 

What would happen if she told her mom that she couldn’t talk to her on Saturdays, and spent the morning on a fun outing with the family instead?

Show your spouse the ripple effect of whatever you feel is bothering them. Even go back and forth with your “Then What?” scenarios, so you can see how out of control and ridiculous they can get!

And then maybe we can find that all this picking and fighting we do at each other isn’t because we don’t have a good relationship. 

It’s because of one root problem which we can actually fix.

And I hope these exercises can help you do that!

What do you think? 

Posts in the Marriage on Hard Mode SeriesPodcast: Are We Making Marriage Harder Than It Needs To Be?6 Ways You May Be Doing Marriage on Hard ModeIdentifying the One Thing that's holding back your marriageAre We Doing Sex on Hard Mode?10 Red Flags about Marriage and SexWhy Downsizing Can Be Worth ItHow Gender Roles Can Make Marriage Harder than it Needs to beDealing with the Primary Breadwinner Stereotype so it doesn't hurt your marriage

And SIGN UP for my emails to get our end-of-the-series activity to work through this with your spouse! 

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts The Problem with How Children’s Bibles Mess Up the Story of Adam and Eve

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6 Ways You May Be Doing Marriage on Hard Mode

Are you doing marriage on hard mode?

In a few weeks Keith and I will be taking a two week vacation down east in our RV. We’re heading to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and we’re going to do some hiking and I’m going to eat a lot of seafood chowder!

Whenever we go out in our RV, we tend to play a computer game at night. We start on our first day there, and we just play that campaign throughout our vacation. Keith runs the computer and the mouse while I knit, and we decide on moves together.

Right now our favourite game is Stellaris (if anyone cares). When you’re starting a new campaign, you have all kinds of decisions to make, and one of them is the level of difficulty you want to play with. You can do super easy or super hard or anything in between. Do you want your enemies to always be technologically superior? Or to tend to win in fights? Do you want your planets to have more resources or make it harder to find what you need?

We used to always play on Easy, but I’m slowly letting Keith make it a little bit more challenging.

Making things more challenging is great for games. It isn’t for marriage.

There is no point in making marriage harder than it needs to be.

And that’s what we’re going to be talking about this month in our series on Doing Marriage on Hard Mode. We’re going to look at whether we’re inadvertently making marriage more difficult than it needs to be, and causing ourselves unnecessary and avoidable stress in our relationship.

As Rebecca and I talked about last week on our Bare Marriage podcast, we often say in Christian circles that “marriage is hard.” And we agree that life can be hard. And relationships require us all to be less selfish for them to work well. But that doesn’t mean that marriage needs to be hard. And as we’ve been talking about this on social media and on the blog, many of you have agreed. Marriage can, and should, be something that makes your life easier, that makes it easier to handle the ups and downs of life.

Yes, you will have trouble when you are married that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. Had I not been married, I would not have had a baby die. Some people have challenges that make life more difficult. We may have difficulty with sex, or with in-laws, that certainly do contribute to stress in our lives.

But marriage should not be a long hard slog that you have to get through. It should be something that helps you get through the long hard slog of life. And if it is difficult, that’s often a sign that you need to seek help.

So let’s look today at the different ways that we can do marriage on hard mode that we’ll be looking at throughout the month!

Sometimes how we view marriage can make marriage harder:1. We can have a faulty view of marriage

As Rebecca and I talked about on our podcast last week, when we believe that marriage is automatically hard, then when we experience hardship, we can think, “this is just the way things are,” and we’re less inclined to actually try to get help or work through something.

We’re trained to think that things are going to be hard, and if hard is the default setting, then we may not realize that this isn’t something we have to chronically live with. Believing that all relationships are hard can also encourage some people to make poor choices in mates, because we don’t realize that our mate should make our life easier, not harder.

2. We can have a faulty view of gender roles

What do you believe about gender roles? As we’ll look at later in the month, if you believe that the point of marriage is for a husband to make decisions when you disagree, then your assumption going into marriage is that there will be lots of times when we disagree, and disagreement is normal.

If, on the other hand, you believe that the point of marriage is to follow God together as a team, then you’ll assume that the default is for you to agree. When you don’t agree on something then, or when you feel distant,  you’re more likely to realize that this is something to be dealt with and fixed, rather than just the natural state of things.

Or if you believe that men should be the primary breadwinners and women should always stay home with the kids, then if she starts earning more money than he does, you can make marriage harder than it needs to be because your marriage will be viewed as “wrong”. Often the things that we believe about roles can either cause conflict or cause us not to properly solve conflict.

You may also enjoy:“In the case of ties, he wins.” Is that really submission?Let’s look at the evidence: Do marriages work best if he makes the decisions? 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage

 

Are you GOOD or are you NICE?

Because the difference matters!

God calls us to be GOOD, yet too often we’re busy being nice. And sometimes, in marriage, that can actually cause problems to be even more entrenched.

What if there’s a better way?

Take me to it! Sometimes we can overextend ourselves and make life more stressful3. We can overextend ourselves financially

Do you spend more than you earn? Have you bought a really expensive house, perhaps too early in your marriage? Do you just live in a very expensive city and find it hard to make ends meet?

We’ll look at how sometimes our financial decisions, including just where to live, can make marriage harder than it needs to be. (But this post is not for those who are just getting by and are doing the best they can, but rather for those who have made some decisions that perhaps weren’t necessary! We know that many people truly have little choice).

4. We can get too busy

Marriage is just going to be hard if you have little down time together. You’ll grow apart, you’ll always feel stressed,  you’ll always be exhausted.

So when we make decisions, especially in the fall as school is starting up again (which is why we wanted to do this series in September!), let’s remember to keep a lot of our calendar clear.

And this can even include shift work! Some people work opposite shifts and then never see each other. This may make sense for the kids, or financially, but is it doable long-term?

Sometimes we can ignore problems in our marriage that are fixable5. We can fail to get help

I was talking with a woman on Instagram yesterday who has put up with sexual pain for nineteen years in her marriage because she thought that’s what she was supposed to do. It’s made her resent her husband and resent marriage. But after listening to our podcasts and learning about vaginismus, she’s finally getting help both from a counselor and a pelvic floor physiotherapist.

Sometimes we’re dealing with things in our marriage where help is available, whether with medical issues or trauma or relationship issues. But getting help can be hard. How do you know where to look for help? How do you know how to tell if someone is good? And what about the cost?

But if help is available, it’s often the very, very best investment in your marriage  you can make!

6. We can fail to deal with the issue, or issues, that is driving our marriage apart

Often when our marriage feels distant it’s not because everything is bad. Instead, there’s often one thing that we haven’t dealt with that is coloring everything else.

Maybe it’s in-law issues. Maybe it’s housework issues. Maybe it’s sex.

That one issue then blows up and affects everything else.

What would happen if you could isolate what the root issue is that is hurting your marriage–and then deal with it?

Now, there are some of you for whom marriage is hard but there isn’t a simple reason like these.

In fact, that’s one of the big lessons that I want people to learn: How to identify when your marriage ISN’T normal-hard, but that something bigger is actually wrong. I have heard so many women in abusive marriages say things like:

The idea that “marriage is hard” kept me trapped in a toxic marriage with an abusive narcissist for far too long. I accepted toxicity as normalcy. I always thought I could just try harder, pray more, be better. Thankfully I am no longer in that situation.

One of the things I’m hoping that this series can do is to help us all recognize the difference between normal-hard, where there’s something we just need to sort out and deal with, and hard-hard, where there’s actually a character or maturity issue with your mate that you can’t solve which is undermining the marriage itself.

You can’t fix another person. You can’t be so submissive and so kind that someone stops being mean to you or starts considering your feelings. If someone truly doesn’t care about you, you can’t make them care. That’s terrible to type and even worse to hear, but it’s also true. And I’m hoping that by dispelling this idea that marriage is always hard, people who are in truly difficult marriages can see that they have a real problem.

You may also enjoy:10 Signs You’re in an Abusive Marriage10 Truths about Emotionally Destructive MarriagesLeslie Vernick, Gretchen Baskerville, Sarah McDugal, Flying Free, or Patrick Weaver on Facebook (just search for them!)

So that’s what we’ll be looking at this month! As you look at the list, is there one particular that stands out to you today that is hurting your marriage? Or is there one that USED to hurt your marriage, but you overcame it? I’d love to hear your story in the comments!

Posts in the Marriage on Hard Mode SeriesPodcast: Are We Making Marriage Harder Than It Needs To Be?6 Ways You May Be Doing Marriage on Hard ModeIdentifying the One Thing that's holding back your marriageAre We Doing Sex on Hard Mode?10 Red Flags about Marriage and SexWhy Downsizing Can Be Worth ItHow Gender Roles Can Make Marriage Harder than it Needs to beDealing with the Primary Breadwinner Stereotype so it doesn't hurt your marriage Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts The Most Fun FREE Book Study Ever–The Great Sex Rescue! (with video)

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