← Feeding The Mouth That Bites You: Parenting Teens Into Adulthood
Feeding The Mouth That Bites You: Parenting Teens Into Adulthood
Episode 241: A Christian Understanding of Marriage (Part 1 of 3)
00:32:43
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Foreign.
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Welcome back to Feeding the Mouth that Bites you, a weekly podcast guide on parenting teens and launching them into the world. I'm Cynthia Yanoff and as always, I'm joined by psychologist and author Dr. Ken Wilgas. I wouldn't say that I wrote the book on marriage, but I did write a book that talked a tiny bit about marriage. Is that worth anything for today's show?
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Let me think. Yes. Okay, let's go with yes.
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I think that's a good answer. I, I love that we're doing a three part series on marriage and this is week one and.
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Right.
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B
Is this a first for you? Like for this show? Have you done much on marriage in the past?
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You know, it's funny, I do a lot. So first of all, I've been counseling couples for 30 years, so marriage is a big part of what I do. I think on this program we have talked more than a couple times about the importance of marriage and the effect it has on your parenting. But I told you this, that last Friday, by the time this is airing, last Friday, Focus on the Family very kindly presented a talk I gave at their, it was basically their staff meeting and it was about marriage and it was one of those that it just didn't go well. I was, I was confused. Very fire hosey. I fire hose all the time anyway, just it's so hard to know. You know, I'm not a speaker, I'm a therapist. So speaking is trying to simplify things and choose which cubbyhole not to get into, which rabbit trail not to go down. And I didn't do a very good job and I thought they were very kind. They held onto it three years and thanks to a woman there, Lisa Cadman, who heavily edited it, it's only a fire hose and moderately confusing instead of the mess that it was. So it did make me think, you know, I really want to just step back and take three episodes and really talk about how Christians view marriage. Which I think would be interesting for Christians who are listening, for those who are interested in Christianity. The only people it won't be is those who are kind of anti Christian. We actually have a very small number. You can see them in the comments of people that are like, well, if you're Christians, then you obviously can't know anything about science or behavioral science or any of that. And that's not going to help them. But I just want a chance to try to clarify how I'd work with Christian couples.
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Yeah. Well, I'll start by saying I have not heard that particular talk But I disagree that you're not a speaker. But I agree that it's fire hose, which is what's making this work for both of us because you never know where we're headed on anything.
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Which is so true.
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Which is right in line with why I'm going to start it off with something. And this is just from a woman's perspective. Dr. Ken, you're welcome. In my new book, How'd I miss that? I wrote this. These are things that men who want to stay married should never say. You ready?
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Oh, good, good.
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Number one, wow, you must have been hungry. Number two, calm down. Number three, what did you do all day? Number four, it's really not that hard. Number five, why are you so tired? Number six, I'm not a mind reader. Number seven, is that supposed to be form fitting? Number eight, they meaning the kids never do that when I'm at home. Number nine, is that a gray hair? Number ten, you're acting like my mom. There you go. That's from straight From Cynthia Yan off 10 Things that Men who want to stay married should never say.
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I think we should point out these are not things you've heard in your marriage. I assume. So let's just.
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Well, you know, yeah, let's start there. No, I don't believe. I think Mike's a smart man. He knows that. But I will say the other day one of our kids told me to calm down and he was like, woo, you better back that up.
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So well, hopefully by the end of this show, this episode, you'll know why that's particularly difficult for wives.
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All right, well, let's hit it. Get us started.
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So the thing that I really always want to get across is that. So I call my teaching on. It's called no Longer two. And there's a lot of Christian marriage counseling out there that is really seeking to be helpful. Very practical is is usually what people are aiming for, which I think is fine. Except that if that's all you hear, then you begin to wonder, is there anything unique about how Christians approach or understand marriage? If you think about it, some of the bigger selling quote Christian resources. If you ask yourself what's unique about this, it's almost like the only thing is Christians believe you're not supposed to divorce and you probably should pray to God for help so you won't divorce. And that's not really the primary way of understanding things. So I tend to back up and want to really look at, well what is unique about that. And it turns out that the scriptural description of Marriage explains more about the things I've seen with couples than I ever would have imagined. So I start with the primary sort of passage that lights up both sides back to the Old Testament. The new is Matthew 19. Remember when. When Jesus is asked, he's always tested, so he's asked about divorce. Basically where they're saying, can a man divorce his wife for any reason? And Jesus, as is not unusual, changes the paradigm completely. You know, he almost never answers your question directly. Like, yeah, no, it's like, have you not read that he created. Who created them from the beginning, made them male and female, said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. That's just a very weird answer. He doesn't say, haven't you read in the Law that you're not supposed to divorce? It's a covenant. That's not what he emphasizes. He goes all the way back to Genesis 2, which means that he's not answering from the law, he's answering from creation. And that's a huge deal. That marriage then is a recreation of the creation of human beings. You know, Genesis 2 tells that very weird story of he, God creates the entire universe, creates the world. And then the crowning creation is this man who is going to be in the image of God. Sort of like, okay, playing the part of man today will be. Playing the part of God will be this man. And he makes this man. And the man is perfect. He is not sinful. He's in unbroken fellowship with God. And God says, it's not good that this man is alone. It's really important the man is not lonely. You cannot think that a man in unbroken fellowship with the living God is lonely. You don't need anything. It's God that says, this doesn't look like me. And he fixes that problem by dividing that man into a male and female human. Right. I mean, that's the story, Correct?
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Yeah. And let me underscore that really quickly. And if you go back to Genesis 1, and I had never really seen this before and someone pointed it out, maybe you. But if you go and you look all the way from Genesis 1, it starts off, you know, he makes land, and he says it's good, and he makes the animals, and he says it's good. And he separates day and night. And each time you hear God says, and God saw that it was good. And then you go to Chapter two, the first time he creates something and says it's not good. Is man alone. He Said then the Lord God said, it is not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper. And that's in Genesis 2. And I think that's just what you're saying. It's profound that here he is author and creator of all things. He's creating birds and you know, the animals of the earth, and he's creating skies and dark and light and all this. And he's saying it as good as. As good as good. And then he creates man and sees man alone in the garden. And he says it is not good
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and not good, not good. Well, in this, you know, I don't want to get too deep theology here because I'm not a deep theologian. But you know, what's not good is he needs help doing what? Being God in God's image. That's why he create, let's create him to be in my image. So without getting too deep into it, how do you sort of sculpt, if you're God in the material world, a being that is two, that is one, but two. You remember, we know God is one, but three. Well, how do you do that? Well, I think you tell a story of making the one, then dividing out of that one into two. You remember the old book, men are from Mars and women are from Venus. No, men are from clay and women are from the man. You know, it's like there's a unity there that, that is relevant in our marriage. So to me, it comes into a very important difference. I hear a lot of discussion in the Christian community about what's known as complementarian or you egalitarian. Have you heard of that?
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Yes, but we need a little descriptor on that.
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Well, it just means what, what it's trying to do, I think is trying to offer an acceptable name for both groups. So there are those who are very big on that. Men and women in marriage and should be, well, in marriage should be equal. And. And then the other side is that men and women play complementary roles, you know, and they have different function in marriage. The difficulty with that is that you're, you're talking about two different dimensions of relationship. It's like saying, are you a communist or romantic? I don't know how to answer that. I think the answer is I'm believe in the unity, that there is no man without woman. There's no woman without man. It is a unity. And the idea of this, this pretend like roles, differentiation forgets the unity that is there. And that's what I saw in therapy. Marriage is not like Any other relationship. It kind of makes you nuts. It really is, in Jesus view that it's. It's a work of the Holy Spirit. You and I both have our stories as to how we got married, how we courted and ended up with the person we're married to, But God has the actual story of, no, this is really why I got you together and how I got you together. It's a. It's a work. It's sacramental. And I don't mean that in an overly Catholic way, but I'm fine with that. Sacramental is in an outward sign of an inward, spiritual reality. In this case, you are joined to your spouse. There's a weird passage in Malachi where he says he's upset with them, and God says, jesus, did he not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union? Implying that when you got married, God joins. The glue that joined you is the Holy Spirit. He's invested and he put you together.
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Yeah. So how does. How does that impact what I do on Tuesday in my marriage? Like, with that background? What is that practically? How does that change my philosophy on marriage?
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Well, that's a great question. So I think you start by paying attention to this. You know, again, we're used to thinking of ourselves in our individualness and with a goal of, well, just try to be real reasonable with each other. You know, we often, often recommend communication. As a matter of fact, I think they titled my talk Poor Focus. You know, they're trying. Folks in the family, they're just trying to be helpful. And here I give this bizarre talk. So they went, why don't we just call it simple ways to improve. Improve your marital communication? Okay, I don't blame you, but no, it's. Communication isn't actually the golden road to great marriage. What you start with is paying attention to the unity. And I would start by paying attention to what that unity does to you with wives. Think about just how intense you are with your husband. Wives who are reasonable people, intelligent leaders, kind of can't help but want to know, what's he thinking about? What's he looking at?
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What.
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Why is he on that phone? What's he look at more than the husband does? Why? She's very, very aware of the connection in that intimacy. And husbands, it's easier to see the connection there. I'm a normal, reasonable person. I think you would agree. You and I have worked together. I work with women in psychology all the time, but my wife makes me nuts. I am so defensive with her. So touchy. With her. And that's the thing I discovered is that in doing marriage therapy, marriage, married couples are crazy. They get intense. I've had to put my hand between them on the couch going, wait, wait, wait. You can do this at home for free. You can argue, you don't need to do it here. It's like this life or death thing. That's one way you can do it. The other is to rethink just your. Your history, for example, your courtship. Cynthia, you and Mike, I assume, married. You met in Sunday school. You both had your lists of who God wants me to marry, and you compared them, and then we decided to go get married. Is that basically your courtship story?
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I mean, it's basically if Sunday school is the same thing as law school, which I think it is, right? I mean, that's kind of the same thing. That's where we met. And if him whistling at me in the parking lot is the same as him saying, I've prayed over this godly woman, I think the Lord has answered, then, yes, that's how it played out.
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See, I think that's a great example. I think I've heard Christian couples try to fit into this idea of, shouldn't we have thought it through and done well? Yeah, you try to, but God is going to do stuff and, and courtship stories are, are. Yours is a good example. They're. They're not what you think. I used to teach a nearly wed class at a Baptist church. And the funny thing is that when we ask people about how they married, you would hear several of them say, we met at a restaurant. And after about two semesters that I said, look, if you met at a bar, you can say, so it's okay, you don't have to pretend. But the point is that there's a part of your courtship that is God's. He did things. I remember there was a guy who remembered the first word he ever heard from his wife then. Wife, but not at the time. The first words he ever heard from her mouth were, I know who you are, and I don't want anything to do with you. And he was like, you know, normally that would have discouraged me, but. And you know, you can trace the spirit in bringing you together beyond what you thought you were doing. The other thing is, you can look at your honeymoon. You can't believe how many weird honeymoon stories. We got along great, whatever. But as we walked away from that minister, let's say we got on the plane to Hawaii or whatever, and she was sick from having too much to drink and I couldn't help her, and I ended up, you know, in a seat opposite or away from her. Just. It's suddenly this intensity that is just not the same as you were even before then. There's. There's even old research on couples that cohabit that we had data up as till eight years. You live together and then you get married and something changes. It's called the first year drop. But it changes in your relationship immediately. The point is, I think you start on a Tuesday by really paying attention instead of what you're thinking or your spouse is thinking. Start thinking about the usness here and look for the weirdness and the tension first.
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Yeah. I remember when Mike and I dated, we dated seven years. And I would like to go on record as saying, that's horrific. Don't do that. People do not do that because you. Everything they do already annoys you before you even walk the aisle. And. And that went both ways for us. But I remember part of the reason people ask us all the time and our kids, like, why did you date some so long? And some of that was logistically. We were in law school and we needed to pass the bar exam and get jobs and all that. But the other thing was, is I had heard from so many of my friends getting engaged that I was like, how did you know? And they were like, oh, I just knew I couldn't live another day without him. And I just can't imagine my life without him. And I'm pretty pragmatic, and so is Mike. And neither one of us. I mean, of course we loved each other, but neither of us were like, I don't know. I mean, I think I'd be. I could live another day. I'd be real sad. But, I mean, I would get out of bed tomorrow and keep going. And. And there's this pragmatic side of things. And I remember meeting with a minister who basically said, you're overthinking it. Get married. But it was this. Now, knowing what I know. It was this whole notion of, you complete me. Right. Like, is this the person that completes you?
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Agree with that now? Kind of, yeah. And now Ms. Pragmatic,
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I think, no, I don't agree that I needed to be looking for someone who completes me. Because here's the thing. As that leads me to wanting to make him into the person that's similar enough to me, that can meet all my needs. And I realize now his dissimilarities to me are actually what keeps this relationship intact. The Lord found a person that fills the gaps and fills those areas. I'm more impatient. So sometimes in parenting, especially our youngest, he's very patient, mild mannered. He, you know, just. I look at these personality. He's a researcher by nature. He's a lawyer. He researches things. I'm like, ah, let's do it. Let's see how it goes. And instead of trying to make him into who I am, I AM finally, after 25 years, realizing that compatibility piece works because we are so different and the Lord created us so differently and uniquely. And I feel like I've bought into many times a lie that if we don't see things eye to eye, then, oh, did I get. Not that I questioned our marriage, but did I get it wrong or was this actually the person for me? Or we just do things differently and I think, thank goodness we do things differently. Like that's the Lord's design in my marriage, is that we look at things differently. And so back to what you're saying. As we're looking at being, I mean, our likeness, our togetherness, we also. That doesn't also mean we're the same, right?
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Well, that's what I hoped for. I mean, I thought love was hyper compatibility. Like just we got along and agreed on all these things. And just like you're saying, I've learned something different. And what I like about courtship stories is they're not the same like mine. I mean, when, When Sally, my wife, walked through the classroom door at college, she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. And I, I've always joked I would have married her if she was Jewish. I just wanted to be with her. But. But that's my story. And that's not, you know, I don't think that means that every story has to be. Every story isn't like that. It's just tracing how you've brought. Been brought together and when did you kind of know is the. Is the important part of that the thing to watch for also on a Tuesday is what is painful in your marriage. So the second thing to be aware of is that you're joined and it's all great. You know, the man says to the woman when she's brought to him, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. And then sin comes along. And very briefly, remember, sin is not stealing fruit. It is the desire to be like God. It is when our original mother and father changed from seeing the world as God has shown it to them to seeing it their own way, like little gods who are not gods. And we know that the first experience of that look at Genesis 3 is shame. They look at themselves and decide they are inadequate and they make fig leaves and cover themselves. I do want to point out. Stick with me. They didn't make hats and gloves. They covered their private parts, their connecting parts. Because God's don't have connecting parts. So when in that part of you that is made to connect with your spouse. This is what marriage therapy is, is two people coming into my office, clinging to fig leaves, trying to pretend that they are not deeply troubled and in pain with the shame they feel with their spouse. Does that make sense?
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It does. You know, we really went somewhere with private parts and fig leaves and so.
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Gotcha. Are you gonna leave the room? You okay?
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I'm barely still on this podcast because I'm super immature, but let's. So. No, but I'm with you. But let's talk about this shame in marriage. Because shame looks different between a husband and a wife.
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Typically it does. And there's a lot of people that will even kind of. There's a new almost movement of people trying to push back on the. No, men and women are interchangeable. They're identical. I'm fine with that if that's how you want to see it. It just isn't the experience in marriage, because if you look at the story, you know, they're both. The man, for example, looks at himself, his. His potency, his manhood, whatever you want to call it, and he thinks he's inadequate, and he grabs fig leaves and is trying to. To cover that. Well, who's he covering from in the story? God hasn't shown up yet. When God shows up, you just gotta run. But he's covering so the woman won't see, which is important. It. I've seen this all the time. A husband thinks that his wife is telling him that she sees his inadequacy. He assumes that's what she's. That she's seeing in him what he's seeing and she is not. He doesn't notice that she's not looking at him. She's busy sewing her own fig leaves to cover her own shame, which is a kind of unloveliness, unattractive, not desirable, and. And she thinks that's what he's seeing. Does that make sense?
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Yeah. And so you have a note in our notes that says he can feel like a loser and she can feel like she's alone.
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That's basically it. I can't tell you. I learned that from wives. For 30 years, wives would come. They were Better at describing, you know, I'm like, okay, what do we hear about? And she would usually start and would give a. Almost always a good description of, you know, we were close. I think after our second child we started to sort of drift and all this stuff. And then I would say, so this has all left you feeling what? And a surprisingly high percentage of wives use the word like I feel alone, I feel invisible, you know, and. And I've learned that whatever, as a husband, I or as a man, what I think is alone. It's not what she's talking about. It's a deep existential pain that I've read from many other women about. A woman would rather be physically alone in a house than in a house with a husband who is acting like he's not thinking about her at all. It's just too painful alone. Men are not as good at describing inner experience, especially shame. You don't want to talk about shame anyway. But men are always one step away from feeling like a loser. I taught a class for years at my church called Ringleaders, which was just for Christian men about husbands. Wives called it husband college. We were just glad it wasn't husband high school that we were pleased. But you brought up the issue of shame and loser and the room got very quiet because every man knows that most of the time men's greatest fear. Guess. Can you guess their fear?
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What would you say is being discovered? Maybe for who?
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They kind of financial ruin at their own hand is probably one of the most basic. If it's not my fault, I can live with that. But if I have driven my family into the ground at my own efforts, he's deeply afraid. It's shameful or it feels shame. But they think, and the key is they think that the other spouse is looking at them that way. And so you cover yourself in different ways. Wives cover that. You know, like, I'm fine, but the kids miss you. You know that that kind of thing is a way of not having to expose your own vulnerability that I don't think my husband loves me. I sometimes think that I was made a fool of when we started. He may never have thought about me. And I know he doesn't think about me now, but I cannot risk even experiencing that. So I will talk instead about my children and, and you know, and invest completely in them. It's a very common way of doing the other one. A lot of Christian wives do. This is they kind of want to be a low maintenance girl. Like they have to fight with themselves before asking their Husband, hey, I'm feeling, you know, neglected. She has to first fight with herself that, you know, you shouldn't need, that you're fine, you should be stronger than that. And it takes forever for her to finally just be open with him because she even thinks what she needs isn't right. Again, she shames herself. At the same time, husbands fig leaves can be things like work, success. A lot of men, you know, do not feel that. Again, she's not actually thinking this, but they think that their wife doesn't respect them, doesn't appreciate them. But, man, when I go to my workplace, people really like me, get me or see my effectiveness. The other one, that is not exclusively men, but more high percentage of men is sexual outside of the marriage. Kind of flirting. Flirting is just that way of interacting with someone that says, hey, if this were a different world, you and I would probably get together, wouldn't we? It's a kind of inappropriate, you know, seeking that kind of affirmation. Certainly pornography is just, you know, pay. Women paid to look like they're enjoying sex. And men actually can kind of have some distorted sense of success by watching that. And even extramarital activity is often a way of. But it's. It's a way of covering their own shame. So Christian marriage then. And I think what's important here, I want to kind of wrap this part up, is it's really important that Christian marriage exposes the underlying truth, which is your spouse is suffering, that you can, you know, a wife can absolutely feel like he is just happy with himself. He just wants to be left alone. He wish he never married me. I get that. But that's not his thoughts, that's yours. What you're seeing is a little guy who is deeply ashamed. It's not reasonable. It's how he sees it. And it can look like he is being unloving. And husbands very commonly assume that their wives are trying to control everything. She is. She's never happy. She's overly critical. We used to bring this up in the. In the class. It's like 50 men there would say, you know, your wife is not trying to control you. And there was almost every semester one guy that would raise his hand and go, well, actually. And he'd try to explain to us how his wife is not fearful that she's alone. She's trying to make him do what she wants and all that. And it always took a couple weeks to try to calm that guy down. That, no, I know it looks like she's critical and not happy. That's you. She is trying to tell you. I'm afraid because I feel alone here. And it's important that Christian couples. It really would help everyone but for Christian couples at least to recognize that your spouse is suffering and. And part of Christian marriage is aiding each other in that suffering. But if we don't even see it, if we just look at it as two individuals in this terrible nonprofit organization known as our family, then we don't even know that it's happening. But that union is a critical way of understanding a Christian understanding of marriage.
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B
Yeah. Okay. And so let's wrap it up with this. To a man that's listening to this podcast that says, actually, I totally feel that what you're saying, I feel that shame. I feel inadequate. And I'm going to acknowledge that's probably impacting my marriage. What would you say to them? Like, what's a practical step to him?
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A
I think he should listen next week, actually. Get your wife and you both to listen to next week because. And the week after that. Because, number one, that's a spiritual struggle. And number two, Christian marriage is pretty clear that when he feels that inadequacy, that's not his problem. That's her problem. His problem is helping her with her fear. And so he's kind of asking the wrong question. I feel that. What do I do? First, pay attention to your wife, who is drowning and needs you to reassure her. And we'll talk how to do that next week.
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B
Okay. And then flip side of that to the woman who's listening. It's like, I do feel alone. My fear is being alone. I probably do come off as controlling. And so what would you say to her? Listen, keep listening the next two weeks. But what would your word be on that?
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A
Well, I would say to her that she's in a harder position because our culture is all about making sure women are protected and not being demeaned. And I'm big on that. Anyone who trained in psychology in the 90s knows all about the rise of women and the importance of women in our culture. But in marriage, it can tend to come out as, you're not really mainly connected to your husband. You need to take care of yourself. So it's harder, I think, for wives today to hear the message of your. Your concern should be to help your husband with his shame and trust in. In the way that the Lord will work in your husband to help you with your alone. But even as I say that, I hear how un. How really unpopular that is that. So you're telling women to just, you know, just give, you know, just respect their husbands no matter what. No, I just said that husbands should love their wives and show them that love no matter what. But we tend to not hear that part. You know, much of this. By the way, one of my favorite books on this is called how to Improve youe Marriage Without Talking About It. It's not a Christian book. It's by Patricia Love and Steven Stasny. And that book explained describes this. These vulnerabilities that husbands and wives have. But if you look at the reviews, every 10th one is a woman going, oh, so you're just saying I should coddle my. My husband, who just is all touchy and whatever, And I get that. But it's an odd situation we're in where it's harder overall in our culture for women to understand the vulnerability of their husband while they're very busy making sure that they're not being taken advantage of, Which. Which. I get it. I respect that.
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B
All right. Okay. So we've laid the groundwork for week one, and we're going to keep going on this. And I just want to. I just want to commend you on not telling me to calm down or ask me what I did all day. So I feel like even though you're not my spouse, I feel like that's going to be hard on the work relationship. And so I want to commend you on seeing. Saying neither of those two of the ten you didn't hit today.
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A
So I'm very aware that you are saying complimentary things so that I don't feel like a loser.
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B
Yeah, I don't want you to be a loser.
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A
And you're pointing out things that if I had said that, you'd feel like, I don't get you, and you're alone. And the best part is we're so reasonable on this podcast because we're not married.
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B
Right.
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You don't make me crazy. That wife of mine, she's a goddess and makes me nuts. No offense to you, of course.
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B
Yeah, I hear you. Okay, thank you. We're. Everybody tune in next week for week number two as we talk through marriage with Dr. Dr. Ken. Thanks.
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A
Thanks.