Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce

Top 3 Marriage Myths That Everyone Believes

October 26, 2022 Dr. Joe Beam & Kimberly Beam Holmes: Experts in Fixing Marriages & Saving Relationships Season 4 Episode 12
Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
Top 3 Marriage Myths That Everyone Believes
Show Notes Transcript

We hear them all the time. Famous sayings about love and marriage. And while it all sounds accurate on paper, what does the research say?

Myths like:

"My soul mate is out there somewhere!"

"Once a cheater, always a cheater."

"Good sex in the beginning of your marriage means great sex for the rest of the marriage!"

Whether they are true or untrue, what can we learn from them?

Let's talk about it in today's episode of Relationship Radio, hosted by CEO of Marriage Helper, Kimberly Beam Holmes, and founder of Marriage Helper, Dr. Joe Beam.

Regardless of your situation, what we teach will not only make your relationships better, but will also help you to become the best version of yourself along the way.

Relationship Radio is released every Wednesday and is an extension of Marriage Helper.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. We love hearing from you!

For more resources about your specific situation, visit marriagehelper.com.


Dr. Joe Beam:

You've heard that old joke. Well, it must be true because it was on the internet. That kind of thing happened a long time before the internet, you can get people saying things and it gets said so often in so many different places that people actually believe it's true. We call them myths. Now, in this program, we're gonna talk about three marriage myths that if you believe they're gonna wind up leading you in a direction you don't want to go. Hi, I'm Dr. Joe beam with MH International, you might know us as marriage helper. And this is Kimberly Holmes, our CEO. So Kimberly, let's start with the most common marriage myth that we hear among religious people, which is, God has one person out there, he's prepared for you.

Marriage Helper:

Yeah, well, I think in non religious circles, it would be I have a perfect soulmate.

Dr. Joe Beam:

Oh, my soulmates out there working, although are waiting, I should say, my soulmate is out there

Marriage Helper:

working.

Dr. Joe Beam:

making some money.

Marriage Helper:

That's right, get ready for me.

Dr. Joe Beam:

But never stopping to think about where did soulmate come from actually came from mythology, where it said that the gods took a soul and divided it into pieces and put one in a female body and one in the male body. And your job was to find the other half of your own soul? Well, based on the odds of how many people are alive on planet Earth today that make the odds about three and a half billion to one that you could find the other person out there. So whether it's that kind of thing, soulmate, or whether it's religion, and let's particularly talk about religious people are more difficult to sometimes persuade on no God has that person for me. Is that a myth? Or reality?

Marriage Helper:

I would say it is a myth that there is one person perfectly that God has prepared just to be your spouse.

Dr. Joe Beam:

And when would you say that's a myth? Well,

Marriage Helper:

I believe I mean, talking about God and the spiritual sense, I believe that God can work through a lot of different options. And I do believe that God can move us to certain people and lead certain things to happen. But I don't necessarily believe that there's one person and if I miss that person, your life is over. Life is over. Or, and I think where we start to see this really cause a lot of problems is someone does get married, they start having problems. And then because they have that belief, it's well, this isn't my soulmate,

Dr. Joe Beam:

right? So obviously, God didn't intend for me to be with this, it wouldn't be this hard. You see, I once talked to a guy who was leaving his wife, for his old high school girlfriend that he found only on Facebook, actually. And here's what he said to me. God's given me a second chance, oh, my gosh, to be with that person he wanted me to be with to begin with,

Marriage Helper:

and why did they break up?

Dr. Joe Beam:

I didn't think to ask him that question. That would have been a good question to ask him. But here he was saying I have this perfect person got repaired. Unfortunately, it's not the one I'm married to. Right. And so we hear that all the time. God said that person God sent that person. Well, I have a bachelor's degree in Bible and most of them master's degree before I actually changed fields. And I have looked all through my bottle. And ain't there right there. Let's talk Southern and it's just not there. Instead, we're taught about how to have relationships. And those principles are there.

Marriage Helper:

And the reason it's such a destructive belief is when you enter into your marriage with that expectation of ease of perfection of all of that, then, are you going to invest as much in making it good? Are you going to do the hard work that needs to be done in order to

Dr. Joe Beam:

more or even if you do, it's not going to be perfect? And you're gonna start thinking, I don't think God did his job. Because if I'm supposed to have that perfect person out there, but that doesn't exist. So that's a common myth. Now, you should take heart in that I shouldn't be discouraging, like, Oh, my goodness, God doesn't have that one person out there, my soul mates not waiting on me. If you get past that myth, you can start evaluating people better. There's not just one and you haven't missed your only opportunity. Wherever you are today, whatever state you're in whatever age you are. There's still people out there that you can have a good relationship with, and a strong marriage. So don't think there's just one.

Marriage Helper:

You know what I heard a couple of weeks ago, I have a friend who's about my age, but she's back in the dating scene. And so she was talking about how there are apparently men on apps that want to know your credit score before you can go on a date with them interesting. And there's a lot of things like that people basically what's happened is people have made their own list of perfection. And they're saying if the person doesn't meet everything that I think needs to happen, even though I'm single, and there's probably a reason for it. If there's, if they haven't met all of this, then I'm not even going to think about starting a relationship with them. And how destructive is that? Because you and I know you could take any two people and take them through a process to fall in love.

Dr. Joe Beam:

You can. But I do understand having some criteria. Like I want a person that's not a heavy drinker, you know, things like that. Sure.

Marriage Helper:

I mean, some make sense. But their credit score, like what is it supposed to be? I don't even know my credit score. And there's and there's just other things like that. Like not. And apparently this is another popular one not wanting to be with a woman who works too, not not works too much, but doesn't have a flexible enough schedule that she can't get on a plane with me and go wherever I want to go. When I want to go?

Dr. Joe Beam:

Well, the wishbone I heard before we go to the next myth several years ago, a friend of mine, he was up in age. He said, I'm looking for a woman whose filthy rich blue hair and a bad cough.

Marriage Helper:

So she's about to die. It's actually all the money. Yes.

Dr. Joe Beam:

So what's another marriage myth?

Marriage Helper:

All right. Another marriage myth is once a cheater, always a cheater. And this one is rampant?

Dr. Joe Beam:

Yeah, we've actually had people get angry with us even say nasty things about us sometimes just attack us verbally, because of the fact that will help a marriage when one spouse has had an affair. It has cheated. We will help them work out the situation, put it back together and save their marriage. And we've been told you are bad if you do that, because once a cheater. So what's your response to that?

Marriage Helper:

Our response to that is it's not true. Once a cheater, always a cheater, there's many different reasons that a person can end up having an affair. And each of those reasons should be dealt with differently. But a person can change their behaviors, fix their relationship, their marriage, and have a strong and healthy relationship and marriage, I need to say that head have a strong and healthy marriage going forward. And not ever have an affair again.

Dr. Joe Beam:

I had an affair and wound up divorcing my wife, Allison, this was a long time ago, well before Kimberly was ever born. And we were divorced for three years. And when I asked her if she'd be willing to take me back, every body in her world said, you can never trust him again. If you were to take him back, you'll wind up doing the same stuff he did before. And so her family, her friends, everybody, not because they were bad people. But because they didn't want her to get hurt again. But they actually that myth that well, once you've done some terrible thing, you can never be trusted again. If that's the case, we're all in trouble. Because none of us is perfect.

Marriage Helper:

That's right. That's right. And it's that mindset of well, once a person does this, then never that. I mean, where do you stop? Yeah,

Dr. Joe Beam:

exactly. Alex, and I've been happily married for 35 years. And you came along on that second marriage. So we think we've been blessed tremendously. So there's a lot of marriage myth out there. And that's typically about sex.

Marriage Helper:

So the the next myth is that if a couple has a great and amazing sex life, their first year of marriage that it will always be that way.

Dr. Joe Beam:

Yeah. And actually, that when is fed that myth is fed by television, by movies by novels, that it makes it sound like Oh, even all the way back to the fairy tales. And they live happily ever after, which really is a fairy tale. And what we tried it, I actually saw a marriage fall apart one time because he couldn't handle the fact that after they had children, his wife was not as interested in sex with him, nor even have as much time for sex with him, because she was open to taking care of a couple of toddlers. And he was saying, See, she was false advertising. False advertising. Yeah, she seemed to be so interested in sex when we first got married and look at her now. And how can I say with someone who would not fulfill what she made me believe he was going to do in sexology. We call it sexual habituation. And basically, what that means is after you've been making love to a person for about two years, now, it's not like well, Oh, you mean Tuesday at 10am is up about two years. And then the frequency decreases, and the repertoire decreases, meaning you won't do as many different things together. And you can finally get to the point. Barry McCarthy, who is a tremendous sexologist, researcher, teacher write her lecture, talking to Barry once about that. And he said, Until people finally realize that even in really, really good marriages, great sex is only going to happen and maybe 15% of the time. And the rest of the time is going to be, you know, helping your body because of all that happened from sex and fulfilling, reducing tension, a bunch of other things like that. You've heard that whole country illustration about this image.

Marriage Helper:

I believe I have it has to do with a lot of pennies. What is that? The illustration is if you take a jar and you have a bunch of pennies and you put a penny in the jar, every time you have sex in your first year of marriage to first two years of marriage. And then after those first two years, if you start taking a penny out every time you have sex, you will never empty the jar.

Dr. Joe Beam:

And that's how the old country folks used to illustrate it. And it basically, like I said, we know that that's sexual habituation. You can have good sex, you can have great sex, but you must understand that in a marriage, once you've been together more than a couple of years, which have been together more than a couple of years, that sometimes it's just going to be so so. But that is good enough. And so Barry, the sexologist, that researcher, etc. He says, you know, an extra order book with his title, sometimes it just needs to be good enough sex. And that's the name of the book that he wrote. Well, Kimberly, that's three quick marriage myths, we can talk about a whole lot more. And if you would like to know more, then send questions to us. How do they do that?

Marriage Helper:

Yes, comment below with other marriage myths that you have heard and we will use that to fuel future episodes where we address common marriage myths.

Dr. Joe Beam:

Thank you for being on the program with me talking about this. And I guess people need to do something underneath like, like, yes,

Marriage Helper:

we would love if you're listening as a podcast, be sure that you follow the show. That way, you'll be able to get notified when new episodes release. And then if you're watching on YouTube, be sure that you like the video and hit subscribe so that you'll be notified when new content drops as well. And we have more content that comes on YouTube than we even do in the podcast. Also, share this with a friend. Share this with someone who you believe needs to hear it and it's a great way to help us grow our show as well and leave a five star rating especially on Apple podcasts that really helps our show to continue to grow.

Dr. Joe Beam:

Thank you very much and we'll see you on the next episode of relationship Radio.

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