Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
This Piece of Marriage Advice Could Destroy Your Marriage
Enjoy the episode? Send us a text!
There's a lot of bad marriage advice out there. Control and manipulation tactics. Tracking, spying and hacking your spouses devices. Having an open marriage. Watching pornography together.
We've heard counselors, therapists and other marriage "experts" tell people to do these things because it can lead to the reconciliation of the marriage.
THIS IS HORRIBLE ADVICE.
After decades of working with thousands of couples, we know what works and what does not. We also know the best empirically-based research that has been verified by the worlds leading researchers.
So let's talk about all of these tips and advice that some people have said is a great idea. We want to go ahead and bust ALL of the myths out there that these things can lead to a better marriage.
If you're struggling in your marriage, don’t wait. Get our FREE resource: The 7 Steps to Rescue Your Marriage 👉 https://marriagehelper.com/free
📞 BOOK A CALL WITH OUR TEAM: https://marriagehelper.com/call
🔗 Website: https://marriagehelper.com
📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marriagehelper
👀 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marriagehelper
Follow our other channels!
📺 https://youtube.com/@kimberlybeamholmes
📺 https://youtube.com/@drjoebeam
So I was surfing the internet. Well, this was a couple of years ago and I ran across this ad where a guy said if you just send me $99, I'm going to send you back the exact right words to say to the person that you love who has left you. And when you say these words, what's going to happen is the following they're going to come back to you, they're going to apologize to you for everything they've ever done and they want to make love to you every day for the rest of your life. I'm you better. I have a PhD earned from a very prestigious university. I have worked with relationships, with thousands and thousands of couples. But because this guy was so persuasive, I thought, heck, I might spend $99 just to see what he has to say. And then my wisdom overcame my idiotic motive of thinking.
Speaker 1:Surely surely Because we all know there's no such thing as a magic phrase Say that and it's all going to work better.
Speaker 1:But if you start looking around the internet, you'll find that there's all kinds of advice that people give, not just on the internet but in these big events they have where you come and listen to them. And if you listen to what they tell you to do. I'll guarantee you right now, based on our knowledge, our research, our studies and the thousands upon thousands of couples that we've worked with, that if you follow some of the principles these people teach, your relationship is done. Even if, through some of the processes they teach you, you were able to manipulate the person to come back for a little while, you can't manipulate them to stay with you from now on, and that manipulation actually will make them leave you faster, longer and never want to come back when they finally realized the manipulation was taking place. So, kimberly, surely you've run across these kinds of things as well, right? So let's talk about things that other people teach, that we say oh no, no, no, no, please don't do that.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, bring me my soapbox, I will stand upon it and share all of my opinions about this with the world. But yes, I mean several of these. One of the ones people probably have heard us talk about several times in the past if they've been around Mary Tulper for a while is this premise called no contact, which has been really hot on YouTube, of all places. But it's this thought of if your spouse is leaving or gone and you want them back, then all you need to do is ignore them, for everyone varies on how long they prescribe 1430, 60 days and they will realize what they are missing out on and come crawling back to you. And then there's other things that they throw under no contact.
Speaker 2:As you're doing no contact, be sure that you post pictures of your best life on social media so that they'll see it and that they will begin to have a fear of missing out because they're no longer with you. And it's just manipulation oozing out of every aspect of what they teach and it's despicable, to be completely honest. So no contact is one of those which we say. We know that doesn't work, because it's a manipulative tactic to bring someone back and then, as we say, once you get them back? What are you going to do to keep them if you've used manipulation to bait them?
Speaker 1:By the way, this is Kimberly Holmes, who is our CEO at Marriage Helper. I should have introduced her earlier. I'm Dr Joe Beam with Marriage Helper, kimberly.
Speaker 1:Way back in the beginning I think I probably phrased it as no contact, and then we begin to realize what we were saying, that no, that's not correct. No contact makes no sense because of the fact that if the person is playing a game with you where they're doing what we call a push-pull that we teach about when we do our workshops that if a person is trying to push you away because they want you to come busting back through that to prove to them that you want to be there, no contact would actually be a brilliant move, because you now are not playing their game, which makes them do something differently. But the push-pull game that people play always ends up with a destruction of their relationship. I mean, it may work for two or three plays, if you will two or three games, but then it ends and we recommend that you don't try to save your relationship through a game that you make it real. And so we talk about a thing called smart contact. Can you explain that in like a minute or two as to what that means?
Speaker 2:Right. That's what we evolved to right, because what we wanted people to understand was there is a positive way, a research-based way, to actually communicate in a way with your spouse where you're not fawning after them, just begging them to stay with you, contacting them every single day which some people recommend but you're also not completely ignoring them, but you are rebuilding a way to talk to each other that is based in respect, that is based in having positive interactions whenever you do communicate. And smart contact teaches you a method. It's actually an acronym that we talk about. It teaches you the method of how you can do that, because, even if you just look at attachment theory which I'll explain how this relates to what we're talking about but everyone really wants to be in a secure-based relationship.
Speaker 2:So they want to know that the person I love is going to be there for me no matter what. That doesn't mean they're going to approve of everything I do or help me do bad things, but that they're going to be there for me. And when you play these games, you're breaking secure attachment, you're showing yourself and the other person that you're not always going to be there for them, that they have to live up to some ideal you've put out there in order to receive love back from you. So it, at its fundamental core, breaks what could even build a healthy relationship on top of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we know. There's a guy out there who spends a lot of money advertising his success on helping couples and he'll say you contact him every day, you send him a note, you send him a card every single day. Think about it this way If your spouse is angry with you and doesn't want to be with you, either because they want to be with somebody else or live a different lifestyle, or just the fact that they're not happy with you because of what you've been doing, and they say just leave me alone, and now, every day, you're going to contact them in some fashion, what do you think that's going to do? Well, this guy teaches it's going to make them realize how much you love them and they'll come back.
Speaker 1:Our experience is, when we watch couples do things like that, people do things like that with the person that doesn't want to be in the marriage anymore is it just irritates the stew out of them. I've asked you to leave me alone and every single day you bother me. And so that constant contact. We say that's not showing respect to the other person. And then if they're saying leave me alone and people say okay, great, so don't, and no contact at all means they'll miss you. They've already told you they don't want to talk to you and now you're fulfilling that. You think they're sitting around going. Wow, I miss them so much, when they've already said to you leave me alone. And so we teach that middle tactic. The middle tactic is called smart contact. I'm not completely ignoring them. I'm not sending them something every day. There's a way to interact. Now, we can't explain that all here, but people can find out more about that if they go to our website. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. There's a link in the show notes of where they can go to learn more about the smart contact toolkit that we have and how they can start applying that tactic to their marriage, but going a little bit deeper. So I touched on this a little earlier, but I think that's why people have to add these games on top of no contact, Because if your spouse has already asked you don't contact me, well then you've got to add some more to it to really up the ante, which is the posting all of your best life things on social media, Getting mutual friends to go and tell them about things that you've done in order for them to hear about you and start to wonder. Right, All of this is very backhanded and it feels like middle school. To be completely honest, I may even be dissing middle schoolers with that compliment but it's just honestly ridiculous.
Speaker 1:It is ridiculous. It's trying to manipulate the other person. To come back to you, and typically we find that when people do that kind of game, the stuff they're representing is not accurate anyway. It makes it look like I'm having a better lifestyle, that I am living doing more things than I am doing. And don't you know that if they were to come back and check you out again which is highly unlikely but if they do that, they're going to say that was all a facade, it was all fake. So constant contact? We say no, we think that's a bad idea. No contact no, we think that's a bad idea. Smart contact, which is in between those two things. We think that works well and we've had hundreds, hundreds of people, if not thousands, over the last few years tell us about how brilliantly that has worked for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:So, what other kind of things are people teaching out there?
Speaker 2:Have you heard the word thruple?
Speaker 1:Thruple yes, how would you spell that word?
Speaker 2:T-H-R-O-U-P-L-E Thruple. It's couple, but take off the C and put a three.
Speaker 1:Oh good grief.
Speaker 2:This is growing. It was actually just in a movie that released in the big screen I don't even know the name of it, but it was a whole thing and there's people out there promoting this as a lifestyle. So it's not just an open marriage, which maybe that's one We've covered that in a previous episode but it's not just having an open relationship. It is actively having multiple people in a relationship. So consensual, non-monogamous relationships, take it away. Sexologist.
Speaker 1:You know, people have asked me sometimes if my spouse and I both wanted to try it. Could pornography enhance the sexuality of our sex life? And the answer is in the short term it could, if you both want it. People sometimes say if we bring another person into our bed, could that, in the short term at least, or could that enhance the sexuality of a marriage? In the short term, if you both want it, it could. But both of those reasons are because you're doing something novel, something new, which means that it's going to wear off really quickly. And so we know that people, for example, who regularly use porn, eventually wind up just watching weirder and stranger porn because they're not being stimulated by what they saw before, and that people who think bringing somebody else into our bed is going to excite things wind up doing more things, wind up doing things with more people. And when we have people like that come into our workshop, which we do inevitably, one of them typically the wife, but at least one of them comes into the workshop telling us well, I finally fell in love with that other guy and therefore I don't want to be in this marriage anymore because I want to be with that other person I've been sleeping with.
Speaker 1:Back in the mid-1980s, when I was divorced and living a lifestyle very different than the one I live now, I subscribed to Playboy magazine and I remember in the Playboy advisor they were asking about these open marriages, multiple partners, et cetera.
Speaker 1:And the Playboy Advisor they were asking about these open marriages, multiple partners, etc. And the Playboy Advisor at least back then said, yeah, it'll be fun in the short term because you're doing something new and novel, but it's going to destroy your relationship Because at some point one of you is going to emotionally connect with somebody else and this relationship is over. It's really hedonistic. It's back to the thing we talked about when we did some episodes about beliefs and values and those kinds of things. It's like, okay, making me happy in the moment is becoming the most important thing, which eventually is ultimately destructive to every relationship. I'm going to do what makes me happy in the moment ultimately destroys every relationship, because it's all about me and it's not about loving or caring about the other person, even if I try to put it in words that make it appear that I am doing it for the other person.
Speaker 2:But there are people out there actively teaching men and I feel like they're never trying to teach women how to be in a relationship with two men, because women are smarter than that, but it's always trying to teach men how to do this. It's like it's an ideal for some men that they've made it, and maybe that's how, because of how it's been portrayed in pornography and different things like that.
Speaker 1:But I can't wrap my head around why any woman would agree to enter into a thruple or a consensual, non-monogamous relationship where that he would never get too emotionally connected to her, where she could get her quote sexual needs fulfilled without having to have an emotional connection. And therefore it needs to be with a married man who's in love with his wife. And here's how you can find him and here's how you can seduce him. So don't think it's all men. At least at one point it was a website for women that did that.
Speaker 2:But she wasn't wanting to become another wife or to be in a like, but she wasn't wanting to become another wife or to be in a like, but she was going to be.
Speaker 1:She wasn't going to be in the bed, she was going to be the side she wasn't going to be in the same bed with him at the same time, that's correct. I remember a few years ago. Actually, I can remember where the couple's from and remember what the lady did for a living. She told me that in an effort to save her marriage, she let him, the husband, bring his lover into their bed, thinking it was going to save the marriage.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And of course Dr Phil wasn't popular back then, so I didn't say well, how's that working out for you? But I did ask that question, whatever the wording was.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And she said it was destructive. Yeah, yeah. So people teaching that aren't about helping you with relationships, they're hedonistic. They're saying here's something that'll make you happy in the moment and as long as you send me money for that, I'm happy in the moment. And who cares what it does to your relationship long term? They don't care. It goes to something teaching they know is destructive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's absolutely right. But then maybe the last one that we'll talk about and end on, especially for the faith-based crowd, so going swinging the pendulum the opposite way, is the phrase just pray about it. And how many people on our team have said when they went to their pastor, to their church leaders, and shared my marriage is in shambles, this is what's going on. The pastor didn't know what to do. In fact, a lot of time would say well, the Bible technically says that you have an out here if your spouse has committed an affair. So I think this would fall under things that other people teach that we know don't work, don't just divorce your spouse because they've had an affair and you have a quote, unquote scriptural out to be able to do so. But then also the phrase just pray about it.
Speaker 1:Right. We believe that any marriage can be saved and we have seen that, proven, witnessed that being proven thousands of times in the last, well, 23 years. So, yes, we believe that if you could divorce your spouse if you wish, but there's also a way to save it, and that I'm all for prayer I really am. But it takes a lot more than just praying and typically whenever we pray, the things we pray about actually requires actions on our part. So it's not just okay, god, you take it all, I'm just going to sit here and wait. It's like if you pray which I'm for it's like okay, what does that bring about to you?
Speaker 1:So, for example, in that model prayer Jesus said about give us our daily bread, they didn't pray that prayer and then think I'm just going to sit here and the bread is going to show up in front of me. When they prayed that they also knew there's some things I have to do. I've got to go out there and earn that daily bread. God be with me, help me do it, but there's some action I should take. Worst one I heard Kimberly was a couple that was trying to reconcile and they went to see their pastor and they called us and they said, our pastor said yes, he'd help us reconcile. Then he gave us the Myers-Johnson.
Speaker 2:Myers-Briggs.
Speaker 1:Myers-Briggs, that's right. I'm sorry there's a different one called Johnson, believe it or not, not Myers-Johnson, it's something else. But they took that. And then he said no, I'm not going to help you reconcile this, as you should have never gotten together to begin with. And they called me and they were saying what do you recommend? And I said I recommend you find a pastor who's a Christian. That's what I would recommend. Don't listen to just anything that's out there. Use people such as us, who care, who really want to help you save your marriage, who will not lie to you. We'll tell you the truth, even when you want to hear a lie, to help you understand what you have done and what you need to change, what you're doing now and what you need to do in the future. But remember, it's going to be you, so please don't look for the $99 serve or the person that tells you just go out and do whatever the heck you want to do. Those people are not helping you.
Speaker 1:We would love to help you right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And the best way that we do that is through our three-day workshop. And sometimes people will come back to us and they'll say, well, wow, what y'all do is expensive. And our response to that is listen compared to the people who the $99, these six text messages will get your spouse to come crawling back to you. Yeah, you could say that ours has a lot more that you need to invest, because we've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and a team in research and the things that we teach, because it works.
Speaker 2:It's all based on social science, research and experience over 23 years, with over 5,000 couples that have gone through just this workshop that we're talking about. So it has the success rate to back it up and it's a very highly involved process that we take people about. So it has the success rate to back it up and it's a very highly involved process that we take people through. That requires a lot, of, a lot of finances to make that weekend work and to make it happen, and so we recommend that you look more into that, that you go and find out about our three day workshop, marriagehelpercom slash workshop. If you are listening as a podcast, the link is in the show notes as well as if you're watching on YouTube. You can find it below as well. But we would love to work with you and your spouse and help to disband these negative or poor beliefs that you might hold, that you've heard from other people, and teach you the real things that will work to make your marriage stronger than ever, no matter what has happened.
Speaker 1:We'd love to help. Let us and of course, we hope to see you in the next episode of Relationship Radio.
.png)
.png)
