"My Husband Paid Me $2000 To Marry Him" – Answering Listener Questions

You made a commitment. But you're not sure you'd make it again.

That's where a lot of people are. And in this episode, I answer their questions honestly.

One woman has been married 41 years. She loves her husband. She's just never been in love with him. She's asking if it's too late, or if this whole thing was a 41-year mistake.

Another asks the thing most separated spouses are afraid to say out loud. If we're both doing fine apart, if we're both becoming our best selves, what would ever bring us back?

And one man wants an answer to something bigger. Does God change hearts? Or has his wife's decision already settled it?

Here's what I keep coming back to. Love is a choice. But it's also a process. Follow the path and you can fall in love with almost anyone. Stop following it and you can fall out of love without ever meaning to.

PIES is where it starts. Physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual. But it's the first step, not the finish line. Becoming your best self doesn't pull someone back on its own. Two people don't fall in love just by standing side by side as their best selves. There has to be a lean in. There has to be acceptance. A safe place where someone is finally allowed to be who they are without being asked to change.

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Transcript

How To Submit A Question

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you want to submit a question to be answered in a future show, then here's how you do it. You go and you follow me on Instagram at Kimberly BeamHolmes and then send me a message and just type the word pies, P-I-E-S. From there, you're going to get a direct message right back that's going to have a link to a form. So you'll just click that, you'll fill out your question. You can choose for it to be anonymous, or even for the chance in the future for me to give you a call and for us to talk about it live together to air on the show. However, you want to do it, I want to answer your questions. So go give a follow at Kimberly Beam Holmes on Instagram. Message me the word pies. All right, Jason, what's the first question?

A Marriage Built On Regret

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Okay, first question is from someone who wants to remain anonymous. They said, I married my husband because he paid me $2,000.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

What?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

I was not a Christian at the time, but a few months later, I accepted Christ as my savior. Now, 41 years later, and the kids are gone, he is still the man I wouldn't have even dated. I feel like I am in a death sentence. I want to divorce and just be free and chalk up, chalk this up as a 41-year mistake. I love him as a husband, but have never been in love with him and suffering silently as I live with him and he has Asperger syndrome or is autistic. Someone help me.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

I really wish I could talk to this person and ask why there why there was $2,000 exchanged at the beginning of this. Mostly just because I'm nosy, not because it actually really makes any difference with what I'm with what I'm going to explain. So the listener said that she feels like she made a mistake. Okay. But also at the end of the day, you made a commitment. And you also said that he is a good husband, right? Isn't that what she said?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

She said, I love him as a husband, but have never been in love with him.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Okay. I love him as a husband, but I've never been in love with him. Okay. So you have two options here. Either you divorce, which is going to go against your belief system because you're a Christian and you made a committed, you made a covenant commitment in front of God. Do they have kids?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Yes, they do, but they are grown and out of the house.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Doesn't make a difference. So you have kids together that are going to be witnessing this and seeing this. I feel like while it may be true that your husband paid $2,000, which again I would love to know what that story was, but while it may be true that your husband paid you $2,000 to marry him, you've been married a long time now. You have committed your life to this person. You see good things in him because you say, I love him as a husband, but I'm

Choosing Love Through The Love Path

SPEAKER_01 2:38

not in love with him. Then figure out how to grow love together. Figure out how to walk the love path. Because one of the things that we teach religiously at Marriage Helper is you can fall in love with anyone. Love is a choice, but it's also a process. And if you follow the process of falling in love, then you can fall in love whether you intend to or not. But if you stop following the process, then you can fall out of love even if you don't mean to. So forget the past. The past is the past. You can't go back and change it either way. You do have kids who are still looking to you as their source of understanding how healthy relationships and marriages can work. And you shouldn't take that lightly. So try and walk the love path, starting with attraction, physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, one of the things to talk about a whole lot on this show, but really getting to how can I become the best that I can be, and at the same time finding the things that you can be attracted to in him, not thinking about available alternatives. You've got to stop thinking about what your life would be like without him, what comparing him to other people, stop doing those things. It's going to keep you stuck in wanting out of the marriage. Instead, just start actually mentally dedicating yourself and committing yourself to, I'm going to try and fall in love with my husband. It starts with attraction, it starts with building friendship, and then it goes from there.

If Both Spouses Improve Then What

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Okay, next question comes from Allison from New Jersey. She says, Hi Kimberly, Dr. Kimberly. Hello. I know the need for working on your pies and totally agree it's a win-win if you do. However, what if your separated spouse is also working on their pies? They don't know anything about marriage helper, so they're just working on themselves. That should be great, right? But what would make them choose to come back if they're their best self? As you tell the story, Dr. Beam came back because he went through the trenches and hit rock bottom and your mom was doing well. If both spouses are doing well without the other, why would they come back?

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Okay, I can understand where the question is coming from, but I think there's a bit of a false dichotomy. Is that the is that the right use of that phrase here? You, I think you would want your spouse to be working on themselves and becoming their best self while you also. The spouse doesn't come back because they feel like they are less than whole. That's not the goal. Just like the goal of you working on your pies is that you realize that you have identity and worth outside of the marriage. That doesn't mean that you then automatically are going to want to leave the marriage. No, it just helps you have better self-esteem, self-confidence. It helps you handle situations better to be calm, strong, and gentle in the interactions that you have. So great. If they're working on themselves and working on their pies, fantastic. They don't have to be going through the trenches in order to want to come back. Now, the second part of that question is if we're happy without each other, then why would my spouse come back? And again, I don't think that's quite the right way to look at it. Your spouse may be finding uh peace away from you right now because they are away from the pain, they're away from the conflict, they're away from the stress that the relationship was bringing. That that isn't totally encompassed in what's going on with working on your pies. You see, there's a there's a bigger system here. The system is that pies is the first part of the love path. It's how we begin the process of falling in love. And it's the thing that keeps us falling in love when things get off the rocks. As we say at Marriage Helper, if you feel like your marriage begins struggling or you're you're slipping off of the love path, then you can always start back at the beginning, which is the pies. But the pies isn't the end all be all. It's just one thing. Your husband can be completely happy and alone without you, without anyone. But the goal of marriage is not that we get not that we find wholeness, not that we are finally complete as if we weren't before. The goal of marriage is that we are in a relationship, a long-term, stable, committed relationship with someone who says, I will be there for you, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. And that doesn't just happen from the pies. The pies allows you to show up your best in the relationship. You would want your husband to also be working on his pies, but there has to be a next step from there. Two people don't just fall in love because they're they're two best selves. That's that's not how it happens. There has to be a crossover. There has to be a point where they actually start leaning in towards each other. Attraction is what leads us to want to move closer. That's all attraction does. It allows the person to finally lean in a little bit, if you want to think of it that way. But once they lean in, then what happens from there? That's where you become that safe place, where you're able to be friends. You build that stability and foundation of friendship with the other person. That's how intimacy occurs. That is where the whole basis of the rest of how you fall in love happens from there is through that acceptance piece. Being a safe place, I accept you for who you are without trying to change you. And that's the key that your husband is never gonna get alone. He's never gonna get that alone because what all of us are looking for is someone to accept me as I am without requiring me to change. So lean into that part. If you're working on your pies, great. Check the box on that, keep working on it. But now maybe it's time to go to that next part of the love path, which is acceptance.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Okay,

Acceptance And Friendship After Attraction

SPEAKER_00 8:34

next question. This comes from Dr. Dad from Spring Hill, Tennessee.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

I wonder who that could be.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Dr. Dad says, just how brilliant is your dad? And do you remember that he told people for years that he felt he was supposed to mentor someone to do far more than he ever did? Do you also remember that he's known for years that that is you? Now I ask again, how brilliant is your dad?

SPEAKER_01 8:58

The most brilliant. So brilliant. Thank you, Dad. That's sweet. Dr. Dad.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Final question for today comes from Chris from Minnesota. He says, People have told me that God will never intervene in a person's free will. So since my spouse has made it very clear that she wants out, God will respect her wishes and not mess with her decision. In fact, in God's plan, since he knows all, included uh her wanting to walk from our marriage. So here's my question Who's running history/slash time, us or God? It seems to me that when everybody wants to pray for another person's salvation, they ask God to change their heart or change their mind. So why doesn't the same apply to our marriage? Am I wrong to ask God to change her mind and to not give my spouse a moment of peace until she sh surrenders back to, quote, for better or for worse, so help me God. And get humble, get on her knees, and dig in and build a new marriage with me. It seems like to me that the only way I can believe in the MH slogan, there's always hope, is that is if that hope is dependent on someone else other than me or my spouse. I choose to believe that God is in the business of changing hearts, changing wills, and that goes for salvation and for my marriage. I would love to know what you think.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Wow. I do not agree that God does not change hearts and minds. I now I'm not smart enough to know, like, does it the first the first question you asked was, does God intervene with free will?

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

He can. He absolutely can. I mean, there's precedent for that in the Bible. We know that God hardened Pharaoh's heart at the Exodus. Now, whether that means that God set up circumstances to where Pharaoh would end up choosing to harden

Prayer Free Will And Saving Marriage

SPEAKER_01 10:40

his own heart, or whether God like intervened even more than that. We just know that scripture says God hardened Pharaoh's heart. We also know that God changed his mind with King Hezekiah, where he King Hezekiah was going to die, and King Hezekiah pleaded with God to allow him to live, and God changed his mind and allowed him to live. I believe it was 15 more years. So I don't, I don't think I at the core agree with the precedent that God cannot. God can do anything that he wants to do. I also don't know that I want to keep going down that rabbit hole right now on this show because it's probably a little above my pay grade. And there's probably a lot of philosophers and theologians who would have a lot of really intricate things to say about that that would probably just confuse me. But I think at the core, the real question is can my marriage still be saved? Even if my wife has decided that it's done. I mean, to the people who say, well, if God, if, if she's already decided she wants out and God isn't gonna intervene with free will. But but how do if, and I agree, God knows all things. Like he ultimately ends up knowing the timeline that everything's gonna end up playing out. But I think that's because God can handle, like mentally, I don't even know if he has the same kind of mind that that we do, but mentally he can handle several different timelines for every person's life, for every decision placed in front of them. And and ultimately can still help people get to the same end result. But here's what I was gonna say. Ultimately, we don't know that that, like those people who are saying, if that's what her decision is right now, God's not gonna intervene. You don't know that that's gonna be her decision in six months or a year. What we see in scripture is to pray for life. And that doesn't just mean when people are sick, we pray for them to not die, but for relationships to continue to live, for there to be restoration, for there to be reconciliation. And we see that there are difficult circumstances of people in the Bible. I mean, even the 12 disciples, they didn't always get along. And even Paul, when he was going on his mission trips that he had, there were times he had to part ways with other people, but later they ended up coming back together. We see that there is a precedent for reconciliation in scripture, of course, with the ultimate reconciliation, which is us to God. I believe God can do anything. I believe that there is always hope. I believe God works in ways we will never understand. And I believe that the best thing we can do, and scripture always also even tells us this when people are in the middle of sinning, when they are leaning out of their faith. I believe it's in Ephesians, maybe it's 1 Peter somewhere in there. Scripture says, pray for those people that they would be restored, that they would end up coming back to the faith, that they wouldn't continue in a life of sin. Now, I'm not trying to say that your wife is like actively living in a life of sin, but we know from again what Scripture says, the reason that God ever permitted divorce to Moses back in the Old Testament, and then Jesus said this again in Matthew. The reason that God ever permitted divorce was because there were hardness of hearts. And that's always true. Any marriage that ends, it's because one or both people has a hardened heart. And we also know that God can soften hearts. And we see that with in Ezekiel when we talk about the valley of dry bones that were able to come to life, a heart of stone that was turned into a heart of flesh. God has the ability to how in many different ways, through circumstances that people experience, ultimately they do get to make the choice of what they're going to do. But I believe at every turn God is there pursuing them and hoping, like asking for them to end up following him and making a choice that will lead to abundant life. And marriage plays into that because we know that marriage was God's plan from the beginning. So, and we know that he he honors that covenant. We know that that covenant of a marriage relationship is what reflects the heart of God and how he sees us as his church. And that is what we want to see reflected in a marriage relationship and how a husband loves her his wife and how the wife loves his husband. So we know that it's important, and we know that it's the way that God sees how to how to bring up families and how to create strong societies. So, all that to say, I think you should keep praying for your wife. I think you should keep praying for her heart to be softened. I think you should keep praying for miracles to happen. And I think more than anything, that God can absolutely bring that restoration and that reconciliation, even when all things seem impossible, but even if it doesn't happen, that God is still good and he will work all things for good for those who love him. Romans tells

Watch The Full Show On YouTube

SPEAKER_01 15:58

us that. What you just saw is a segment from the brand new The Dr. Kimbrilli Beam Holmes show. If you want to see the full thing, then go over to my YouTube channel. It'll be linked below, but it is Kimbrilli Beam Holmes, and you can watch the full show where I answer even more questions, where I break down a study scripture with me, and much more. I would love if you would go over there, check it out, leave a comment, make sure that you subscribe, watch the video, leave a comment, share it with a friend. I'll be releasing episodes like that every single week. Until next time, remember there is always hope.