Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 287 Sheila Gregoire - The Marriage You Want
Today we're talking about marriage - specifically, how Christian marriages might be missing the mark. I'm sitting down with Sheila Gregoire, a researcher who's spent years studying what actually makes relationships work. And here's something interesting: the biggest threat to marital satisfaction isn't what most people think. It's not sex or money - it's housework. Sheila isn't just another marriage author. She's surveyed 7,000 people to understand the dynamics of healthy relationships. Her work challenges a lot of the traditional evangelical advice that's been circulating for decades - advice that often creates more distance than connection. We're going to explore how Christian marriage books have sometimes gotten it wrong. How messages about leadership, submission, and roles can actually harm the very relationships they're trying to protect. We'll talk about what real partnership looks like, how couples can communicate better, and what it means to truly see each other. This conversation is about reimagining marriage - not as a power structure, but as a genuine partnership that reflects mutual respect and love. So if you're curious about building a healthier relationship, or if you're tired of the same old marriage advice, this episode is for you.
Sheila Wray Gregoire is the face behind BareMarriage.com as well as a sought-after speaker and an award-winning author of nine books, including The Great Sex Rescue and She Deserves Better. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to make it healthy, evidence-based, and biblical. She and her husband, Keith, live in Ontario, Canada, near their two adult daughters and three grandbabies. Sheila also knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
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But when you go into marriage believing that he's the tie breaker, then when you don't agree on something, you think, Oh, I guess this is a time I'm supposed to submit. Or he thinks, oh, this is the time I'm supposed to make the decision. And you take shortcuts. And that's what we see over and over again in the data, is that people who believe that he has the tie breaking vote have much lower scores on emotional maturity.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson, today we're talking about marriage, specifically how Christian marriages might be missing the mark. I'm sitting down with Sheila Gregoire, a researcher who spent years studying what actually makes relationships work. And here's something interesting. The biggest threat to marital satisfaction isn't what most people think. It's not sex or money, it's housework. Sheila isn't just another marriage author. She surveyed 7000 people to understand the dynamics of healthy relationships. Her work challenges a lot of the traditional evangelical advice that's been circulating for decades, advice that often creates more distance than connection. We're going to explore how Christian marriage books have sometimes gotten it wrong, how messages about leadership, submission and roles can actually harm the very relationships we're trying to protect. We'll talk about what real partnership looks like, how couples can communicate better, and what it means to truly see each other. This conversation is about reimagining marriage not as a power structure, but as a genuine partnership that reflects mutual respect and love. So if you're curious about building a healthier relationship, or if you're tired of the same old marriage advice, this episode is for you. So join us as we discover the marriage you want. Here is my conversation with Sheila. Gregoire, Sheila, welcome to shifting culture. Really excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me. Thank you. It's good to be here. I'm really excited to dive into marriages and dive into the marriage we all want and need to be healthy, to be thriving, so that both the husband and the wife can actually thrive and look more like Jesus in their marriage. Imagine that, yes, wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be great? You know, as you started to go down this book, particularly, what are the typical things that Christian merit books have been saying about marriage and how to have a healthy marriage? Okay,
Sheila Gregoire:so there's a whole bunch of things that Christian books often say that lead to really unhealthy things, things like you shouldn't have expectations. If you have expectations, it means that you're relying on your spouse to fulfill you when only God can fulfill you. And the reason that you're upset in your marriage is that you have expectations, and so you need to let go of those expectations and just put your faith and trust in the Lord and find your joy in the Lord. And it's like, yeah, but your spouse made vows. And when we don't hold our spouse to any kind of standard that isn't good for the marriage, and when you tell yourself you're not actually unhappy, you just don't have enough faith. Well, that's gaslighting yourself, and a lot of people have been taught to gaslight themselves. So that's number one. I think the other big thing that Christian marriage books have done is they've gendered everything, right? Men are like this, women are like this. Men are supposed to do this, women are supposed to do this, and it doesn't work. And that's what I really appreciate about our book, is because we're evidence based, we looked at what works and what doesn't work, and it's kind of incontrovertible.
Joshua Johnson:So set us up a little bit like, what what did you do? What was the research that you did? What was the survey that you did to get some of the data that you found for this book? Yeah.
Sheila Gregoire:So basically, our team is really a research team. I started off blogging back in 2008 I've been talking about sex and marriage online for ages. I have couple of master's degrees in this. And I was writing and writing and writing in the Christian world. I never read other books because I was afraid of plagiarizing. So I was just assuming they love Jesus. I love Jesus. We're all saying the same thing, right? And then in 2019 It was a Friday afternoon, and I had a migraine and I didn't want to work, and I was on what was then called Twitter, and people were having a debate of whether they needed love or respect, and they were referring to Emerson egriches best selling book, Love and respect. And I thought, I have that book. This is a great way to procrastinate. So I got the book, and because I normally write primarily about sex, I turned to the sex chapter, and it was. As if a nuclear bomb went off in my living room, because I read, if your husband is typical, he has a need that you don't have. That need was for physical release. If he didn't get physical release, he would come under satanic attack. And women, you should like sex, because it takes such a short amount of time, and all this nonsense. And it never said a single word about female pleasure, and I freaked out, and my team and I decided to do something about it, because I had working for me, my daughter who has a psych degree and did a lot in psychometrics, and a woman who has a master's in epidemiology and has done a lot of stats. And so that became our first book, The great sex rescue. We surveyed 20,000 women to find out how evangelical messages around sex affect marital and sexual satisfaction. But we wanted to do something differently this time, because we wanted to say, if you were just to create marriage advice from the ground up, just a healthy marriage. We're not we're not trying to necessarily knock everything down. We're just trying to say, from the ground up, what would it look like? So we surveyed 7000 people, including 1300 matched pair couples, and we just said, Hey, what actually works? And we found some really interesting stuff. We
Joshua Johnson:want to know what actually works, and we want to know what is healthy This is so it's fantastic that you were able to do this work. So what were some major things that came back when you got the survey results back and you started to look at the data, and you go, wow, this is the this boils everything down to a few things here. What is it? Okay?
Sheila Gregoire:If I were to ask you, what are the two biggest things couples fight about? What would you say they are
Joshua Johnson:finances and maybe sex or,
Sheila Gregoire:okay, yeah, yeah, sex, money, those tend to be the two things that everyone says, right. Okay. So we used a couple of different measures of marital satisfaction. One of them was the relationship satisfaction scale, relationship flourishing scale, and we made it out of 100 and if you have money problems, it drops your relationship flourishing by about five points. Okay, so it does drop. And remember that most people are sitting in a 20 point, like between 70 and 90, so there's not a lot of people at 10, right? So, so five points is still quite significant. If you go from having sex several times a week to having sex just once a month or less, it drops your marital satisfaction, your relationship flourishing about 10 points. Okay, so important. If you go from doing half the housework to doing 90% or more, it drops your marital satisfaction 30 points. It is way more important than sex or money, and yet Christian marriage books do not talk about it unless they're saying that men have a God given need for the wives to do the housework, which both marriage on the rock by Jimmy Evans and his needs her needs, by Willard Harley, both say that that men have a God given need for domestic support. So men have a God given need for the wife to do the dishes. Wow.
Joshua Johnson:So let's dig into it then. So let's get into housework. And so why is like Unity teamwork? Like carrying each other's burdens so important in a marriage and in housework, I would assume that if I was doing 90% in housework, I'd feel alone, not supported. I don't have a partner here. I am somebody's slave. That's, that's how I would feel if I was doing the majority of the work.
Sheila Gregoire:And that's, and that's what happens now, it's not always women who are doing the majority. There are sometimes men that do, but it's far more likely, I think it's like six times more likely, to be women. And this holds true whether or not women work outside the home. So you can't just say that, Well, if she's a stay at home mom, she isn't going to mind, because the simple fact is, carrying 90% of the load or more is exhausting. It just is. It's absolutely exhausting, and you really can't sustain that over the long term. And so what we called we saw a frequent dynamic on a whole bunch of different scales, which we called the unfairness threshold. And it goes like this, in the first five years of marriage, you can basically put up with anything, and it doesn't really affect you that much. Okay, it's like that honeymoon effect. So if you look at people who are doing more than 75% of the housework in the first five years of marriage, and you ask them, does your spouse do their fair share like they tend to say, yes, my spouse does their fair share. So even if you're doing like an outsized portion, you're saying, Yeah, sure, my spouse does. But when you ask them at year 10 or year 15 or year 20, you get a very different response. And what we see is that over time, people can't take it anymore, and around years 15 to 20, that's when, that's when things break, and this holds true for housework. It holds true for sex. So she's never reaching orgasm. She doesn't really care in the first five years, but boy, does she care by year 20 and and that's when, that's when marriages often become sexless. If she is making all of the doctor's appointments for both of them, she doesn't really care in the first. Five years, but boy, does she care in year 20 if she is the one who is always initiating repair, so when there's a problem in our marriage, she's the one who comes to Him first. Doesn't really matter in the first five years, but by year 20, it really does, and we don't see the same dynamic quite as much for men, even when men hold the majority of it, and in a lot of them, we just didn't find the man health, majority of it. So, yeah, it's like unfairness. You can't handle unfairness over a lot of years. You just can't. It wears on you.
Joshua Johnson:Let's get back into the roots of some of these, these problems, of of how we got to a place where there is unfairness. There is a place where, in some theology, the man is supposedly more important than the woman. For some reason, where did we get to this place where unfairness happens in a a Christian marriage man? Because if I think of of God, I think of Jesus himself. He loves all of us, we're all children of God, like there's, how did this happen? Where there is so much inequality in a marriage, there's not much communication saying, Hey, you get to do all the work. I get to receive all the benefits of that work.
Sheila Gregoire:And they don't. No one says that out loud, right? Like they don't, they don't phrase it that way. They talk about it in terms of roles, right? Like God has made him to be the leader, and he has such a he has the he has to carry the burden of the responsibility for the family, and that's a heavy burden, and so we have to support him as he carries that burden, you know? And that is the way that it tends to be phrased. But when you look at the nitty gritty, in most relationships, she is actually carrying the majority of the load, and she's carrying the majority of the stress and the mental load. He actually isn't carrying very much at all. Yes, he may work outside the home, but remember that in most marriages, she does too, and in quite a few marriages today, she's bringing home more money than he does, but that doesn't change the fact that she's still doing most of the mental load. And so, yeah, we we've given all of this advice to Christian couples about how he needs to be the leader, and he's an authority over her, and it doesn't work. Can I? Can I give you an example of how we found this? All right? So basically, we measured everything like we threw everything at the wall to see what sticks right, like we we were looking at. Do they have shared hobbies? Do you feel like you can share, you know, your feelings with your spouse? Can you admit your weaknesses? Do you have high sexual desire? You know when you're when you're upset about something? Do you feel like you can go to your spouse like we asked everything, and what we found is that good things travel together. Okay? So if one thing is going well, chances are everything else also has more, like, a higher chance of also going well, right? It doesn't necessarily go well, but like, you know, if she has higher sexual desire, she's also more likely to feel like they're part of a team. She's also more likely to feel like they have shared hobbies, right? So good things travel together and bad things travel together. So if one thing's going badly, everything else has a higher chance of also going badly, right? So isn't necessarily going badly, but it's a higher chance of moving in that direction. So if you think about two groups of hikers, you know, one group's all wearing green T shirts, and one groups all wearing purple T shirts, and they start at the same place, but to go in an opposite directions. So you have your group that's doing well, and your group that's not doing well, okay? And they're they're moving in opposite directions. Here's what I want people to understand, the idea that he holds the tie breaking vote in marriage, right? That he is an authority over her travels with the bad outcomes. It doesn't travel with the good outcomes. Or the idea that he needs respect in a way that she will never understand, travels with the bad outcomes, not with the good outcomes. And so complementarians can tell you that, oh, well, this is the way that God ordained it. But Jesus said that you can tell things by their fruit, that a bad tree can't bear good fruit, and a good tree can't bear bad fruit. And what I'm telling you is that him being the tie breaker, him having authority, is going in the same direction as all the bad fruit.
Joshua Johnson:There's the fruit, right? There's bad fruit. We could see it. So let's move into a place then. What does it look like then to make decisions together in a marriage? What is a fruitful marriage decision making process for couples?
Sheila Gregoire:Yeah, I find this one really funny, because often when I'm talking to people who believe that the Man has authority in marriage, and has the tie breaking vote, which is a weird thing to say anyway, because if you have the tie breaking vote, that means there's more than two people. Like, if you have the high break tie breaking vote, there's only two people. You don't have the tie breaking vote, you just simply have all the votes. Because things just simply always go your way, either you agree and it goes your way, or you don't agree and it goes your way. So it's not. You have a tie breaking vote, you just simply have all the votes. But when people believe that, what they'll often say to me, and they think this is a mic drop moment, they think this is gonna, like, win them the argument is, ah, but if he doesn't have the tie breaking vote, what are you gonna do when you disagree? And I think that is so funny, because they don't realize they're telling on themselves. Because the vast majority, 78.9% of couples make decisions together, they never need a tie breaker. We've been married for 33 years. We've never needed a tie breaker. We just work it out. But when you go into marriage believing that he's the tiebreaker, then when you don't agree on something, you think, Oh, I guess this is a time I'm supposed to submit. Or he thinks, oh, this is the time I'm supposed to make the decision. And you take shortcuts. And that's what we see over and over again. In the data, is that people who believe that he has the tie breaking vote have much lower scores on emotional maturity.
Joshua Johnson:That's pretty much key, right there. Emotional maturity, yeah, that's that's a big thing there. There's been a lot of times when, you know, my wife and I were trying to figure things out together. I say, Hey, I'm ready for this decision to happen now. And really, the decision doesn't happen for another year and a half. Like, we have to work it out for a while to say it's, it's okay. Like, and then my wife goes, Okay, I'm ready. Like, this is this is good. We actually have to do some of the work ourselves. I think that's part of the the thing in a marriage, we don't realize that it takes a lot of emotional work to work on ourselves to bring health to any relationship. So what does that look like for a couple to come together and be healthy, but also then apart, they could actually do some some really good emotional therapy or work so that they can have self awareness and emotional charity within the relationship?
Sheila Gregoire:Yeah. And this is a tricky thing, because people tend to assume that women are more emotional, that women are more in touch with their emotions, that they have an easier time talking about their feelings, and this is somehow genetic, and what they thought is this is not genetic, this is social. There is no reason why women should have an easier time with this, and there is no guarantee that just because she is a woman, she will have an easier time with this, right? Some men are very emotionally aware. Some women are not more women tend to be comfortable sharing their feelings than men. But again, that is social. That is not God given. And in this culture, boys, especially, are often penalized for having feelings or showing feelings. So they say the only emotion that a man is allowed to express is anger. You know, the only quote, unquote negative emotion. There are no actual negative emotions, but, but when we frame it that way, the only one men are allowed to express is anger. And we see that showing up too in our data. We you know, when we ask, um, does your spouse have frequent outbursts of anger. Do they have? You know, uncontrollable anger. We do see that showing up quite a bit in these relationships, where, you know, men don't know how to share their feelings. They don't know how they don't have shared hobbies, they don't spend time together. They're going to have because they're running away from intimacy. And we often see it too in men who channel a lot of their emotional needs into sex, because sex can help you feel connected without necessarily having to do the work of vulnerability or emotional connection. And so sex, for a man like that, can make him feel really close, but at the same time, it's making his wife feel very distant. So it's actually hurting the relationship in the end. And so in the marriage we want, we you want, we have a lot of exercises that couples can do to help grow intimacy, to help learn how to be vulnerable, to learn how to express what you're feeling. Because a lot of us didn't grow up with it. When my grandson was three, he used to have a lot of temper tantrums, and my kids would be teaching him, you know how to identify his feelings and how to emotionally regulate, right? Like how to take deep breaths, how to jump up and down. You know how to go by be by himself, or whatever. But I remember him just saying to me one day we were out at the park and one of the slides wasn't working. He says, oh, Mimi, I am just so disappointed, you know? And he's three years old, and he's using the word disappointed, and he had all kinds of emotional language for different emotions. A lot of us can't do that at 3343 or even 53 so we know we feel bad, but we can't name what that bad is. And that's a real gift we can give your kids, but it's also a gift we can give our spouses when we can start working through and and being that sounding board and being a safe place for people to learn how to be more vulnerable.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, we were having a training at our church last month, and we're talking about emotions and the how to we name our emotions, and my friends got out his wallets. And he pulled out his emotion wheel. Yeah, I
Unknown:love that. It's such a good tool. So
Joshua Johnson:to be able to figure out, what are we feeling one of the questions I have as I think that a lot of people bring into their marriage patterns from what they have seen with especially within their own parents and their own parents marriage, or the marriages that have been close to them, and so they those are the expectations that they come in if it's an unhealthy marriage, if they you know, if their dad cheated on their mom or something, they're going to be very suspicious of their husband going into the marriage. And they may not think that, but subconsciously, they are. How does the how do we start to walk into health and intimacy and deal with some of the patterns and the unhealthy expectations that we bring into a marriage, even at the beginning of coming together, you
Sheila Gregoire:need to understand your story, because so much of the way that we react in the moment comes out of our story, the story that we are telling ourselves about our past, how that story has impacted us today. And many of us have never explored our stories. We don't really talking about our stories. They're ugly, they raise they raise emotions we're not comfortable with. And so we tend to try to live in the present. And people can tell you, Oh yeah, you're not supposed to live in the past. You gotta live in the present. But present, but, but you can't fully live in the present until you address your past, because the past is going to keep coming up. And so, you know, take the time with your spouse and share your story. It's such, it's such a an intimacy enhancer. When you when you let your guard down, and you share your story with your spouse, but also helps you recognize your own emotions and recognize, Oh, these are the patterns. That's why I do these things. And of course, if you can do this with a licensed counselor, all the better, all the better. But I you know, we've been married for 33 years, and I realized recently there's a large part of the years from 10 to 13 that I haven't shared with my husband yet, you know, and we started talking about those things, and I realized how well, you know, that that actually is why I react to this that way, or that's why I do this. And so getting into the habit of, you know, just asking random questions, like, if, you could go back in time and talk to your nine year old self, what would you say? Or what is the first time you remember crying? Or who did I never meet in your life that you wish I could have met you know, from your past, like anything, just ask questions, have interesting conversations that can help you get a light in your spouse's story. Years
Joshua Johnson:ago, when Eternal Sunshine and the Spotless Mind came out, there's a line in there about looking at the people in the restaurant and all the couple, older couples in the restaurant, and calling them the dining dead. They're just sitting there. They're eating. They're not communicating or talking. And so there seems to be a lot of affection and wanting to know each other early on in a relationship, in a marriage, you know, the first five years, as you said, is and so how do we sustain like affection, and how do we sustain going deeper and continually Working on intimacy and vulnerability and wanting to know our spouse as we go on. How do we sustain that?
Sheila Gregoire:Okay, I've got a really quick exercise you can do on a daily basis. It's something super quick, but anyone can do it. And we call it sharing your your constellation, your desolation, which is a Catholic way of saying because I heard this were Catholic ones, but we shared that the moment of the day when you felt the most in the groove, you know, I am doing what the Holy Spirit put put me on this earth to do. I am, I am living in the groove. I am doing amazing. And then the moment in your life that happened today where you were the most defeated. It's like, I hate this. I can't do this. This is wearing me down. And share those two emotional moments. Because what usually happens at the end of the day, you know, you see each other after work. What do you usually say? What did you do today? Or, how was your day, right? How do you answer that question? Well, I had six business meetings at lunch. I went to the bank, I deposited a check, you know, I tried to take in my 10,000 steps, you know over the lunch break, like, like, what do you say? That doesn't that doesn't actually give emotional information. It gives facts, but it doesn't actually help you connect on an emotional level. But when you have to share those two emotional moments in your day, then now you're letting your spouse into your world. But the other thing you're doing is you're letting yourself into your world, because you're processing it yourself. When Keith and I started doing this about 10 years ago, I realized that the moment that I felt the most defeated was always the same, and it was when I had to go to my inbox and deal with my emails, and because, you know, I was doing a lot of hard work and I was getting a lot of people's complaints, but I was also. Getting heartbreaking stories from readers, and it was just really heavy. And so after a week of that, I hired someone to do my inbox for me, and my life has gotten so much better, you know, so sometimes it helps you too, but it just, it just helps you really see the emotional side. And for people that aren't necessarily comfortable sharing emotions or getting vulnerable, it's something easy to do that you can put the practice in, and then you really do feel like you connect. I think that's
Joshua Johnson:important. So connecting intimacy, it actually then will start to affect all the areas of our relationship and our marriage, knowing that we see each other, we know who we are, and it also affects our physical relationships. So let's, let's get into it. Let's talk about sex a little bit. One of the things that has become a problem in our culture, that is the pornification of our culture, not just in, you know, naked people on the internet, but it is the total like using and consumption of others, and we see that in different ways in our culture. And it's not just naked people, it's just everything in American culture. How has the pornification of culture affected marriages? And what do you see, especially within use of porn or or these sort of things as effects on a marriage.
Sheila Gregoire:I think that the Evangelical Church and the porn industry sees sex the same way, which is that sex is about getting a man's needs met, and a woman exists to serve his needs, and it has nothing at all to do with the Bible, nothing at all to do with the heart of Jesus. Nothing at all to do with God. To give you an example in in the book, sheet music by Kevin Leman, he talks about how if she is postpartum, or she's not feeling well, you know, or her period is really heavy, she can learn to give him hand jobs or other sexual favors when intercourse is off the table, because, after all, faithfulness is a two person job, and many books talk about this the importance, especially in the postpartum area. So you know, she has just pushed a human being out of her body. She is exhausted. Her milk is coming in, she hasn't slept. And yet, our Christian books are telling her that the main thing she needs to remember is that her husband still needs her attention, and especially her husband still needs sexual release. And it's scary, you know, or every man's battle, which has sold 4 million copies, that series, literally told women that they were methadone for their husband's sex addictions. So it said, when he quits cold turkey, be like a merciful vial of methadone for him. So what is methadone? You know, methadone is a substitute for what you really want. So every man's battle is saying, yes, sure, he really wants that, but he'll settle for you, and when he uses your body, it'll make him want that other thing less. So women become sin management tools, and that has nothing to do with the heart of God. And when you also realize that we have a 47 point orgasm gap in the evangelical church, by which I mean that 95% of men almost always, or always reach orgasm in a given sexual encounter, compared to just 48% of women, and we have twice the rate of sexual pain disorders in the evangelical church. So we have about 23% of women experiencing vaginismus of some sort, largely because of our messaging around sex. We have taken something which is supposed to be mutual and intimate, and we've turned it into something that she owes him in order to keep him from straying or sinning. And that's just got to change. And so, you know, in our in our chapter on sex, we we frame it in this way is that sex is supposed to be something which is intimate, something which is mutual, and something which is pleasurable for both. And until those three things are met, it's not really sex. It's just using her
Joshua Johnson:that's so damning to the church, just like that that is, that's pretty horrific when it comes to a place where man, I just I love I love God, I love Jesus. But what we have done with the messaging of them and twisted it into a place where it is about using other people like there's like that that is horrible to use other people. It doesn't matter if it's in the bedroom or if it's anywhere else in life. Using people is horrible and wrong and anti Jesus, anti what he came for? What? What have you seen? Have you seen any needle moves since you've been doing your work? Is it getting any better? I think
Sheila Gregoire:it is because we've put a phrase into the conversation that wasn't there before, which is about obligation sex, and we've been sharing ever since our first book, The great sex rescue, came out, about how dare. Imaging obligation sex is this idea that she has to have sex with him, or she has to have sex when he wants it. It's one of the big reasons for our increased incidence of sexual pain disorders. It drives women's orgasm rates down. It kills libido. It's awful. And so we have seen people start to talk about that. I think people are starting to realize that women should feel pleasure to I'm hoping. But what one of the things that really bugs me is that the main message around sex in our books is frequency, right? You need to have more sex. He needs sex. You need to make sure you're having sex a certain amount of time. And the big problem, the way it's framed, is the women don't want sex, right? And if you look at our stats, that is true. Is true. Okay, when couples aren't having a lot of sex, it's usually because she doesn't want it. So the solution must be just to tell her to have it more, right? No, no, that's not it. Instead, what we invite people do in our book the marriage you want, is we say, Let's get curious about this and ask why she doesn't want it. And with three simple questions we can explain 95% of her not wanting sex. Okay, so when we when we look at women with very low sexual desire, and we say, do you reach orgasm? And we say, Do you feel emotionally close during sex? And we say, Do you have any kind of sexual pain disorder that explains 85% of her not wanting sex. If we were to also ask about porn use, if we were, you know, if we were to also ask about sexual abuse in their past, we could probably explain pretty much all of it. And so when people talk about frequency and frame it as if this is her fault for not wanting it, why would she want something that hurts her or that is bad for her or that makes her feel used. Why would she want that? And why is the solution to make her want want it more, or to make her have it more instead of asking, how can we make this a better experience for her?
Joshua Johnson:It all boils down to curiosity and kindness in the relationship. So what are some good questions? Instead of being more committed. What are some good questions to bring about a better commitment in marriage?
Sheila Gregoire:Yeah, because, you know, one of the we used to speak at family life Canada marriage conferences, we started speaking with them in like, 2004 2005 and at that time, they were still using the American curriculum. They're not anymore. And a lot of the American curriculum focused on commitment, how the secret to a good marriage is to commit. You know, never say the D word meaning divorce, right? Like, like, you just need to lock in and remember it doesn't matter whether you marry the right person. That matters if you become the right person, and once you're married, this is the right person. And all these things that that were often taught, right? And I found this really strange, because when you read secular marriage books, they don't say that like, they don't talk about commitment, hardly at all. What they're trying to do is say, How can we create a marriage that you actually enjoy and and that's what we're trying to do, too. So it's like, instead of, instead of just saying to people, hey, you need to stay in this marriage no matter what, let's start asking things like, you know, why are you feeling distant right now? Let's start asking, Okay, is the current way that you're doing life sustainable? Because one of the biggest stressors in marriage is just when you feel like you're barely surviving, right, like there's not enough money, you're being run off your feet with little kids and with job demands. Like, is this sustainable what we're doing right now? Do we need to do something big to change the way we do in our life, you know, like, like, looking when there is a problem, let's start to ask, why is this coming up, right? Like, what is the actual underlying thing? And is there anything that we can do about this? Instead of just saying, Ah, you just got to live with it.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, I think it's, it's always we want to get underneath and go back and backtrack and why, and why and why is such a great question to ask when it's asked in kindness, with some curiosity, to say, I actually care about you, instead of why the world are you doing this? This is, yeah, yeah.
Sheila Gregoire:Like you've been asking, I mean, there's, there's a great story that we share in the book about the founder of the Toyota car company. He found he finally had to ask why five times in order to get to the real issue, right? And so let's say that you're just always fighting in the morning, like, before you go to work, you're just grumpy at each other and you're stressed at each other, like, Why are we always fighting in the morning, you know? And maybe the first answer is, well, because there's just too much to do in the morning. Okay, well, why is there too much to do in the morning? Well, it's because we're not doing it the night before. You know. We're not making the kids lunches the night before, we're not checking on homework the night before. We're not figuring out what we're wearing the night before. People, why aren't we doing it the night before? Well, because we're spending too much time on time wasters. Well, why are we spending too much time on time wasters? Well, it's because we're just exhausted, you know. Well, why are we so exhausted? And just keep asking the questions until you can get to the thing. Oh, okay, if we were to fix this one thing, it would fix everything else downstream. You know, I
Joshua Johnson:think one of the big things you you start your book in, and I think it's probably key all the way through, is you talk about teamwork. I went and hung out with with my friends. We were talking, we're just as you know, my wife and I are talking. Them about their marriage. And I basically said, teamwork makes the dream work. They thought it was cheesy, which it is, is for the cheesy, but it kind of is true. As we we move towards teamwork, what were, what were the areas in your study that found that it actually really boils down to teamwork?
Sheila Gregoire:Now we see that in so many different ways. We've already talked about housework, but here's another really simple one that actually matters. Is who makes repair when we're having a fight? You know, who is the first one to say, hey, I don't want this distance between us when one person does that instead of both of you doing that, that's really destructive on a marriage, because if, if the if one person really isn't interested in making repair, what they're really saying is, I don't care if there's distance between us, but often we outsource that emotional labor to our spouse, because it's like, well, this is uncomfortable. I don't want to do something uncomfortable, so I'll let them make the first move, right? That's not That's not good. There's even little things okay, that you may not think matter that much, but they actually do end up mattering over over a long period of time, such as if it's some if it's someone's mom's birthday, who is going to buy the present and send the card. And we asked people, hey, who takes care of your parents? Stuff? Is it you or your spouse? And what we found, I think it was in roughly 50% of marriages, you know, people took care of their own parents and their own families of origin, but in the other 50% she took care of both. There were very few marriages where he took care of both and when she's taking care of both families. That doesn't work out the best, even simple things like who makes the medical and dental appointments? You know, now, most people make them for themselves, but in I think it's about 40% of marriages she makes them for both of them, and very few does he make them for both of them. And when she's making them for both of them, you don't see a good marriage in general, because taking care of your own stuff tends to tends to do better, like we're partners, we need to each show up.
Joshua Johnson:I think a lot of people, and a lot of evangelical marriage books and conversations, they call men to step up and lead more. I actually think that really, they're just calling men to show some initiative in their relationship, because I think that's initiative is important. What does that look like? Then, if it's not just like, domineering, abusive leadership, which I think has been, but what is, what are men like not doing that they're being called out for not leading? Like, why aren't they actually showing initiative or doing anything in their marriage?
Sheila Gregoire:This is actually a really big pet peeve of mine. Okay, so when you ask women, you know, do you want a leader in your marriage, a lot of Christian women will say yes, but when you ask them, what they mean by lead, they don't mean someone who makes the decisions, right? They don't mean, you know, someone who's in authority. What they mean is someone who is a partner with me, someone who takes initiative. So it gets called leading when he does it, but it doesn't get called leading when she does the exact same thing, right? So she is already figuring out, you know, which teacher we're going to use for piano lessons this semester. She's already figuring out where you know they're going to take swimming lessons, she's figuring out where they're going to vacation. Whatever it is, she's already figuring those things out. But when he does it, it's now leading. It's like, no, like we it's almost like, unless you call it leading, he won't do it. That's a problem, right? But, yeah, like, I think what women want and what makes for good marriages is when men just notice what needs to get done, and they take some of that load on themselves, you know. So if Bobby and Susie are not getting along right and they're fighting a lot instead of her having to navigate that, maybe he's the one Googling, you know, creative ways to solve sibling rivalry. Or, how do we stop five year olds from hitting each other, right? Like, like, he's the one who's taking some of that initiative. And instead of just sitting back and thinking, well, this isn't my This isn't my issue, we use one story in the book of a couple where he says to her, You know what, go out on Saturday morning. Do whatever you want. I've got the kids. I've got this handled. I really want you to give get some time off. And so she goes out, she has a great time. She comes home and the kids are super happy. They had pancakes for breakfast. You know, every they've had a great time. And then she notices that, you know, the the birthday present for the birthday party isn't wrapped yet that they're going to this afternoon. So she wraps it. It's not a big deal. But as she's going to get the wrapping paper, she sees that science fair stuff is still out on the table and no progress has been made, and it's got to be in on Monday. And she asks her husband why this hasn't been done. And he said, Well, you didn't tell me. And she's like, okay, but we were talking about this at dinner last night. We were talking about the science fair project at dinner last night. And then she wonders, does that mean the piano practicing didn't get done either? Because the piano recital is this week, and he's like, Well, no, you didn't tell me it's like, but you know, it's this week. It's on the calendar. It starred the kid, like, why does she have to carry it all and that? And that's really the that's really what the cause of a lot of stress in marriage is. That's
Joshua Johnson:so good, that's so helpful for all of us. So if you we have some different dynamics. So if people are listening and go, Man, I think we need to do something different in our marriage. I think that we need to move into a place of more mutuality of we're both actually taking the burden on of this marriage. And we want more intimacy. We want to be more like closer. And they're going, Okay, we want that. So let's take those steps. How would you say to those people? What would you say to them? To say, these are the first steps to take to get to a thriving, healthy, mutual marriage?
Sheila Gregoire:Yeah, of course, it's always hard to answer, because it depends which areas people aren't doing well in, right? And I'm gonna sound like I'm trying to promote my book, but honestly, we've got so many great charts in the book. There's a workbook that goes along with it that you can work together through as couples to try to identify, you know, where are the areas where, where we really need to improve, and what are some super simple, practical things we can start doing today, and so those are in both the book and the workbook, and the workbook has small group curriculum and pre metal curriculum too. But I would just say, get into the habit of speaking up and speaking directly when something's bugging you, because we don't tend to do that, and sometimes we feel religious reasons for not doing it, right? Either she's not supposed to speak up because she's supposed to be submissive, or he's not supposed to speak up because he's supposed to love her as Christ loved the church and and so if she's doing something that bugs him, he's not supposed to say anything that doesn't work in the long term, it can sound like you're being super spiritual, right? Like I am giving my spouse Grace and I am showing them love. But you can put up with something for a little bit of time, over 1015, years, you can't, so we have to practice, and it is a practice speaking up that doesn't mean that we land based our spouse. It doesn't mean that we yell at them. It doesn't mean that we show contempt, but you're allowed to say, You know what, babe, okay, this bugging me. What are we going to do about it? Can we figure out a solution together? It's not always the easiest thing to do, but you got to start talking, because there's really no other way around it.
Joshua Johnson:Once we start talking, there's that and sometimes we have a tendency. And I think this is what Jesus one of the things that Jesus was tempted in in in the desert, in the wilderness, by Satan. It was to make things transactional. Relationships with God transactional. You know, if you throw yourself off here, God's gonna send the angels down, and he's gonna make sure that you're safe and everything's okay. Like, it feels like, Hey, I do this. God's gonna do this. Or it's the same thing with our our relationships, with our marriage. If we make it transactional, there's a temptation to have like, Hey, we're just gonna you do this for me. I will do this for you. How do we not fall into the trap of transaction in relationships, especially in our marriage? Because I think that's a it's a huge thing that we're not always aware of. Like, oh, I'm actually moving towards transactional relationship instead of seeing you for who you are as a whole person. Yeah. And
Sheila Gregoire:isn't it weird how evangelicalism is so drawn to transactional marriage advice, right? Like love and respect. You know, if you want him to show you love, you need to respect him first. The Five Love Languages. If you want your spouse to show love, here's how you need to show them love first. If you want sex, you need to do the dishes. Like, we're really drawn to this idea of transaction, and it likely flows a lot from the way that we see Jesus too, right? Like, yeah. Like, you know, he died so that we get our ticket to heaven, you know? And it's a very, it's a very shallow view of the gospel and the cross as well. I think if we keep first and foremost the idea of, how are we growing intimacy as a couple, as opposed to, am I getting what my needs met. And I'm not saying that it is bad to get your needs met. Okay, if we're going to grow as a couple, you are going to need to get your needs met, but your spouse is too. And I think often we approach marriage thinking, how am I going to get my needs met? As opposed to, how are we as a couple going to grow? And we need to keep the focus on the couple we need to keep the focus on what the Couplehood needs and the couple needs for both of you to show up. The couple needs for both of you to be fully present in everything that God made you to be. The couple needs both of you to use your gifts. The couple needs both of you to feel loved and respected. So so your needs are still important. But we're not only focused on what you want, we're focused on what is going to enhance our marriage and what is going to enhance us together as a couple.
Joshua Johnson:So for the the millions of people that will pick up your book, the marriage you want,
Unknown:we got ourselves 4 million to beat every man's battle.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, that's right. What hope do you have for the readers? What? What's your big hope for this?
Sheila Gregoire:Oh, gosh, I am just so excited that finally there is going to be an evangelical marriage book that doesn't give terrible advice, and that is really focused on mutuality. Because when you look at the best sellers in evangelicalism, they haven't changed in about 15 to 20 years. They're all the same, and they all say the same thing, you know, pray more. Don't speak up. You know, sex is for him meet his needs, and it's just time for something that's safe and that's validating and that's real, and that gets to the heart of Jesus. And so I, I feel I'm excited, like I'm hoping this will be the breath of fresh air. I'm hoping that this will be the book that helps play people back in the right direction, because I think we've seriously missed the boat as a church we have
Joshua Johnson:and so I highly recommend it. The marriage you want is fantastic, very practical, and it is man. It is so life giving and life affirming for the marriage, for the couple, for all of us as we're in it. So, well done. Thank you for the work and thank you for what you've done. So go and get you know, hundreds of copies and pass them out to all of your friends and your family. So Sheila, I have a couple of questions. Here are the ends real quick ones. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?
Sheila Gregoire:Oh, deal with your crap now, because it just comes back up, like, just deal with your crap now, and it's okay to speak up for what you need.
Joshua Johnson:Good, good, good advice. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could
Sheila Gregoire:recommend I have been okay. Dan Allender just wrote a great book. I think it's the deep rooted marriage, which just goes so great with our chapter eight on on how to build emotional connection and really and really deal with your story. So I love that. I love Beth Allison Barr's new book. I read an early version of that becoming a pastor's wife, and I'm just hoping that, with all of these works coming out, focusing on emotional health and wholeness and focusing on the fact that women were made in God's image too, that the church is going to change and that there is going to be a shift. Yes,
Joshua Johnson:amen, yes, both of those books are fantastic. I would highly recommend both of them as well. Sheila, how can people go out and get the marriage you want anywhere you would like to point people to anywhere else you'd like to point people to your podcast, your blog, your website,
Sheila Gregoire:yeah, so we're at Bear marriage.com our podcast is bear marriage every Thursday. That's B, A, R, E, and all my social media can be found there. Of course, you can buy the marriage you want anywhere if you are trying to avoid Amazon. It is on bookshop.org and of course, you get it from Baker books with free shipping within the United States. United States, and I think it's 30% off once it launches. So, yeah,
Joshua Johnson:perfect. Well, Sheila, thank you for this conversation. Thank you for helping us move marriage into the direction of mutuality and something that is beautiful, that reflects the heart of Jesus, and it's not domineering and really just using people for who they are and who they're. We want them to be in a marriage, but it's actually a beautiful reflection of seeing each person in the marriage as whole, beautifully, wonderfully made, that they are made in the image of God, you see them for who they are, and that you can actually grow and trust and intimacy. It's a fantastic book, and I really do hope that a lot of people read it. I do hope it changes the marriage conversation in the evangelical church, that we can move into a new, real, true, mutual relationship, type of discussion around marriage in the church, because it is necessary and needed, and you have helped us out a lot. So thank you so much. Thank you. Applause.
