The Love Dare, based on the movie Fireproof, has been a huge best-selling marriage book for two decades. But does it actually contain good advice? Today on episode 280 of the Bare Marriage podcast, we show how The Love Dare simply regurgitates ...

What if vulnerability and authenticity are vital for true community? And what if we can never truly know God, and each other, until we know ourselves? It's episode 279 of the Bare Marriage podcast, featuring Aimee Byrd talking about her new boo...

Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently did a podcast bemoaning the fact that young women, unlike young men, are giving up on the "creation order" and abandoning marriage. But he distorts the argument, and misses...

So many evangelical pastors teach that men are rational while women are emotional. But is this true? And if women are more emotionally mature than men, then doesn't that mean that men need to learn from women? Listen in as Keith and Sheila diss...

We know watching porn is wrong--but are romance novels just as bad? We've often heard that comparison made: Sure, guys watch porn, but remember that women read novels! Today Rebecca and I talk about when the comparison may be fair, and when it ...

What if marriage replaced ordination as a woman's path to ministry? What if we've systematically erased the stories of women ministering in the past, and in so doing silenced women's voices and removed opportunities to serve Jesus? Today Beth A...

The Marriage You Want is LIVE! Our book launched this week, and in this week's podcast we take a broad, investigative look into the state of evangelical marriage publishing, and why there has very little change in the top 10 books in decades. P...

It's episode 273 of the Bare Marriage podcast! We found that certain beliefs are correlated most with emotional immaturity--passive aggressiveness; outbursts of anger; emotional dysregulation. In our research for our book The Marriage You Want,...

What if the "acts of service" love language is masking something else--the totally unequal division of labor that many couples have, and Gary Chapman ignores? Plus does the "physical touch" love language mask something wrong in the bedroom? ALL...

PREODER THE MARRIAGE YOU WANTPre-Order on AmazonGet other links to Pre-OrderSend in your pr...

Prioritizing your marriage can be tough. How do we spend enough time together? Do we need more date nights? And MOMS—don’t forget to be a wife first and a mom second! But in all this talk, are we missing the bigger point? If we’re functioning a...

Ever tried to find a compromise when you’re having an argument—but even the compromise doesn’t seem fair? In today’s podcast we explain why—using what we call The Marriage Hierarchy of Needs. We talk about this in our new book The Marriage You ...

What is the biggest key to a great marriage? Teamwork! Let’s talk about how teamwork is associated with all the good outcomes we want for marriage—better sex; feeling close; resolving conflict—everything! But complementarianism, on the other ha...

In our research looking at marital and sexual satisfaction among evangelicals, we’ve found that over and over again our best-selling books, and our megachurch pastors, teach things that are shown to lead to worse outcomes. Why? What’s going on?...

The idea that men need respect while women need love has been treated as gospel truth in the evangelical world. Best-sellers have been written based on it; it informs almost every marriage sermon. What if it’s not true? Using data from our marr...

So many of us got sucked into believing toxic stuff about marriage and sex in the evangelical church! But unless we figured out WHY we believed that, we’re likely to get suckered in again to toxic stuff—just DIFFERENT toxic stuff. So today, Reb...

Our big announcement: We’re peer-reviewed! Our dataset for The Great Sex Rescue has now appeared in the November 2024 Sociology of Religion Journal. So let’s talk about what we found, but also ask: why are evangelicals so quick to dismiss scien...

Advent is normally a time of hopeful expectation. But what does it mean when our hopes have been dashed in the past? Stephanie Duncan Smith shares her stories of miscarriages and losses—as well as great celebrations, and what it means to embrac...

Jimmy Evans started XO Marriage over 30 years ago, and his book Marriage on the Rock became a best-seller. He leads marriage conferences around the country. But for years he also Mark Driscoll on his leadership team. He got his start at Gateway...

Ever feel like your body is a stranger to you? Like you’re plagued with insecurity, can’t find peace in your relationships? What if it’s because we’re running away from part of who we are, and we haven’t been able to honor who God made us to be...

Gisele Pelicot famously said that "shame must switch sides"--and I think that applies to the evangelical church! Over and over again over the last few years ,when male teachers have presented a pornified view of sex and women have said "no", wo...

Do you find yourself in constant power struggles with your kids? Do you feel like your kids too often set the terms of their cooperation? Or are you worried that you are too hard and demanding on them? Well today I talk with Wendy Snyde...

Why are writers for The Gospel Coalition coming after the dad in the cartoon series Bluey? He’s an involved dad who loves his kids. Why are they so offended? Rick Pidcock joins Rebecca and Connor Lindenbach for a deep dive—and then Rebecca and ...

Christa Brown was sexually assaulted dozens of times by her youth pastor when she was 15. She was made to repent and apologize to his wife. The pastor just got moved around from church to church for decades. When Christa’s daughter reached the ...

Talking to your kids about sex & puberty is awkward! And over the years the church has made some big mistakes. Today we talk about how to avoid the biggest ones--and some encouragement for how to do this with as little awkwardness as possib...