Bare Marriage

Episode 268: Why Data Shows That Teamwork, Not Hierarchy, Is the Key to a Great Marriage!

• Sheila Gregoire

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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 hand, is associated with all the bad outcomes. Good outcomes and bad outcomes tend to travel together—and complementarianism travels with the bad stuff! Hear about all our new data from our new book The Marriage You Want!

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Sheila: Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast.  I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice for your marriage and your sex life.  And I am joined today by my husband, Keith.

Keith: Hey, everybody.  

Sheila: My partner, my teammate, my person, who goes through life with me and who I love very much.

Keith: Yes.

Sheila: And we are going to talk today about teamwork.    

Keith: Yeah.  It’s great.  I’m excited.    

Sheila: Yeah.  Because teamwork is just such an important part of marriage.

Keith: Well, it’s such a key part of the book we wrote too.  

Sheila: Yeah.  So here’s what’s going on, people, because this is really, really cool.  The Marriage You Want, our brand new marriage book which is based on another survey we did of 7,000 people, 1,300 matched pairs, and then another 5,000 people—that’s coming out March 11.  And our preorder bonus is all ready to go.  Our launch team got up and running on Monday, and it is not too late to join.  All the fun is happening.  So please send us your preorder receipts at preorder@marriageyouwantbook.com.  And you’re going to get our alternate chapter.  So the conclusion that we wanted to put in and then we pulled at the last minute.  You’re going to get an intro to our launch team. And if you join our launch team, all you’re doing is you’re promising to write a review.  An honest review on Amazon and/or Goodreads or Christian Book or wherever you buy it.  Plus you get access to our really fun behind the scenes Facebook group.  You’ll get weekly lives with us.  You’ll even get an audio copy of the book when it’s ready.  And you’ll be able to start reading the book right away on an electronic version.  So head on over.  We’re just hoping to have a ton, a ton of people on the launch team.  It’s always fun.  We’ve done this for our other books too.  But as we get started today, this is our first major podcast where we get to talk about what’s actually in the book because last week we talked about what wasn’t in the book.  All the problems, the five point problems with most evangelical marriage books because they’re starting on a faulty premise.  And so today let’s talk about the premise that we actually want to start on which is teamwork.  

Keith: Yes.  Yes.  Two are better than one.  Right out of the Bible.

Sheila: Yeah.  I read that somewhere.  Yeah.  Because our book is not gimmicky.  We’re not like Love and Respect where he’s found the secret key to great marriage success.  We’re not like The Five Love Languages.  This isn’t a gimmicky book.  This is just, hey, this is what works.  And when we were trying to find the commonality of what we were talking about, you look back in all of our chapters, and it ends up being teamwork.  When you treat each other as equals, when you feel like we’re in this together, when you’re each putting in effort, things work so much better than when there is hierarchy.  Mm-hmm. 

Keith: Yeah.  You’re more flexible.  You’re able to adapt to what changes in life, all that kind of stuff.  If you’re a team, you’re working together.  You’re looking out for each other.  That’s what works.

Sheila: Yeah.  And so before we get too into the implications of that, let’s bring Joanna on the podcast, and we can talk about the stats.  So, Joanna, we have brought you back on the podcast to talk about our stats.  Hello.  

Joanna: Mm-hmm.  Hi.

Sheila: So in this podcast, we are talking about teamwork and how teamwork does best, and that’s really the theme of our book.  But when you were pulling stuff out, you realized something interesting.   

Joanna: Mm-hmm.  So first of all, I was so stressed doing the stats for this book in a way that I wasn’t stressed for Great Sex Rescue or She Deserves Better because we were looking at these specific tropes and how do they correlated with the things.  And this time we were looking at marital satisfaction and how does that correlate to who does the housework or how does that correlate to sexual satisfaction.  And I was worried that it was going to be boring.  And it wasn’t boring.  We found really interesting stuff.  But we did find the stuff that would be very unsurprising to the person, who is listening which is that, oh, turns out if your marriage is good your sex life is better.  If you act like a team, your marriage is better.  That’s correlated with better sex life, is correlated with all of the good stuff because you can get on to a—either a vicious cycle or a virtuous cycle, right?  Where as you are improving in one area, you’re more likely to also see improvements in other areas.  And a good marriage is going to be characterized typically by a happy marriage, good marital satisfaction, and good sexual satisfaction and good sharing of the mental load, right?  All of these things are going to travel together.  

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  So it’s like all of the good outcomes that we found all go together.  It’s like they’re a package deal.

Joanna: Yes.  I would also like to say that while this is obviously just—again, makes complete logical sense.  It does make running some of the stats difficult because if you’re—anyway, multicollinearity issues and model building can be a little bit tricky especially when we’re doing some of the paper writing that we’re doing down the road.  Again, it just makes logical sense that if one thing is better the other things are also better.

Sheila: Yes.  Exactly.  Exactly.  

Keith: If your, for instance, marital conflict is less in your marriage, you’re more likely to report that you’re satisfied with your marriage, right?  And you have more sex.  I mean all these kind of things.  And that was one of the problems of the study too is that it’s difficult with all—everything is correlated to everything.  So what’s the causation?  What’s the overall thing that makes it better?  It’s hard to pin down this is the exact thing despite all the gimmicky books that are out there saying, “This is the one thing that will make your marriage better.”  It’s actually a package deal.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  

Keith: The think I was thinking that was very interesting when you were talking about all these things all being related to each other was something that is in the medical literature as well which is the concept of eating dinner together as a family.   And for those who haven’t heard this, basically, if you eat dinner together regularly as a family, then the outcomes for your teenagers are phenomenally good in multiple areas.  Many of which are not obviously related to eating dinner as a family like they have lower rates of depression.  They have less substance use.  

Sheila: Less likely to get pregnant.  Less likely to end up in jail.  

Keith: All kinds of good outcomes when you eat dinner together.  And so people—what is it magic about eating dinner together that makes you not have substance use later?  It’s not something magic about eating dinner together.  It’s the kind of family that is eating dinner together has other things going on in the background.   So it’s sort of a—what’s the word for that, Joanna?  You know the word.  It’s a proxy.  It’s a proxy for other things.  

Joanna: Yeah.  It’s a confounder is the technical term.

Keith: Confounder.  Except for the fact that this is the deal.

Joanna: Yes.  Yeah.  Yeah.  You’re right.  It’s not an unrelated variable.  It’s not like—yeah.  Yeah.

Keith: Because confounder sounds like it’s like, well, this is skewing the results.  But in fact—and you may say that because, well, instead of—if I suddenly magically today started having dinner with my family, I’m—my kid is going to not get over their substance use issues, right?  It’s not a magic thing.  But if you are the kind of family which is working toward being the kind of family that does have dinner together regularly, there are other things you’re going to change in your life to make that happen.  And you’re going to become that kind of a family.  So once you start down that pathway—you may not start as that kind of a family.  But if you are able to do it and keep it in place long enough, all those other things naturally come into play because they have to to sustain this decision you’ve made that you want to do this.  So in the same with—I think that what you are finding is—to me the one ring to rule them all is teamwork.  If you see yourselves as a team, then you’re naturally going to do all those other things.  And so it’s not—you don’t have to worry that it’s not this is a confounding variable.  Because if you’re trying to be a team then all the things are going to line up, and you’re going to behave in a different way in all these areas of your marriage.  And your marriage is going to get better across the board.  

Joanna: I think that—sorry.  I’m just going to jump in real quick.  There is one thing that I think is important here is that having dinner together is not necessarily an end that you need to strive for.  You need to strive for being the kind of family that could if you were in that situation have dinner together every night, right?  But if you are a hockey family in Canada—I say this as a mom whose kids are starting youth sports.  Whew.  We have a lot of practices.  And we don’t eat dinner together as a family because I’m running the kids across town to this arena to do—we do speed skating.  We do speed skating on this night over here.  And then we have choir on that night over there.  And they get tons of time with their dad.  We get lots of family time.  But for us eating dinner is not necessarily a goal.  However, teamwork should always be a goal.  That’s not a negotiable one.  You can’t go, “Oh  yeah.  We’re doing the things and ticking off the boxes, but we’re not doing the eating together as a family thing because we’re filling in that time with X, Y, Z other thing.”  Teamwork is just the bedrock, the cornerstone.  It is just that important.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  I want to explain it this way.  I was trying to think of an analogy to help people understand this.  And here’s what I got.  Okay.  Imagine you have two groups of people that are all going hiking.  And they’re going hiking in different directions.  Okay?  And one group—we’ll call them the purple group.  And that’s our group that represents all the good outcomes that we’re looking for in marriage.  So things like having shared hobbies, feeling like I’m sexually enough, having high sexual desire, feeling like I can share my weaknesses with my spouse, feeling like my opinions matter just as much as my spouses do, right?  So all of us are traveling together because we’re all correlated with each other.  And we all travel in the same direction.  But we don’t necessarily travel hand in hand.  There could be some of us that travel hand in hand.  So Joanna and Josiah, you guys are really fit.  You guys are really fast, so maybe you’re at the front of the group. And you’re holding hands.  So when Josiah is ten steps, Joanna is also ten steps ahead.  And I’m going in the same direction, but maybe I’m eight steps back from them.  But I’m still going in the same direction.  So some things are more closely related to each other than others.  But we’re all going in the same direction.  We’re traveling together.  And then there’s your green group, which is also going in the same direction, but it’s traveling away.  It’s going in the opposite direction.  And those are things like we don’t have shared hobbies.  I don’t feel like I can open up with my spouse, right?  I don’t reach orgasm very often.  My spouse watches porn.  All of those guys are traveling together in the opposite direction.  And what happens in Christian literature is that we are told that one of the green guys that is traveling in the opposite direction, which is feeling like my husband needs respect in a way that she will never understand or the husband making decisions—the final decision or the husband as being an authority—those are all green guys.  They’re traveling away.  And we think that we can just take those green guys out and put them in the middle of the purple group.  And it doesn’t work that way because we’re traveling in different directions.  And those bits of the husband having authority are in the bad group.  Okay?  It’s like there’s the good place, and then there’s the bad place.  

Keith: Yeah.  Because what you get is people saying things like, “You’re saying that these kinds of things are related to these bad outcomes, but that’s because they’re doing it wrong.  If I, as the husband, have the authority in our relationship, but I do it the right way, then we will have all the good outcomes too.”  And it’s like, well, there’s no evidence for that.  All of the evidence that we have shows that those things are correlated with the bad stuff.  So where’s this magical world where you can do things that usually in all of the studies that we have seen and the studies that we have conducted correlate with bad outcomes, but suddenly if you do them magically a different way they’re going to correlate with good outcomes?  Where is the proof for that?

Joanna: And also, again, logically, right?  If he needs respect in a way that she can never understand, that means she can’t understand her mate.  And this comes out—this is in all—a lot of Christian literature about marriage.  Wives, you can’t really understand your husbands.  Husbands, you can’t really understand your wives.  But I, the author, understand both men and women, and I shall tell you how it actually is if you will listen to me.  But then what does that do?  That decreases intimacy because you don’t believe—your theory of mind does not extend to your spouse.  That’s a big problem, right?  If you believe that he has to have the final decision and you can’t actually use logic to figure out how to make a decision together based on both of your strengths and weaknesses and the circumstances of your life, that’s going to erode your intimacy.  It makes complete sense that that is going to be correlated with negative outcomes.  What else do we expect?  We’re supposed to—sorry.  In epidemiology, what you do to start apparently—I don’t—it’s a best practice thing that some people choose to do is you make a causal diagram.  It does not tend to be my work flow, but it is a thing many epidemiologists do is they will make a diagram saying, “What do I think is going to be the thing that I find?  What are the relationships that I expect?”  Again, if you’re saying you can’t understand your spouse, where do you expect to be in the causal diagram?  You expect it to be correlated with negative outcomes because you’re saying that you aren’t actually intimate.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  Mm-hmm.  And when we say correlated with a negative outcome, let me also stress this too.  And this is what—and we have so many charts in The Marriage You Want that talk about this.  It’s actually pretty cool.  But we’re not saying you absolutely will have this negative outcome.  What we’re saying is you have a two and a half times the chance of having this negative outcome.  Or you have a 57% times the chance of having a negative outcome.  And so we’re not saying it necessarily will be bad.  We’re saying this is correlated with more people having negative outcomes than not when you go in that direction.  And that’s how research works.  So yeah.  It’s like do you want to be on the side that’s moving away from the good place or do you want to be on the side that tends to be moving towards it.  Yeah.

Keith: Yeah.  I think that not everybody who smokes gets lung cancer, but that—smoking causes lung cancer.  So if we’re seeing patterns of behavior that can correlate with bad outcomes like if I feel, as the husband, I have to have the final say and we see that leads to bad outcomes, that should cause us to question our basis of marriage.  Jesus said, “Look at the fruit.”  If the fruit is always turning out bad, maybe we should be looking for a different way to deal with this.  And that’s what we try to do in The Marriage You Want.  We try to talk about being a team rather than being a hierarchy where he’s in charge.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  And because we had so many extra outcome variables, it actually was really fun.  Joanna made all of these charts.  And I think each of the charts has between—I counted them.  Like 16 and 24 outcomes.  So they’re really long.  And things like household management, emotional maturity, sex, all these different—conflict resolution.  All these different attributes of marriage.  And we break them all down, and we show yeah.  If you do this—if she makes all the medical appointments, what happens to everything else?  It’s really interesting and really fun.

Joanna: Yeah.  No.  It was really fun.  I mean, again, just the level of stats that we had in Great Sex Rescue and She Deserves Better—we had lots of numbers in those books.  But we really cranked it up to 11 for this one.  It was really fun.

Sheila: Really fun.

Keith: Oh yeah.  Oh yeah.  Well some of these charts—you could just look at this chart for 15 minutes and just peel out all these different correlations and such.  It’s quite dense.  

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  Mm-hmm.  Super fun.  All right.  Well, thank you, Joanna.

Joanna: Thank you.

Sheila: We’ll have you back on next week for another stats moment with Joanna.

Joanna: Awesome.  I love it.  

Sheila: All right.  I really do like my analogy.  I’m proud of my analogy about all are little hikers in their purple, and they’re going in one direction.  And I wanted to give people an example of what that looked like from one of the charts.  Okay?

Keith: Okay.  Oh good.  Good.

Sheila: Yeah.  Because we measured teamwork in all kinds of different ways.  Do you feel like puts in their—does their fair share of housework?  Do you make decisions together?  Do you feel like your opinions count as much, et cetera, et cetera?  And I’ll read you this chart that comes in—right from chapter one where we’re talking about how important it is in the balance of your marriage that you are teammates.  That you are equal.  So we looked at what happens if you believe when you get married that one spouse has a tie breaking vote.  

Keith: Yes.  Which is a big thing in most Christian books, right?  

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  Because that’s what’s taught.  God created man with authority.  And so women have to submit.  So when you can agree, he gets to decide things.  And John Gottman looked at this in his book, Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.  And he found that when men don’t share power there is an 80—I think it’s 81% chance of divorce.  So this is not a benign thing to believe.  And other researchers have found that too.  So here’s some of the things that correlate.  And I think there’s—let’s see.  4, 7, 10, 12—so there are 15 different things that we have in this chart.  I am not going to read all 15.  

Keith: Well, and this is what I love about our charts.  I said this earlier.  They’re so packed with information, right?  Because these things impact each person in their marriage relationship.  Sometimes if I believe something bad, it negatively impacts me.  But also we picked up in our matched pairs that sometimes I would believe something—the husband might believe something and the wife would have a bad effect of that.  If her husband thought something, she would be less happy in her marriage.

Sheila: Yeah.  Because that’s something we couldn’t do in our other surveys because we didn’t do a matched pair.  So this is kind of cool.  

Keith: So what you believe really matters and really has a huge influence on your marriage.

Sheila: Yeah.  So when you believe when you get marriage that your spouse has a tie breaking vote if the wife believes this, she’s 83% more likely to say my opinions don’t matter as much as my spouse’s.  Okay.  So people who believe the complementarian message the women in those marriages are 84% more likely to say my opinions don’t matter which makes sense because they don’t.  They de facto don’t.

Keith: Exactly.  

Sheila: These are the little people on the hiking trail walking with their hands to—holding hangs because they move in the same direction, right?  Because if you think that he has the tie breaking vote, then by definition his opinions matter more than yours.

Keith: What’s funny is that not everyone thinks that.  Some people have managed to convince themselves you can be equals but still have a person who has a tie breaker.  So I don't know.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  Does it really work?  Okay.  When the wife believes that—okay?  She is 39% more likely to say I am frequently exhausted.  And she is 33% more likely to say I am often in pain.  So it actually affects her body.  But here’s what’s even more interesting.  When the husband believes it, she is 50% more likely to say I am frequently in pain.  

Keith: Oh, so the husband’s belief that he has a tie breaker vote is more correlated with suffering for the wife than even if she believes it.  Right.  Because she might believe it, but he might not.  And, therefore, they might have a more equal relationship.  Interesting.

Sheila: Yeah.  And then here’s—  

Keith: And, again, these are correlations, right?  So it’s not necessarily this causes—

Sheila: Right.  They’re all walking together.

Keith: This causes physical pain to her that you believe this.  It means that’s it’s associated with this.  And this is what we were talking about.  It’s why do you want to believe things that cause harm.  Or that are related to harm.

Sheila: Okay.  Here’s another one.  Okay?  When a wife—again, when a wife believes that her husband has the tie breaking vote, all right?  Her husband is 63% more likely to say my spouse is often passive aggressive.  This makes sense.

Keith: Right.  Of course.  Well, when you believe that the husband is supposed to be in charge and she’s only supposed to submit to him, then if she wants to have who she is showing up in the marriage but she’s not allowed to ever contradict him or that kind of—well, then she’s—of course, she’s going to be passive aggressive.  What other options have you given her?

Sheila: Exactly.  The whole thing from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  Yeah.  The husband is the head, but the wife is the neck that turns the head.    

Keith: Right.  Is the neck.  She’s turning the head.  Whatever she like.

Sheila: When you tell women that you’re not allowed to make decisions, that you don’t have any authority, women still want to get things done.  They still want certain outcomes.  And so they’re only way to do that is to be passive aggressive.

Keith: Yeah.  Exactly.  Exactly.  Unless you just ditch this garbage and just be equals and be partners.  Whatever.   

Sheila: Right.  And so there’s a ton more.  And what’s interesting is all of them are negative.  Okay.  The things that are correlated with this.  And you’ll find that the things that we talk about—being exhausted, being in pain, I don’t know how to make my spouse laugh, being satisfied with your sex life—these show up on all of our different charts.  And they tend to move in the same direction again just like we’re talking.  And so when one thing is bad, the other thing is bad too.  And so having the tie breaking vote is associated with all these bad things.    And that’s pretty incontrovertible.  And, again, we’re not the only ones who found this.

Keith: No.  For sure.

Sheila: So the question is why does the church keep teaching this.  Well, and we know that, right?  Because they want—  

Keith: There’s an agenda.  

Sheila: Right.  Because the agenda is to have men be in charge.  But what I find so interesting is that often the way they teach it they make men sound really sacrificial.      

Keith: Yes.  Oh, of course.  Because basically when you’re saying I’ve—he’s not—it’s not that he has all the power.  It’s that he has 51% of the power.  That’s the way they say it, right?  He’s got a little bit more power than she does, but they’re actually equals.  Well, 51 and 49 are not equal numbers.  Okay?  Let’s start with that.  But the thing is it’s a hard sell to say I want to have slightly more power than you.  So then the way they sell it is but I’m going to sacrifice more than you.  I’m going to give more than you.  And so, therefore, that’s the balance, right?

Sheila: Yeah.  That’s what they say.  And they say, “Men, we’re called to something even greater than wives.  Yes.  Wives have to submit.  But we are called to literally lay down our lives.  We’re called to sacrifice.  We’re called to love as Christ loves.  And as men do this women are going to flourish, and you’re going to see women flourishing in these marriages.”   

Keith: Mm-hmm.  But why don’t you just both bring everything you have to the marriage without any concept of one person having 51% of the vote.  And why don’t you flourish that way?  

Sheila: Yeah.  Exactly.  Why does he need to be in charge in order to give sacrificially to her?  Why does he need to be in charge in order—

Keith: Yeah.  And we don’t think that a wife is supposed to sacrificially give for her husband to flourish too.  I mean come on.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  No.  It makes no sense.  But that’s the way they phrase it.  When you do this, she is going to flourish.  She is going to do so much better.  

Keith: And they would say that our teaching that the two of them should be equal partners is actually against God’s plan and will not result in flourishing.  Yet all of our data—and the book is also full of all kinds of other peer reviewed data from all kinds of studies throughout the literature that show the same thing.  If you truly are equal teammates, you do better.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Now what we often get pushback on is but, Sheila, you’re ignoring the Bible, right?  And I’m not going to go over this because we have done so many podcasts on this.  But the Bible does not teach—I believe that the Bible does not teach that men are in authority over women.  That is one interpretation of the Bible.  It is not the best interpretation of the Bible.  And when you look at Greek scholars worldwide and New Testament scholars worldwide, more of them believe in egalitarianism than complementarianism.  So the people who have actually studied this, who have actually studied the Greek, more of them believe in egalitarianism.  Not in Southern Baptist seminaries because you’re not allowed to teach at a Southern Baptist seminary unless you believe in complementarianism. 

Keith: Yes.  Well, this is the thing is the weight—in the past, people had a much more traditional view.  And as time has marched on, people have studied the Scriptures more, and they have come to an egalitarian view.

Sheila: Because also we have more manuscripts.  We also have a bigger body of knowledge now than they did when they translated the King James Version.

Keith: Yeah.  But what happens with the people who still believe the more old fashioned, traditional stuff is they basically just—anybody who stops believe like them they say, “Well, they’re now just one of those literal theologians, seminary type people.”  And they ignore it.  So the fact that people are moving in that direction is evidence that they’re still right which is bizarre to me.  If most people are coming to a point of saying, “You know what?  Maybe we should be looking at this differently,” the arrogance that you would say, “Well, that proves that I’m right because I don’t think like you do.”  It’s crazy.  

Sheila: And I want to get more in to how teamwork helps and how we have a wrong view of it.  But I do want to address this biblical thing first, and I want to do that by playing you a clip from a podcast that I recorded almost five years ago now with Cynthia Westfall, who is a professor of New Testament I believe at McMaster Divinity School in Hamilton, Ontario.  She’s a Greek scholar.  She was a big part of the translation committee of the New Testament for the Common English Bible and did a big part of the Pauline letters, so this is a woman who knows what she’s talking about as you will hear in this quick clip of her talking about Ephesians 5:33, which we think says—  

Keith: Which it’s often translated that the husband should love the wife and the wife must—

Sheila: Husbands love your wives, and wives respect your husbands. Yeah.  

Keith: Respect your husbands.  As a command.

Sheila: Yeah.  So here is Cynthia.  I have with me today Dr. Cynthia Long Westfall from McMaster Divinity College in Ontario, near where I live.  So this is exciting.  I get to talk to a fellow Canadian.  And I have asked her on because she is an expert in Greek, and she has actually looked at the translation of Ephesians 5:33 that we are talking about in this podcast.  So you’ve given me permission to call you Cindy, so I am just going to do that because that’s easier.  So Cindy, let me read you this verse, and I have the old NIV.  I think this was the 1984 version.  And you can tell me what you think of this translation.  So here we go.  Ephesians 5:33 says, “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”  

Cindy: Mm-hmm.  And that’s not really what it says in the Greek.

Sheila: Okay.  So what’s the problem there?

Cindy: What the problem is is that there’s no must.  There’s no command.  And there’s no imperative that’s given to the wife.  It’s actually a purpose—a signal to be a purpose clause.  A garden variety purpose clause that you can look at—for instance, in our lexicon (inaudible), they say that this is what that means, “in order to, as a result that, that, namely.”  That’s it.  And so it says actually in order that the wife may respect her husband or with the purpose of that or with the result of.  That would be normally what a hina clause would read if one were not projecting one’s own views about what this has to say.  But there is—

Sheila: Okay.  Because when I look at this in the NIV, it looks like it’s saying husbands should love your wife and the wife must respect her husband.  But you’re saying there’s no Greek work there that says and.  There’s instead a Greek word that says hina.

Cindy: There is a Greek word that we most often use as but.  We translate it as but.  It’s what we call a dé.  And that’s a mild contrast.  And so it could say but or just kind of say somewhat of a on the other hand that the wife—in order that the wife should respect or fear her husband.  And so there is a conjunction.  But the hina signals purpose and result.

Sheila: So there’s not an and conjunction?  I remember when I was little.  You heard that conjunction, junction, what’s your function with the grammar, and it was and and but and so.  But it is not an and, you’re saying.  There’s a word that really means so.

Cindy: It’s not an and.  It’s a but.  It’s in contrast.  If you look at the Greek—and I’m going to just read this really woodenly.  It says, “And each of you each one each,”—and so there’s three emphatic different things.  It’s very awkward.  No one ever translates it the way it says in the Greek.  It’s kind of like saying, “You, you, you.”  Each one of you.  Very emphatic.  “Must love.”  And this is an imperative.  “He his own wife as himself in order that the wife may respect the husband.”  

Sheila: Okay.  So when you’re saying there’s an imperative, what that means is a command.  That’s a grammatical term that means a command.

Cindy: The imperative is the command.  And so the word to love is given as a command.  Yes.

Sheila: But the word respect is not.

Cindy: No.  The respect is not.  It’s what you call a subjunctive.  But the thing is with the hina clause—I actually was looking in a lexicon that says, “You know what?  There is such a thing as a hina imperative with a subjunctive.”  And I’m like there is no hina without the subjunctive.  The hina always takes a subjunctive.  There is nothing in this verse that signals that it’s anything different than every other hina clause that you read in context.  And so they have thought, “Okay.  This is a hina clause with a subjunctive.  All the time pretty much garden variety.  This is in order that this should happen.”  And so I would say that this marks reciprocity in the marital relationship.  It specifically says that the husband’s way of behavior, which he has talked about at length with commands in it in the preceding passage, is the basis upon which a wife respects.  And so there is not—in this passage a nonreciprocal respect demanded of the wife.  It’s the opposite.  It’s actually putting the obligation on the husband to behave in such a way that she does fear or respect him.  This word fear—when you look at what it—how it commands the husband to behave you know contextually this kind of behavior doesn’t provoke fear in the sense of being afraid of abuse.  It’s just the opposite.  It does provoke respect.

Sheila: Right.  Okay.  So why then—if what you’re saying is true, then why is this translated this way in the NIV and in other translations?

Cindy: I could say it’s on purpose, but I think there is just some assumption that’s coming into this passage.  And so did you know that in 5:22 where it says, “Wives, submit yourself,”—well, I can’t even say it because it doesn’t say it.  

Sheila: The verb is not there.  Yeah.  I’ve talked about that quite a bit.  That it infers the verb.

Cindy: Right.  It says, “Submit one to another.”  And then it says, “Wives to husbands as to the Lord.”  It’s in the same sentence.  It doesn’t even stop.  And when you analyze this whole passage—and where do you even start the passage?  I would start it in 5:18 where it says to be filled with the Spirit.  And then I would—well, you would end this little part, the household code about husbands and wives, of course, at the end of the chapter.  But not once is the wife given a formal command in this passage.  Not once.  That is there is not a single imperative given to women.  And so I almost feel like I had to back up to explain things is that I actually think Paul was holding back his language because it was assumed in the culture that women were supposed to submit.  And he’s kind of like saying, “Women, as you were, you’ve got this.  Not only that, you’re an example of what I’m talking about submitting.  If we want to know what submitting is, look at women.  And now, men, you do that too.”  And so I don't know if you’re familiar with my book, Paul and Gender, but I actually go through Ephesians 5.  And I show that the way that Paul describes how a husband is supposed to relate is actually taking on a woman’s role with one small exception of all the description of the way Christ function is a head and the way the man was supposed to function as a head.  It’s all women’s work.  

Sheila: Yeah.  The washing and the—yeah.  Yeah.

Cindy: And then he says, “So if you’re the head, she must be the body.”  And so now who has the genitals in that case?  “So treat her like a man.  How you want to be treated.”  So what this passage actually does is it fleshes out that command to love your neighbor as yourself when you’re in this power relationship, when you’re in this relationship in the culture where one person is entitled and the other person is disadvantaged in power.  He flips it and explains how the love of a husband towards a wife—it’s loving as himself means that he treats her as if she is the one who is honored.  And she is the one who receives the care that he expects to receive as the man as a husband.

Sheila: I just love the fact that the people who will dismiss her can’t hold a candle to her knowledge base.  This is a woman, who knows what she is talking about.  And I just really wanted you all to hear that because that is something.  Over the last few weeks since we put up the Love and Respect podcast and since we have been talking about this, people have been telling me, “But you’re just ignoring the Bible.”  It’s like no.  We’re not.

Keith: Yeah.  And this is the thing.  There’s different ways to interpret the Bible.  Okay?  So some people honestly look at the Bible, and they see hierarchy and authority and that the husband is in charge of the wife.  And they see that’s what the clear reading of the Bible is for them.  People like Sheila and me—we read the Bible, and we see equality.  We see mutuality.  We see God making men and women different but meant to go together to accomplish something that neither of them can accomplish alone.  We see that.  But in the sense of full equality and partnership.  We look at the Bible, the same Bible, and we see different things.  How do we know who is right?  

Sheila: And that’s where I want to read to you from Matthew 7.  Hold on.  Okay.  So this is from Matthew 7, and this is in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount.  And Jesus has just said to enter through the narrow gate.  So He’s just finished this enter through the narrow gate thing.    

Keith: It’s easy to get on the wide path.  Stay on the narrow path.  

Sheila: Yeah.  And then the very next thing He says is watch out for false prophets, right?  Because it’s going to be the false prophets that are going to take you out of the narrow way.  So we’ve got to be really, really careful to watch out for false prophets.  And that is the context in which He says the next thing.  He says, “You will know them by their fruits.  Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles?  In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit.  But the bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  Thus you will know them by their fruits.”  And I take Jesus at His word.  Okay?  Jesus said when you’re trying to figure out how a false prophet is you look at the fruit because there will always be people with different interpretations of the Bible.  There have been for millennia.  Even in the Old Testament, there were people with different interpretations of the Old Testament scriptures.  And what did Jesus say?  He said look at the fruit.  And that is what we’ve done in The Marriage You Want.  We did it in The Great Sex Rescue.  We did it in She Deserves Better.  We look at the fruit.  And the fruit of this idea that men are in hierarchy over women is bad.  But the fruit of teamwork is good.

Keith: Absolutely.  And you can say as much, “Well, you’re doing it wrong then.”  But Jesus said, “A good tree can’t bear bad fruit.”  So if your quote good tree is bearing bad fruit, you need to think.  And if our bad tree of equality—true equality is bearing good fruit, you should think.

Sheila: Yeah.  Exactly.  So one of the things that I find interesting though is that in the church because we have talked so much about how the husband needs to be a leader and women need leaders I think we’ve missed the boat because sometimes we’re talking about something using words that don’t actually mean what we think they mean because we don’t have words for teamwork, right?  

Keith: Well, because we know quote unquote that the husband has to be the leader, right?  So, therefore, we interpret things with that mindset.  So what happens is—you’ve said this a lot of times is that a lot of people who say they believe the husband is the leader actually function as complete equal partners, but they just keep using the label of leader with the stuff that he does because that makes them feel better because they’ve been taught that’s the biblical way.

Sheila: Exactly.  So I want to play a clip.  And I actually think this is a healthy clip.  This isn’t one that I’m necessarily criticizing it all.  Of a guy.  I think his channel is Brandon Talks Marriage or something.  Where he’s talking about what women mean when they say they want men to lead.

Brandon: Does your wife want you to lead her?  Here is what we’re going to do, baby.  That’s not what I’m talking about.  Lots of women seeking a deeper connection in their marriage will say, “I just want to be led by you.”  So what does that mean?  I don’t think the idea of masculine leadership has anything to do with domineering over your wife.  Here’s what I think it looks like practically.  When your wife is seeking your opinion on something, have an opinion.  When your wife feels overwhelmed, don’t just give her space until she’s over it.  Create the structure so that she can succeed.  Men, leading in marriage is taking initiative toward the things that are important to the two of you.  It’s conscious action versus inaction.

Sheila: So when you hear that, what’s the big takeaway?

Keith: Yeah.  I mean they’re basically saying be partners but he wants to give lip service to the idea of being the leader.  All the things he’s asking to do is there any reason why the woman can’t do them?  

Sheila: Yeah.  And I’m not even sure he’s trying to give lip service.  I think it’s like he’s saying, “Okay.  She says she wants a leader.  But what she really means is she wants someone to take initiative.  She wants someone to show up.  She wants someone to pay attention.”  And we have an entire chapter in The Marriage You Want on the importance of noticing, taking initiative, paying attention.  Just paying attention to what’s going on in your spouse’s life.  Paying attention to what the family needs and then doing something about it.  Taking initiative.  When there’s an area you can improve, take initiative.  And we both need to be doing it.  

Keith: Exactly.  And so both husbands and wives need to be doing that.  So why do we make it a male thing?  Why is he the one that’s supposed to be looking out for these things?  Well, I think, frankly, because when you have a situation where you’ve taught—I mean I’m not trying to be too much of a—beating a dead horse.  But when you teach the man is in charge and the woman is supposed to take care of him, often, guys get lazy.  And they don’t look for opportunities.  They feel like they’re in charge of everything, but they don’t really know how anything runs because their wife takes care of everything for them.  I mean you may think I’m being a bit mean, but that’s kind of what I’ve seen in a lot of these circles.

Sheila: It’s also the data that we have, right?  And we’ll talk about some of that next week.

Keith: Yes.  Spoiler for next week.  Sorry.  I always jump ahead to the next topic.  But just training men to be an equal partner for them—for a lot of men, that’s such an increase in their—they’re upping the ante so much they feel like they’re leading now when they’re getting to the point of being an equal partner.

Sheila: Yeah.  But it’s interesting because I think what he was saying in that reel is like she’s saying she wants a leader.  But that’s not actually what she needs.  And I wish that he had been clearer that she doesn’t need someone to lead her.  

Keith: He’s a partner.

Sheila: Because what they tend to say—and I’ve heard other people say this too.  What they tend to say is leadership means taking initiative.  No.  Taking initiative means taking initiative.  If leadership is taking initiative, then she is also showing leadership when she takes initiative, right?  But they won’t admit that.

Keith: Well, because she can’t be a leader because that’s not biblical.

Sheila: Right.  So instead of calling taking initiative leadership, let’s call taking initiative taking initiative.  Because when we call taking initiative leadership, when we say, “Well, all we really mean by leadership is that you take initiative and that you show up and all that,” then you’re really muddying the waters because to most people leadership doesn’t mean that.  Leadership means he makes the decisions.  Leadership means he can tell her what to do.  And those things we know have negative outcomes.  And so we need to change the words that we’re using, right?  And we actually talked about this in another podcast that we did awhile ago about Jimmy Evans, so I’m just going to play a clip that was a reel that we pulled from that podcast when we looked at Jimmy Evans book, Marriage on the Rock.

Keith: And the one that he specifically talked about that really hit me was finances.  And he says this.  “Guys, women have this need for security.  So one of the key areas you need to show your leadership in as men is to be in charge of the finances and take leadership in that area.”  Then he actually gives quite detailed accounting of what they do in terms of finances.

Sheila: So that he is in charge.  

Keith: And what they do in their relationship is they sit down together, and they make all the financial decisions together as complete equals.  And then she pays the bills.  And it’s like this is the whole thing.  They talk about leadership, leadership, leadership.  And it’s just like, again, I hear Inigo Montoya in my mind.  “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means,” right?  This is not leadership.  Women are not looking for leadership.  Women are looking for a partner.  Sitting down together, making the decisions together is partnership.  That’s what women are looking for.  The fact that you have to call it leadership or you won’t do it is a sign of your immaturity as a man.  

Sheila: I love when you quote Inigo Montoya.

Keith: Princess Bride is the best movie ever.  

Sheila: Yeah.  It’s very, very, very quotable.  We’re not looking for a leader.  We are looking for someone to take initiative and show up.

Keith: And I think what happens in these circles is—because from very young, you’ve been indoctrinated to this idea that the man is the leader in the marriage.  And that is what biblical marriage is.  And the idea of equal partnership is, “That’s what those people outside do.  It’s not what we do in here.  We believe that the man is the leader.”  So the only way you can encourage your husband to be an equal partner is to tell him to be a leader because you can’t ask him to be an equal partner because that would be so disrespectful.  If he’s not being an equal partner and you ask, “Hey, can you maybe step up and do your part,” that would be so disrespectful to your leader.  So ask him to be the leader.  That’s crazy.  Why can’t we just be honest about what’s going on?  So there’ve been times in our marriage where I was carrying more of the load than I should.  And I’ve had to say to you, “Hey, I need help here.”  And there’s been times where you’ve had to say to me, “Hey, I’m carrying more load than I should.  Let’s work on this together,” because we’re a team.  We need to look out for each other.  And that’s mutual.  And that goes both ways.  The idea that one person has the ability to make those kinds of decisions and the other person does not—it’s just so unhealthy.

Sheila: Yeah.  And I think that the word initiative, I think, is so important because when you do look at what women want—and women will often say I just want him to be a spiritual leader.  And they don’t mean leader.  What they mean is I just want someone to take initiative to lead prayers once in awhile.  That’s all they mean.  They mean initiative, right?  It’s not that she can’t also lead prayers.  It’s I want you—

Keith: That’s the other thing too because all these things are always decrying men need to step up to the plate and do these things that women are already doing, right?  Like the Ligan Duncan clip.

Sheila: Yeah.  Let’s play that actually.  So there’s a reel that we played—I think we played it a number of times because it is just so classic and so telling.  I don't know why they haven’t taken it down yet because it is so bad.  And so many people use it as an example of something that is so bad.  But the Gospel Coalition still has it up on their Instagram page.

Ligan Duncan: I think when a man knows that his wife trusts him and respects him he’s more apt to take some of the risks that are involved in spiritual leadership.  It’s very easy for men to be passive in the area of spiritual leadership.  And let me say.  I’m not talking about anything complex.  I’m talking about being the main person getting everybody to church on Sunday.  It’s very easy to leave that to your wife.  If you have the sense that your wife trusts you and respects you, I think you’re probably more apt to take the risks that are necessary to give leadership to the family in praying and reading the Scriptures, in thinking about life from a biblical perspective, in doing the things that are part of the ordinary means of grace in the life of the Christian.  That’s one way that a Christian woman can encourage her husband in spiritual leadership.

Keith: And that’s exactly what I’m talking about, right?  So she’s taking them to church.  He needs to step up and be the leader and take them to church.  So is it like—is she being the leader?  

Sheila: Yeah.  They’re saying all of these things like living like a Christian, reading the Bible, thinking of life from a Christian point of view, these are risky things for—how is that risky?  That is the stupidest thing.  The bar is so low for men is it in the basement.

Keith: I  know.  And this is what I said in that other clip, right?  About how the fact that you have to call it leadership before you’ll do it is a sign that you have some growth to do, man.  If I can’t do these things as an equal with my wife, if I need to have that title of leader or else I can’t be motivated to act like a full partner in the relationship, that requires some soul searching.  You know what I mean?  That really tells me you need to do some work in your healing because why is that appellation of leader so necessary to you.  To me, it’s a sign of deep insecurity.  You’d be better off if you could actually work through that and be a true partner.  

Sheila: Exactly.  And when women say that they really want someone to take initiative because I think that is what women want, I think a lot of men don’t realize how much of women’s lives we have no choice over.  We’re just carried along.  And I think about pregnancy and childbirth, right?  When the baby is coming, the baby is coming.  And you have no choice over it.  The baby is coming.  And my body is taking over.  And it doesn’t matter whether I don’t want the baby to come.  It doesn’t matter whether I want the baby to come faster or slower or whatever.  The baby is going to do what the baby is going to do.  And I have very little choice, right?  It’s like my body is propelling me.  Or when we suffer from extreme nausea in the first trimester, it’s like our body is doing this to us, and we are just being carried along by that.  Even cramps that many women suffer from on a monthly basis.  And if yours are really bad, by the way, please, please see your doctor because there’s a big history of people ignoring women’s pain.  But there are levels of bleeding and levels of pain that are not normal.  But it’s like we’re carried away by our bodies.  And we can’t do much about that.  Women really are confined by our bodies in a way that a lot of men aren’t or most men aren’t.  And so we’re more vulnerable because of that.  And we’re also more vulnerable too.

Keith: Yeah.  You’re physically smaller.  

Sheila: Yeah.  And so we just need men to show up and take initiative and say, “Hey, I’m in this with you,” when there’s a lot of things women have no choice over, right?  And that’s what we’re really looking for. 

Keith: Yeah.  And, again, if you’re the kind of guy that says, “I’m willing to do that as long as I’m in charge,” you’re not a healthy, mature man.

Sheila: No.  You’re not.  You’re really not.

Keith: You’re not.

Sheila: And the funny thing is when men say, “Well, I’m willing to do that as long as I’m in charge,” if you look at it, are they really in charge?  Or do they just have the label?  I saw this great graphic on social media last week which said, “Guys, if she’s giving you a list, you’re not the leader.”  

Keith: Right.  And we talk about that in the book too, right?

Sheila: Yes.  We do.  This is a big thing we talk about is what does it mean to take initiative.  It means that you take initiative.  You own your own areas of responsibility.  You don’t wait for your wife or your husband to tell you, “Hey, this needs to be done.”  You actually take initiative and figure out what needs to be done in your areas.

Keith: Yeah.  And you, as a couple, know what needs to get done in your household, and you divide it up in a way that’s fair.  And you each get your stuff done, right?  Yeah.  

Sheila: Yeah.  If you don’t know what needs to get done, if you’re always waiting for your spouse to tell you, then you are not the leader.  

Keith: Well, and this actually ties into one of the things too when people argue against us too is they say—because, to me, it’s clearly obvious if a person is 51% of the vote, that it’s not an equal relationship.  Or if one is the leader and one is supposed to submit, they’re not in an equal relationship.  That’s not equality by any definition.  And then this is what they say, “Do you think you’re not equal to your boss?”  So this is what they say.  The marriage is like the is the CEO.  And the wife is the vice president, right?  So he’s in charge, but it’s not like he’s a different—has different rights than she does or has different fundamental rights as a human being.  But his position puts him in a position above her.  Okay?  Which is garbage because all men are all CEOs and all women are all vice presidents regardless of their talents, regardless of their status in life, regardless of what’s going on, all these things.  That’s crazy.  But let’s take it.  In these marriages, are these men really acting as CEOs?  Because when you say to your wife, “Give me a list,” that’s not a CEO kind of question, right?  The CEO knows the list, knows how the list needs to get done.  Yeah.  They can delegate things.  A CEO.  But they have a good concept of what’s going on.  These people aren’t—in these marriages, the men are not the CEOs.  The men are the consumers of the product.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Because they’re not even the managers.  They’re not the CEO.  They’re not the manager.  They’re not even the employee because often they’re not doing the things that need to get done.

Keith: The wife is the one that’s organizing the household.  And they’re the ones taking credit for it.  You’re going to say I’m being mean, but that’s what I’ve seen, right?  If you want to truly be a leader in your household, to me, I think you should both be leaders.  All these things.  Initiative, knowing what needs to get done, being able to make your own lists, being able to get stuff done, those are both positive traits for a husband and a wife.  If you’re both giving 100% of what you have to your marriage, you’re going to do well.  Okay?  But if you’re one of those people I still haven’t convinced you and you think the husband is supposed to be a leader, then be a fricking leader and get some initiative.  Do the stuff you’re supposed to do.  Don’t ask for a list and then feel like a hero because you filled out a list.  That’s a manager job.  That’s not a CEO job, right?

Sheila: Yeah.  And I would even say let’s just—can we just get rid of the word leader altogether?  Because I think the reason we keep it in there is because we want to pacify the men because men have grown up thinking, “Yeah.  I get to be the leader.”  Unless he gets called the leader, he’ll pick up his ball and go home sort of thing which is, again, so immature.  But leader has connotations that have negative outcomes.  Leader says my opinions matter more because I get to make decisions.  And we know that has negative outcomes, right?  Whereas taking initiative has very, very positive outcomes.  So I’m just asking that we change the way we talk about these things.  If we don’t actually mean leader, then let’s not call it a leader.  Let’s call it taking initiative.  Let’s call it doing your part.  Let’s call it being a teammate, being an engaged partner because that is what bears good fruit.  And that’s what Jesus said is to look at the fruit.  

Keith: Absolutely.  So the big Bible verse they say is the man is the head of the wife, and they take that to mean leader because leader is an interpretation of the word head in English.  But there are two Greek words for head.  And one of them has the connotation of leader.  It’s called archon.  We get the word monarch from that.  Monarch is one leader.  That’s the king or queen or whatever, right?  The other word for head is kephalé, which is this thing on your—top of your shoulders, right?  That’s the word Paul uses.  The husband is the head of the wife, not because he’s the leader.  It’s because they are one body.  They are supposed to be a unified front.  They are supposed to be completely together.  They each bring different things to the table but together they make one whole organism.  And that’s what the point is.  That we sustain each other.  We’re connected to each other.  We’re intimate with each other.  We become one.  That’s what marriage is about.  When you turn that into, I’m supposed to be in charge, you are destroying intimacy, not building it.

Sheila: Yeah.  And we have the stats to prove it.

Keith: Please, please can we put this to rest and start trying to be good husbands, good wives, and stop worrying about who is supposed to be in charge when our Lord and Savior, Himself, said, “Not so among you.  The Gentiles look for who is going to be in charge.  That’s not to be so among you.  You’re supposed to be the servant of all.”  Can we just please—because that’s what actually works?  That’s what our stats show.  That’s what all the literature shows.  It’s just healthy.

Sheila: Yeah.  It really is.  I don’t know what’s happened, but ever since we did that podcast on Love and Respect two weeks ago I have been inundated with people’s stories.  So every  now and then we do a podcast that really resonates, and people send me these really long form emails or direct messages on Instagram with their stories.  And I’ve been really touched by so many of them.  And I want to read to you one that I think speaks to the idea of teamwork and how beneficial that is to marriage and always.  So this woman writes—and I’m changing identifying details here.  But she says, “I am a strong personality.  I am an Enneagram 8, the challenger.”  Me too.  I’m sure no one is surprised by that.  “Ever since becoming a Christian, I have struggled with finding the balance between my personality and wiring and the idea of a meek, submissive woman and wife.”  And she mentioned earlier in this letter that she and her husband went to an egalitarian church and had really egalitarian theology about church so where women could serve as elders, et cetera.  So on that, they were egalitarian.  Back in 2020, I was on a drive with some girlfriends, and we were discussing Shaunti Feldhahn’s podcast.  My friends were raving about her books and convincing me to read them.  The episode we listened to discussed what it means to submit to your husband, essentially deference and the weight of big decisions being placed on the husband.  They worded it in such a beautiful way, and it was the first time that it seemed to make sense to me.  And I felt that I had to follow the advice in a particular area.  My husband and I were on different pages regarding the size of our family.  I had always said I wanted,”—and she mentions how many kids, but I’ll leave it just for identifying details.  “So I had always said I wanted basically one more child.  But getting him to agree to how many we already had was hard enough as it was, but I wasn’t ready to be done.  And he very much was.  I took that podcast and trusted that my husband, a loving and godly man, would lean into the Holy Spirit and lead us in this area while also taking my heart into consideration.  However, I also had the foundation of a love and respect marriage.  And it was already engrained in me that nagging my husband or bugging him with this topic was disrespectful to him and to his desires.  If I brought up how much I still wanted another baby, that was me being disrespectful.  If I tried to push him to reconsider his stance, that was disrespectful.  So the only course of action was to pray.  Pray that God would lead him.  Pray that God would change either his heart or mine.  And honestly, I was okay with either option, but my silence on the topic sent the message to my husband that we were on the same page.  That I no longer desired another baby.  So while I was begging God to lead my husband in this area, my husband was not even seeking God’s direction in that area.  And there’s obviously a lot more that goes into how we got here.  And we are working through a lot of emotions and a lot of hurt together, and I fully believe we will come out the other side stronger and better.  But in processing, I have come to realize the profound impact that that podcast and the love and respect teaching has had.  I thought I was being a biblical wife and a godly wife.  But in reality, I was merely suppressing my own desires and that would come back to bite us.  I wasn’t respecting my husband.  I was disrespecting myself while also setting my husband up for failure.  How could he be respectful of my heart and my desires if he didn’t even know where my heart was?  How could he honor me in our marriage when I couldn’t express what I needed?”  And this is the whole point of our book, The Marriage You Want, is that you cannot have intimacy, you cannot feel like you are one with someone that you cannot truly share your heart with.  And you can’t truly share your heart when there are things like hierarchy in the way or this idea that she is wrong to bring up issues.  And so in the book, we just talk about teamwork.  Let’s just be a team.  Let’s take initiative, and let’s really care about what each other thinks.  And let’s learn how to share our feelings, how to share our requests, how to share our concerns, and how to handle it when our spouse shares theirs as well because that’s how you build a team.  And that’s how you build the marriage that you want.  Yeah.  It is.

Keith: It’s going to be exciting.  So we’re looking forward to going through the whole book with you over the new few podcasts and taking about each of the different aspects we go into.  But yeah.  

Sheila: But this is the overarching thing is that you are a team.  You are not a hierarchy, and that’s what brings good fruit.  That’s all the little purple people walking in the hike in the right direction.  Okay?  We can do it.  We can get these good outcomes.  And we’re having so much fun in our Facebook group talking about The Marriage You Want and reading early copies.  So please get your receipts in to preorder@marriageyouwantbook.com, and you can join us and have a lot of fun too.  And so thank you for being part of the Bare Marriage team, the Bare—listening to the Bare Marriage podcast, and we will see you again next week as we talk about why compromise isn’t always the answer.  

Keith: Bye. 

Sheila: Take care.