Betrayal-Free Marriage: Talking Candid About Sex, Money, and Expectations - Gary Thomas

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Just go to angel.com forward slash Tina G to become a member and get all the info on the I Was a Stranger movie. In Making Your Marriage a Fortress, Gary Thomas, bestselling author of Sacred Marriage and two dozen other books, guides you and your spouse in how to fortify your marriage ahead of time so that it can withstand any storm or difficult season. You'll discover helpful and practical principles to strengthen your marriage, learn to detect the warning signs of trouble and how to act on them together, gain spiritual insight about God's view of marriage and how to live it out in all circumstances. Every marriage will face setbacks and seasons of disappointment, but this book will help you keep your marriage strong for better, for worse, for richer or poorer in sickness and health. Till death do you part. This is the counterculture mom show. I'm your host, Tina Griffin. Marriage is the focus of the week as we head towards Valentine's Day. I'm with author and speaker Gary Thomas for part two. Gary, how are you doing? Long time no see. Thank you. Yeah, it's been a while. How are you doing here for the last ten minutes? Doing okay. Great to meet your husband. Yes, yes. You met him during a pre-show setup because I told Luke, I was blowing up his phone saying, oh my gosh, you just had Gary on for part one. He was talking about thongs and lingerie. Watch part one. If you didn't, it sets the foundation for this baby in part two. And he's like, oh yeah, he ran down to the studio and showed me his pecs. He's like, look what I was working out for you, babe. And then he told me he hung some boxers on my lamp for tonight. I don't know what's going on, Gary, but you already made massive changes in our marriage. You write books and blogs and articles and speak to groups all around the country and globe about marriage and the Christian life. Thank you for being dedicated to that because that is critical in today's culture for even raising counterculture children, which I'm passionate about. So thank you for doing that. We're going to drop the bomb in part two. We had a lot of fun in part one talking about just intimacy aspect of marriage. But in part two, there are seasons of difficulties and I can't wait to ask you a couple of critical questions. You encourage couples to know what you're really fighting about. Can you talk about that? Well, we have to do this ruthless evaluation of ourselves and what's really going on and what is the issue. And a lot of times, Tina, I find that my problem is my initial reaction is defense. Well, I might do that, but you do this or whatnot, in part because I don't want to see the ugly side of myself. But I wrote this in my first marriage book, Sacred Marriage. Marriage is like this gigantic mirror showing you what you're really like. We bring our ideal selves in the marriage and marriage shows us the real self and we can want to run from that. There was one brilliant hotel owner who got tired of how the front desk people were being treated because people would yell at them and they'd get all nasty. He just put a gigantic mirror behind him so that people could see how they looked when they're screaming and pointing their finger and it really cured it. And so, I think in marriage, we have to realize, one, let's be honest. What are we really doing? Am I afraid? Am I threatened? Am I offended? Two, I have to remember that marriage is two people. God so challenged me one time and this sounds horrific because it is, but I felt like God was challenging me. Tina, with Gary, you're trying to turn Lisa into a love Gary like he wants to be love machine. And I've made her from more than that. And that's the natural bent where we can all fall that we just want to keep making our marriage better and better for us. When in fact, I married my wife saying, I want to be here for you. I want to support you. I want to showcase you. I want to cherish you just as you are. I love that. And if we focus on the other person, we get blessed as a result because that other person is being fed the way God wants us to be feeding our spouse and loving our spouse. I will never forget the hotel owner that put a mirror up behind the front desk. I will never forget that. And honestly, I want to do that all throughout our house so we can see what we look like. How did you check into that hotel? Like just to go on that for a tangent for 30 seconds, did that really happen somewhere? Is that now in a chain? It's been years since I wrote that book. I think it was in Wall Street Journal or something just creative management techniques. And I thought, but I think you're right at homes or even with kids or whatnot. If we could see what we look like, I think it would, it would cause us to, you know, maybe change what we're looking like. Right now, parents after done watching this part two, go into the mirror tonight when you're getting ready for bed and just pretend you're yelling at a kid and see what that looks like or yelling at your spouse and see what that looks like. We might laugh at first and then probably cry and it would majorly change us. So that alone, we're done with this episode, Gary, that's going to save a ton of marriages right there. Let's dig in a little deeper. We have the mirrors up. We're now looking at ourselves and what's going on and how we're actually responding or doing. Let's talk about betrayal for a minute, because a lot of marriages are faced with that. Betrayal is to a marriage, what dynamite is to a door. It threatens to blow apart everything that two of us have worked to build around this globe. If betrayal has occurred, Gary, what is the first step to restoring transparency on all levels? First, there has to be true repentance. And by that, I don't just mean tears. People might cry because they're ashamed of what they've done or they're afraid of what they would lose. One couple that I interviewed for the book, he did everything right. He didn't just cry. He basically, he got into a 12-step program. He knew for him, it was out of control. He went to the meetings. He went to 30 meetings in 30 days. He read the books. He listened to the podcast. He signed up for a service. This is what they had in Houston, where he was given lie detector tests four times a year, where he knew his wife could ask him anything she wanted and that lying was over. And so I would say for the marriage to be rebuilt, there has to be true repentance, which is marked by actions, not feelings. I've seen as a pastor, some guys they'll say they're sorry, or women, but if they're forgiven too easily in the sense of there aren't any actions and there's not any accountability, they just go back to doing it again and again. That becomes evil and cruel. I've seen God restore people that have been through this situation, but it always begins with clear, demonstrated repentance. So well said. We're jumping from betrayal to the bedroom, but we got to go there. It'll help tie into episode one here. Enjoyable sex can't save a bad marriage, but bad sex can certainly keep a marriage from feeling good. Understanding your partner's sex drive is important. Gary, you're an expert in talking about this topic and a conversation you encourage past the newlywed phase. How can couples start that conversation and what got you interested in even addressing this topic? Well, I've been writing about marriage for a number of years and there were a number of national marriage ministry leaders that came to me and said, Gary, look, we feel like the books that are out there, they're too male-centric or they're just outdated. Would you think about putting together another one? I didn't want to do that on my own, so I joined with Debra Folletta, a counselor. She's been married about a generation younger than me. We felt like together I could come as a pastor. She's a counselor. I'm a guy. Obviously, she's a woman. I've been married longer. She hasn't. So that we could really address this in a book that we called Marriage Sex. We should expect, just as emotional intensity fades, throughout marriage there will be different stages of the relationship. It's different when you're young and in love and the sexual chemistry might be high and then you have kids and there's hormonal changes and just physical energy changes and then your body changes and whatnot. I love an analogy that Dr. Julie Slattery, who writes as well on this topic as any Christian writing today, that marital sex is more like a Lego set than a Tonka truck. Guys will get it. A Tonka truck, you take it out of the box and you're good to go. You're playing with it. You're moving dirt. You're running over things. A Lego set, the fun is putting it together. But then after you put it together, you tear it apart because who wants to play with a Lego boat for more than five minutes? I mean, it gets boring. So we should look at it and not take offense that what worked for us in our 20s may not work for us in our 30s, may not work for us in our 40s and 50s. It doesn't mean we've stopped desiring each other. It means we've stopped desiring the physical relationship we had 10 years ago. We need to continue to grow and develop. Mutual pleasure needs to be at the front of that. Tina, I've seen when that starts to go, nobody can be altruistic for decades of marriage. It's got to be where both are enjoying it. They're valuing each other's pleasure, but recognizing that response threshold changes. That's a technical term for what gets you excited and then what gets you over the edge. You can't depend on what used to be there. And what happens is, because sometimes couples say, well, we didn't used to have to work at it. So we just lost the spark. No, it's like anything. You've got to figure out a new way to make it work. My son grew up in the second half of Michael Jordan's career. I think basketball player of all time. And of course he came back after playing baseball. I came back a third time. I told Graham he's coming back for a third time. And Graham said, well, is he still hitting that famous fade jumper? And I laugh and said, Graham, he was famous for being Air Jordan, for jumping from the free throw line and jamming the ball home. But Graham saw him at an older stage in his career. He couldn't do that anymore. And so he did the fadeaway jumpers. Well, it's the same thing with a couple in the bedroom. You find new ways, new understandings to connect and to excel. It doesn't mean you've lost the spark. It just means the relationship is growing. You got to rebuild that Lego boat. Rebuild the boat. And it might take a different shape form. It might not be a boat. It might be, I don't know what it could be, but you also, I think it's critically critical. And you said it might look different in the bedroom. It's now we're looking at it later in life and how we don't get injured. So you don't want to end up in the hospital. That's about it. Gary, you bring this out of me. People know watching this program for almost five years, I typically don't talk like I am about this topic. That's why I was scared to bring you on, but I knew that I needed to. Oh my gosh. And you came on the program, I want to say three, four years ago, you were fantastic. So everybody out there, just a quick little plug. Listen to Gary's phenomenal insight on marriage, different angle on the counterculture mom show. When we first literally launched the program, just go to counterculturemom.com, click on the show tab and just search for Gary Thomas. And you'll come up with his whole, basically at this point, your own channel on our platform. So check out Gary. We're going to be back with more on this phenomenal human being after this short commercial break. Is there a Christian alternative to Instagram? Stick around and find out. For Christians scrolling through Instagram, some reels, photos, and videos can be less than edifying. A lot of Christians have grown frustrated with the lack of options for social media platforms that align with their beliefs. Others may just be tired of getting sucked into the algorithm and are looking for social media alternatives with other believers. The answer to your question is Tuvu. 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And it's a great distinction that we can't do some things that we used to be able to do, but we can have a much deeper, more enjoyable connection because we've got other aspects of the relationship that's better. And look, and my wife and I can testify, it does get better with age. I think that's just phenomenal. In fact, that was during a commercial break, which now we're going to give America. So I hope you don't mind, but that section needs to stay in, Gary. Luckily, our team edits. It's going to be good dirt, good dirt for America. And they're going to be like, yes, thank you for keeping that in. We're going to go to a topic, Gary, that I think is absolutely critical. Most marriages end in divorce because of it. And that's financial, even in the Christian realm, finances, we both know can break marriages. What are some tips to making sure you're on the same page financially with your spouse from the very beginning? When I talk to couples that survived financial catastrophes, one thing was in common. One spouse usually knew much sooner than the other spouse. And that's where fights are up. And that's where accusations fly and where hurt is felt. And so I really stress with couples and my wife and I do this. I don't handle our finances. I'm not great with numbers. My wife could be building a little chalet in Switzerland that I don't know about. I can't spend a hundred bucks without her knowing. And I'm happy with that. But we have quarterly meetings where I get, okay, this is where we're at. If there's debt, if there's savings, what we need to spend money on and whatnot. And so I would say communicate, communicate, communicate is all of it. You don't just let one spouse take it all on, even if they're the one managing it, because then they're going to get the blame if things go wrong. And so it's, you got to express these are our values. And I found with couples, it's just what motivates you. Tina, some couples or some individuals are motivated by giving, some are motivated by spending and some are motivated by saving. Those are three different motivations. Marriage is about coming together and realizing, okay, I know you really like to give, but we do need to save a little bit, or I know we save, but they really, you know, we want to help build this building. We think it's important for this ministry or whatnot. And so it's appreciating each other, respecting each other, but talking about it and saying why this is important to you. I love your quarterly meeting together idea. And I remember a pastor telling me about 20 some years ago, obviously before I was married yet, somewhere in Northern California, I just got done doing an event for parents and teens. And he pulls me aside, we have this great conversation. And he said, Tina, if I could tell you one thing, someday when you get married, you want the 7-7-7 rule to happen. Every seven days you go on a date with your spouse, no matter where it is, if it's little kids stage, it's at the house. Like we talked about in part one, fondue action, lingerie is after kids are in cribs, you know, somewhere separate to not traumatize anybody. And then we have every seven weeks, it was a trip getaway with your spouse. That would be a great time to talk about the financial and separately from other things that you suggested in part one. See, I'm listening to every word you say, Gary. I want an A-plus marriage, but different conversations for different topics at different times. I love that. Every seven months is a family trip. And I'm telling you that 7-7-7 rule stuck with me about 25 years later, and it has done wonders for our families. So financial is key. The one bummer would be if both people in that marriage were givers, both were savers, both were spenders, we'd have a bomb. You'd have to write a book on that one. You probably already have. 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We often think of church as a duty and we're the last ones to get there and the first ones to leave, but the couples that I saw have that have thrived through those challenges made building community a priority. I tell the story of a couple that faced one of the worst hits a couple could face. They lost their only child. Now think about this. He was a teenager. Every mother's day, every father's day, every holiday is going to be different. There will be no weddings. There'll be no grandchild. It was devastating, but they had been involved in choir. They'd been involved in Bible studies. They were involved in their church. She made one phone call. In 30 minutes, their block was filled with cars and their house was filled with supporters. She grabbed one of her closest friends. She goes, I've seen the statistics. 70% of marriages will not survive the loss of a child. I've lost my only son. Please don't let me lose my marriage. She got half a dozen texts and scriptures a day for over a year from friends that are saying, we will walk through this with you. It's possible, Tina, to be a lonely couple. It's fine. When the weather is fine and perfect and everything is happy, you can get by as a lonely couple, but the storm will hit. It's too late to build community after the storm hits. It's something you have to do ahead of time. Push into your church. Find a church. Build a small community within that church. Be the first to arrive, the last to leave. Get to know people because if you know a storm's going to hit, you build the shelter ahead of time. I will give my husband, he went from a D to an A in the last two years alone going to church. He'll be like, Tina, let's get out of here already. Sunday's for relaxing. I said, after you give me a half an hour talking to my friends after church, now he loves it. I'm like, Luke, where are you at, man? I'm in the car. It's like a half an hour later. I'm talking to some guys I haven't seen in a while. I'm like, all right, you're making up for the first 10 to 15 years. Give us a lowdown on your website, GaryThomas.com. We can get your books. We can bring you in to speak. What else can we do on this fantastic site? It's got the schedule. Where I'm most active, Tina, is actually on Substack, which is connecttogary.com. Basically, Facebook and Twitter have decided that nobody needs to see anything I post. I just kind of accepted it. Connecttogary.com, Substack, that's where I post. That's where I interact and answer questions and post often about marriage and parenting. You are something else. Everybody out there, share this episode, all four episodes this week, as we talk about marriage leading up to Valentine's Day. It's not just about the chocolate and roses on Valentine's Day. It's loving each other well, our spouses, our children, our families, our communities, every day of the year as the Lord draws nigh. counterculturalmom.com. We shoot it. You share it. Watch all the episodes. Gary, you rock. I'm watching you, and I can't wait to bring you back on again.