The Marriage Pattern Almost Every Couple Falls Into (Dr. Emerson Eggerichs)

(upbeat music) - Dr. Egrich, so excited to have this conversation with you, man. I'm really honored that you'd give us some of your time and your wisdom today for the audience who maybe has lived under a rock for the last few decades and has not heard about you and the work you're doing. Tell us who you are and what you're up to these days. - No, thank you, Jared. And I look forward to this time together with you. I think one of the things that we're known for is the book called "Love and Respect," book on marriage. My wife, Sarah and I have been doing our Love and Respect conferences across the country since right around 1999 before you were even born, Jared. And so there is really a focus on this is our ministry, our mission in life and it's based on occasions 533 where God commands the husband to love, a copy of love is wife, and the wife should respect her husband. I had my PhD from Michigan State University. In fact, I actually did my dissertation on strong, effective fathers and maybe approach that subject. But I realized that was in an academic community. I was the pastor there of Trinity Church, Michigan State, the Spartans, professors, that whole environment. And I knew the idea of respecting a man, the second part of that Ephesians 533, would fly like a Led Zeppelin. - Hi. - No, women say, you know, he has an earned it, he doesn't deserve it, he's not superior to me, I'm not inferior to him. I'm not gonna give him license to do whatever he wants to do. I'm not gonna set the feminist team back 50 years. I'm certainly not gonna return to patriarchy, which is what I think your hidden agenda is. I'm not gonna subject myself to emotional abuse, but other than these things, Dr. Emerson, I'm really open to hearing what you have to say about this. And so we were up against a culture that didn't understand this yet. You and I as a man, we serve and die for honor. Pat Riley years ago had me come speak to the Miami Heat along with the fact that he and I spent about five, six hours talking about this. He's an icon, he knew these things instinctively and that we had such a refreshing conversation that men serve and die for honor and that if you treat a man honorably and justly, he'll die for you. If you unfairly treat him, you dishonor him or his perception of that, you'll have mutiny. Either he'll throw you over ship or he'll jump ship. And so Ospot and I and coach talked about these dynamics and it was really a refreshing thing for me, what an honor for me. But this just brings home the fact that there's a huge disconnect between what you and I feel as a man and how women process that. And so as I meditated, I realized, well, the Lord must have had some purpose in this. No wife is commanded to a goppy lover husband, only the husbands and the marital portions of scripture are commanded to a goppy love. And both Paul and Peter, and Peter says, you can want a disobedient husband through your respectful behavior, not to love. There's no command. And I said, Lord, why do you not commanded wives to love? And the inaudible voice said, I put it within the nature of women to nurture, women love to love at the level of intimacy. You have to woo the woman to get her to stop loving. I'm not going to command her to do what I created her to do because I'm not into redundancy. But she's very natural at being disrespectful. Here it is when she feels unloved. And I'm very natural at being unloving when I feel disrespected. And here's the deal, neither one of us are really trying to react in that unloving or disrespectful way. But that's how it plays out. So without love, she reacts without respect. Without respect, he reacts without love. Without love, she reacts without respect. Without respect, and this baby starts to spin. And I coined it the crazy cycle. And so in effect, over the years, we've been known as the guy that teaches the crazy cycle based on Ephesians 533. Does that make sense, Jared? (upbeat music) As dads, we want our kids to know Jesus, not just know about him, but actually know him. But if you've ever handed your child the Bible, you've probably seen it. They open it, they get overwhelmed, and then they quietly close it again. And that's why I'm really grateful for the NLT Kids Go Bible. This Bible was designed specifically for kids. It uses the new living translation, which means the language is clear, it's understandable, and actually makes sense to them. It's full of color, it's easy to read, and packed with over 600 features that help kids not just read scripture, but understand it, remember it, and apply it to their lives. There are short devotionals, hevers challenges, timelines, maps, and stories that show how God transforms real people, and how he wants to transform their lives too. Because here's the truth, strong families begin with healed men, and healed men help erase kids who know God's voice. If you want to give your child a Bible, they'll actually open, actually read, and actually understand, go to kidsgobible.com. Again, that's kidsgobible.com. (upbeat music) Well, it makes sense, but I have a million follow-up questions, because even in the, as you kind of laid out the natural pushback that people give you when they hear this idea, I think we could just spend the rest of the time addressing each of those line-by-line, and we would fill up the rest of our time, 'cause I think a lot of people feel that, I do want to say right off the bat, I was 12 in 1999, so I appreciate you giving me the compliment. (laughs) - Well, I was close, you're close, yeah. Yeah, but I was starting to hit those preteen years. - Yeah, so I think there, maybe there are two sides of the spectrum here. One is there are wives who are saying, well, yeah, I respect my husband, sure I do, but I still need him to do XYZ, and there are men who say, yeah, of course I love my wife, I work hard for her, and I make sure we're protecting, we get food on the table. So there's kind of a, there's a kind, but maybe ignorant view, or maybe not a full, there's not a lot of depth there. It's like, when I think about the words casually, I would say, yes, I love my wife, and my wife would say, yes, she respects me. That would be maybe the nicer, but not as deep side. And then on the other side, would be some of those caveats that you rattled off there, which is, well, I'll respect him when he earns my respect. If he stops acting like a little boy, then I would be happy to respect him, but he's not a man, so I'm not gonna respect, and I've heard this many times in my life, I've probably experienced this in my own marriage, and a husband would say, well, exactly what you just said. Yeah, of course, I'll love her, but she needs to start showing me a little respect and stop treating me like a boy. So for someone who hasn't read the book, can we just, can we hit some of those arguments that are just kind of selfish, sinful nature wants to respond when we hear your idea of love and respect, or I should say it God's idea of love and respect. Right, no, and I give people more of the benefit of the doubt. I mean, there is that sinful, selfish element, but I think there's often an honest misunderstanding. She's not really trying to be disrespectful for the reason you say. She, and she knows that she subscribes to the cultural mindset that respect must be earned and deserved, but she also knows that, so the logic there would then justify contempt if he doesn't fulfill your standard, that you can be disgusted with him, that you can show all that negative demeanor. I think most women would say, you know, that's, I probably am overdoing it a little bit, but it's natural for her to come across that way when she feels unloved. She's trying to send a message in a negative, disrespectful way, not because that's her aim, but because she's trying to awaken him to her deeper longing to connect with him. And it's really a compliment, not a complaint, and that she's really longing for him to meet a need that only he can meet, but she uses unholy means to achieve a holy end. So I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and try to help them understand that you're probably not doing yourself any great service by misrepresenting yourself, 'cause if you do, you're gonna be misinterpreted. And the same thing on the side of a man, you know, he'll say, I'm not gonna love that woman, she starts showing me more respect. I'll teach her lesson, and we all would agree that there are those moments, but by and large, you know, he tends to shut down and withdraw, 85% of those who withdraw and shut down during a marital conflict as the husband. When he feels disrespected, he tries to de-escalate this thing, 'cause he is lethal. So from his vantage point, he's doing the honorable thing, only to hear that he's the most loving person on the planet. He's not trying to be unloving. He's actually trying to do the respectful thing on the heels of feeling disrespected. And she's trying to do the loving thing on the heels of being unloving. And so we have this honest misunderstanding, and one of my campaigns is to help couples decode this and give the other the benefit of the doubt rather than taking up a fence. So I, first of all, try to profile goodwill. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, 33 and 34, the husband's concerned about how to please his wife and the wife is concerned about how to please her husband. So the calling is to give our spouse the benefit of the doubt, even though they're stepping on our air hose. Does that explain part of that continue to follow up with good questions, Chair. And I welcome that. - Well, man, you keep dropping so many lines there that my brain keeps getting sound. Like, well, tell me more about that. We'll tell me more about that. - Yes, sir. - You know, the fact that you just kind of rattled off 85% of men, or 85% of the people who shut down their marriage are men. That's so fascinating. I'd never heard about that or thought about that before I'm thinking about my own marriage. And the guys I know, can you unpack that a little bit? That my brain kind of got flagged there. What's happening there? Why is that happening? - It's a huge thing. And it's helpful for all of us, for self-understanding of the male, as well as for the wife to understand why her husband's doing what he's doing because she can't imagine shutting down during a moral conflict. She's more. progressive. She moves forward to connect to Sam. Sorry, we forgive him. She wants to repair it immediately. She lives in the moment, but she also doesn't experience what men do physiologically. And that research 85% comes out of the University of Washington, where Dr. John Gottman studied 2,000 couples for 20 years in their love laboratory. And they're the ones that flag this, that they noted when that moral conflict, and people will eventually let down their hair and those love laboratory things, but they had linguists, they had medical, personality, or monitoring heartbeats per minute. They had this thing so comprehensively evaluated. And they noted, you know what, 85 guys out of 100 during these conflicts eventually just goes quiet. He withdraws in stone walls. That's the way they described it. The women were asked when he does that. What do you feel? She said it feels like an act of hostility. That comment was so common, they made that a descriptor act of hostility. And they said, well, why? She's well, we couldn't imagine shutting down over, but we perceive it worse to minor criticism of it. You know, so the women are just, they just can't comprehend this. So obviously he hates me. He doesn't love me. Isn't interesting. The gender specificity there of Ephesians 533, she could say he's not respecting me, but they land on the feeling that he hates me, that he doesn't love me. And that's deep in the core of a woman. And no movie ends with the hero embracing the angels saying, I want to respect you the rest of my life. I mean, it's about L O B E. So the researchers though realized that 85% of those men in those moments, they were monitoring the beats per minute called BPMs. They get to 85, excuse me, they get to 99 beats per minute, 99 beats per minute. Jared, that's, that's warrior mode. That's what, that's what comes over us when we throw ourselves on a hangar, Nate, and save our buddies and the war in Vietnam, Mayer. And so there is this adrenaline that comes to us. So there's fight or flight. Well, he didn't want to fight with a sweet little do drop. She's poking, shaking her finger and putting, I mean, and he's just, his blood, I mean, the whole thing, he's flooded at this point. Emotionally, it's called Godman talks about this is flooding. You're not going to have a rational conversation. And he knows that physiologically and he hasn't put a voice in vocabulary of this, but he knows I just got to withdraw here. Is this drop it? Let's just forget it's no big deal. And she keeps chasing him around the house because she's threatened and will explain that in a moment. She feels abandoned. And I'll talk to about Shani Feldhahn's research as to what's going on in her soul at that juncture. But in his case, he's got to do the honorable thing. And that is, and if you and our best of buddies and we got into a heated moment where, you know, we are really hot at each other, one of us is just drop it, forget it. And we walk away from each other because the relationship is more important than this stupid issue we're fighting about. That's how we operate as men of honor. It's part of the honor code. And so we live that way. Well, when a man acts that way and marriage suddenly, he is not only told he's the most unloving human being. He's his words that are even more disrespectful. So he is completely confused as to what's going on. So one of my campaigns again is to bring a voice and vocabulary to allow men to have this self-awareness because once they realize that, then they can begin to deal with that situation in a healthy way. As well as with wives, I coach them on, hey, when this happens, here are some things you can do. I know you're threatened at the core of your heart. I know you want to repair. I know you are an anxiety at that moment, but let's give him a 15-minute break and then let's come up with a rule of engagement on how we can talk about one issue for another 15 minutes, not 15 days. Imagine walking into your church on a Sunday morning and seeing rows of men who are actually doing the work. Men who are getting honest about their struggles, men who are healing, men who are going home and loving their wives well and leading their kids with patients. That kind of change doesn't happen by accident. Sometimes men just need a space where someone finally says you're not crazy and you're not alone. And that's why we created the dad-tired one-day conference. If you're a pastor or you're a leader who want to see the men in your church, step into healing and real discipleship, we'd love to come serve your church. Head over to dadtired.com, click the conferences tab to learn more about what it looks like for your church to host a one-day conference. Well, I was going to ask you because you gave some practicals at the end there, but you've been married for decades and so I was going to have you make it personal in your own shoes and your own marriage. When that situation, which I imagine at some point in your marriage, has inevitably come up, your wife wants to address this right in the moment and you feel that flooding, that fight or flight, what are the root, what are some helpful, because you know, you're talking to a group of guys right now and so you're like, do just tell me what to do. Like, what do I do in that moment so that I'm not the most unloving husband or most unloving man in the history of the world? Oh, years ago. Sarah picked up my love and respect book that I wrote and chased me around the house saying, what would you say to a husband treating his wife the way you're treating me right now? You know, it's called negative encouragement and everybody know that these moments are going to happen and they're not always rooted in some selfishness. We just look at the world differently and we're going to have honest differences of opinion that create heated fellowship, but it starts escalating because it moves off the topic onto the crazy cycle because now my tone sounds unloving to her. I don't mean to be unloving him. We need to spend the money this way, not that way. And with the guys, we would just be, you know, we don't take, hey, Harry, you're talking to me in a tone that I don't, we don't, we don't personalize it. Our lives do personalize it. And in her world, she doesn't see herself as being disrespectful, but every guy watching this men, I wouldn't be wanted to be married to that woman. And so there is a, there's just a male and female pink and blue difference here. But in terms of our relationship, we have to then decode. I mean, part of this teaching that we bring is we have these moments, but I have to ask myself, is Sarah really intending to be disrespectful? Or does she have a need right now that she's feeling insecure about? And she's coming at me aggressively because she needs reassurance that everything's okay. I have to come to a point where I don't interpret her negative look at the University of Washington said there are these gestures of contempt that come from the woman, hand on the hip, the scolding finger, the side, the eyes roll, the face hours, the eyes dark and head goes back. And when estrogen kicks in, the word choice of contempt just rolls. Every woman will say, I don't know what respect is, but I certainly know how to speak disrespectfully. It's very natural for her to do that. And so when a guy's up against that, it's kind of like nobody talks to me this way. So it's easy to conclude that she's got a mission here and that's to tell you that you're inadequate and she doesn't respect you and you can never be good enough and you're a failure. And if you interpret it that way, you're going to miss it totally. So part of what I have to remind myself is Sarah is a good-willed woman based on that first grantee in 733 and 34 passage that she's probably crying out from the vulnerability. Yes, she's going to tell me that I failed to do XYZ and I don't want to hear that, but that at the end of the day, her mission isn't to put me down, but is ultimately in need of something that only I can give to her. And that's I have to process that. But in each of those situations, it's never comfortable because my nature is a male. Oh, you know, she's really in the marriage. She said, we need to talk. And I learned early on to ask this question, is it about us or something else? And when she said it's about something else, I said, okay, I'm all in. But if she said it's about us, oh, here we go again. And it happened almost once a month. And we talk about that, the menstrual cycle, getting in tune with that. But not and here's the rule of engagement. As a man, we can never be dismissive. The whole reason that I'm talking about this isn't to give you ammunition. And you're not an honorable man. If you use this as ammunition to put her down, rather than to understand her and move forward in a way that is going to resolve that particular situation that you're experiencing. So I appeal to men again and again. If you're a man of honor, a true man of honor, because there are some men, I'm not going into battle with you because you shoot me in the back. There'll be friends for our, so to speak. And we have to then stand as honorable men, not using this as ammunition, but instead to create the kind of understanding that's going to really get you through that conflict much quicker. Because some of us, you know, it goes for a day, two days, several hours. And this has been a pattern. And somebody's got to break it. And so this information to you can be to say to her like this, hey, you're coming at me in a way that feels disrespectful. I know that's not your aim. Did I say or do something earlier that felt unloving? I mean, she's going to say, are you drinking again? Totally, totally. Well, I think what you said there is that I appreciate your call, your challenge to men to not use this as ammunition. It makes me think of the, when Peter says, to live with your wives in an understanding way. And that's what you were talking about. We get this information so that we can better understand and love her. And then that passage goes on to say so that your prayers may not be hindered, which I think is one of the hardest verses as a man to read in that we should take that very seriously. I want to ask you two questions that I think are related. But if you feel like they're not, go ahead and tease them out and, you know, answer them individually. But how much of us are coming into marriage with a pre-written story? And then when we are in these moments, and I mean, just story about who we are, how what value we have and that story kind of frames the way we enter into our marriage and then when our wife or our husband, if you're a wife, does something that it kind of pokes that story. If we come in with some kind of insecurity, I'm not good enough. I don't have value. I'm not respectable. Whatever the story may be that we have believed about ourselves, how much of that is plain into the the quick escalation because of that look or the thing that he or she said. And then the other question that might be related to that is, can for when you're thinking of wife and loving your wife, can the words safe sometimes or always be synonymous with love? Is it at time when she says I don't feel loved? Is it that she's saying I don't feel safe? Again, feel free to take those questions individually if they don't make sense to overlap. Yeah, I think on the latter point, I mean the word safe is being used a great deal by women today and so it has a connotation that you're unsafe as a human being as a man that I am potentially going to be victimized and you're going to be violent toward me. So I mean there is that definition and so I'm a little guarded but yes, quite often. Yeah, and that's a good point actually because that's not what I was thinking when I asked the question. It wasn't a physical safety thing. It was more just like your tone as a man, your disposition. It doesn't give me the space. One thing that my wife and I often say to each other is I want to be a safe place for you to land. And that's more when I'm thinking of like you can emotionally come to me and I'm safe for, I'm safe to hold what you're feeling in that moment. That's more what I was thinking. Thank you for that distinguishing. Yeah. Well, I mean that helps, men are help when I, a woman sexually isn't just turned on by nudity or the body or any of the connection, the sense of love that we're talking about. And they're the words safe. I feel safe. I feel I can relax. I'm restful. You're not going to, you know, that's where it applies in a very wholesome, noble way. At this or a woman, I challenge women to be very guarded when you say to your husband, I don't feel safe with you right now because that is, that is just packed and replete with significance in the male world. There are certain words that simply are loaded and you have to be guarded about that because you're in effect saying he's not a safe man that you can't trust him, that he's not predictable, he's not honorable. Same thing, you know, a man saying, you know, you're just an emotional wreck, you know, you know, I can't predict how you're going to be. I mean, you're, your meltdowns are, we have to be very guarded about how we use words as though somehow we're getting a message through that the other person is going to say, oh, thank you for sharing that. I will make an adjustment now and change. No, they're just going to get defensive because they feel attacked and now we're back on the crazy cycle. But back to the first point, I think again, the past, our past experience that we bring into the relationship is extremely formidable. And each of us has to have that self-awareness of what those triggers are because quite often it may not have anything to do with my spouse, whatsoever. It has everything to do with some past experience and I'm projecting that onto this person unfairly. And that's why we have to think about this and reflect in journal and be thoughtful about these kinds of things. But I think, you know, one of the things that I share in a positive way, you know, our gender affects this, our upbringing brings this, our spiritual giftine. I mean, if he has the gift of exhortation or 19 spiritual gifts and she has the gift of mercy, which is one of the 19 gifts, that is replete with significance when it comes to child wearing and taking care of, he's going to want to be more of an exorter. There need to be consequences here to our 16 year old son. She's going to want to extend mercy. So the very giftine that God has given to the person when they came to Christ is now going to create a conflict between the two of them. So you bring your even your spiritual giftine into the relationship, not to suggest your temperament, your personality, the negative relationships you've had with other people. This is why relationships need to be understood as something that Paul said in 1 Corinthians 728. If you marry of not sin, but you will have trouble. And that is a special challenge. It doesn't mean sinful trouble. And this is why I write in the book several things to your point. The first chapter is our value, a God given or spouse driven. Because if it's spouse driven, then their mood determines my happiness. And God does not want my being and my inner life based on their attitudes. We are affected by them, but we've got to come to a point where I don't find my identity from my spouse. I bring my identity in Christ to my spouse. There's that point. And then also the idea of, are we going to live by the Holy Word or Hollywood? And that's where these cultural scripts affect us. So in the book, light bulb moments, which is the one that's come out recently, thousands of people, Jared, have written over the years with what they call their light bulb moment. They're aha moment. They're eureka. And these are those realizations, not the least of which on this point, they suddenly realized, wait a minute, I've been living to the script of Hollywood, not the scripture of our Heavenly Father. And I'm bringing those, the real love, our EEL, you know, from all the romantic comedies that you bring that into the relationship as a woman. And you have a princess syndrome. There has to be a moment where you step back and think biblically, not just from the standpoint of the romantic comedy. And that would be an illustration, same thing with pornography. Many men have a meaningful sexual relationship initially. But then it begins to realize she's not drooling about sex. In fact, they're laying there in bed when they're having that moment of intimacy. And she says, we need to go to the grocery store after this. And suddenly, he realizes she's just not into this. And so then he begins to think, maybe she's frigid. And then it begins to think she's not wanting to wear lingerie. She's not initiating sex. And he begins to send a message to her that she's, you know, you may be, you got a problem here. No, she's a woman. She wants sex, but it comes to the emotional. But she's just wired differently. In the same way, you're not interested in always talking every day about your emotions. It's just not, it's just not where you're at. And this is where many women today are, the husband needs to be in therapy. He needs to be more emotive. He needs to be like me, a woman, yes, still be a man. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's be very guarded here. But back to the pornography issue, you've been affected by the culture. And so your whole relationship with your wife is contingent on your boyhood fantasies. And you're going to have to do some work on this. Because the same guy that married, the guy that marries your daughter, if he brings into that relationship, the fantasies that you are, your daughter is going to just be run over. I mean, you talk about a pain that your sweet little five year old girl that used to walk around with on your shoulders. You need to then step back and say, wait a minute. Hey, your wife was all in on regular sexual intimacy. But because she didn't think about it the way you did and may not have wandered as much as you did, now you don't get any of that because you've been so judgmental, so angry. And so to the wives, you're trying to make him into something. And finally, he's just shut down because he just feels like he's a complete failure that he can never be good enough. And you've heard him say that again and again and again, but you dismiss it as excuse making rather than believe that that's how he feels deep in his heart because you've got some kind of a standard here that he's not fulfilling because of your reading all these romantic novels that are slightly pornography from a female standpoint. They're causing you to fantasize about someone who's not your husband. And all of a sudden need to step back and say, you know, what am I bringing into this relationship that isn't holy, isn't healthy? And that isn't the shame anybody. I think all of us have to recognize we, and I think I went a bit harder and deeper on the two points I just made. But all of us need to, and what you're saying is, hey, is my spouse the problem here? Is my spouse the issue here? Or am I interpreting this thing in a way that really isn't pleasing the Lord? And because we have these longings that may not be fulfilled, have we ever thought about just giving that over to Christ? Have we ever as a man just said, Lord, you know my, my sexual appetite? You know my desires? I just pray that you would just, I commit this to you. And the same thing with a wife, Lord, I just give my idealisms. A paradise is lost, but I believe those ideals that many women have are good and godly. They're just on this side of Eden and are not going to be fulfilled to the extent that the culture tells her that it's going to be. So I may have run on with that a little bit too long, but nonetheless, there it is. Well, I think you made so many great points there that are really helpful. And I'll just say, you know, after working with guys for the last several years and in our world, we're talking a lot about pornography and guys finding freedom from that. Your desire for sex, because I'm talking about this because you hit it so on the nose there, but it's significantly changes when you stop looking at pornography. I mean, that's just the reality. Like your brain as a man is completely warped and your desires for your wife are completely warped. If you think that this is a compartmentalized part of your life that is not deeply impacting your marriage, you're just completely wrong. Like it is absolutely impacting your marriage in a very negative way. One of the dads who listens to the show recently reached out and shared his story with us. He said that while he was listening to the podcast one day, God used one of the episodes to finally wake him up. He said he was able to confess years of hidden pornography used to his wife. He stepped into group counseling. He started doing the hard work of healing and today he's walking in freedom and he's helping other men break free too. The wild part is that story exists because of people like you who support dad tired. When you give, you're helping reach the next dad who feels stuck, who feels ashamed and who feels alone. If dad tired has helped you, would you consider becoming a monthly supporter? Strong families begin with healed men and your generosity might be the reason the next dad finds freedom. You can go to dadtired.com/donate. Every person I've asked, do you believe that Jesus Christ joined you together? Most everyone says yes. Do you believe that God, Dorino's courtship days, called you to something bigger and better than that marriage that he had a sense of destiny that there was for you. I asked this at our conference, we've averaged 1800 couples, 1800 people. I should say our two day conferences for many years focus on the family sponsored them, and I would always ask. The hands all over the auditorium, everybody believes that, but then they get derailed. They're looking through the river mirror. They individually may be walking with Christ, but as a couple, they're not, and even their own personal relationship with the Lord has been suffering. One of the appeals I make is, look, this is not to shame you. You're not the enemy. You're the victim of the enemy, and the panographers out there are going after you, because they know the male appetite, just as the romantic novelist and the script writers, they know. If I wasn't a Christian, I'd be writing romantic novels and scripts for Hollywood and going to the bank and having a wonderful life on the heels of creating this appetite and leaning into that appetite in a way that's not appropriate. You're not the enemy, you're the victim of the enemy, but you're going to have to make a decision. Did Christ call me, did He join me together? Is there a sense of destiny? And you and I both know, you cannot quench and grieve the Holy Spirit. You cannot look upon another woman and lust for her and fulfill the wonderful, glorious call on your life. And so all of us have to come to a point. It's a crossroads where we have to make a decision that either I'm going to go that direction of pornography and fantasy and lust and come up with all the rationalizations for that. Or I'm going to say, you know what, I got to fight this and it is a fight. There is a schemer and you've got to then turn the corner on that because the conscience becomes free, prayer becomes powerful, fruitfulness and ministry expands, fellowship with other believers is genuine. I have a list of seven things that happen immediately when we turn the corner. And none of those things are happening until we do. And so each of us has to come to a point where we say, you know what, the consequences of these decisions are distasteful enough to me that I now need to make a new choice. And there are enough godly wise guys out there that have no interest in shaming because they'll say, I was there three years ago, man. And so you need to bring in to that situation, other brothers. But you have to make the decision. Are you called and how badly do you want it? Yeah. Thank you for saying that. I was working really hard not to just completely start sobbing as you were talking about our little ones, our little girls entering into these marriages and being hurt by, I have three little girls, even right now, man, even if I start thinking about it, you're going to make me just start weeping. So how much of this, the love and respect, obviously you're talking about all of this in the covenant relationship of marriage, but how much of this, I can't help but think as a dad of four young ones. I have a son and three daughters. How much of these principles still apply to them, like my daughters, longing to be loved in a way that I can speak love to them and my son wanting respect. He's 14 in a way that it actually like, can any of these principles apply to parenting and if so? Excellent question. Well, yes, I wrote a book called Love and Respect in the Family making that very point. I also received thousands of letters from mothers wives who went home after our conference and said, "Wait a minute. I have three sons here." I wonder if I started applying this respect language to my sons. What might happen? They were so blown away because women want to connect with their sons, connect. They get it. That's abstract to us guys. What do you mean, connect? But every woman knows exactly what I'm saying to connect, oh, to connect. They know it. They understand it. It's the way they live. It's what they long for. And suddenly these women are beginning to experience connection with their sons in a way they never had before, whether it was four or forty. It did make any difference. The age was irrelevant. And I unpack all of that in the book called Mother and Son. But to your point, yes, it's fascinating to observe it if we just watch it. And even though you would think little three or four or five-year-old girls, they are so aware of love and they use their strength. Little boys are not tracking that way on that love factor as much. If they are tracking on honor, hero, superhero, why do little boys pick up a stick and make it into a gun? The secular culture says it was because they're violent. No, you'll always, if you listen to the story, they're always defending the innocent against the evil invader. And even if they have to get into a situation with a group of boys, okay, we'll be the bad guys. I mean, everybody wants to be the hero defending the good. It's instinctive. And I had women say to me, I don't think our little four or five-year-old boys can understand the concept of respect. I said, well, just ask this question. Would you rather have mommy say to you, I love you? Or mommy say to you, I respect you? In significant ways, the little boys would say respect. That's not always the case, but it was enough that the women would write, "How in the world does he even understand respect?" To many women, it's just kind of like that's too abstract, but now love, of course, not. One of the things you can do is to say to your son, you know, I really respect the way you did X, Y, Z, or I respect the fact that you have this desire. A lot of times, instead of respecting performance, which makes it earned and deserve, I respect this desire in you. I can see a desire in you to protect your sister. I can see this, and I unpack ways you can use that and watch what happens when you use those kinds of words. You know, and I used this illustration that I'm about to give you, a wife wrote me and a mother, and she said, "My son was given assignment in school, he was a teenager, to put on his tombstone what it was he wanted said about him, and he wrote, "Here lies an honorable man." "Here lies an honorable man." She said, "I corrected him." I said, "No, you need to write here lies a loving man." And after she had listened to my message on that she writes me in confesses, "There it is, I completely missed it, didn't I?" It's just interesting how we women are. We just don't get it. We don't get it. And so it's not because women are mean-spirited women adore their baby boys. So it's the ignorance, it's not the ill will at all. And so the challenge for us is to come up with a few vocabulary words, and I say to women, "You don't have to stop loving on your son. You just keep being who you are." But every once in a while, say, "You're an honorable man." Every once in a while, say, "You're a respectable man," or when you're correcting him. For the life of me, I don't understand why you didn't pick up the stuff I told you to pick up in the bedroom. You're an honorable man who would die for your mother. I know you would. You're a good soldier. You're an noble man. But for the life of me, explain to me why you're not doing what I told you to do. He'll jump up and do it. I'm going to try that literally as soon as we hang up here. I've got a 14-year-old son sitting in the other room behind me, and I'm going to start using that language. Or maybe that's what you told me not to do. Don't use it as an organization. It's an online between motivation and manipulation. We have to recognize you don't say to a woman, "I love you in order to get sex." We all know that. You can't do that because they're vulnerable to that manipulation. We give this as a gift. It's a matter of understanding. This is a need they have that isn't just temporary. This is a lifelong issue. We have to begin to introduce new language to rightly motivate them. It is good to motivate them. It's good to influence them. If the motivation is to get them to do what I want, then they're going to feel abused at some point. I think the key, what I'm hearing you say is it's more I'm speaking identity about, here's who I know you are, and I'm going to speak as your dad, as your mom, I'm speaking that identity over you so that you come back to who God made you to be versus I'm saying something false just to get you to do whatever I want you to do. Yeah. You can even ask the question. I see you becoming this honorable man. What does it mean for you to be an honorable man? You know, I see so many things you do that I really respect. Are you conscious of those things? Are you aware of that? I just love to engage. There's no right or wrong answer. I just am curious if that question even makes sense to you. And then go quiet. Yeah. That's good. It depends on who he is and how communicative he is, but give him time. There's no hurry on it. And also women want to talk, talk with their sons, talk, talk, talk, talk. The issue isn't talking, the issue is him feeling connected to you and having fond feelings of love for you and it doesn't necessarily translate into him talking about all of his feelings. Now, here's the deal. We've found that if you give that gift to him of honor, he will open up. He will talk, given that he feels, here's where the word "save" comes in our end, that he feels safe and this isn't going to result in some kind of a rebuke. Man, I have so many questions. I'm trying to be respectful of your time here, but I'm asking this very selfishly as a dad of three little girls. What does it look like practically? And they live and breed this language of love intuitively. What does it look like for a dad to love his little girls? You gave some examples about respect for the boys. What does it look like for the little girls? Well, again, the major warning is to never say no one could love you. You say that one time, and you had better get down on your knees and seek forgiveness. Say, I was stupid. That is not true. There are going to be thousands of people will love you because you've got a heart that cares about people. But here's what I want to say. You can damage that little girl's heart by making that kind of comment when you are in a bad mood and somehow you're trying to be vindictive. So from a horrible negative standpoint interpretation, there are certain things that are taboo. But on the other side, you can just watch her. I mean, she's gonna bring you a flower. I mean, our two-and-a-half-year-old Fernie McGurney, I call her. My Fern is her name. She's my granddaughter. She's already picking up flowers here. You know, the other day they were with us and she's picking up flowers and giving it to Poppy. That, have we not noticed this? And so you can thank her. Thank you for thinking of me. There's just a tenderness there that you can just be appreciative of. Thank you for that. Thank you for thinking of me 'cause they are conscious of the people around them. Oxytocin kicks in. They have this caring nature. And what you can just simply say is, I really love that about you. You are such a loving person. Thank you for caring. And 99% of all those who are the caregivers and adulthood is the female. And I say to men, if you're sick and you've got a terminal illness and your wife is in a wheelchair and you've got three young kids, this is going to spread on prayer groups across the world. Women in these prayer groups are going to be praying for you. They don't know you, but hundreds if not thousands of people are going to be praying for you in that particular story 'cause it'll get their attention and they can't not pray for you. They can't not care for you. And you need to understand this is God's gift to us. And so when you have these three little girls or you have girls as a father out there, understand the giftedness of this and the beauty of this. And furthermore, she's going to be the one that's carried for you when you're in the retirement center and you're sitting in a wheelchair drooling. - You know what's funny about that, man? This is totally an ADD tangent here. And I'm going to offend some guys 'cause I know we have guys who are listening who are in the medical profession and I'm so thankful for you. But dude, when I'm sick and I'm in the hospital, I don't want a male nurse. And when you throw out all those executives, it's like, I've had male nurses before. I'm like, please let 'em switch my wife's a nurse and she knows I'm like, I'm more grumpy. I'm like, dude, you don't know how to really care for me the way that these female officers can care for me. - I mean, obviously we are guarded on that. But I mean, let's just honor people for who the God has wired them to be. Just as if I say if you had a hundred 19 year old women and a hundred 19 year old men and a mosque comes charging in, the 19 year old male is the perfect fighting specimen. Watch what those guys do in response to that. It doesn't mean that some of those women who are karate experts aren't gonna do some. But I had a colonel in the Marine Corps female right now. She said I resigned because we were in combat and the men could not help. We were in a helicopter and fire came up. The men, two men went below me and they pushed me on top of those two guys. The other guys got on top of me. She said they instinctively needed to protect me. And I had the guy that was third in highway patrol, California. Ray Blackwell said we have men and women in squad cars together and the wives of those men complain. And you know why they complain not because of a fear of romance but because they know their husbands will want to protect her in the line of fire. It's instinctive. Now we could say that's contrary to expertise and protocol, I get it. But I don't have any apology for what I'm saying here. And we need to understand that. And so if we have children and we see that kind of thing, let's begin to honor that and love that and enjoy that. Jesus Christ asked this question, Matthew 19.4. Have you not read? He'll made them from the beginning. Made them male and female. And not one of the points I make in the book, not wrong, just different shades of right. - Yeah. - Like, uh, yeah, sorry to interrupt you. I just say, you know, as you even describe those scenes, the six year old boy who takes a stick and makes it a gun, just comes out in me. You know, it's just like, man, I want you. I want to protect my family. It's like, it's an honor to protect my family. It feels honorable, something I want to do. - Yes. - For the sake of time here, there are guys listening who are like, man, I've been trying for years. There may be some wives who have snuck in and is like, I'm trying for years and you have this book coming out or that has recently come out, light bulb moments. And they're just like, I need one, man. I need, 'cause I've been doing this for years. I've been doing this for decades and I feel exhausted. I feel hopeless. What would you say to that person? - Well, and that's a major point that I made. You don't need more effort. You need more light. Coming back to what we said earlier, about 85%. Every man, where 85% is stonewall and withdrawal, because their heartbeat's at 99 beats per minute, that was a light bulb moment for some men. And if your wife has a light bulb moment, then she realizes that she's been making this aggressive chasing you around the house. We need to talk right now 'cause Shanti Feldhahn's research says that Christian women are three conversations away from fearing they're gonna hear their husband saying, I never have loved you, I don't love you now, and I'm leaving you. And that's why they repair and why there's this fluidity of insecurity. Now she has her moment of intensity, but then she'll always, I was horrible. I should have said that the way they will always repair because they have their insecurities, okay? So if we come to a point where we begin to decode and have this light, where suddenly this makes sense now, and I have 12 chapters of giving more light, it isn't more effort. You need to realize the very event that you're going through if you're both misinterpreting it, it just creates more crazy cycle moments. But once you get this light, once you get this information suddenly, he's not trying to be unloving. He's actually trying to do the honorable thing. This isn't an act of hostility, this is an act of honor. And she isn't trying to be contemptuous when she comes and criticizes and complains, it's an act of care because she's a caregiver, not an act of contempt. And so there is this moment in our conferences where I help people realize, and couples, we had, interestingly, a focus on the family spent $50,000 to evaluate the long-term impact of the love and respect message, post-conference, post-reading the book. One of the demographics that manifests it, we had people who were either divorced or a filing for divorce who came to the two-day conference. We don't know why, but Jared's 60% called off the divorce or remarried. - Wow. - Why? It comes back to this. I don't believe that people have ill will. You know as a man, you don't have ill will toward her, you don't get up early in the morning to storyboard ways to irritate her. But at the end of the day, she's irritated with you and vice versa. I do not believe there's ill will. I believe there's an honest misunderstanding because we've subscribed to this idea that because we're equal, therefore we're identical, that because we're equal, therefore we're the same. That is one of the most misleading concepts. Now we have crossovers because of common humanity. But once we come to the point that we realize we do conflict differently. Once we have that moment of light, it just changes everything instead of gripey. Now we're actually grinning when we now are observing her do what Emerson just predicted she was going to do. And she's not trying to put me down. She's actually feeling insecure and needing reassurance. Granted, nobody talks to you that way. I'm not going to defend the way she comes at you. Never. But if you don't decode it, then your son-in-law is going to do the same thing to those three precious little girls. And we don't want that either. You want to be in a position of moral authority to take him aside and say, let me share something with you that I learned 27 ago. (upbeat music) If you're like most of the guys who are listening to this podcast, you're probably doing some deep internal work right now in your life. You're dealing with stuff that most men avoid. You're trying to become the kind of husband and dad that your family deserves. But the funny thing about healing is, it's almost always invisible. Nobody sees you, praying in the car. Nobody hears the hard conversations that you're having. Nobody sees the nights where you choose honesty and integrity instead of hiding. We made a few new dad-tired t-shirts that are just a quiet reminder of the work God is doing in you. It's not to show off. It's just a little signal to yourself and maybe another dad who's on the same journey. You can check out all the new merch that we have by going to dadtired.com and click the shop tab. (upbeat music) Well, there's some guys listening to this right now who you're like, you need to read this book 'cause you guys are in a spot where it's like, we need some serious help here and we need some light bulb moments. We need to have some light shed on this 'cause we're spinning in circles here. And so we've got a link in the show notes where you can immediately click that. Some of you were like, no, I feel like my marriage is pretty good, but we recently had Dr. Gary Chapman on the show and he says that he reads a marriage book every year. He's been married for decades and decades and decades. He said he reads a marriage book every year. And so even if you feel like you're in a pretty good spot with you. or spouse. You are two sinful people who have an enemy against you who would love to destroy your marriage. And so just keep pursuing each other, keep figuring out ways to grow. And this book is the perfect book to keep doing that. Dr. Emerson, thank you so much for taking the time, man. Obviously, I didn't have a chance to pick all your wisdom. You just gave us little crumbs, but that's why you write it down in books. So we'll go buy your books and keep exploring the wisdom that you have. Thank you, brother, for your time. Thanks, Jared.