122: Revisiting His Needs, Her Needs with Melissa J. Hogan

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Welcome to episode 122 of the Untangled Faith

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Podcast. Over the course of several weeks, I'm doing a series of episodes

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on influential Christian books from the 80s, 90s and

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early 2000s. I've asked some friends to join me for conversations about

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these books after reading them again or for the first time.

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In today's episode, my good friend and longtime friend of the podcast,

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Melissa Hogan, joins me to talk about the marriage book, his

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needs, her needs. And just a note, before we get going,

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some of this conversation may not be appropriate for young ears

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and there is some discussion about abuse. I wanted to

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let you know that before we get going so you can decide how to best

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listen to this episode. I'm so glad you're here.

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I'm Amy Fritz and you're listening to the Untangled Faith

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Podcast, a podcast for anyone who has found themselves

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confused or disillusioned in their faith journey. If you want to hold onto your

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faith while untangling it from all that is not good or true, this

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is the place for you.

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Welcome back to the podcast, Melissa. It has been a long time since

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I've had you on the podcast. A lot of things have happened, but I

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wanted to have you back on for this new series I'm doing

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kind of talking about do these books hold up? And did they

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ever hold up? I don't know about

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that. Yes, influential books of like the 80s,

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90s, 2000s. And so this is a book

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that came to my mind very quickly. His needs,

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her needs, building in a Fair Proof marriage

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that came out in 1986. So I did a little

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bit of research. I'm going to talk a little bit about the background of the

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book and then I'm going to have you share your

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experience with the book. If you read it previously before you refreshed

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your mind on this, and if it was what you

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remembered as you revisited it, the highs and

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lows and wherever this leads

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us and sort of how it influenced how it, you know,

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you. It came into your life. You were thinking it would help you. So I'm

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not going to spoil anything, but that's sort of how our conversation will

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go. So I looked this up. The author

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is Willard F. Harley Jr. He's from

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Minnesota. I knew of him because I'm a Minnesota

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girl. They were in Minnesota. I think he had a counseling practice

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there. His wife, Joyce is on the radio

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often. And so I had their names

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were pretty well heard of in the Minnesota Twin Cities

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area, so I didn't recognize. The name at all. I was

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surprised that, you know, he wasn't. You

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know, the book is so common, but I didn't recognize his name at all.

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Yeah, I think he got. I think it's possible that since his wife was on

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the radio so much, I, I could. I need to double check this, but I

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think she was connected to the local Christian radio station. One thing

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that's interesting, it was published in 1986, and like I said, the

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subtitle of this book is Building in a Fair Proof

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Marriage, but it was revised and updated and

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republished in 2022 with a new

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subtitle. No longer is it Building an Affair Proof Marriage. It

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is Making Romantic Love Last, which

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is interesting. Well, what I saw was it. The

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subtitle changed over the years and it

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was. Was it more than one time that it changed? Yes, it changed like

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six times. Holy moly. And what I saw was that

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the latest version went back to the Affair

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proof Marriage. So. Really? And so who

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knows? What I saw was that the latest

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version. Yeah. Went back to something related to an affair proof

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marriage. So I, I don't know for sure.

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Like that. Yeah. The Marriage that Lasts or Love that Lasts

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was in there somewhere. Yeah. But

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mostly 90% of them were. Something about affair proofing.

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Yeah. And one thing, though, I did notice was that it was republished and

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2022, which was not that long ago. And So

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I asked ChatGPT what's the difference between the 1986

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version and the most recent updated version. Now, I don't know if

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ChatGPT is right or how well this AI has been trained, but it did

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say basically it kind of leaned away from the more very

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stereotypical gender role situation, which I

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guess I can kind of see that. But I would argue, and here's a spoiler,

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that may not be the biggest issue with this book, but it was a big.

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It was very, very trad. Gender roles

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all over this book. So that's sort of an interesting, you know, history

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of the book. So this guy who wrote this as a clinical

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psychologist, marriage counselor, it does

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look like he's written several books. He also did a

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video curriculum for churches and small groups. This seems to be a thing

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that people do. They make video curriculums for churches. And

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then also he has a mer. Has a website. Did you see that? He has

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a ministry called marriage builders.com

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and his family's a part of it too, which

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initially I was like, is this the same thing as the.

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The guy in middle Tennessee that lives here that has a

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marriage ministry, that actually his daughter works

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with him now? Joe Beam Is he the sex guy? Yes. And I

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thought, is he like the same? Is this he working for him? No, this is

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a whole different business that family. And once

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again, it's a family. Marriage is a money maker.

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Yeah. Yes. So. So inside the COVID of the book

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says, this book was written to educate you in the care of your

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spouse. Once you have learned its lessons, your spouse

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will find you irresistible, a condition that's essential to a

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happy and successful marriage. So that's from the preface, and then it

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said, is your marriage affair proof? Recent studies have

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shown that most couples will experience the

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agonizing pain of infidelity. However, there are measures you can take

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to ensure faithfulness in your marriage. In his needs for

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needs, Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr. Shows you how to

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affair proof your marriage. You'll learn to build a relationship that

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sustains romance, increases intimacy, and

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deepens awareness. Year after year,

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it goes on a little more. Yeah, so that is the

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introduction to the book. That's a very, very strong

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promise. Very interesting premise.

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And so the idea of this book is it's based on, I

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guess, surveys that he has done of clients where he

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decided what he discovered were the

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number one needs of men and women. And so the five basic

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needs, he says of the man is sexual

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fulfillment, recreational companionship, an attractive

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spouse. Sorry. Domestic

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support, admiration. Okay, those are those. And then a woman

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needs affection, conversation, honesty and openness,

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financial support and family commitment. And he said, once a

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spouse lacks. Lacks fulfillment of any of the five

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needs, it creates a thirst that must be quenched.

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If change does not take place within the marriage to care for that, the individual

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will face the powerful temptation to fill it outside

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of marriage. Melissa, say something.

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That whole premise

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is unbiblical.

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It's toxic. It is

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supportive of unhealthy

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patterns in a marriage. Yeah. You

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know, I went back and read portions of the

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book, and there's. There's some good nuggets, like there

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is some truth. But sometimes the problem is when you

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have some truth combined with

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really unhealthy things,

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it's hard to pass through. And, you know, I don't want to throw

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the baby out with the bathwater with this book,

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but. Or as I like to say, the

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chicken and the bones. Yeah. I'm wondering if

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this is poop and brownies. Yeah, it's more poop and brownies.

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I don't think it's. I don't think it's easy to say, I'm going to eat

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the chicken and throw out the bones of this, because it's. It kind of

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seeps in. It's kind of like a virus. Yeah. And the

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idea that one person in

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a relationship can do things

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that then affair proof the marriage

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and a fair proof the other person, that's a misassignment of

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responsibility. Yeah. And if you follow some

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marriage, health and relationship, you know, therapists,

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one of the foundational premises of abuse, for

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example, is the misassignment of

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responsibility and saying that. So, for

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example, if you have the phrase, you know, you made

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me do that, like, look what you made me do. There's actually

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a book about abuse called look what you made me do. You know, I hit

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you, you made me do that. This is the same

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flavor of that. I had an affair

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because you didn't meet my needs. Yeah. And

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that's really what we're talking about here, that you can do the

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things that satiate someone

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else's needs to keep them from having an affair. Right.

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The thing that makes me really sad is I know how these

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books are marketed. I know how. I know who

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buys them. I know that.

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Okay. I don't know. I'm going to suggest that this is the

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likely outcome. A woman is

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in a marriage and she's like, this is terrible.

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I need to fix it and I need to figure out a way to

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save my marriage. She goes and looks for

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something, any resource that will help her, and she finds this

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book. This is the book that's going to help her and

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she's going to bring this home and she's going to read it.

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Yeah. And that. Tell me about that from your

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perspective as somebody who's had a hard. Who had a hard

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marriage. Can I tell you how many marriage books I had on my

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shelf? Yes, lots. Lots of marriage

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books. I had this book on my shelf.

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Actually got it from my mom, who was also in a

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hard marriage and had this book.

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And then I, you know, we repeat the patterns that

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we know. Right. So I had this book. I had,

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you know, what are some of the other. In 86. Were your parents

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still together in 1986? My mom

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was married to my stepdad at that

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time and they got

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married maybe not long after

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or before that book came out. And so then

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she had that book and then I had that

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book. I had some of the other books, the five love

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languages, A lot of these same

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vein of books. Because you're trying, you're going, well, what

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can I do? And that's the lie. The

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lie is that one person

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can do something to affair proof

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or save a marriage. Affairs or bad

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behavior are the deficiency of the Person

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committing those things. Now, of course there

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are, there are things we can do and should do that are the

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responsibilities of us in our, in our marriage and to, to keep things

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alive. But our actions are our own

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choices. Yeah. And to set this up

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as. That's just a terrible way to do

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this. To set this up as your affair. Proofing of marriage.

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Now, he did have this sentence in there that I took note

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of, but I feel like it could have been a

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whole. He should have spent an entire chapter on it. He said, this

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is for married people who want to be happily married. But

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here's the thing. If you're, if you're trying to have a good

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marriage and you're buying this book. Yeah. You usually

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don't know that that other person is not

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on the same page with you. So one of the things

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that I would say about this book is

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it assumes that you have two people

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that are acting in good faith and are

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acting honestly that are somewhat

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emotionally healthy and emotionally aware

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or self reflective. And often

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what I have seen is if there is a

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partner who is deceitful,

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unhealthy, abusive, they're going to

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act like that they're at that same place with the other person and that

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other person then cannot figure out you're like a, you know,

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running on a treadmill or on a wheel. Yeah. And you can't figure out what

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you're doing wrong. Yeah. It is interesting because somebody that's an

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unhealthy person, they oftentimes don't want to

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go far enough to say, I really don't want to be in a happy marriage.

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Because there, you know, if, if we talk about needs here,

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right. If both people have needs, that person is

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getting some of their needs met and they're like, whether

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that need is, I need to project an image that

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I'm happily married or I'm getting domestic,

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free domestic labor from this partner. I'm,

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they gave me, you know, allowed me to have children. They're keeping the

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house, taking care of the kids while I can go do these things over here.

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So they're getting some of these needs met,

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but they've decided they're going to get other needs met in

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other places. And, and back to that,

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like assuming that one, that both parties are

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healthy, it also assumes that

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people have needs that can be met

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and that those needs are healthy needs. So

241
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I'm just here to tell you there are people in the

242
00:15:10,345 --> 00:15:13,993
world that are unhealthy to the extent that their needs are a

243
00:15:14,049 --> 00:15:16,645
black hole. Another person

244
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cannot, you know, do Enough to

245
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ever meet those needs. And that's that

246
00:15:24,235 --> 00:15:27,795
spinning wheel thing. Yeah. Even the word needs is really

247
00:15:27,835 --> 00:15:31,627
interesting to me because it, it's so loaded. It's. It's

248
00:15:31,651 --> 00:15:35,203
sort of a get out of jail free card, I think, for women or men

249
00:15:35,259 --> 00:15:38,655
who read this and say, look, this is my need.

250
00:15:39,595 --> 00:15:42,915
And throughout this entire book, there is this theme that

251
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if somebody isn't getting that need met, that it

252
00:15:46,751 --> 00:15:49,967
is basically an excuse to have an

253
00:15:49,991 --> 00:15:53,655
affair. And like, like

254
00:15:53,775 --> 00:15:57,359
I. That is wild to me. And I think it's

255
00:15:57,407 --> 00:16:01,063
wild to me probably because my parents are happily

256
00:16:01,119 --> 00:16:04,755
married and I'm in a happy marriage

257
00:16:05,615 --> 00:16:09,455
that, I mean, I. I kept reading this and hollering upstairs to my husband.

258
00:16:09,495 --> 00:16:13,277
Cause I was sitting down, I was like, honey, is this a

259
00:16:13,301 --> 00:16:16,509
need you have for me to be more

260
00:16:16,557 --> 00:16:19,825
attractive? I'm so sorry. Because, like, there's this.

261
00:16:20,165 --> 00:16:23,869
I mean, it feels so. I don't know, I don't love the

262
00:16:23,917 --> 00:16:27,229
word need in this because it has like this

263
00:16:27,317 --> 00:16:31,101
value judgment on it. Like, how

264
00:16:31,133 --> 00:16:33,905
can you have a need that involves

265
00:16:34,885 --> 00:16:38,501
somebody else doing something with

266
00:16:38,533 --> 00:16:41,585
their body like that their ne. You have a need for your

267
00:16:41,725 --> 00:16:45,121
wife to lose the baby weight or you're gonna

268
00:16:45,273 --> 00:16:48,921
cheat on her. Well, and I'll give two. Two angles of this one. We

269
00:16:48,953 --> 00:16:52,721
also often have a double standard that women

270
00:16:52,913 --> 00:16:56,577
have to be thin and well

271
00:16:56,641 --> 00:17:00,433
kept and all of these things. And, you know,

272
00:17:00,609 --> 00:17:04,433
men are running around looking however the heck they want. Well, that's because it's

273
00:17:04,449 --> 00:17:07,969
not in the top five basic needs, according to Dr. Willard F. Harley

274
00:17:08,017 --> 00:17:11,845
Jr. For Women. Women don't care because we need affection,

275
00:17:11,925 --> 00:17:15,653
conversation, honesty, financial support, and family commitment. Well, and

276
00:17:15,669 --> 00:17:18,733
I'm like, you know, if we're saying that attraction is a lot of different things

277
00:17:18,789 --> 00:17:22,261
and companionship and blah, blah, you know, a person

278
00:17:22,333 --> 00:17:26,013
who is kind and nice and you do things with, you

279
00:17:26,029 --> 00:17:29,365
know, maybe, maybe part of the need is to

280
00:17:29,405 --> 00:17:32,773
be. Not a need, a desire for them to be in shape so you can

281
00:17:32,829 --> 00:17:36,477
do things together. That's very different than I want them to

282
00:17:36,501 --> 00:17:39,453
look good so I can look good to my friends that I have an attractive

283
00:17:39,509 --> 00:17:42,665
spouse. So that's one issue. Another issue is,

284
00:17:43,085 --> 00:17:46,305
say, for example, my own experience

285
00:17:47,685 --> 00:17:51,245
weight going up and down. That can happen for lots of

286
00:17:51,285 --> 00:17:54,105
reasons, including medical issues, including

287
00:17:54,885 --> 00:17:58,677
medications, including, you're now changing

288
00:17:58,741 --> 00:18:02,237
jobs and you don't have as much time to work out a kind,

289
00:18:02,421 --> 00:18:06,023
thoughtful, understanding spouse. You. You

290
00:18:06,079 --> 00:18:09,195
realize those things and you communicate about them.

291
00:18:10,135 --> 00:18:13,935
So, you know, I was in an experience where

292
00:18:14,015 --> 00:18:15,875
I had a spouse who

293
00:18:17,975 --> 00:18:21,759
I find out much later was very

294
00:18:21,807 --> 00:18:25,543
derogatory about my body, but also

295
00:18:25,719 --> 00:18:29,095
when I was thin, that also wasn't

296
00:18:29,135 --> 00:18:32,455
good. And so what I'm talking about is like

297
00:18:32,495 --> 00:18:36,007
insatiable needs. Somebody who needs

298
00:18:36,111 --> 00:18:39,807
their spouse to be thin or a

299
00:18:39,831 --> 00:18:43,287
certain weight, frankly, that's a bottomless

300
00:18:43,351 --> 00:18:47,111
pit, at least in my experience and what I've experienced with other people because that's

301
00:18:47,143 --> 00:18:50,583
a superficial need

302
00:18:50,719 --> 00:18:54,511
for themselves and we shouldn't have

303
00:18:54,543 --> 00:18:58,031
that. And so, you know, that person could, they're

304
00:18:58,103 --> 00:19:01,595
never going to look good enough or never going to be

305
00:19:01,985 --> 00:19:05,681
right enough for that other person's supposed

306
00:19:05,753 --> 00:19:09,537
need. Yeah. As you read through the chapter, so

307
00:19:09,561 --> 00:19:13,217
there's a chapter for each need. So it alternated between

308
00:19:13,321 --> 00:19:16,673
a woman's need and a man's needs. So we start with

309
00:19:16,729 --> 00:19:20,513
affection for the woman and then we go to sexual fulfillment for the man and

310
00:19:20,529 --> 00:19:24,337
then conversation. What do you get from that? We

311
00:19:24,361 --> 00:19:27,783
get that in some of the other books that somehow it's actually not

312
00:19:27,969 --> 00:19:30,375
normal or expected for women

313
00:19:31,195 --> 00:19:34,883
to desire sexual fulfillment. I mean,

314
00:19:35,059 --> 00:19:38,403
you know, we've, we've seen that in a number of the other Christian marriage

315
00:19:38,459 --> 00:19:42,251
books that that's, you know, it's never even thought

316
00:19:42,283 --> 00:19:45,195
of that women would desire that. And that

317
00:19:45,235 --> 00:19:48,995
perpetuates that whole scenario that he

318
00:19:49,035 --> 00:19:52,827
says he's trying to avoid. Yeah. And I think, I mean,

319
00:19:52,971 --> 00:19:56,649
I, I'm curious, like what sort of research he did, how

320
00:19:56,697 --> 00:20:00,513
he surveyed people. And I mean, it could be some people are

321
00:20:00,529 --> 00:20:03,361
coming to him because their marriage is in trouble. And then he asked them this

322
00:20:03,393 --> 00:20:06,889
and then you have sort of a self fulfilling, self selecting

323
00:20:06,937 --> 00:20:10,761
group of people that are in trouble. And you know, he did very

324
00:20:10,793 --> 00:20:14,633
much lean into stereotypes. And so I would

325
00:20:14,689 --> 00:20:18,385
say probably men or women could have any one of these 10 needs

326
00:20:18,545 --> 00:20:21,987
to varying degrees. And to give the benefit of the

327
00:20:22,011 --> 00:20:25,795
doubt, to be in a healthy marriage relationship or any

328
00:20:25,835 --> 00:20:29,251
healthy relationship, you need to be willing to think

329
00:20:29,283 --> 00:20:32,899
about needs that someone else has that you aren't necessarily.

330
00:20:32,987 --> 00:20:36,731
That aren't your top thing and that just feels like being a

331
00:20:36,843 --> 00:20:40,491
good person, you know. Right. And I

332
00:20:40,523 --> 00:20:44,267
would argue it's not being a great spouse or a great

333
00:20:44,331 --> 00:20:48,127
partner to somebody to just pick up a book like that and lay all

334
00:20:48,151 --> 00:20:51,903
of those on your spouse. Well. And you

335
00:20:51,919 --> 00:20:55,559
know, I would challenge to the fact that if, if

336
00:20:55,607 --> 00:20:58,631
we are falling in love or entering a

337
00:20:58,663 --> 00:21:02,423
relationship with someone whose needs are so

338
00:21:02,519 --> 00:21:06,247
different from our own. Yeah. Wouldn't it be better

339
00:21:06,431 --> 00:21:10,087
to highlight the fact that actually identifying

340
00:21:10,151 --> 00:21:13,795
someone that, whose needs are somewhat similar to ours.

341
00:21:14,105 --> 00:21:17,401
Yeah. And not being swung into this

342
00:21:17,593 --> 00:21:21,089
emotional infatuation relationship

343
00:21:21,217 --> 00:21:25,001
and actually being healthy enough to say, hey, do we at least have

344
00:21:25,033 --> 00:21:28,561
somewhat similar needs in some of these areas? Like, that's a

345
00:21:28,593 --> 00:21:32,433
better use of our. Really interesting thing to

346
00:21:32,449 --> 00:21:35,969
say, Melissa, because I wonder if a lot of people end up in marriage

347
00:21:36,017 --> 00:21:39,473
trouble because they have chosen a partner

348
00:21:39,569 --> 00:21:43,347
with very different needs. So very. So the people whose

349
00:21:43,371 --> 00:21:47,035
needs more align aren't showing up in his office.

350
00:21:47,155 --> 00:21:50,907
Yeah. I mean, I can say that now being in a healthy relationship

351
00:21:51,091 --> 00:21:54,683
with someone who's. Who has a lot of

352
00:21:54,739 --> 00:21:58,335
similar interests and similar needs

353
00:21:59,155 --> 00:22:02,907
and similar, frankly, emotional health. Yeah.

354
00:22:02,971 --> 00:22:06,747
And experiences is very, very

355
00:22:06,811 --> 00:22:09,895
different. And also someone who has integrity

356
00:22:11,155 --> 00:22:14,569
and honesty. That's. That's pretty much better. Baseline,

357
00:22:14,697 --> 00:22:18,045
Baseline, baseline. Level of honesty.

358
00:22:18,425 --> 00:22:21,897
If you are in a healthy relationship, you take that for

359
00:22:21,921 --> 00:22:25,681
granted. Like, of course I have that. It wouldn't, we wouldn't even got to

360
00:22:25,713 --> 00:22:29,485
this point if we didn't have that. But depending on your background, you don't

361
00:22:29,785 --> 00:22:33,457
recognize it right away if somebody has it or not. Or like, you know,

362
00:22:33,521 --> 00:22:37,281
you get into patterns of things that are comfortable to you because you're. You've

363
00:22:37,313 --> 00:22:41,131
seen that in your life. You saw that. I had the benefit of a

364
00:22:41,163 --> 00:22:44,771
mom who even was aware of this book in 1990 and was

365
00:22:44,803 --> 00:22:48,171
like this. I know from Working with Women, this is the most returned book at

366
00:22:48,203 --> 00:22:51,827
our local Christian bookstore. Wow. I mean, that says

367
00:22:51,891 --> 00:22:55,691
something for you, that you were primed to realize that

368
00:22:55,763 --> 00:22:59,099
certain Christian texts or certain marriage

369
00:22:59,147 --> 00:23:02,735
texts may not actually be healthy. Whereas

370
00:23:03,395 --> 00:23:07,187
we've talked about this before, one of the premises that

371
00:23:07,211 --> 00:23:10,635
I know is that if you grew up with certain

372
00:23:10,795 --> 00:23:13,615
patterns in your family of origin,

373
00:23:14,395 --> 00:23:17,935
with your parents, certain red flags,

374
00:23:18,235 --> 00:23:22,035
those are normal to you, so they don't become red flags when you

375
00:23:22,115 --> 00:23:25,371
start dating or looking for a partner. So if

376
00:23:25,403 --> 00:23:28,819
you grew up in a. In a

377
00:23:28,867 --> 00:23:32,509
family where someone you know regularly

378
00:23:32,557 --> 00:23:36,341
lied or cheated or gaslit other people

379
00:23:36,453 --> 00:23:39,829
or guilt tripped, you're not going to think that's weird in your

380
00:23:39,877 --> 00:23:43,597
relationship. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm really very thankful

381
00:23:43,621 --> 00:23:46,909
for that. I think my mom even helped talk a local church out of

382
00:23:46,957 --> 00:23:50,429
hosting an event with this guy. Maybe it was our

383
00:23:50,477 --> 00:23:53,989
church. I don't know. You were, you were born for this

384
00:23:54,037 --> 00:23:56,785
podcast, Amy. I was born for this.

385
00:23:57,805 --> 00:24:01,545
But as you were saying about. I was talking about, you know, relationships being

386
00:24:01,585 --> 00:24:05,417
really hard in a lot of work and how that can sort of be

387
00:24:05,481 --> 00:24:08,689
a red flag. I mean, not that you should, if you're married, that if you're

388
00:24:08,697 --> 00:24:12,081
like, this is hard, we're done. I'm out. No, I'm not arguing that, but I'm

389
00:24:12,153 --> 00:24:15,721
saying that if you're early on in a relationship. I learned this from my

390
00:24:15,753 --> 00:24:19,285
reading specialist friends. When you are teaching reading

391
00:24:19,985 --> 00:24:23,713
to somebody, when you're teaching your kid to read and they are

392
00:24:23,769 --> 00:24:27,273
like struggling over every word, it's really hard for them.

393
00:24:27,409 --> 00:24:30,065
What you need to do is you need to back up a little bit to

394
00:24:30,145 --> 00:24:33,301
the, you know, those CVC

395
00:24:33,493 --> 00:24:37,157
consonant, vowel consonant words that are like cat and bat,

396
00:24:37,301 --> 00:24:40,941
where 95% of the words they're reading are just

397
00:24:41,133 --> 00:24:44,781
so easy. Don't have to think about it. And that's kind of how it should

398
00:24:44,813 --> 00:24:48,133
be. As they're learning and going along, you're only introducing some new things so that

399
00:24:48,149 --> 00:24:51,861
when they're reading, they are not struggling over every

400
00:24:52,013 --> 00:24:55,669
syllable. You're going too fast, you're in the wrong book, you're in the wrong

401
00:24:55,717 --> 00:24:59,259
curriculum. If everything they're doing is a fight,

402
00:24:59,347 --> 00:25:02,775
is a struggle. And it's the sort of thing, I think that applies

403
00:25:03,115 --> 00:25:06,483
to marriage relationships too. Like if you are in a dating

404
00:25:06,539 --> 00:25:10,275
relationship and every last thing is a struggle, maybe

405
00:25:10,315 --> 00:25:13,955
it's. Maybe they're not the one. If you're dating or in the early

406
00:25:13,995 --> 00:25:17,795
parts of the relationship, that's when things should be super easy.

407
00:25:17,955 --> 00:25:21,763
Yes. Like they should feel amazing. And if

408
00:25:21,779 --> 00:25:25,347
you're encountering problems at that

409
00:25:25,411 --> 00:25:28,215
point or like serious

410
00:25:29,195 --> 00:25:32,695
disagreements, invalidations.

411
00:25:34,235 --> 00:25:37,851
I, of course, can think back now to, you know, serious

412
00:25:37,923 --> 00:25:41,675
red flags in my, in my. The dating portion

413
00:25:41,715 --> 00:25:45,427
of my marriage relationship. And if I knew then what I

414
00:25:45,451 --> 00:25:49,161
knew now, I would. Or if I had somebody, you know, that

415
00:25:49,193 --> 00:25:52,793
knew about those things, I, of course, wasn't telling anyone. I

416
00:25:52,809 --> 00:25:54,725
would never marry this person.

417
00:25:56,225 --> 00:26:00,009
But, yeah, you only know what you know. But I

418
00:26:00,017 --> 00:26:03,625
think the thing about this book is it

419
00:26:03,665 --> 00:26:06,777
ignores talking anything

420
00:26:06,841 --> 00:26:10,525
about red flags. It doesn't talk about

421
00:26:11,145 --> 00:26:14,033
boundaries or communication. There's several

422
00:26:14,089 --> 00:26:17,433
anecdotes that talk about, oh my gosh,

423
00:26:17,489 --> 00:26:21,313
there's so many crazy anecdotes. And it's talking about like

424
00:26:21,489 --> 00:26:25,325
one, oh, gosh, a woman

425
00:26:25,945 --> 00:26:29,165
wanted to go back to school and get her degree.

426
00:26:29,865 --> 00:26:33,033
And so she's back in school.

427
00:26:33,209 --> 00:26:36,265
She's has lost

428
00:26:36,425 --> 00:26:40,001
time to, you know, do as much

429
00:26:40,153 --> 00:26:43,511
for her husband or do as many activities together, play tennis

430
00:26:43,633 --> 00:26:47,299
together. And she's tired because she's

431
00:26:47,347 --> 00:26:50,859
both keeping the house, keeping the child,

432
00:26:50,987 --> 00:26:54,219
and she's going to classes and she's doing

433
00:26:54,267 --> 00:26:57,735
homework. So she's often too tired to have sex.

434
00:26:58,715 --> 00:27:02,147
And so it talks about how he starts becoming

435
00:27:02,211 --> 00:27:05,947
friendly with this woman at work and, you

436
00:27:05,971 --> 00:27:09,595
know, she listens to him and she has more time for

437
00:27:09,635 --> 00:27:13,457
him. And then all of a sudden they're having sex in the office, like, boom.

438
00:27:13,481 --> 00:27:17,245
It's so wild. It's so. And you just sit here and go,

439
00:27:17,625 --> 00:27:21,025
wait a second. That guy did not have

440
00:27:21,185 --> 00:27:25,033
boundaries in his relationship with. With

441
00:27:25,169 --> 00:27:28,881
work or with other people, with women who were

442
00:27:28,913 --> 00:27:32,569
not his wife. And I'm not. I'm not even supportive of the Billy Graham

443
00:27:32,617 --> 00:27:36,089
role like that. You can't. But you. We all should

444
00:27:36,137 --> 00:27:39,913
have boundaries emotionally, you know,

445
00:27:39,969 --> 00:27:43,473
with. With anyone outside of our primary

446
00:27:43,529 --> 00:27:47,121
relationship, whether it's, you know, same, same sex, opposite sex,

447
00:27:47,233 --> 00:27:50,805
you know, friends, you know, friends, husbands, you know, whatever.

448
00:27:51,105 --> 00:27:54,729
But it doesn't at all talk about the fact that this. This guy did not

449
00:27:54,777 --> 00:27:58,577
have appropriate boundaries. He also didn't communicate these needs

450
00:27:58,641 --> 00:28:02,345
to his wife or how he was feeling about any of this.

451
00:28:02,465 --> 00:28:05,951
And then when she finds out, it talks

452
00:28:05,983 --> 00:28:09,751
about that, you know, she finds out about this affair

453
00:28:09,823 --> 00:28:13,039
that he has had, and she realizes that her

454
00:28:13,127 --> 00:28:16,595
drive for a degree was

455
00:28:16,895 --> 00:28:20,503
what caused this, and she's so sorry. And

456
00:28:20,599 --> 00:28:24,367
it equates these two things that, you

457
00:28:24,391 --> 00:28:28,231
know, her love bank was still filled because he was supporting her

458
00:28:28,263 --> 00:28:31,951
in this. In this effort to get a degree, but

459
00:28:31,983 --> 00:28:35,495
his had depleted because she wasn't meeting these needs that he wasn't

460
00:28:35,535 --> 00:28:39,311
communicating about and that he didn't have boundaries with the person,

461
00:28:39,423 --> 00:28:43,151
you know, at his office. And, I mean, that

462
00:28:43,343 --> 00:28:47,159
does a number on women to

463
00:28:47,207 --> 00:28:50,599
read things like that. And, you know, and every one of these

464
00:28:50,647 --> 00:28:54,471
chapters was, here's the need and here's when it failed,

465
00:28:54,503 --> 00:28:57,847
and it always led to an affair. Every last one of these.

466
00:28:57,991 --> 00:29:01,833
And no, it's. Let me give you another example. Let's. Let's

467
00:29:01,889 --> 00:29:05,585
say one of the spouse becomes physically disabled.

468
00:29:05,705 --> 00:29:09,205
Yeah. Let's say one of the spouses has Alzheimer's.

469
00:29:09,745 --> 00:29:13,529
How. How do we deal with that? Because you know what? That other spouse

470
00:29:13,657 --> 00:29:17,481
is not getting those needs met. They're probably

471
00:29:17,553 --> 00:29:21,377
not having sex. They're. Or, you know, I mean, there's

472
00:29:21,401 --> 00:29:25,177
a wide spectrum. Things are different. Yeah. Especially, you know, as a

473
00:29:25,201 --> 00:29:28,585
parent to a child with a progressive debilitative

474
00:29:28,665 --> 00:29:32,305
disease, which can be likened in some ways to, like,

475
00:29:32,345 --> 00:29:36,065
Alzheimer's in a child. You know, if you become

476
00:29:36,105 --> 00:29:39,889
a caregiver to your spouse, guess what? A

477
00:29:39,897 --> 00:29:43,225
lot of your needs may go unmet. And according to this

478
00:29:43,265 --> 00:29:47,057
book, I guess you can have an affair, and I guess that's completely

479
00:29:47,121 --> 00:29:50,897
fine. It's understandable. It's wild. Now for

480
00:29:50,921 --> 00:29:54,761
a quick break. Now back to the show. I mean, it feels

481
00:29:54,793 --> 00:29:58,235
like infantilizing people and

482
00:29:58,275 --> 00:30:01,415
like saying you don't have any agency, you know, like,

483
00:30:01,755 --> 00:30:05,371
you have no choice. Because they did not hold up

484
00:30:05,403 --> 00:30:09,067
their end of the bargain. That's just so

485
00:30:09,131 --> 00:30:12,175
very sad. I had. I had marked a couple of pages.

486
00:30:12,915 --> 00:30:16,363
John and Mary's fifth anniversary in the Love bank

487
00:30:16,539 --> 00:30:20,235
chapter where he's here.

488
00:30:20,395 --> 00:30:24,149
I'm gonna read part of it here. Critical changes start

489
00:30:24,197 --> 00:30:27,861
taking place in that sixth year. Mary is still the

490
00:30:27,893 --> 00:30:31,213
joy of John's life, but he notices an increase in his down

491
00:30:31,269 --> 00:30:35,101
times. While Tiffany is a little doll and John loves her dearly, their

492
00:30:35,133 --> 00:30:38,013
baby, she still creates new demands and negative

493
00:30:38,109 --> 00:30:41,845
experiences. Taking his turn to change baby's diaper in the middle of the night

494
00:30:41,885 --> 00:30:45,717
is not John's idea of a pleasant time. Also, Mary's

495
00:30:45,741 --> 00:30:49,357
decision not to nurse Tiffany leaves John with his share of

496
00:30:49,381 --> 00:30:53,041
responsibilities to walk her and hold the bottle. In

497
00:30:53,073 --> 00:30:56,161
addition, Mary has a tough time losing the weight she gained while she was

498
00:30:56,193 --> 00:30:59,605
pregnant as a net result of all these common

499
00:30:59,905 --> 00:31:03,697
visitors. Little annoyances. Mary's little annoyance is what

500
00:31:03,721 --> 00:31:07,441
it calls it. Mary's balance in John's Love bank drops by a

501
00:31:07,473 --> 00:31:10,729
hundred points over the year. John, get yourself

502
00:31:10,817 --> 00:31:14,641
together. Goodness gracious. I

503
00:31:14,673 --> 00:31:18,177
mean, her decision not to

504
00:31:18,241 --> 00:31:21,707
nurse was a problem, was a

505
00:31:21,771 --> 00:31:25,619
burden for him. I mean, what in the world.

506
00:31:25,747 --> 00:31:29,331
The idea to get himself together. The idea

507
00:31:29,403 --> 00:31:32,963
that caring for your child, which actually should. Something

508
00:31:33,019 --> 00:31:36,627
that Be something that is joyful. For both a

509
00:31:36,651 --> 00:31:38,375
mother and a father.

510
00:31:40,435 --> 00:31:43,891
Family commitment. Yeah. And of course, of course,

511
00:31:44,043 --> 00:31:47,781
there are changes in your life when you have kids

512
00:31:47,893 --> 00:31:50,941
for both people and, you know,

513
00:31:51,013 --> 00:31:54,585
communicating, you know, what is expected in that.

514
00:31:55,205 --> 00:31:58,573
Yeah, I remember that section because it called them common little

515
00:31:58,669 --> 00:32:02,477
annoyances. Her weight gain, you know,

516
00:32:02,501 --> 00:32:05,813
the fact that he changed diaper and used, you

517
00:32:05,829 --> 00:32:09,109
know, did the bottle. Well, in my version, it said

518
00:32:09,157 --> 00:32:12,145
vicissitudes. Nobody must have known what that meant.

519
00:32:12,725 --> 00:32:16,395
They changed it. Two annoyances.

520
00:32:16,975 --> 00:32:20,555
Okay, Here, here, though, here is the next part of that chapter.

521
00:32:21,495 --> 00:32:25,255
Maybe you're asking yourself, should I be concerned about my

522
00:32:25,295 --> 00:32:29,039
spouse having an affair if I don't meet her needs? Should my

523
00:32:29,087 --> 00:32:32,895
spouse fear that I might have an affair if my needs are not being

524
00:32:32,935 --> 00:32:36,435
met? In reference to the needs described in this book,

525
00:32:36,975 --> 00:32:40,647
answer yes. Can I tell you how many stories I've

526
00:32:40,671 --> 00:32:43,629
heard from women whose

527
00:32:43,757 --> 00:32:47,345
husbands demanded sex

528
00:32:48,285 --> 00:32:51,997
in the recovery period from a vaginal birth

529
00:32:52,061 --> 00:32:55,837
or a C section, and they were then blamed

530
00:32:55,981 --> 00:32:59,669
for these needs that he had in an area

531
00:32:59,717 --> 00:33:03,357
that was extremely painful? And we're

532
00:33:03,421 --> 00:33:07,109
validating that. This book validates that. Instead of

533
00:33:07,157 --> 00:33:10,303
saying, hey, you know what? That's. That's a lot.

534
00:33:10,439 --> 00:33:13,435
Like a truly caring partner

535
00:33:14,175 --> 00:33:18,015
wants their partner to be comfortable, wants them to

536
00:33:18,095 --> 00:33:21,263
not have pain. Wants them to recover from a

537
00:33:21,319 --> 00:33:25,015
serious procedure. Yeah. Like, like birth

538
00:33:25,055 --> 00:33:28,515
or a C section. Yeah. Not, not have a justified

539
00:33:28,855 --> 00:33:32,567
reason for then, you know, viewing porn or going out

540
00:33:32,591 --> 00:33:36,357
and having an affair. And here's the thing. Yeah.

541
00:33:36,381 --> 00:33:40,125
It's just a spectrum. So, so maybe it wasn't two weeks after. It's the

542
00:33:40,165 --> 00:33:43,625
mentality. It's the mentality that this justifies.

543
00:33:43,925 --> 00:33:47,637
The other thing this book says and Harley suggests is

544
00:33:47,661 --> 00:33:51,385
that basically at least 50% of people are having an affair.

545
00:33:51,885 --> 00:33:55,077
And I don't know if that is actually

546
00:33:55,221 --> 00:33:59,029
accurate. It very much normalizes it as of course it's going

547
00:33:59,037 --> 00:34:02,093
to happen. I mean, what else would happen if you aren't happy? Well, and it

548
00:34:02,109 --> 00:34:05,757
also, what, it also normalizes. It talks about falling into an

549
00:34:05,781 --> 00:34:09,413
affair. Yeah, falling into an affair. When what,

550
00:34:09,509 --> 00:34:13,349
What I personally experienced and

551
00:34:13,517 --> 00:34:16,637
other women I know who have been in really

552
00:34:16,701 --> 00:34:20,325
difficult marriages is that this is a pattern.

553
00:34:20,485 --> 00:34:24,245
It's a pattern of behavior. Because what it doesn't deal with also is

554
00:34:24,285 --> 00:34:27,789
the deception that's involved in,

555
00:34:27,957 --> 00:34:31,661
in an affair. And from my personal experience,

556
00:34:31,733 --> 00:34:35,437
actually the, the most painful parts was

557
00:34:35,501 --> 00:34:38,785
not actually the affair, it was the

558
00:34:39,365 --> 00:34:43,045
long standing patterns of deception. Because

559
00:34:43,125 --> 00:34:46,381
you know, when someone is willing to have an affair,

560
00:34:46,453 --> 00:34:50,189
there's. You have to deceive first. I always say the first lies

561
00:34:50,237 --> 00:34:53,925
to yourself, first lies to yourself and then you start lying

562
00:34:53,965 --> 00:34:57,533
to other people. And the thing is your conscience

563
00:34:57,629 --> 00:35:01,367
becomes dulled to that lying and you

564
00:35:01,391 --> 00:35:04,927
know, then you know, if that affair ends, you know, your conscience is

565
00:35:04,951 --> 00:35:08,727
dulled, you got away with it, you have another one. And for, for

566
00:35:08,751 --> 00:35:12,583
some people, and from my experience this can just be long standing decades

567
00:35:12,759 --> 00:35:16,527
of affairs that are then forgiven. And then you buy marriage books

568
00:35:16,551 --> 00:35:20,263
like his needs, Her Needs and then forgiven. Then you buy love

569
00:35:20,319 --> 00:35:23,983
languages and you know, it doesn't contemplate that. And it

570
00:35:23,999 --> 00:35:27,235
also does not deal with that. The damage

571
00:35:27,615 --> 00:35:31,071
to this, the spouse who

572
00:35:31,223 --> 00:35:34,959
didn't have the affair and the damage to the spouse who's having affairs.

573
00:35:35,007 --> 00:35:38,535
And that dulled conscience and that

574
00:35:38,615 --> 00:35:41,823
dulled conscience to deception, it bleeds. It

575
00:35:41,879 --> 00:35:45,515
never just stays in.

576
00:35:45,855 --> 00:35:49,391
I'm having an affair and I've watched this, I've

577
00:35:49,543 --> 00:35:53,167
talked to many, many women in these types of situations.

578
00:35:53,271 --> 00:35:56,989
My own personal experience that that ability to

579
00:35:57,037 --> 00:36:00,829
lie generally existed before

580
00:36:00,997 --> 00:36:04,749
even having that first affair. Right. Because your conscience

581
00:36:04,797 --> 00:36:08,493
is dulled, you're lying to yourself and then it bleeds out into

582
00:36:08,549 --> 00:36:12,305
other areas of their life. And so you know,

583
00:36:12,605 --> 00:36:16,389
there's other things they're likely lying about by the time, you

584
00:36:16,397 --> 00:36:20,061
know, the affair comes to light. Yeah. One of

585
00:36:20,093 --> 00:36:23,829
the Quotes from the. The chapter on the man

586
00:36:23,877 --> 00:36:25,865
needing to have an attractive spouse.

587
00:36:27,805 --> 00:36:30,917
It was on page 117 of my book. A wife's

588
00:36:30,941 --> 00:36:34,565
attractiveness is often a vital ingredient to the success

589
00:36:34,645 --> 00:36:38,165
of her marriage. And any wife who ignores this notion for

590
00:36:38,205 --> 00:36:41,425
whatever reason risks disaster.

591
00:36:43,285 --> 00:36:46,117
I read and then, like, the end of that book, you know, the end of

592
00:36:46,141 --> 00:36:49,967
the chapter, there was, like, these questions to talk about with your spouse.

593
00:36:50,141 --> 00:36:53,371
And one of the things it suggested was get out of. Get out pictures from,

594
00:36:53,403 --> 00:36:57,099
like, your wedding or whatever and, like, I don't know,

595
00:36:57,147 --> 00:37:00,675
talk about how you looked then. And it basically was. The

596
00:37:00,715 --> 00:37:04,355
questions were leading in such a way even the guys to,

597
00:37:04,395 --> 00:37:08,163
like, you need to admit that you. You're not happy with

598
00:37:08,179 --> 00:37:11,619
your wife's body. Really? Are you really? Are you ready to,

599
00:37:11,667 --> 00:37:15,059
like, own that? What is wrong with this

600
00:37:15,107 --> 00:37:18,465
guy? What if the woman has a medical

601
00:37:18,545 --> 00:37:22,049
condition? I'm so

602
00:37:22,097 --> 00:37:25,729
sorry. But this also has incorrect assumptions

603
00:37:25,817 --> 00:37:28,845
about body and about weight.

604
00:37:29,905 --> 00:37:33,049
Genetics. Yeah, Genetics is a huge

605
00:37:33,097 --> 00:37:36,881
component in weight. This basically says

606
00:37:36,913 --> 00:37:40,681
you can love your spouse less and be more justified in having an

607
00:37:40,713 --> 00:37:44,207
affair if they develop some medical condition where,

608
00:37:44,391 --> 00:37:48,055
you know, they can't move as easily. They

609
00:37:48,095 --> 00:37:51,895
can't, you know, go do, you know, go

610
00:37:51,935 --> 00:37:55,767
run and go do calisthenics and, you know, all the different things. And it's

611
00:37:55,791 --> 00:37:59,447
just. It's a completely warped sense

612
00:37:59,511 --> 00:38:02,751
of how a loving, healthy relationship would work.

613
00:38:02,903 --> 00:38:06,551
Yeah. You know, one of the quotes from the

614
00:38:06,583 --> 00:38:10,051
book, I think that encapsulates the most. The

615
00:38:10,083 --> 00:38:13,835
worst, most insidious thing about this. The theme throughout this whole book

616
00:38:13,875 --> 00:38:17,195
is I try to point

617
00:38:17,235 --> 00:38:20,883
out that the straying spouse is not

618
00:38:21,019 --> 00:38:24,255
the only guilty party. Yeah.

619
00:38:26,595 --> 00:38:30,059
No, no, no, no, no. Dr.

620
00:38:30,107 --> 00:38:33,643
Harley, I have some thoughts about

621
00:38:33,699 --> 00:38:37,427
that. Everyone's responsible for their own actions. I mean. Yeah. In the world

622
00:38:37,451 --> 00:38:40,539
of us all being sinners. Absolutely. We're all sinners.

623
00:38:40,707 --> 00:38:44,235
But it is not the husband's

624
00:38:44,275 --> 00:38:47,955
fault if the wife chooses to have

625
00:38:47,995 --> 00:38:51,475
an affair. It's not the wife's fault

626
00:38:51,635 --> 00:38:55,323
the husband chooses to have an affair. I mean, these

627
00:38:55,339 --> 00:38:58,901
are grown adult people. Yeah. That

628
00:38:59,003 --> 00:39:02,737
are not being forced at gunpoint to cheat

629
00:39:02,841 --> 00:39:06,361
on their spouse. I have even heard women saying, you know, that.

630
00:39:06,433 --> 00:39:09,857
Whose husbands were terrible, cheated on them. Be like, well, you know, I wasn't perfect.

631
00:39:09,961 --> 00:39:13,353
And I'd be like, can you just. I hate that you have to say that.

632
00:39:13,409 --> 00:39:17,217
I hate that you have to feel like, well, I need to own my

633
00:39:17,241 --> 00:39:21,085
part in this. Well, and here's. Here's the thing. Like, in any

634
00:39:21,625 --> 00:39:25,457
dysfunctional relationship, which, I mean, I would say, like an

635
00:39:25,481 --> 00:39:29,315
abusive relationship, is a dysfunctional relationship.

636
00:39:30,215 --> 00:39:33,687
You have the abuser and you have the victim and the

637
00:39:33,711 --> 00:39:37,551
victim stays often because what's been normalized for them or

638
00:39:37,583 --> 00:39:41,167
because their self esteem has been so beaten down by the

639
00:39:41,191 --> 00:39:44,071
abuser, it's still dysfunctional. And you can

640
00:39:44,223 --> 00:39:47,951
explain that behavior. You can explain why the

641
00:39:47,983 --> 00:39:51,407
victim got into that relationship by what was normalized in

642
00:39:51,431 --> 00:39:54,839
their family of origin, why they've stayed. You can explain

643
00:39:54,887 --> 00:39:58,697
it without excusing the abuser's

644
00:39:58,721 --> 00:40:02,005
behavior. Same thing with an affair, which those things often

645
00:40:02,545 --> 00:40:06,201
go together. You know, you can causation,

646
00:40:06,273 --> 00:40:09,625
correlation, situation. Some things can happen in the same place, but they didn't

647
00:40:09,665 --> 00:40:13,513
cause. Yeah, yeah, you, there can be dysfunction

648
00:40:13,569 --> 00:40:17,417
that is unhealthy. You staying with someone and keep keeping, trying to keep

649
00:40:17,441 --> 00:40:20,873
them from having an affair without it being in any

650
00:40:20,929 --> 00:40:24,517
way your fault. And to equate the two, like

651
00:40:24,581 --> 00:40:28,141
everybody, I will say I experienced that

652
00:40:28,333 --> 00:40:31,669
in early on, someone

653
00:40:31,797 --> 00:40:34,785
in leadership saying, well, there's two.

654
00:40:35,685 --> 00:40:39,477
Everybody has a role to play and there's two people in

655
00:40:39,501 --> 00:40:42,735
a relationship. And this was, you know, 10,

656
00:40:42,874 --> 00:40:45,745
15 years back, but by the end,

657
00:40:46,885 --> 00:40:49,625
you know, when I said, hey, that was really harmful

658
00:40:50,945 --> 00:40:54,005
that you said this 10, 15 years ago,

659
00:40:54,785 --> 00:40:58,065
they apologized because they then knew

660
00:40:58,105 --> 00:41:01,953
that that's not how this works. Yeah.

661
00:41:02,049 --> 00:41:05,681
So that was very. I wish everybody could get that

662
00:41:05,713 --> 00:41:09,073
apology from their church

663
00:41:09,129 --> 00:41:12,905
leaders, Christian leaders, for at any point

664
00:41:12,985 --> 00:41:16,441
saying, well, you know, it takes two to tango. If this

665
00:41:16,473 --> 00:41:19,905
person's having an affair, they're abusive, you know, you've got some

666
00:41:19,945 --> 00:41:23,699
responsibility there too. It's not, that's not how it works. If

667
00:41:23,707 --> 00:41:26,975
you were the editor on this book or someone came to you and pitched,

668
00:41:27,755 --> 00:41:30,795
I want to write a book called His Needs, Her Needs, or like a marriage

669
00:41:30,835 --> 00:41:34,683
book on how to keep your marriage strong, what would your,

670
00:41:34,739 --> 00:41:38,315
what would your response be and what would you say would make this book palatable

671
00:41:38,395 --> 00:41:41,055
or a better way of approaching it?

672
00:41:41,915 --> 00:41:45,331
First, it would have a lot more nuance. I mean, I did

673
00:41:45,403 --> 00:41:49,067
find, you know, one paragraph at the beginning that says, well, you

674
00:41:49,091 --> 00:41:52,583
know, really in counseling, people are individuals

675
00:41:52,779 --> 00:41:56,623
and relationships are individual. And then it goes on. The rest of

676
00:41:56,639 --> 00:41:59,183
the book to not treat it that way does the same. Thing at the end

677
00:41:59,199 --> 00:42:02,063
of the book where like you could maybe these needs aren't yours, kind of a

678
00:42:02,079 --> 00:42:05,607
throwaway sentence. Take this survey. Yeah, right. Yeah.

679
00:42:05,671 --> 00:42:08,715
So I mean, it would be much more nuanced.

680
00:42:09,455 --> 00:42:13,115
It needs to talk about this issue that,

681
00:42:13,935 --> 00:42:16,715
hey, if you're reading this book

682
00:42:17,175 --> 00:42:20,775
and these other things are happening or

683
00:42:20,855 --> 00:42:24,329
this isn't your first rodeo with this kind of thing,

684
00:42:24,527 --> 00:42:28,293
there's probably some other things going on. And, you know, I

685
00:42:28,309 --> 00:42:31,333
think almost any marriage book that doesn't

686
00:42:31,509 --> 00:42:35,185
contemplate that the person picking up the book

687
00:42:36,165 --> 00:42:39,877
might be the healthier one, might be the more honest

688
00:42:39,941 --> 00:42:43,645
one, might be the one acting in good faith, and the other person might

689
00:42:43,725 --> 00:42:47,477
not be. Is doing a disservice to your

690
00:42:47,501 --> 00:42:50,997
reader. Because if. If you look at that, you know the

691
00:42:51,021 --> 00:42:54,841
statistics of people who have experienced abuse

692
00:42:54,913 --> 00:42:57,125
or sexual assault or different things,

693
00:42:58,425 --> 00:43:01,793
I'd say you have a good number of people that are likely to pick up

694
00:43:01,809 --> 00:43:05,285
that book that are in those situations. And if you don't contemplate that audience, you.

695
00:43:05,985 --> 00:43:09,681
You're actually actively harming people. Yeah. Yeah. I love

696
00:43:09,713 --> 00:43:12,945
that. I think that's really helpful. I think there's probably two audiences for the book.

697
00:43:12,985 --> 00:43:15,937
The one is the person's marriage in trouble. The other is the person getting ready

698
00:43:15,961 --> 00:43:19,113
to get married and is giving. And somebody's giving a stack of books. Like, these

699
00:43:19,129 --> 00:43:22,125
are your. These are your books you need to read to have a good marriage.

700
00:43:22,205 --> 00:43:25,605
And I. It just makes me sad that somebody would start their

701
00:43:25,645 --> 00:43:29,005
marriage with the foundation of

702
00:43:29,165 --> 00:43:32,741
this, really, this book

703
00:43:32,773 --> 00:43:36,149
that might give you a lot of bad

704
00:43:36,197 --> 00:43:39,901
ideas about what marriage is all about and what you can expect. I would

705
00:43:39,933 --> 00:43:43,509
be really sad coming into marriage, reading something like that,

706
00:43:43,557 --> 00:43:47,273
thinking, oh, no, at any moment I

707
00:43:47,289 --> 00:43:51,001
could fail and be in an affair myself. Or at

708
00:43:51,033 --> 00:43:54,713
any moment I could fail and my husband would be

709
00:43:54,729 --> 00:43:58,569
having. Yeah, it's like this scare tactic like this. You need to do this.

710
00:43:58,657 --> 00:44:02,481
And so. I don't

711
00:44:02,513 --> 00:44:06,281
love that. I don't love that. Would you

712
00:44:06,313 --> 00:44:09,969
recommend this book, Melissa? I would not.

713
00:44:10,097 --> 00:44:13,737
I would not recommend it. Not in your friend's library. What would you do? Would

714
00:44:13,761 --> 00:44:17,577
you hide it? Would you take it? No, I

715
00:44:17,601 --> 00:44:21,409
would initiate a conversation about it and say, hey,

716
00:44:21,537 --> 00:44:25,241
what's. What's going on? If. If they're

717
00:44:25,273 --> 00:44:28,489
close enough to me. What's going on that. That made you buy this book?

718
00:44:28,657 --> 00:44:32,441
Um. Because I know for me, the. The hard

719
00:44:32,513 --> 00:44:36,297
things. This is a crack. We're not things. I. Yeah, I didn't talk

720
00:44:36,321 --> 00:44:39,881
about them. Yeah. I didn't even talk about them to my family

721
00:44:39,953 --> 00:44:43,165
until the end. Yeah. And so, you know,

722
00:44:44,505 --> 00:44:47,605
we didn't talk about them till after the.

723
00:44:48,145 --> 00:44:51,657
No, we did not. So, yeah, I would initiate a

724
00:44:51,681 --> 00:44:55,145
conversation because I think we're scared sometimes to know what's going

725
00:44:55,185 --> 00:44:58,769
on. And, you know, if you. If someone is in a marriage

726
00:44:58,857 --> 00:45:02,697
where it feels like a betrayal of their spouse

727
00:45:02,881 --> 00:45:06,681
to have, you know, confidences with

728
00:45:06,713 --> 00:45:10,559
people, to talk about some things that. That's a. A warning sign. That's a

729
00:45:10,567 --> 00:45:14,143
red flag, too, because it's,

730
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:17,823
you know, a healthy spouse wants

731
00:45:17,919 --> 00:45:21,767
their partner to have good sounding boards and to have people that

732
00:45:21,791 --> 00:45:25,215
they can process things with or wants them to go to therapy. And

733
00:45:25,255 --> 00:45:28,879
so it's not a betrayal to talk about

734
00:45:28,927 --> 00:45:32,623
those things in an effort to actually improve and have a better

735
00:45:32,679 --> 00:45:36,211
relationship. So, star rating from

736
00:45:36,363 --> 00:45:39,935
1 star to 10, how many stars did you give this?

737
00:45:41,955 --> 00:45:45,635
I would give it two. Okay. And I would give it two

738
00:45:45,715 --> 00:45:49,507
because I think there are good nuggets in here. I think there

739
00:45:49,531 --> 00:45:52,695
are good things. That's the problem with these books. Yeah.

740
00:45:53,235 --> 00:45:56,655
But I think the assumptions, the

741
00:45:57,515 --> 00:46:01,275
very. The equating of

742
00:46:01,315 --> 00:46:04,283
responsibility. Like I said, this actually actively

743
00:46:04,379 --> 00:46:08,087
perpetuates the misassignment of responsibility, which is the base basis for

744
00:46:08,151 --> 00:46:11,999
abuse and justification for abuse. I think there's just

745
00:46:12,047 --> 00:46:15,823
actively harmful things in the book. Yeah. I think I would be with you.

746
00:46:15,879 --> 00:46:18,835
I would be either a 2 or a 1. And also

747
00:46:19,375 --> 00:46:22,911
I. I agree with that. That there are. The idea

748
00:46:22,943 --> 00:46:26,583
that we need to be sensitive to the needs of our

749
00:46:26,719 --> 00:46:30,103
spouse is a good thing.

750
00:46:30,279 --> 00:46:34,127
Yeah. That it isn't going to always be. The things that

751
00:46:34,231 --> 00:46:37,395
we would think are the things that are

752
00:46:38,095 --> 00:46:41,935
most important to us that make us feel loved isn't necessarily the thing that

753
00:46:41,975 --> 00:46:45,615
our spouse most. Makes them most feel loved.

754
00:46:45,775 --> 00:46:49,447
Um, so I think that those are the good, Good things in it.

755
00:46:49,551 --> 00:46:52,879
Right. It's a very small amount. A very

756
00:46:52,927 --> 00:46:55,515
small amount of good things.

757
00:46:56,175 --> 00:46:59,783
So. And it's just the

758
00:46:59,799 --> 00:47:03,553
recognition that there's no formula. Like, we cannot

759
00:47:03,649 --> 00:47:07,137
love formulas. We love them. We do. And you had a

760
00:47:07,161 --> 00:47:10,937
podcast episode about this at one point that we

761
00:47:11,001 --> 00:47:14,289
look for. It's easier to almost turn

762
00:47:14,337 --> 00:47:17,905
over our. Our thinking brain, our

763
00:47:17,945 --> 00:47:21,745
discernment in favor of some formula, and we can go,

764
00:47:21,785 --> 00:47:24,977
ha. You know. Right. Okay, now I know exactly. I probably got that from you,

765
00:47:25,001 --> 00:47:28,723
Melissa. I probably got that from you and all the conversations that we've had, you

766
00:47:28,739 --> 00:47:32,003
know, and I talked to Nathan in a recent podcast, you know, about politics, you

767
00:47:32,019 --> 00:47:35,627
know, and there's just so many shortcuts we want to take. Like, oh,

768
00:47:35,771 --> 00:47:38,747
I don't have to think about this. If I think this team is the right

769
00:47:38,771 --> 00:47:41,323
one, I must. I'm always going to do what they say. I don't even have

770
00:47:41,339 --> 00:47:44,883
to think about it. Or this denomination is the one I'm a part of. I

771
00:47:44,899 --> 00:47:48,435
don't have to think about anything beyond that.

772
00:47:48,475 --> 00:47:51,635
They've figured that out. You know, I think we've talked about sort of like,

773
00:47:51,675 --> 00:47:55,315
outsourcing our. That's it. Doing our

774
00:47:55,395 --> 00:47:59,219
wrestling is hard. Due diligence. Wrestling with and

775
00:47:59,267 --> 00:48:03,003
wrestling with so many things in our life like that is.

776
00:48:03,139 --> 00:48:06,867
It is hard. And of course, we all want, like, the

777
00:48:06,891 --> 00:48:10,595
easy way. But encouraging people to, hey, wrestle in your

778
00:48:10,635 --> 00:48:14,115
own faith, wrestle in your relationship

779
00:48:14,275 --> 00:48:17,795
for what it means to serve and love well,

780
00:48:17,955 --> 00:48:21,729
and don't turn it over to a book. Yeah. Now, I

781
00:48:21,737 --> 00:48:25,393
don't know what he's saying these days. I don't know, like, if he has

782
00:48:25,449 --> 00:48:29,129
said. I wish I had said this differently. I have not read the most

783
00:48:29,177 --> 00:48:32,681
recent versions, but all these. There's a lot of them out

784
00:48:32,713 --> 00:48:36,537
there. When this book was published that I have in my hands, it

785
00:48:36,561 --> 00:48:40,281
said more than 500,000 copies in print. So there are a lot of that have

786
00:48:40,313 --> 00:48:43,841
this message out in the world. But I do want to say,

787
00:48:44,033 --> 00:48:47,721
to Dr. Harley's credit, I was looking at his

788
00:48:47,793 --> 00:48:51,105
website, Marriage Builders, and

789
00:48:51,605 --> 00:48:55,317
there was like an FAQ or maybe articles, like a list

790
00:48:55,341 --> 00:48:59,181
of articles he'd written. And one was about abuse. And

791
00:48:59,213 --> 00:49:02,829
he said, with no equivocation, if there's

792
00:49:02,877 --> 00:49:06,597
any violence, you call the police. You get out of that

793
00:49:06,621 --> 00:49:09,941
situation. It is dangerous. And I

794
00:49:09,973 --> 00:49:13,025
thought, thank you for saying.

795
00:49:13,565 --> 00:49:17,333
I'm glad he said that. I would not have expected it from some of these

796
00:49:17,389 --> 00:49:21,107
outdated. Right. Ideas in this book.

797
00:49:21,291 --> 00:49:24,971
And I don't know if something changed from the time in 1986 until now, but,

798
00:49:25,003 --> 00:49:28,215
like, he was very clear. Although I would say it's a very low bar.

799
00:49:28,955 --> 00:49:31,963
That's a very low bar. If there's physical violence.

800
00:49:32,099 --> 00:49:34,695
Yeah. If you're. If you're in that,

801
00:49:35,795 --> 00:49:39,611
it can be very hard to see that that's even abuse

802
00:49:39,643 --> 00:49:43,095
or problematic. And what I wish he would

803
00:49:43,475 --> 00:49:46,855
have incorporated into the book is this understanding that,

804
00:49:47,805 --> 00:49:51,341
you know, emotional abuse and blame, the

805
00:49:51,373 --> 00:49:54,805
blame shifting that he's actually engaging in in the book is

806
00:49:54,845 --> 00:49:58,637
actually. It's combating that very thing. Because abuse is

807
00:49:58,661 --> 00:50:02,373
not physical violence. I mean, well, physical. All physical violence

808
00:50:02,549 --> 00:50:06,309
in that way would be abuse, but, like, abuse is much broader

809
00:50:06,357 --> 00:50:09,797
and it's supported by the mindsets.

810
00:50:09,941 --> 00:50:13,781
It's a mindset of misassignment, of responsibility, of power

811
00:50:13,813 --> 00:50:17,661
and control. And so when his book actually engages in

812
00:50:17,693 --> 00:50:21,465
that very behav, It's. It's hard for somebody then to see their

813
00:50:21,505 --> 00:50:24,965
way out of that and go, oh, man, by the time they hit me,

814
00:50:25,865 --> 00:50:29,713
it's okay to leave. When you believe all these other things,

815
00:50:29,889 --> 00:50:31,485
the hardest part about

816
00:50:33,305 --> 00:50:37,153
emotional abuse before they hit you is even recognizing that it's there because you say,

817
00:50:37,169 --> 00:50:40,689
they haven't hit me. And you're like, well, you know, but then is that

818
00:50:40,737 --> 00:50:44,313
really. And so engaging in some type of nuanced

819
00:50:44,369 --> 00:50:48,195
conversation about, well, when are these

820
00:50:48,275 --> 00:50:51,899
needs not appropriate? Like I

821
00:50:51,907 --> 00:50:55,411
said, a bottomless pit of need

822
00:50:55,523 --> 00:50:59,083
where you can never fill. And you keep trying, keep trying.

823
00:50:59,139 --> 00:51:02,835
Like that's a sign that something is wrong. And I wish he

824
00:51:02,875 --> 00:51:06,451
had more. He had talked about that like, or if your

825
00:51:06,483 --> 00:51:10,055
partner has an excessive need for admiration,

826
00:51:11,275 --> 00:51:14,915
that's not a healthy need. You can't, as a wife or a

827
00:51:14,955 --> 00:51:18,719
spouse, like, you're never going to feel that. And that's a sign

828
00:51:18,767 --> 00:51:21,783
that something's actively problematic.

829
00:51:21,959 --> 00:51:25,719
Yeah. Well, I'm so glad we were able to talk. I also wanted to give

830
00:51:25,727 --> 00:51:28,311
you a chance to kind of tell the world what you're, what you've been doing

831
00:51:28,343 --> 00:51:32,167
lately. Like you have restarted a law practice. Say whatever

832
00:51:32,191 --> 00:51:36,035
you want to say about what you're up to and what's coming. Yeah, yeah. Well,

833
00:51:36,335 --> 00:51:40,031
yes, I've always been a lawyer. I've been a lawyer for 25 years. But

834
00:51:40,063 --> 00:51:43,559
I always say I've been lots of different lawyers and

835
00:51:43,727 --> 00:51:47,069
God has, you know, taking me on this

836
00:51:47,197 --> 00:51:50,269
different journey. You know, I'd

837
00:51:50,317 --> 00:51:53,941
founded a nonprofit and had run that for a number of

838
00:51:53,973 --> 00:51:57,065
years and. But then after

839
00:51:57,645 --> 00:52:01,341
my divorce, I was approached to do

840
00:52:01,373 --> 00:52:04,997
work in the area of abuse and trauma. And I'd

841
00:52:05,021 --> 00:52:08,345
written a book about trauma, about medical trauma specifically.

842
00:52:08,805 --> 00:52:12,557
But, you know, it's an area that I was really passionate about. So I've

843
00:52:12,581 --> 00:52:15,757
been working in the field of abuse and trauma, doing

844
00:52:15,861 --> 00:52:19,245
investigations into allegations of abuse in faith communities.

845
00:52:19,905 --> 00:52:23,649
And I also do work in my law

846
00:52:23,697 --> 00:52:27,369
practice related to that and

847
00:52:27,417 --> 00:52:30,457
different cases. And I'm also launching a

848
00:52:30,481 --> 00:52:32,965
substack on January 3rd

849
00:52:33,985 --> 00:52:37,321
on the intersection of the law and abuse

850
00:52:37,513 --> 00:52:41,005
and faith. So I'm going to be talking about

851
00:52:42,025 --> 00:52:45,703
different cases, talking about, you know,

852
00:52:45,759 --> 00:52:48,695
areas where abuse and the law

853
00:52:48,775 --> 00:52:52,087
intersect, things that might come into play in

854
00:52:52,111 --> 00:52:55,303
institutional abuse like non disclosure and non disparagement

855
00:52:55,359 --> 00:52:59,111
agreements. Another area that relates to abuse and

856
00:52:59,143 --> 00:53:02,767
laws like no fault divorce. You know, how do we look at that as a

857
00:53:02,791 --> 00:53:06,191
community of faith, but also to care and protect

858
00:53:06,343 --> 00:53:10,081
for. Yeah, for, for women in those kinds of marriages.

859
00:53:10,263 --> 00:53:13,781
Um, and you know, another thing that. One of my

860
00:53:13,813 --> 00:53:17,637
beefs with this book was that it. In

861
00:53:17,701 --> 00:53:21,421
one page, in one page of the introduction, it called

862
00:53:21,533 --> 00:53:25,365
divorce a failure. Four times. Four

863
00:53:25,405 --> 00:53:28,661
times in one page. That divorce is a failure,

864
00:53:28,853 --> 00:53:32,317
which is, that is another

865
00:53:32,421 --> 00:53:36,119
layer of shame to put on people who,

866
00:53:36,317 --> 00:53:39,935
many of whom for which divorce is a rescue.

867
00:53:40,755 --> 00:53:44,163
You know, if we, and if we look in the Bible, you

868
00:53:44,179 --> 00:53:47,339
know, God actually, you know

869
00:53:47,427 --> 00:53:51,067
rescues some of these women and tells men to give them a

870
00:53:51,091 --> 00:53:54,579
certificate of divorce because they aren't caring for them or

871
00:53:54,627 --> 00:53:58,219
providing for them. And for me, divorce was

872
00:53:58,267 --> 00:54:02,003
a rescue from God. And so for this book to

873
00:54:02,059 --> 00:54:05,675
create and perpetuate this notion that

874
00:54:05,755 --> 00:54:09,347
divorce is a failure heaps shame

875
00:54:09,531 --> 00:54:13,147
on people who, many of whom never wanted to get

876
00:54:13,171 --> 00:54:17,011
divorced to begin with, never intended to get divorced and actually

877
00:54:17,083 --> 00:54:20,415
struggled in many ways to even

878
00:54:21,075 --> 00:54:24,375
get out of a very difficult or harmful marriage.

879
00:54:24,835 --> 00:54:28,615
So, so that's I'll be on my

880
00:54:29,795 --> 00:54:33,635
soapbox about no fault divorce and the role that that

881
00:54:33,675 --> 00:54:37,255
plays in Christian

882
00:54:37,295 --> 00:54:40,879
faith and in abuse and things like that. So people can find

883
00:54:40,927 --> 00:54:44,655
me, like, find me on all my socials at Melissa J. Hogan and

884
00:54:44,695 --> 00:54:47,951
on substack on that as well. The new substack is called Res

885
00:54:47,983 --> 00:54:51,711
Ipsa, which is the thing itself. That's so cool.

886
00:54:51,743 --> 00:54:53,791
I will link to it in the show notes. But I just want to say

887
00:54:53,823 --> 00:54:57,435
I'm so proud of you, Melissa. And I'm really excited

888
00:54:57,775 --> 00:55:01,395
as your friend and as somebody who's seen you.

889
00:55:02,185 --> 00:55:05,961
I mean, I remember in conversations from four years ago where you're like, I am

890
00:55:05,993 --> 00:55:09,713
afraid that I'm gonna have to do anything

891
00:55:09,769 --> 00:55:13,553
in this field and that you. And you were like, I this

892
00:55:13,569 --> 00:55:17,273
is the last thing I ever wanna do. And somehow you're doing

893
00:55:17,329 --> 00:55:21,001
something that overlaps, but it isn't the last thing. Yeah,

894
00:55:21,073 --> 00:55:24,809
I mean, God has done, you know, I didn't walk into this

895
00:55:24,857 --> 00:55:27,765
field actually wanting to.

896
00:55:28,345 --> 00:55:31,727
And this is often the case in my life. God just keeps

897
00:55:31,881 --> 00:55:35,587
nudging. I'm like, no. No. Really? No. And

898
00:55:35,611 --> 00:55:39,215
I say no a bunch of times. And then God's like,

899
00:55:39,755 --> 00:55:42,987
this is a problem. You need to say yes. And

900
00:55:43,091 --> 00:55:46,611
so I've gotten better at being willing to say

901
00:55:46,643 --> 00:55:49,923
yes, you know, before God, you know, blows the

902
00:55:49,939 --> 00:55:53,411
door. Yes. And so, yeah, so now I'm in this field,

903
00:55:53,483 --> 00:55:57,299
I'm passionate about it and I'm just waiting to see what God's going to do.

904
00:55:57,347 --> 00:56:00,685
It's going to be good. Thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

905
00:56:01,025 --> 00:56:03,085
Thanks, Amy. Thanks, Melissa.

906
00:56:04,625 --> 00:56:08,377
It was great to have Melissa on the podcast again. I hope you'll check

907
00:56:08,401 --> 00:56:11,969
out her new substack, Res Ipsa. I'll link that in the show

908
00:56:12,017 --> 00:56:15,777
notes and you can find those show notes in your favorite podcast

909
00:56:15,841 --> 00:56:19,313
app. Or you can go to untangledfaithpodcast.com

910
00:56:19,449 --> 00:56:22,601
and click on Episodes and find all the show notes

911
00:56:22,673 --> 00:56:26,387
there. If you want to connect with me, you can find me on threads

912
00:56:26,491 --> 00:56:30,123
as Amy Heming Fritz or Amy Fritz on blue sky

913
00:56:30,219 --> 00:56:33,643
and I'm untangled faith on Instagram. If you'd prefer

914
00:56:33,699 --> 00:56:35,115
email, send me A note to

915
00:56:35,155 --> 00:56:38,963
amymtangledfaithpodcast.com thanks,

916
00:56:39,019 --> 00:56:40,555
everybody. I'll see you next week.