Hey Tabi!

Why Standard Evangelical Sex Advice Is Wrecking Marriages - with Sheila Wray Gregoire

• Tabitha • Season 2 • Episode 5

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What if the marriage advice you were taught in church is actually what's ruining your marriage?

In this powerful and data-backed conversation, author and researcher Sheila Wray Gregoire joins Tabitha to unpack the myths evangelical culture has fed us about sex, submission, and "roles" in marriage and how those messages have led to entitlement, emotional immaturity, and deep harm for both men and women.

In this eye-opening episode of Hey Tabi, licensed trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook sits down with author, podcaster, and researcher Sheila Wray Gregoire (BareMarriage.com) to dive deep into the truth about evangelical messages on sex and marriage.

Drawing on data from over 32,000 survey responses, Sheila exposes the damaging beliefs that have shaped evangelical culture—from the “72-hour rule” to male headship—and replaces them with Christ-centered, evidence-based truth about healthy intimacy, mutuality, and emotional regulation.

They tackle:

  • Why prioritizing sex is the wrong goal
  • How purity culture harmed an entire generation
  • The silent epidemic of emotionally immature marriages
  • Why Christian men need real discipleship, not entitlement
  • What love languages actually reveal (hint: it’s not what you think)
  • How to build a marriage rooted in partnership, not power

Whether you’re single, married, deconstructing, or holding on by a thread—this conversation is the invitation to rethink what God-honoring marriage truly looks like.

📘 Grab Sheila’s latest book The Marriage You Want, and be sure to grab copies of The Great Sex Rescue and She Deserves Better if you don't already have them!


Find Shelia!

  • Bare Marriage: https://www.baremarriage.com
  • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sheilagregoire
  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/baremarriageofficial
  • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SheilaWrayGregoire

✨ Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe for more honest, faith-integrated conversations about trauma, healing, and hope.

Wanna say hi? Send a text!

🎧 Subscribe to Hey Tabi for more expert conversations on trauma, faith, and healing.

Order Body & Soul, Healed & Whole: An Invitational Guide to Healthy Sexuality After Trauma, Abuse, and Coercive Control

📩 Connect with Tabitha:
💻 Tabitha's Website - www.tabithawestbrook.com
📲 Tabitha's Instagram - www.instagram.com/tabithathecounselor
🎙️ Podcast Homepage - https://heytabi.buzzsprout.com

💻 The Journey & The Process Website - www.thejourneyandtheprocess.com
📲 The Journey & The Process Instagram - www.instagram.com/_tjatp

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🚨 Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy and is intended for educational purposes only. If you're in crisis or need therapy, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to hey Tabby, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here and we are not. Take two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control and how complex trauma impacts our health and well-being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope. Now let's get going.

Speaker 1:

I am super excited for this week's episode of hey Tabby. We have got an amazing person here with us. This is Sheila Rae Gueguar and she's an author, podcaster and researcher into evangelicalism and sex, which is like such a cool title. She's the founder of baremarriagecom and with her team she has surveyed more than 32,000 people for her books the Great Sex, rescue, she Deserves Better and her latest book, the Marriage you Want. Her goal is to change the evangelical conversation about sex to be healthy, evidence-based and rooted in Christ. She's a graduate of Queens University and she's married to her husband, keith, a pediatrician, who writes and speaks with her, and I am so excited to have you here. First of all, I am a research nerd, and before I was a therapist I worked in clinical research, and so when I saw your numbers of 32,000, that is a heck of a response.

Speaker 2:

I think you actually may even be closer to 40 now. I'm not even sure I'd have to add it all up.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, and that gives a lot of weight to the data that you have. So tell me about that. Tell me what made you, because you started the research piece way back with the Great Sex Rescue what made you go? I wonder what people say, I wonder what the data says.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, I had started off as this mommy blogger, so I was talking about housework and parenting and everything, and marriage. And then, the more I talked about sex, the more my traffic grew, and so you know who knew that people wanted to talk about sex so much? But I became like this weird Christian sex lady and so, throughout the aughts and like the 2010s, I was writing all this content, Like I was just producing so much stuff on my blog every day. I wrote a couple of big books the Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex, which I've since totally revised, 31 Days to Great Sex. So I'm writing all this stuff, but the one thing that I didn't do was I didn't read anyone else's book because I was so scared of plagiarizing and I figured they love Jesus, I love Jesus. We're all saying the same thing.

Speaker 2:

And then one day it was in February of 2019, I had a headache and I didn't want to work and I was procrastinating and I was on what was then Twitter and they were debating whether people needed love or respect, whether women preferred love or respect, and they were referring to Emerson Egrich's book, Love and Respect, and I thought I have that book. This is an awesome way to procrastinate. So I finally got it off my shelf and I turned to the sex chapter and it was like a nuclear bomb went off in my living room. Because I could, I just couldn't believe it. You know, if your husband is typical, he has a need that you don't have. The need is for physical release. If he doesn't get it, he'll come under satanic attack. And there wasn't anything about intimacy or female pleasure or anything.

Speaker 2:

And at the time which we realize in retrospect now was totally a God thing I had these two young women working for me, one of whom had just had a baby. She was an epidemiologist, a statistician, she was just home with her baby and she was doing some work part-time work for me. My daughter had just started working for me. She was a psychometrics nerd and a psychology grad, and so we had this perfect team to do research. And you know we were like well, why don't we just see what happens when people hear these messages? And that's what we did first was 20,000 people, great sex rescue. And we learned what happens when you tell women hey, you don't need sex.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but that was a game changer for so many women in the evangelical church, because we're not allowed to talk about sex, although I don't know. I don't know why, but it's something that is so desperately needed. I mean, you can tell by the numbers of people that responded to your survey, the numbers of people that follow you on the internet, that women are like. Please tell me more.

Speaker 2:

I know, and like it was a really long survey, all our surveys have been like half an hour long and we don't have a lot of drop off, like people actually fill them all out. It's wild If you were one of those people. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, because I know it was a big part of a big chunk of your life.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing, because one of the things that I learned in school going for stats and then more in clinical research and all of that was that survey research isn't as robust because you can't control whether or not people finish it, and so respondent rates in the 10 percentage ratio is considered great. If you're at 20%. Amazing, and you were way above that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think we had about a 70% completion rate, so about 30% of people who started didn't finish. But you know, we still could get data even from that 30%, depending on how far along they got. So, yeah, that's incredible.

Speaker 1:

I know that you've come under fire for some of the things, because it's hard to ruffle feathers.

Speaker 1:

But, you know, when you look at the sheer amount of data and this is one of the things that also you know I do a lot of abuse work and that sort of thing, a lot of course of control work, and that's where the wheel of power and control is so helpful, because what they did was went and asked people what is your actual experience, and that has made that such a powerful model and that's what makes your research so powerful.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So for people who don't understand how this works, like they actually created a model. That Wheel of Power and Control was based on a number of surveys where they found out what was correlated, and so they found, like when this happens, this also happens, like these are very highly correlated, and so it's what's called a validated construct, and which I know it sounds really complicated, but it just means that they've done enough research that they know. No, these things really are linked, and that's what we did in our surveys, too, is we used validated constructs to measure different things, so use things that were already validated.

Speaker 2:

Other people have said yes, this really is a good measure of sexual satisfaction, this really is a good measure of marital satisfaction. And then we asked them okay, what about this message? What about a wife is obligated to give her husband sex when he wants it? What about the idea that a husband should make the final decision if you disagree? So we were able to measure the things that were taught in church and see how they affect these things, which have been validated as good measures of marital and sexual satisfaction.

Speaker 1:

And that's such helpful information for people because it means that when we're reading what you found, that we can go. That's pretty reliable, right, because validation and reliability go together very closely.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and that's really important.

Speaker 1:

And I think it's like super cool and important that you got that conversation going for people and then have continued it through she Deserves Better and into the Marriage you Want, because it's great. Okay, we've got all this information from the Great Sex Rescue. Now what? How do we combat purity culture and sexual messages? And then how do we have good marriages? And you've followed that trajectory. So take us through that a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So we started with sex. We started looking at okay, what about sex and marriage? But then we got bigger because people were saying, okay, so if I know what's healthy in marriage, I still have absolutely no idea what to tell my kids, because I grew up with all these purity culture messages. I don't want to give my kids that, but I also don't want to tell my kids go do whatever you want, so what's healthy and that's what she deserves? Better is here's how you can talk to your kids, your girls especially, in a way that's healthy and with the marriage you want.

Speaker 2:

We just took another look. We took an even greater bird's eye view. So we it's like okay, so we know what's healthy with sex, but let's get even broader and let's say what actually leads to healthy marriages. Because all of us, like God, put into all of us this desire for intimacy, the desire to be fully known, fully seen and still fully accepted and loved. But how do you achieve that, Right, and what are the real markers of achieving that? And so that's what we were looking at is what goes into that, and it's funny because that's something that most Christian marriage books don't do. In fact, I don't know any other one that does it in the Christian market.

Speaker 2:

Because I take Jesus at his word. Right, Jesus said that a good tree can't bear bad fruit and a bad tree can't bear good fruit. So you can recognize things by their fruit. So if we know that a certain teaching bears bad fruit, that teaching's not from God. It doesn't matter how much your pastor says it, it doesn't matter how many Christian marriage books teach it. If it bears bad fruit, it's not from God. Jesus himself said that. So if it leads to worse marriages, if it leads to worse sex lives, if it leads to higher divorce rates and more abuse, that teaching is bad, you know. But on the other hand, teachings and actions that lead to good marriages, dynamics that lead to real intimacy, to being totally seen, those things are good fruit. And so let's figure out what those things are.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and I think to your point. About all marriage books seem to talk about sex for the most part. One of my thoughts lately, just being a certified sex addiction therapist, is that the evangelical church is a sex addict because all they talk about is intercourse and it's like that is a part of a marriage. It is not the marriage, and I think you really tackle that, the what is a whole marriage in the marriage you want.

Speaker 2:

At least, I feel like you and Keith did that very well yeah, well, thank you, I know because, like, we started chapter four, which is our sex chapter, and, by the way, when you have written like four books on sex, writing one chapter on sex is horrible, I bet. How do I just still all this down to one chapter? So, if anyone wants to know what I believe about sex, like, start with the marriage you want, because it's kind of like the synopsis, right. But we started that chapter by saying that you shouldn't prioritize sex in your marriage. That's what we're always taught, right? You need to prioritize sex. And what do they mean by that, tabitha, when you say you?

Speaker 1:

need to prioritize sex. What do they mean? They mean give it to your husband whenever he asks for it, at least every 72 hours, because, god knows, we wouldn't want to look at exactly exactly.

Speaker 2:

It's like all they're saying is you have to have sex more often, right, and like that's not the point. That's totally not the point. Instead, what we argue is you need to prioritize the ingredients of great sex, because frequency and desire, they're symptoms. Egg your spouse to have sex, like that's a sign that there is something else going on.

Speaker 2:

And so, rather than just tell people, hey, lie back and think of England or whatever they used to say let's figure out why this isn't good, Because if sex is so awesome and we know that it's supposed to be awesome if sex is so awesome, why would people not want it? Yep, and I think a lot of Christian marriage books treat women like they're crazy you know, they treat women like blow up dolls yeah, like why can't you get with the program you?

Speaker 2:

know so it's just, it's just nuts and it's like, well, maybe there's a reason and so let's figure what that reason is, instead of just getting mad at women and telling them they have to put out, no matter what.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it's a huge disservice to men. I've worked with a lot of men who sit across from me in my office and they have struggles with sex addiction for a lot of reasons, and it's not because they don't get sex, it's you know there's a lot of trauma that sits on top of it.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of other things, but you know, I had one guy look at me once and tell me I don't want to do it every 72 hours, but I feel like I have to or my addiction's going to get worse. And I was like what?

Speaker 2:

And.

Speaker 1:

I just remember feeling so much compassion because that had been what he'd been taught for so long that he thought this is how I have to be to be a Christian man. And so it's hurting our brothers as much as it's hurting our sisters, and I think that the church doesn't?

Speaker 1:

the big C church, not all churches, but the big C church doesn't realize that, that you are harming men as much as women by saying these things to them and making them believe that they are nothing more than their lust. My good brothers are so much more Like. They are men of integrity and they're wonderful and they're fun and I can hang out with them because they don't see me as a sex object and it's a beautiful thing and we learn from each other. They accept influence from me, I accept influence from them, and that is much more a picture of the body of Christ that we're supposed to have versus what I think has been languished.

Speaker 2:

Yep, absolutely, and I just don't know why more men don't stand up and walk in some sermons when they teach that, yeah, men can't help it but be visual and lust. That's so insulting to men.

Speaker 1:

It is I don't think they think about it, though I was thinking about that recently that you don't always know the water that you're swimming in until you stop and take a look around. And if you were growing up in certain churches where that was taught and you have a heart for God and you want to follow the Lord and you believe that's what it looks like, then you're going to drink that in and make sense. But it's such such a horrible thing for people, absolutely, absolutely, and I think it breeds, another topic that you have in your book, which is entitlement.

Speaker 2:

So tell me about that. Yes, yes, you know. One of the best ways to encapsulate this is let me take a step back. Often, the way that Christian books frame big issues in marriage is that we just need to compromise. Okay, everyone has needs, you just need to meet your spouse's needs and then they will meet yours. And that's actually, if you think about it, that's the whole idea behind books like the five love languages, or love and respect, or for women only, for men only. You just need to figure out what each other's needs and they need to meet those needs. But the problem is, this whole transactional view of I'm going to meet your needs so that you can meet my needs is based on the idea that we're starting in the same place and we may not be. So let me tell you a story that we open in chapter two with. So let's picture a couple and this is kind of a, a conglomerate of, like all the people that write into my blog, this is one of the most common scenarios.

Speaker 2:

So Gabriella and Brad married 10 years. They have three kids. Gabriella is a nurse. She does a lot of shift work, she's frequently exhausted, but she's also got the primary care of the kids, so she's always juggling schedules and homework and making lunch, et cetera. Brad doesn't do a whole lot with the children, and so their sex life had really dwindled to very little. And then, six months ago, brad disclosed that he's been using porn their whole marriage and he wants to stop. And so what was a sex life on life support has now become almost nothing, and so Brad's not happy with this, because he needs Gabriela to give him sex so that he can fight the porn. So he takes Gabriela into the pastor so they can talk about this. And Gabriella cries and they tell the pastor the whole story, and the pastor looks at Gabriella and says you need to understand how much your husband needs sex, and so you need to give it to him and not deprive him. And then he looks to Brad and says and Brad, you need to understand that your wife needs help with the children, and so you need to start doing bath time, and so they're each going to meet each other's needs. Okay, but what if Gabriella is already doing so very, very much and all we're doing is adding more to her plate without Brad really taking any of that on?

Speaker 2:

And we talked about this in something that we called the marriage hierarchy of needs, and it's lightly based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and his idea is that humans have needs and if you think of needs as being in a pyramid, you have your basic needs, like food, water and shelter, that you need to meet before you meet some of the other needs, like friendship or fun or self-actualization and feeling like you're living at your purpose.

Speaker 2:

So no one's worried about sex when they're getting chased by a bear right. Like you know, you got to prioritize and what often happens in a marriage is that one spouse and it often is women is stuck in that very bottom tier where they're barely surviving. So they're making sure the kids are getting out the door in the morning on the school bus, they're getting lunches made, they're doing laundry, they're barely sleeping they're just barely surviving, while their spouse is actually able to rest and have hobbies and they're up at a higher tier. And then you tell them that they need to compromise and it's like OK, wait a minute. What actually needs to happen is that Brad needs to get down in the trenches with Gabriella, and only once Gabriella isn't in survival mode do you get to talk about the things that Brad needs really how entitlement works is. Entitlement happens when someone is operating at a much higher tier and in so doing, they are pushing their spouse down to survival mode, but they feel like they are the one who is being deprived.

Speaker 1:

Right, right.

Speaker 2:

When reality is they can't really do anything else. Exactly and we see this often in ministry couples, you know so like one person is out every night with meetings at the church and they're living out their vision and their calling from God, but at the same time, their spouse is drowning. And if their spouse tries to talk to them about this, it's like, well, you just don't have enough faith, right, Don't you support God's calling on our lives? But if someone's drowning, they're drowning and you need to understand that you're being entitled because you're expecting from your spouse when you haven't really built into your spouse.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, and in the ministry capacity and I will just say this about that God never asks you to sacrifice your family on the altar of ministry. That is not in the Bible anywhere. And when people do that and go all in, my question is why? What is it that you are getting in your identity from this? That is outside of God, because really, where they are is idolatry, and that is something that has to be attacked, right, and I think in some evangelical circles it is that the man gets to do what he wants and the wife just gets to come along and do what she's supposed to, and that is so not at all what the Bible teaches.

Speaker 1:

God does not ever put a woman in a one down position. In fact, he usually puts them in an equal position. The first person to be told that he is the Messiah is the woman at the well and the Samaritan woman at the well. And then the first person to see that that he is the Messiah is the woman at the well, and you know, the Samaritan woman at the well. And then the first person to see that he rose from the dead is Mary Magdalene A woman, you know and she was very much, definitely a woman.

Speaker 1:

You know, even though there's a few times in Scripture people try to say that somebody wasn't a woman, who was in fact actually a woman, junia comes to mind.

Speaker 1:

Yes, but you know, when we look at that it's like this is not what God says. And if you believe the Bible and you say you do, then it should look a lot different than what we're seeing in how marriage is languaged. And I think about compromise, the way that you're using it, and I want to define it a little bit for the audience here, because there's a couple of different ways to think about compromise. Compromise here is I'm giving up myself, the way that you're talking about it when we talk about entitlement, and that's where we look into that coercion and control space you owe me, you are owned by me is what that kind of compromise is Healthy compromises. We have an impasse and we have to work through it.

Speaker 1:

And for me, as a person who's very highly trained in couples therapy and Gottman method and emotionally focused couples therapy and all of that, I think of the compromise ovals and the thing that kept coming to my mind while I was thinking about that is where everybody hears the different needs and you really look at what's under those needs and what they're saying, what the emotions are, what their stories are about it.

Speaker 1:

You know, and some of that isn't even from the marriage, it's from their own childhood and their life before they were married. And then you go what do we need to do to get through the impasse? And that's healthy compromise. I remember saying this to couples all the time when I would do this exercise with them everybody loses something in a healthy compromise. You decide what are your non-negotiables, what can I not move, and then you want that circle to be as small as possible, and then everything else is subject to change. And both parties do that, not just one, not just the wife, and that is the right kind of compromise. So I just want to make sure, because the English language can be super tricky on occasion.

Speaker 2:

And I want to make sure we're talking about this in ways that people understand. Compromise in the way that you're using it is subjection, yeah, it is. And when you read things like the five love languages, where and you'll hear, well, he has a need for physical touch, right, and she has acts of service, and so he needs to do the dishes and then she needs to give sex, it's like hold on a second. What is the bigger picture, what is actually happening in the marriage? And that's what's often not asked, right.

Speaker 1:

And you know there are differences. There are things that people prefer. Acts of service might be a preference. Physical touch, though, isn't a need only for a man. Acts of service might be a preference. Physical touch, though, isn't a need only for a man. There is a ton of research out there that we all have essentially what amounts to skin hunger is what one of my friends calls it. We all need to be touched, and there's actually protective factors from hugs. So I always tell folks, especially survivors of abuse, I'm going to hug you awkwardly for at least 20 seconds because I want to get the oxytocin flowing for you because they may be lacking physical touch, and that is, it increases our immune system and all of these things.

Speaker 1:

So everybody needs it, right.

Speaker 2:

But interestingly, when we in our survey and we had couples answer this so we could see both how the husband answered and the wife and how they impacted each other, but I think it was almost 50 percent of men chose physical touch as their love language and when you drill down on it, the men who chose physical touch were more likely to also have issues with emotional regulation, to have a difficult time sharing deep things with their wife.

Speaker 2:

So it's like they are channeling a lot of their needs for intimacy into sex, because quite often people see physical touch as sex, even though it's far more, as you were just saying, and that doesn't mean that everybody who says they have physical touches or love language does that, but they're just more likely to. And that's what we see over and over again is, for a lot of the love languages, the thing that you say is your primary need is actually a deficit. So women who choose acts of service as their main love language are far more likely to be doing an oversized proportion of the housework. So it's like, is acts of service truly her love language or is she just drowning Right? Like we need to look a little bit closer at some of these things rather than just take a superficial framework that so many Christian marriage books are based on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I want to circle back to the emotional regulation piece for men, because I think that they've been societally habituated and not all men, but a lot of men to not be able to talk about their emotions, to say this is what a real man is, is he strong and he doesn't cry, and all that other stupid stuff.

Speaker 1:

But then you have these poor men that are like I have all these feelings, I don't know what to do with it, I'm not allowed to have, and so I'm going to either be grumpy, because a lot of depression comes out as anger, or I'm going to say well, have sex with me, because in those moments I do feel vulnerable and close.

Speaker 1:

And I think about gosh, what if it was something where we, as the body of Christ, really changed the narrative and said what if we said amen, jesus wept shortest verse in the Bible, which is also wailing. It's like a wailing weeping. And why don't we teach us all to be whole people? And you may have a preference for one type of love language air quoting that you know preference for one type of love language air quoting that you know, then another, but also like then you are learning that a physical co-regulation that comes from physical touch. You know, I think about like when, as a parent and you've probably done this with your kid you know when they were just really having a moment, you gave them a big, tight hug.

Speaker 2:

You know and your calm body calmed theirs or you take them by the hand, look them straight in the face and just deep breathing and they you know, they mirror you and it's just very lovely.

Speaker 2:

But I've often said and my dream for the church would be that instead of pushing young people into marriage as their main goal because I think that's what we do is we tell kids that marriage is your main goal. I wish we could teach emotional wholeness and health as the main goal, Because then if some people don't get married, it's not like you've failed or like you're not as good a Christian right, Because marriage is not the goal of the Christian life. If anything, marriage is downplayed in the New Testament. But then if people do get married, they're much better prepared for it because they're emotionally healthy and whole, and I wish we could do more of that in the church and that's a big part of what we do, our last section in the Marriage you Want.

Speaker 2:

So there's two chapters on just how to create that kind of emotional connection and emotional awareness and emotional language, especially if you grew up not being able to, if you weren't ever taught how to speak out loud what your emotions are, if you don't even know how to identify them yourself and a lot of men especially don't, but some women don't either how do you get to the point where you can? Because how in the world are you going to feel loved, how in the world are you going to feel known and accepted if you can't share your feelings, if you can't share who you really are with your spouse? Yeah Right, you're never going to be able to experience real intimacy until you can get vulnerable and share who you are. But a lot of us aren't comfortable with that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

It feels scary, right, because you know that we all carry around some level of shame and, like none of us gets out of here alive, right, we all have wounds that we carry.

Speaker 1:

Some of them are bigger than others, but we want to have our partners see us and love us, like you said at the very beginning of this conversation, and that is such an important thing. And when we say that marriage mirrors Jesus and the church, that is what it means. You know, that knowing and loving and unconditional love and all of that. And that doesn't mean we don't bring up problems, it doesn't mean that we don't have to work through things and it doesn't mean it's always nice, neat, tidy. There's messy parts. But if we see each other as image bearers and have that, I'm with you in this and I want to know you and I want to work with you, I want to be with you, it changes the game for people all over?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, I think that's something that's missing from a lot of Christian marriage books, because what normally the books do is they say, hey, the main thing that you need to understand about marriage is that there's different roles for men and women, and so if you can just latch onto these roles and live them out, your marriage is going to be awesome. And that doesn't work. We've actually measured it. And when you live like that, with the husband being an authority over the wife because that's usually what they mean your marriage is worse. So people who go through life with believing that the husband should make the final decision and that the husband needs respect in a way that the wife doesn't, their marriages end up worse. They're more likely to divorce. They feel less emotionally connected. It's all just a big bag of bad fruit. But when you go through life as a partnership, where you make decisions together and you pray about things together and you're really a team, marriages really thrive.

Speaker 2:

And I think that's why so much of our work at Bare Marriage has been looking at these Christian marriage books that have been out there and what messages they've had. And people often say to me do you just hate all books? Because every book you read you find problems with and it's like no, it's not that I'm deliberately trying to hate all books, but up till now evangelical marriage books have been based on a false premise. And if you have a faulty premise then everything that flows from there is going to be unhealthy. And that's our faulty premise that men are supposed to be an authority over their wives. It doesn't work. It doesn't, it isn't from Jesus.

Speaker 1:

And I know there are people that are going to look at some scriptures and go well, christ is the head of the husband, the husband's the head of the wife, whatever. I think we need to look at what else is in scripture. You know, good hermeneutics is you look at the whole word of God. Right, you interpret scripture by scripture, if you're doing it correctly, and so you can take that if you want to proof text that. But that's not actually going to get you anywhere. So you better drop into Ephesians and go submit one to another as you submit to God. Right, it starts with our submission to the Lord, and submission is not subjugation. Those are not even the same word in the Greek or the English, frankly. And so when you look at that and you go, ok, what does this really mean? Right, what does head mean here? What does submission mean? What are we supposed to do? How do we live?

Speaker 1:

And when you look at it in its entirety, it is much more partnership. It in its entirety, it is much more partnership. And Jesus says, when he's washing the disciples' feet I'm doing this as an example, right, you are not going to be like the Gentiles that lord over each other. I don't know how much more clear you can be on that. And this is the leader. He spoke the world into existence. He could have yeeted them off the planet. He could just make physics not work. He's jesus and he's saying this is how I want you to live. And that is such a beautiful picture of power with and power under, and that is a different matter and it works.

Speaker 1:

That's it.

Speaker 2:

It's almost like jesus created it I know, like it's almost like yeah, acting like Christ makes us healthier, yeah, but when we go after authority and power, it makes us less healthy. And interestingly, I found this kind of curious because in the book we have a lot of charts. So what we'll show is you know, if you believe this, here's how it impacts all these different areas of your life. So if you believe that the husband should make the final decision and you act that out, how does it affect whether or not you have shared hobbies? How does it affect her libido? How does it affect whether you feel like you can laugh with your spouse, like we have all these different charts?

Speaker 2:

And that idea that the husband makes the final decision is highly correlated with all of the markers for emotional immaturity. Correlated with all of the markers for emotional immaturity. So people who don't have as easy time emotionally regulating, people who are more prone to outbursts, anger outbursts, who are more passive, aggressive, those people are more likely to choose that kind of decision making. And you wonder is it a chicken or an egg? Is it? People who are more emotionally immature are drawn to that wonder. Is it a chicken or an egg? Is it people who are more emotionally immature are drawn to that, or is it that the more that you practice that, the less you mature?

Speaker 2:

and I think it's a bit of both I think so because when the husband gets to make the final decision, then you don't ever learn problem solving.

Speaker 2:

You don't ever learn how to truly wrestle through an issue, how to pray together about something, how to wait, how to be patient, how to research wrestle through an issue, how to pray together about something, how to wait, how to be patient, how to research Like you don't learn, he just gets to do what he wants and she has to go along with it, and she doesn't learn how to bring up issues, because she's been told to do so is sinful. And so we see in these marriages a lot of just genuine emotional immaturity, and that's something that I think the evangelical church needs to reckon with is that much of their advice does end up in these negative spaces.

Speaker 1:

It does and, honestly, I've seen it go to the point where it gets people killed, right Because when?

Speaker 2:

Well, that's the other side. Is that it gets abusive?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and I think it's hard, I think, at times for people to use the A word right Abuse Because I've never met a woman that sat across from me and wanted to use that word for her situation when it was very much applicable. And it is breeding. That, though corrupt, and that sense of entitlement that you talk about in the book and that the Bible talks about is the heart of Satan. I will stand through it and be like the most high. That was what his goal was, and that is the heart of a coercively controlling abuser Like that is what Jesus do, you know.

Speaker 2:

In Philippians 2, it said that he gave up his power, right, right. He didn't consider equality with God something to be grasped or held on to. He laid it aside.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And that's not what our Christian men have been taught. Our Christian men have been taught you are the leader. You need to stand up and lead. It's like, no, you don't. You need to take initiative. We all need to take initiative, and this is what's actually quite interesting is when women say they want a spiritual leader and most women do say they want a spiritual leader. Multiple of our studies have shown that.

Speaker 2:

But when you actually dive down and you ask, what do you mean by that? She doesn't mean someone who makes the decisions. She doesn't mean someone who tells me what to do or someone that I have to respect who won't respect me back. What she means is someone who will start prayer with the family. She means someone who will notice when Johnny and Jenny are fighting and will figure out how to help Johnny and Jenny stop fighting, Right? Well, she's not talking about someone who's an authority over her. She's saying I want my husband to take initiative and notice what's going on in the family and involve himself in that and get down in the trenches with me. It's all things she's already doing.

Speaker 2:

She's noticing when Johnny and Jenny are fighting and she's trying to get in the middle of it. You know she's praying with the kids, and so she's not asking him to do something she's not doing. She's just saying I want him to do it with me. I asking him to do something she's not doing, she's just saying I want him to do it with me. I want him to be as emotionally invested in this as I am. And we call that spiritual leadership. When he does it, we call it nothing. When she does it right, we just ignore it. It's like assume that's what she's supposed to do, but we give it a special name when he does it Right. And it's like I wish, instead of talking about spiritual leadership, we could just simply say hey, people, you know what really works in a marriage is taking initiative.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's this concept called mutuality.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, yeah, and it's modeled by Jesus and we both need to be doing it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and it's modeled by Jesus and we both need to be doing it, yeah, yeah. And then when you look at the early church in the book of Acts, right when the Hellenists came and they're like we have a problem, you know, the disciples went and looked and went all right, how are we going to solve it? And what they didn't tell the Hellenists was you don't get served, what?

Speaker 1:

they said was let's delegate this appropriately and like kind of figure it out. And in marriage that's kind of what we do, right? You know, if you've married a professional chef and he is a male, then perhaps he's going to do the cooking. Now he might not want to. You guys can work through all of that stuff. But you know you were talking about those traditional gender roles and all of that. There's nothing wrong with a stay-at-home dad.

Speaker 2:

There's nothing wrong with a stay-at-home dad. He works and she's a stay-at-home parent. It doesn't hurt you, it really doesn't, unless you think that you're supposed to do it that way. And as soon as you think you're supposed to do it that way, then you start to see the negative repercussions. You start to see lower marital satisfaction, et cetera, because you're not acting out of authenticity, you're acting out of obligation and duty, and often you're not acting out of out of authenticity, you're acting out of obligation and duty, and often you're becoming someone you're not yeah and you know it's okay to be the person that God called you to be.

Speaker 1:

It's okay to be the, the couple that God called you to be together in a way that that works best for both of you absolutely eight years ago, when I was pregnant this is now many years ago I was in a church and I, god, had told because I thought I was supposed to be a stay-at-home mom I thought that was the rule. I thought this is how you do it, right? And God was like oh sweet thing, that is not what you're going to do. And he was so clear you are going to work. And I was like am I going? One telling you? And I was like okay, I remember going to women's Bible study and I had wrestled through it and I was like this is what I'm going to do.

Speaker 1:

And I was pulled aside by the wife of an elder and she was older and she said I'm so worried for your soul. And I was like well, I was too, until God told me I shouldn't be. And she was like but Tabitha, my goodness, like the Bible says. And I remember looking at her. It's probably one of the first times I kind of put on some sassy pants and I said can you show me where? Well, I mean it's in there. And I said but can you show me where? Can you show me the scripture that says I have to do that? And she goes well, proverbs 31. I had grown up in evangelicalism.

Speaker 1:

That said, proverbs 31 was like demure and mindful and quiet and like had no voice and whatever yeah, and I went and read it and I was like, I was like, um, I'm sorry, she's a baller and a shot caller, like she was a tough cookie and she's out there buying and selling fields and doing all these things and I'm like, I am like her, I am, I'm good and and that poor lady she, and no shade to her. I think it is how she'd been raised and what she truly believed, and I think she really was worried for me and I want to give grace for that, and I think sometimes in this day and age it can be hard to give grace for people who are really entrenched in places, and so I give her a lot of grace because that's just where she was. But I'm so grateful that God was like no, no, that's not what I have for you, and in my situation he knew what was coming for me.

Speaker 2:

And I think that's God's voice to this generation, right, like? I think God's voice to this generation is that he has a new thing. He wants to set people free, and in the evangelical church we have so put people in cages and we've taught them things that hurt them, and it's been across the board. I think of Jimmy Evans' book Marriage on the Rock, which says that men have a need for domestic support, like men have a need for wives to do the housework His needs, her needs says the same thing that men have a God-given need for wives to look after the house. And it's like how does that even work? That's, it's nowhere in scripture, nowhere. And yet these books are teaching us that men have this need and most people say that sex and money are the two biggest problems in marriage.

Speaker 2:

Okay, but we actually measured this. So we measured marital satisfaction on a scale of one to a hundred. And when you have money problems, your marital satisfaction goes down scale of one to a hundred. And when you have money problems, your marital satisfaction goes down by five points, and most people are in like the 65 to 90 range. So five points is actually quite substantial when you go from having sex more than once a week to having sex once a month, your marital satisfaction falls 10 points. So that's, you know, fairly substantial. But when you go from doing half the housework to doing 90% of the housework, your marital satisfaction falls 30 points, even if you're a stay-at-home mom, like.

Speaker 2:

The thing that is really hurting marriages is not sex and it's not money, it is mental load and the distribution of housework, because so much is being put on women.

Speaker 2:

You know, like to remember everyone's doctor's appointment, to remember that if Johnny is going to go to karate this week, you have to. He's been bullied by Sam and so you need to go and watch and make sure that Sam's mom is aware of this, that Sam can't come to. You know you're carrying all this stuff in your head all the time and it's exhausting and we need partners and when women don't have a partner it really really affects marital satisfaction. So we need to stop making it seem like a fairy tale that she's going to be the family manager and take on all of these roles and it's all going to be okay, because that's what God meant for she can't. It's too exhausting, she's going to burn out, and we found that, like in the first five years. If does that, it doesn't bother her that much. But by year 10 it's starting to really bug her. By year 15, she's really mad.

Speaker 2:

And by year 20 she's done yep and then the kids are out of the house and she divorces yeah, yeah, and so it's like you can't live like that no and we found that for so many things, like for your sex life, we found that same curve, like that same unfairness threshold where it doesn't bother you at first but by 20 years you're done and like if she's having sex it's unsatisfying. She can put up with that in the first few years, you know she doesn't know what else to expect, but she can't keep doing that for 20 years Over and over again. In all of these measures what we found is that it's often women who are getting really taken advantage of. It is men in the evangelical church who are acting entitled, and that doesn't mean that no woman is entitled. It doesn't mean that no woman is the problem in her marriage. But when you look at it in big picture terms, the systems that we've set up in the evangelical church really do set up men to be prioritized and it is hurting marriages.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely, and I think you know just kind of as we land the plane here together, the way out is to really look at real discipleship from excellent theological standpoints, right. So when we are saying, actually some of the things we've taught weren't helpful, you know, maybe they were the best we knew at the time, I can give that grace. We know what we know when we know it. But we're not going to keep the same system anymore. We're going to language it differently, we're going to teach it differently, we're going to invite men into a different place and women into a different place. We're going to honor all of the voices of the image bearers.

Speaker 1:

I think it was Jen Wilkin that said maybe sometime this year. Earlier this year on the Knowing Faith podcast, she said that when she looks at scripture and you look at the leadership of, like the church in Rome or you know who Paul thanks, it's like one third women and if you look at any church's website you do not see that and Jen's a pretty solid complementarian. So you know, when you look at that and you go we aren't doing this. Well, we're not having a voice of all of the image bearers. If I have something of the image of God in me and you have something of the image of God in you and men have something of the image of God in them, then we are all needed at the table.

Speaker 1:

And I think that it could start there and really looking at the water that people have swum in and go, do we want to stay here or do we want to change the chemicals?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, and let's stop focusing on roles and hierarchies and systems and let's start focusing on wholeness and health and showing up with everything you are, including your giftings, but also your emotions, yes, you know, because that's what makes, that's what makes relationship, that's what makes intimacy.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

There isn't a system that is going to give you intimacy. There's only health and being vulnerable and being authentic.

Speaker 1:

Right and people. Other people and men need intimacy as much as women, and I think, that has been so mislanguaged and you know, I think anytime that you do work in abuse like me, or you write about sex and talk about how it is for women like you, people call us man haters and I've had the privilege of talking to you before. We are not man haters.

Speaker 2:

And we believe men can be whole and wonderful and, yeah, that they can feel a whole range of emotions and that they can express their giftings and they don't need women to be their sin management tools, like we believe great things of men, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And we want to see flourishing for both, and I think, as we close this out, that would be my parting thought.

Speaker 2:

What parting thoughts would you like to give our audience? I just want people to know that a marriage that is fulfilling and that is lovely is what God wants for you, and I think we hear so much that marriage is hard and you just need to tough it out. And I just want to tell people I'm not about telling you to stay in a marriage you hate. I'm about saying, hey, how can we actually create something that we love, where we can flourish, because God wants you to flourish? So let's figure out how to get there, instead of just telling people oh, just suck it up, that's just the way it's supposed to be.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, instead of just telling people oh, just suck it up, that's just the way it's supposed to be. Yeah. And for all of the people who I know just said in their hearts, of hearts well, God said that he wants us to be holy, not happy, flourishing when the whole different matter. It's right, it's not in scripture, and flourishing is a whole different matter right Flourishing doesn't mean you're always happy, but it does mean that you're always growing and there's another word that I would use, that is an s word sanctification.

Speaker 2:

Right, and that is part of all of this, and we grow and sanctification. Let me say this too sanctification is not about making you sinless. Sanctification is about making you more and more like jesus, which means making you more and more whole. Yes, yes, like yes, walking into this image that we're supposed to be bearing Right.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and I think that your book helps move us in that direction. The book is the Marriage you Want and you wrote it with your husband, keith, and it is amazing and I definitely commend it. First of all, I commend all of your books to everybody. They're on my like you should go read this list.

Speaker 1:

We give them out in our practice all the time and we are so grateful for your voice, for the risks that you've taken, and I do want to honor that as we end. Anytime a woman has a strong opinion in the evangelical world, you get called all kinds of things. I personally have been called a zombie spirit, a Jezebel spirit, woke, all sorts of stuff, an integrationist, as if that's a terrible thing or whatever. But you know, I just want to thank you for taking those hits. I want to thank you for being bold and for speaking out and for being who God created you to be and letting us all benefit from the gifts that he's given you, and thank you for hanging out with me.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, it's been great to be here and we will have all of your information in the show notes, so if people want to find you, find your books, they will be able to do that. And thank you again so much for being here. And you know everybody. Go follow Sheila, she's amazing. Thanks for joining me for today's episode of hey Tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to tabithawestbrookcom forward slash. Hey, tabby, that's H-E-Y-T-A-B-I and you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.

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