Abusive Behavior in Marriage

Hey, friends. Welcome to the Naked Marriage podcast. We're Dave and Ashley Willis, and on this podcast, we address the truth about sex, intimacy, and lifelong love. We've got a great episode today, Part two in a new kind of miniseries we're doing. And then the question at the end is a really important one that will potentially be very helpful to your sex life. And so stick around to the question at the end. And speaking of your sex life, thank you guys so much. For those who've already read or listened to the audiobook of our newest book, the Counterfeit Climax, which is all about sex and how to grow and thrive in that aspect of your marriage and how to kind of unplug from all of the counterfeit messages the world has given us about sex. Thanks. For those who've already left reviews and sent us in positive feedback, it means so much to know that it's helping you. If you haven't checked out that book yet, please do so. And before we dive into today's episode, speaking of reviews, my beautiful bride, who's wearing a sexy hat today and looks like just a model straight off a Runway. You're so silly and you're even more brilliant than you are beautiful. I'm telling you what, it's just too much talent for one person. She's gonna read a review. Thank you guys for sending in reviews. When you leave reviews, it helps others discover the podcast, and we so appreciate it.

We do. Today's review is from Anika May and it's entitled Completely Honest. She gave us five stars, so I really appreciate that. Thank you, Anika May. It says me and my husband have been listening to your podcast for several months. We have been married three years. The first time we heard y', all, we listened for hours on a trip and laughed and got so much help from you all so many times. Christians are so, quote, awkward about Christian sex and the subject, but you all are such a wonderful example that we have taken a lot of advice from. A lot of advice from you and feel like you all are our marriage counselors in so many ways. We have shared your podcast with many newlyweds and and are thankful to have someone to help them and us along our wonderful journey. Thank you all for your ministry. I can't wait to get your book. We already pre ordered it and it's out now, so they have it now. And I can't wait to hear your feedback on that. But thank you so much, Ana May, for your review. And you guys, let's dive into today's episode. Okay, guys, this One is a little bit heavier, but still so important. And today we're going to talk about two toxic behaviors that literally break our heart. Like, I mean, and in everyone's heart, like when we see these in marriages, it just, it just makes your heart sink. And a lot of times it, it can cause just a, a really horrible ripple effect. And so we're talking about, number one, swearing at your spouse. If you are in the south, you might say cussing at your spouse. If you're in the north, you might say cursing or swearing. So we just put swearing. But anyway, we're from Kentucky. We say cussing, but, you know, we say lots of, we say lots of things that are probably weird. But you know, hey, we love it. We love our roots. But, you know, basically using harsh words, like really harsh words at your spouse and yelling at them, berating them, you know, not only with name calling, but just harsh words. And then the second toxic behavior is physically hurting your spouse.

Yeah.

And so again, it's very heavy. But I know that we have a lot of listeners, a lot of people watching on YouTube where this has maybe been part of your story and maybe you're living in this right now. So we know it's important, an important topic to discuss.

Yeah, abuse is hard to discuss. But this, we want this to be a safe place for you to talk about everything and also a safe place to like, if you're experiencing abuse either verbal or physical. Like Ashley just said, those are the two aspects we're going to talk about in this episode that you don't have to suffer alone. We want you to get help. We want you to. Marriage needs to be a safe place. And if your spouse is, for whatever reason, in an unhealthy place, a broken place, an abusive place, where you have been made to be unsafe through your spouse's words or their actions, then we want to help you, help you get safe. So first let's kind of like identify, you know, what, what is abuse? Verbally or physically? I think physically it's more self explanatory. Right. You know, the verbal abuse, we'll kind of hone in on that because that one, that one is a little more nuanced and people might feel like they're being gaslighted and, you know, oh, yeah, we just want to call some things out. If your spouse is doing anything to cause you physical pain or physical intimidation, even then that's a form of physical abuse. We have to call things what they are. That's not, oh, you know, he's just, you know he didn't mean anything. He just gets rough. And it's like, man, you should never, ever lay hands on your wife in an aggressive way, ever.

Or women.

Or women for that. Yes, obviously. Obviously. And a lot of men have written us and they've experienced physical abuse. And I don't want to make you feel alienated at all if that's your story, because if it's just wrong either way, if you're being hurt by a spouse that is so far out of bounds and nothing that should be stood for. And while yet in marriage, we talk a lot about giving each other grace and. And yeah, marriage is a place where there has to be a lot of grace, but marriage has to be a place where, you know, safety is at the. Is at the top, the top of the priority list. And if your spouse is in a place where they are making you unsafe, then, you know, you might have to get away and get safe for a while while, you know, they get the help that they need and you get the help you need to heal.

Right.

So that's physical abuse. It is just any form of physical harm or even physical intimidation.

Yes. And I want to add this real quick. I kind of put a finger up because I'm like, I really want to make sure I add this. Sometimes this can be masks. Like, physical abuse is masked through like, the lens of sexual, like, hard sex or what's the term I'm looking for here? Like, physically intense sex. And like, sometimes that's when the abuse is happening and like, one spouse is.

Allowing it to flip a switch.

And yeah, I'm going to strangle you, going to grab you harder than you want. And what we found is the spouse that's receiving this does not like that. Like, it is a form of abuse and they have bruises on them from.

And you need to communicate that you don't like.

Well, yes, absolutely.

This is not my thing. Right. I don't want to. Pain is not pleasure to me, and I want to make sure. And so you got to communicate about all things in the bedroom. But yeah, we have talked to some couples where it's like, outside the bedroom, it's like the rules are different. But inside the bedroom, both verbally and physically, like, one spouse might get turned on by just really rough talk and insults and a lot of vulgarity the other spouse is not into. Right. But they feel pressure that they have to go along with it. And so they're in essence taking verbal abuse that they don't like because they're trying to be accommodating to their spouse's behavior, fantasies or fetishes. And then physically that can cross over, like Ashley said, into, into very kind of specific aspects of sex, sexual acts or just kind of overall sexual aggression that the aggressor enjoys that the other spouse doesn't. Now like if, if you're both equally into whatever you're doing in the bedroom, I mean, you got an enormous amount of freedom. So we're not here to referee that. But if they're, if either one of you is uncomfortable right. With it and the other one is like the dominant aggressor, that's, that's kind of forcing this sort of, kind of culture in your bedroom that you're uncomfortable with.

Right.

Then you've got to speak up. Because if it's only one sided, then it's abusive. And so you've got to speak up. I'm so glad you brought up that point, sweetie.

Well, because sometimes I do. I think that that's, sometimes abusers will, you know, and I'm using that term, they will kind of use that part of the relationship to get out that anger and just call it rough sex and call it dominatrix. What do you call that? The submissive and like the sadomasochism.

That's right. Like, you know, and some people are just collectively you're both into certain things and Right. If you guys want to, you know, put on leather and whip each other or whatever, it's not my thing, but you know, if you're bumped into whatever, I guess it's fine. But if we're talking about when one of you is pushing, pushing and the other one feels compelled to like, well, I guess this is what they need.

This is what I need to make them satisfied. This is what I need to do and allow.

I've got to allow them to do this whatever with their words, with whatever role play, with whatever acts that I'm uncomfortable with. And then all of a sudden marriage bed isn't a safe place for you anymore. And the marriage bed needs to be the safest place on earth for you both. Yes, it's a place with a lot of freedom, but that freedom, there's a Bible verse that says, don't use your freedom to use each other, but use your freedom to serve one another in love. And so applied to the sexual aspect of a relationship, if you're not using your freedom to serve one another in love, then it can quickly turn into an abusive or toxic situation.

Absolutely. And I think we need to look at like our motives and I Think that if you're literally trying to hurt your spouse, that's not a good place to be, whether in the bedroom or outside. I mean, we're. We're supposed to love each other and serve each other and be tender with each other. And so, you know, I've. I listened to a lot of true crime podcasts and a lot of the true crime podcasts that I listen to a lot of times, involvement, domestic abuse situations, you know, with married couples. And there's a lot of stats that have been shared over that. And so this, this is the hard thing to talk about here with physical abuse. And a lot of times it goes hand in hand with the swearing at each other and with the, you know, berating each other and being just yelling at each other all the time. But statistics show that, especially when it comes to something like strangling, which I've heard on some of these, because I'm trying to understand, you know, why some, someone would do that. But sometimes it's because they were raised in an environment where they thought that's how you hashed it out. I mean, I'm not making excuses here at all, but it's like, in their mind, they don't even see it as abuse because they're like, well, that's what dad did to Mom. I mean, like, just to get her to stop being so crazy. I literally heard that on a podcast, and, like, my blood boiled. I was like, oh, my gosh. Because we have to make sure we know, you know, what a healthy relationship looks like. And it's not healthy to have to get your spouse in a chokehold when you feel like they're, you know, quote, hands crazy acting with, addressing you about something. I mean, that's never okay. I don't care how hard they're yelling at you or how hard that day was, or if even if they cussed at you, that's not licensed to get them in a chokehold. And there is a high likelihood that if they put you in a chokehold once and you somehow survive that the next time, you're not going to survive it. So you got to get. Get to a safe place. And I don't know the exact statistic, but it's like 80 something percent. Like, and I remember hearing that it.

It escalates.

It escalates, right? And so we have to say this is not okay. And, but this is the, the kicker of physical violence, of domestic violence, is that there's just, in our culture, it's, you know, people don't always believe them when they say, like, this is what's happening in my home. This is what my spouse did to me. And so you see so many of these people who are being beaten up and being abused time and time again staying because they have nowhere else to go. Because that's also what sometimes these abusers will do is they try to get you isolated and they try to get. To get you to where you're fully dependent on them, to the point where. To where they can keep on beating you and letting out all their aggression on you, and you have no place to go, and so you just keep taking it. But you guys, that is not love. And I think sometimes in. In some of these stories that I've heard and research that I've. I've seen over the years with domestic violence, I think sometimes people in these situations will convince themselves, well, it's because he loves me so much. It's because she loves me so much. But you guys, again, that is not love. Love is gentle. Love is kind. Love, you know, keeps no record of wrongs. You know, if you're keeping no records, and that's straight up from the Bible, why in the world are you punching that person? Why are you putting them in a chokehold or digging your nails into them or whatever it is, or berating them and just calling them every name in the book and saying just the nastiest things to them you can. That's not love. That's when we're completely. We've given full vent to anger and, and we need help. Like the person, the aggressor needs help, but also the one who has been wronged. You need help because it is, It's. It's a deep wound. It's trauma. So now there's trauma that you've got to deal with. And so it's going to take you guys maybe having that, you know, not even maybe having. I don't know what the length of time's going to be. You know, if this is like a first offense, you know, having time apart, making sure that person who, who was physically harmful goes to anger management and gets professional help on how to do this. But also, I would not get back in that house with that person until you know they're safe. I mean, you just can't. You can't risk it for yourself and for your children.

If you have kids, you got to be safe. You cannot justify any level of physical abuse.

You just can't.

But the one that gets a little more difficult and easy, becomes easier for us to justify, is verbal abuse.

Yeah.

And I know a lot of couples, you know, individuals will stay in a verbally abusive situation just because they convince themselves, like, well, I probably deserve that or whatever. But guys, listen, we're not talking about, we say verbal abuse. We're not just talking about having disagreement or even a very, you know, heated disagreement. We're talking about when there is a climate or even incidents in your marriage where one spouse is, is physically berating the other. Name calling, really, name calling of any kind is a form of physical abuse.

You mean verbal abuse?

Verbal abuse, yeah. Sorry. Thank you. And, and using words to, to threaten, using words to dominate.

Right.

Like all of that, guys, is so, so, so far out of bounds. And so if you're doing that, if you're doing that to feel power or to have control in the relationship, then you've got to stop and you've got to apologize and you've got to get help. Because like we talked about in the last episode, the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. There's something going wrong on the inside, on a heart and mind level that you need to get healing and help with. And maybe it goes all the way back to you being abused as a kid. And like, you're still working through that. And now you find yourself just doing what you had done to you. And with your words and guys, you can break the cycle. You can say, it's going to stop with me and I'm going to choose a different path and I'm going to work to heal the. Even what I've broken through my words up to this point. If you're the one being verbally abused, then you've got to insist that it stop and that your spouse get help. And if they won't, then there might need. And we're not like big advocates for quick separation or anything like that, but you might need to get out of that home the same as you would for a physically abusive situation, because those words making your home an unsafe place. And physical abuse often escalates into verbal abuse, often escalates into physical abuse.

Right.

And so we can't justify it either. Our words have so much power, guys. There is power in our words to build up or to tear down. And if your spouse's words are consistently tearing you down and ripping you apart, then that's. That's not love, that's not marriage. And you need to, you need to get help. You need to get safe. And, and I know that you know this, this podcast, our hope with it is that it's just a wake up Call for some to recognize. Oh my goodness. You know, without even meaning to, I've fallen into a pattern of giving verbal abuse or justifying the verbal abuse my spouse has given to me. And today's the day that, that we're going to decide. It's, it's changing.

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Wow.

Absolutely. And I just want to share a story of hope with you. So we have some friends, Jamie and Lisa, who are very open about their journey in their marriage and. But they were at that point where they were just swearing at each other on a daily basis. And these are believers, you know, I mean, these are believers that just found themselves in a communication rut where it was just, they were in, you know, having a lot of stress in their life, busy careers, raising kids, and they just were not communicating in a healthy way to the point where they literally found themselves in separate cars driving to an attorney's office to file for separation or divorce while roll. They rolled down their window. I mean literally this literally happened. They rolled down their windows and were so angry. They were slinging, cussing at each other, pointing at each other, going down the highway. So like putting their lives at risk. They were so mad and angry and just, they said they would say the most awful, awful things to each other. And I, I don't know what happened at that attorney's office or if it was a church service. Do you remember how it went? But something got their attention.

Yeah.

And they were like, we can't continue this way. Like something's got to get. Cause even if we do go towards divorce, we have children, we gotta a better way, you know. And so they decided to give the. Their marriage another shot. They're like, we're going to do, we're going to at least try. So they enrolled themselves in this class at church and did the hard work. And it was over a period, a pretty long period of time.

Yeah, it was. And it was a, it was a program the church had that they, they committed to it. They, the first few weeks were just brutal. They hated it. They hated having to sit by each other. They were in a really dark place. But God started to soften both their hearts. They both started to take responsibility for how they had, you know, contributed to the marriage breakdown. And they both committed to doing the work to really have healing. And, guys, I'm telling you, they, within a fairly short amount of time, maybe like six months, went from being just completely toxic in their relationship to having one of the healthiest marriages that I knew of. And before long until today. Yeah. And even many years later, they're still leading marriage classes, they're still mentoring other couples. They're still giving hope. And you might feel stuck in the situation you're in and think, man, this is just how it's always going to be. But, guys, you don't have to stay there. I look at Jamie and Lisa and I am so thankful for their story and stories like theirs where two people said, we're not going to keep living this way. We're going to commit to God and to one another that we're going to turn this around and then doing the work to make it happen. And you can have not just a marriage that you can survive, but a marriage that you can thrive in and enjoy and that laughter can replace that anger. Guys, it is possible. If you need help to get there, we've got a team here to help you take those first steps@xomarriage.com help. You can set up a phone call or a Skype call with, with one of our wonderful marriage mediators to help you take those first steps. All right, now it's time to transition.

The Q and A. We love the Q and A.

Thank you. For those who send in questions@nakedmarriagepodcast.com or on any of our social media channels. And thanks for those who just follow us on social media, we're aveandashleywillis on Instagram. You can just search our names on Facebook. We would love to connect with you there. Today's question says this. My wife always reads romance novels, which I have no issue with if they're just normal Hallmark channel kinds of novels. But I found a few days ago, my wife has been reading erotic novels since 2015. Can erotic novels of this type cause someone to reject their husband or wife? And how do I approach my wife with this great, great question? We talk a lot about pornography, which is, you know, tends to refer to, like, visual aspects of sexual things of a sexual graphic nature. Graphic sexual nature. Usually in photo images or more likely in video form, but something you can actually look at and see. But there's this kind of word porn out there that is mostly consumed by women, whereas the visual porn is mostly consumed by men, even though there's plenty of crossover on both fronts. But the word porn, the erotic romance novels, romance in quotation marks. I'm making quotation mark fingers if you're watching on YouTube, where it's real, it's vivid description of graphic sexual acts kind of woven into a kind of a steamy plot line to just sort of stitch together the, the actual sexual content of the book. And. Yeah, and, and this is a lot of, A lot of women read this and, and it can cause some issue because just like regular pornography, it creates fantasy in your mind that often excludes your spouse and it causes you to have lust for either the characters in this book or the actors on screen, where that lust is robbing you of kind of the intimacy. So I think it's certainly something to talk about. It's something that we're not trying to be the prude police here by saying don't read stuff or watch stuff if it's got anything, even with a hint of steaminess in it. But, but you know, you know, when you're watching or reading something and it's like, this is just for me to get off and this is, I mean.

That'S just the truth. I know we're speaking very frankly, but it is, it's, it's basically word porn. And it really, I, I bet if you did like a brain scan, and I think there's studies on these, if you, you know, scan someone watching pornography, like, you know, the visual watching, you know, a video of people having sex, and you also scan the brain of a woman reading an erotic scene from an erotic novel. Um, I'm sure the same parts of the brain are lighting up because it is, it's, it's a turn on. It's meant usually to be a means to an end of sexual satisfaction. It often leads to masturbation, which we talked a lot about, you know, kind of replacing that need that we have for our spouse sexually. And so. And I don't know if that's what's going on with, with your wife. You know, to the husband who actually wrote us, his main question though was, will this make her ultimately reject me? And that just breaks my heart because basically what I hear this guy saying is, is she gonna be so into these scenarios in these erotic novels that I'm just not enough?

Yeah.

And man, I mean, I bet if, if his wife is listening, I bet that she, she would be so sad to know that that's how that's making him feel. And it's the same with pornography, you know, feeling like you're not enough. And. And so I would just. I would talk to her about it. I don't know how he found out about this, if they've actually had a conversation, but I would talk to her about it and say, listen, I get that you are a sexual woman, and, you know, and I get that there's desires and things there, but the fact that you're reading these sex scenes that are, you know, it's beyond a steaminess. I mean, they're actually descriptive sex scenes, very similar to pornographic scenes, as if you were to watch them. And it just makes me feel like I'm not enough. And, you know, I know you probably wouldn't like it if I'm watching porn regularly. And to me, this is the same. And so can we. Can we talk more about this? And. And if I, you know, can we open up the discussion for. For our sex life? Like, let this be kind of a. A place to just talk about your sex life and say, you know, this really, you know, this hurts my feelings in essence, but also it makes me wonder if there's, you know, something more that you desire. And I'd love to fulfill that. But can we both be healthy about where our eyes and where our minds are going when it comes to sex? Because I want to have a strong marriage. And if we have, you know, erotica novels that we keep on having on a fantasy reel in our brain or pornography in the same fashion, then we're not really fully having, you know, a marriage bed that is pure. I mean, we look for that pure marriage bed. And I know that that's really our aim. And so we have to be willing to not do things, you know, like the world says are okay to do.

So true. And in our new book, the Counterfeit Climax, which we've talked about a lot, because I just so believe in the message of it to help with kind of issues in anything related to sex in your marriage. And really, the counterfeit things like porn and even these types of romance novels can be that rob us of the real thing. And so check out that book, audiobook or hardcover, read it, listen to it, and then discuss it with your spouse. And I think that it could create some understanding and help you both sort of see this whole issue in a new light and have healthy conversations about it and take the fantasy from just external stuff through these books to really being able to experience that fantasy and freedom just with one another, the way God intended. So thank you for your question. Thanks to all of you guys for listening and watching. We appreciate you so much, and we'll look forward to seeing you next time. Sam.