Can an "Open Marriage" be a Healthy Marriage?

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Naked Marriage podcast. We are Dave and Ashley Willis, and on this podcast, we undress the truth about sex, intimacy and lifelong love. And we are so glad to be back into our longer episodes. And we have an exciting topic for you today.

Yeah, that's right. We can't wait to dive in. I wish this was a video podcast because you, my love, are looking stunning today.

Oh, my goodness.

Even brought your pink glasses, which are just like irresistibly cute. I'm gonna have a hard time concentrating. You know, it's gonna be fun today. And hey, thank you. A quick shout out. Thank you. For those who've been leaving reviews. We read every single one of those and are so encouraged by the reviews you're leaving on itunes. Wherever it is you're listening to this, you can listen, of course. You know, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube. We put all these episodes on YouTube. But your reviews are really, really helping others discover it. In fact, I've seen that this podcast is showing up on, on podcast charts all around the world. Canada, I saw Saudi Arabia the other day. So wherever you're listening, thank you for tuning in and thank you for helping us spread the word because together we're, we're getting the word out and strengthening strength marriages along the way. And that really, really is what this is all about. Like Ashley said, today's topic is a really good one. And then stick around to the end because we've added a Q and A segment and the question we're going to tackle at the end of this episode is really, really a good one. So let's dive in.

We have a very interesting topic today and one that we haven't addressed quite yet, but it was in the media recently in a very interesting article and from a place that has a lot of influence. And so we want to talk about it.

Yeah, and it's really an alarming trend. And it's not just from one media outlet. I've seen it in the New York Times, a very prominent article. I've seen it from the Gottman Institute, which is a very reputable secular, research based marriage and relationship place. I've seen it on television. And what we're talking about is this trend of open marriages or kind of a fancy word that people are assigning to it is this polyamorous trend, which essentially means having many loves or many lovers. And this is a thing that people are talking about in culture saying, is this okay? The article in the New York Times was kind of celebrating this as another lifestyle within marriage to kind of make marriage more exciting, to make it more sustainable, to help the spouse with kind of a lower sex drive meet that sexual needs while still remaining in a committed relationship. You know, we see different versions of this on TV reality shows like Seeking.

Sister Wife or Sister Wives, you know.

Yeah. And so, and people with those will even point to the Old Testament and say, well, what is polygamy? Okay. And so we just want to address this stuff head on because we want this to be a place where we're addressing everything head on and trying to do it from a biblical practical perspective. And just right out of the gate, let me say that this is a bad idea. Any kind of non monogamous marriage is not a marriage. It's something else. And it's something that is not gonna end well. It's not gonna be healthy. But we wanna talk about the reasons.

Why it's so right, because it is so. It's becoming something that is just talked about more and more in our culture because we're seeing it on television, we're seeing it in articles, it's on social media and we have people, I think that people. We're not shaming anyone. I just wanna, I wanna say that really quickly. If this is something you struggle with or even pondered in your mind, you've never told anybody about it and you're hearing us talk about it, oh my goodness, they're making me feel ashamed. I don't want this to make you feel ashamed, but I want this to be a wake up call.

Yeah, definitely.

Because they make it look really fun and like savvy and like, oh, you're so above, you know, the rest of the world. If you can do this, you're not.

Chained down by yourself.

You're not chained down, you're enlightened. And that's just, it's a lie from the enemy and it's ruining marriages. We've literally known people who have entertained this idea, who have lived out this idea and it has busted up their marriages. And, and marriages is that it's, you know, they've ended up getting married several times out of it and it's busted it up. They've tried to do swinging, they've tried to do, you know, open marriage type things and it just doesn't work. And so we're not trying to shame you, but we're trying for this to be a wake up call because it isn't something to entertain. I think how people fall into this is they're lonely and they're like, well, maybe, maybe it would spice things up. If I bring in another partner or they're not sexually satisfied, like Dave was talking about, and they're like, maybe that's the answer. Cause I don't want to have an affair. And they consider this. This is what we do. We are justifying things and acting like having another partner and calling it polyamorous or calling it an open marriage makes it not an affair. And that is just a lie. It is having an affair. Yeah, absolutely.

Because they think, well, if I can get my spouse to agree to these kind of new terms of the marriage, of the partnership, then it's not infidelity, it's not breaking trust. But listen, you and your spouse could agree on something that's terribly wrong. You could agree it's a good idea to go kill somebody, and it doesn't make it right. In that case, it doesn't make it legal or anything else. And God's word is here to protect us, to provide the guardrails, to help us know how and where we should go with our lives and relationships. And when we start trying to redefine those core laws and principles that God put in place, we're only hurting ourselves. When we remove the guardrail from an interstate, you're going to veer into oncoming traffic. You're going to hurt yourself and others. When you remove the guardrails from a marriage, you're going to cause irreparable damage to yourself, to your family, and to others. And sex is the most powerful guardrail. God gives us so much freedom in marriage to express ourselves sexually with each other, and that's a wonderful gift. We think that married, monogamous Christian people should be having the best sex on the planet. And we talk a lot about that, both in this podcast and in our Naked Marriage book. But when you open up the floodgates and you say, you know what? I'm not getting my need met here, or maybe we should try something new. We should bring in other partners. We should open up the guardrails, man. It's going to end very, very badly. We have some friends who were in a situation of frustration in marriage. And one, the husband was really sexually frustrated. He felt like his need wasn't getting met, and it was causing a lot of stress and friction. They ended up going to see a counselor.

And.

And this counselor was a secular counselor buying into a lot of the trends that we're seeing in the world. And this counselor, this professional, actually encouraged them to have an open marriage. She said, I think that the solution you're looking for is to have an open marriage is to just say, you know what, we're going to be committed to each other in terms of our partnership and our kids and our relationship, but we're going to remove the shame and the boundaries, and we're going to let each other explore outside this marriage for other sexual fulfillment and companionship. And thankfully, our friends, who are, you know, strong Christians, and they know God's word, they recognize this to be a lie. They recognize this to be very, very dangerous. And so they immediately stopped seeing that counselor. And they said, we're clearly not going to do that, and we're going to commit to, you know, to God's principles, which is going to be the only thing that can really lead us to healing. But if you're in a vulnerable place and maybe you don't have the worldview that. That our friends have or that we have that's based on God's word, then I can see where this myth could be something that sounds appealing. If you're in a situation of vulnerability and frustration, you're like, well, nothing seems to be working. Maybe we need to just open up all the different options. And this seems like it could be an exciting one, but, man, it is never, ever, ever going to end well. I mean, we can talk the statistics of what this does in terms of causing damage to kids in relationships that see this as a normal thing, what it causes in damage to the relationship, what it causes in damage to your own mind, your own emotions, your own health. There's, gosh, we could go on and on and on. I'm just still kind of dumbfounded. The reason I can't even hardly form words around some of this is that this has really been jarring to me to see so many reputable places. You know, the Gottman Institute in particular, which is a place that I've quoted, a place that has had some good advice for relationships to essentially celebrate this whole polyamorous trend as something that could be a good thing. It was disappointing to me and frankly, very frightening to me that a reputable place that people look to and listen to would be giving advice that could just cause such irreparable damage to people's marriages and families if they. If they take it to heart. And so we kind of felt like almost, you know, a sense of urgency to come to you with this topic, which wasn't even really planned that far in advance. We just said, this is something we've got to address, because we're living in a world where people are buying into this, and we've got to say we've got to point back to the truth of what God says about marriage, which is really the whole point of everything we do in this podcast as part of the team at Marriage Today, we want to just point people back to the truth of God's unchanging, beautiful plan for a husband and a wife. And this is far outside that plan.

Absolutely. And I just want to say, too, for those of you who are not familiar with the Gottman Institute, they are not a Christian organization. They don't claim to be a Christian organization. So they do. You know, it's not surprising, I guess, when you think about it more, that they would consider this because they are going kind of off cultural trends and things. And so, you know, I guess the more we thought about it, we were like, well, I mean, if you don't have God's word as your roadmap to marriage, then I guess your mind and your heart could go all kinds of different places and consider all kinds of different things. But the bottom line is, just like we say in our Naked Marriage book, God created marriage. He literally created marriage. And Adam and Eve were the very first married couple. One man, one woman. And when we walk down that aisle and we say those vows, one of the vows we say is forsaking all others. And you can't forsake all others and be completely committed to your spouse. When you invite the some other person into your relationship, whether you both agree on it or not, it right then, and there is a form of infidelity. And I wanna say this too, is when you bring in that other person, you immediately stop focusing on your relationship with your spouse because your mind and heart are divided. And so you'll never have the marriage that you could have. When you hone in on what God has called you to and what the two of you are called to as a married couple, and God brought the two of you together, you can't. You can't focus on that when you have this other person in the picture and you're stepping out of the bounds of what God has called you to in marriage. And so when we step out of those boundaries that God has put in place, we will get burned. Yeah, every time. And they're there for a reason. You know, I know I've said this before on the podcast, but when you look, especially when it comes to sex, it's very binding, and it's meant to be binding specifically for a husband and wife. It's a gift that God designed specifically for a husband and a wife. And so I Look at it like a fireplace. It's a fire within the fireplace. The fireplace is the marriage. And, and we wanna keep the fire burning. But the moment that fire goes outside of the fireplace, it is destructive. It burns everything in its path. But when it stays in that fireplace and it stays burning, it's. It, you know, it gives warmth to the home. It's a good thing. And so we need to be really careful where our thoughts go and where, what kind of actions we take. And the minute we start entertaining these ideas, we need to see that again as a wake up call to say, wait a minute, we need to talk about this. And we need to get some professional help and we need to seek out a Christian counselor. There are even some Christian counselors that do really focus on sex. Because I think so many times, for some odd reason, and I think this is changing. Thank goodness it's changing. But the church, for some reason, sometimes they just don't know quite how to address sex because they're afraid they're gonna make it too appealing, that, like, teens are just gonna run and start having sex, and they just don't know how to address it in a healthy way sometimes. And so they don't talk about it at all.

But.

But sex, again, is a gift from God for marriage. So when it comes to married couples, we need to be able to talk about this. And if we're having sexual issues, if we're feeling like our needs aren't being met or, you know, we have some kind of intimidation when it comes to sex, or maybe there's baggage that we brought into the marriage. And so we have this shame when it comes to sex. We need to talk about these things because when we don't, that's where you see people getting lonely or extra horny. And yes, I just said horny on this podcast. But when you are lonely and you're horny, you're gonna make wrong decisions. I mean, seriously, right, sweetie?

I'm sorry, I'm just distracted. Cause, you know, you said horny, I got excited.

That is the truth. We talked about this on the way here. We were like, I'm gonna say horny on air because it's the truth. Like when people go through prolonged times of being lonely or being sexually frustrated, they're gonna make decisions they wouldn't otherwise make.

Yeah. I mean, to kind of bring in some comic relief. I think it was Robin Williams who said, it's God who gave man both a brain and a penis, but only enough blood to operate one at a time. And. And I Just thought that was really funny. But, you know, it's true. We do make out of sometimes. You know, if sex is the driving force behind all of our decisions in a reckless way, it can lead us to some really, really dark places. And so we have to follow Christ, not our feelings. And if we're following Christ, our feelings will usually catch up, and it's always gonna lead us back to the marriage. And you know, real quick, we don't wanna camp out on this topic forever, but I do wanna address kind of the awkwardness that some people will bring into this argument of saying, doesn't the Bible endorse multiple partners? Because you look at the Old Testament and there are examples of polygamy, which means, you know, multiple wives. And so what about that? And I want to address that head on, frankly. So from the very beginning, God created one man, one woman. And his original design for marriage is one man, one woman. Now, in the ancient world, for a brief period of time, there was kind of an exception that was made to this. It was never part of God's plan. That exception happened because in the ancient world, for a woman, as a way to protect women, for a woman, her social net, her protection came through having children of her own and being part of a family structure. There was great shame and abandonment that was seen for a woman who was childless, didn't have a husband, didn't have children. There was no social network to help her. There was no way for her to make a living. It was all rooted in family. Now, in the ancient world, because of a genocide that had happened against boys in particular, when the Jews were in ancient Israel and the firstborn of all the boys were killed by the Egyptians, and then the wars that happened, there were probably twice as many women as there were men. This created a huge conundrum. There was a problem. It was like, half these women aren't going to have a husband, which means they're not going to have children. They're not going to have that safety net. And so for a very specific problem, in a very specific period of time, an exception was made that was never part of God's original designer plan where people could, in that setting, enter into that bigamy or polygamous situation. But it never ended well. Even for people that did it as a way to provide that social net for each other, it never ended well. There was always division, there was always friction, There was always huge family drama. And when Jesus came on the scene, he reaffirmed God's original design and intent for marriage, that it was One man, one woman for life. That's the only design for marriage that Jesus ever talked about. One man, one woman for life. And in the New Testament, the entire New Testament, we don't see one example of any leader within the New Testament, any follower of Christ living in any marital situation that was anything other than one man, one woman for life. In fact, in Paul's writings, he said, you can't be a leader in the church if you're a husband of more than one wife. It was a huge. It was a huge no, no. And so from beginning to end, the Bible affirms this pattern of one man, one woman for life. And anything else, any deviation from that, for whatever reason, is always going to end badly. It's always going to create drama. It's always going to hurt people. And so don't buy into the myth. Don't drink the Kool Aid. One study says that 92% of open marriages end in divorce. And that's a study from 2010. And so I would assume now, I would guess that's even higher. And so, guys, this is not a way to help your marriage. This is a way to justify very selfish, reckless sexual needs outside of marriage, which never, ever ends well. And so the key is focus on having a great sex life and a great marriage with your spouse. And every resource we have is aimed at pointing you in that direction.

It's so true. And that's why, I mean, we call this podcast the Naked Marriage, because it's all about being fully known by God and by one another. And, you know, we can't do that when we are of divided mind. We are supposed to focus on God first and then each other second if you're married. And that's how it has to be. And we can't fully know our spouse when we're just, you know, lusting after this other person. And this could be if you're actually, you know, engaging in an open marriage or an affair or if you're just fantasizing, you know, we really need to get our thoughts in the right direction as well. And so I just encourage you. If this was a wake up call for you today, I'm so thankful. Thank God for that. Because we need those wake up calls, all of us, Dave and I included. We need wake up calls to point us in the right direction. So I just, I praise God if you did have a wake up call listening to this. But the next step is getting help and recognizing that it's a problem and recognizing that even though it is a problem, that's not a bad thing. The reason we have these wake up calls and realize there's a problem is because God's saying you need to get help. And you can get help. And I just wanna tell you that, you know, God can help you. A Christian counselor can help you, you know, talk about it with a trusted friend again, who loves God, loves you, loves your spouse, and is for your marriage and get through these problems, work on them together, fight for your marriage, don't fight against your spouse. And I promise you will see so much blessing come out of that. You can. We'll grow closer than ever before. You know, that's the whole thing about having a naked marriage is there's no secrets, there's nothing you're hiding, there's nothing you're keeping from one another. And that's the kind of marriage that God wants us to have.

Boom. I wish you had a mic to drop. That was good stuff. And that leads into our Q and A section for the day. Remember now, in all of our podcasts moving forward, we're going to take time at the end to answer a very specific question. If you have a question you want us to answer, you can go to nakedmarriagepodcast.com and on nakedmarriagepodcast.com there will be a place for you to submit questions. And we would love to hear one from you. But here is today's question. My husband likes to be the, quote, head of the household and make the money and the decisions. He takes what I think to heart and is so good to me. And I know the man being the head is biblical. However, how can I reconcile this as a feminist or equalist, you know, someone who believes men and women are totally equal in every way and not feel like he wants to dominate all things in my life. Man, this is a good question. It is.

Yeah.

We've had really this come up in a lot of different ways of trying to reconcile this, this biblical pattern of male headship within marriage with this, you know, this modern world we're living in where, you know, men and women have equal opportunities in every way as they should. But what does that look like in the home? Like, how does a biblical marriage in a modern setting look like? Is man still supposed to be the head? What does this mean? Sweetie, I'm going to, I'm going to. I'm gonna let you lead off on this one.

Well, first of all, I wanna say this is a very common question, I think in this modern day and age that many Christian women ponder, because you know, Absolutely. I just wanna say first off that we are equal. God made us equal beings. And I'm sure many of you have heard the whole story about how God took Adam's rib to make Eve. And that means it's like the middle part of the body. And so there's this equalness here. And we're both equal in the eyes of God. We both have the same kind of worth. There's nothing that says that man is better than woman, that there's not the same kind of worth. So I just wanna say that. Cause I think that was part of her question as well. But I do understand it. It's very clear in the Bible that God designed man to be the head. And with that comes a lot of responsibility. Okay. So I think that some women have taken this as, oh, he has more worth than me. But we need to understand that that's not at all what the Bible is saying.

No, it's really not at all. I mean, I think in most marriages, and certainly in mine, the wife is the smarter one, right? So, like, I don't know about that. No, she definitely is. She was valedictorian of her class. And, you know, I was not anywhere close. So that's never been an issue. Now, when God's saying, I want the man to have headship, he is certainly not saying man makes all the decision, man rules with an iron fist or anything like that. What he is saying, to kind of echo what Ashley said, is that in his design and in a way that we can ask him why exactly he did this, when we get to heaven, he puts an extra layer of responsibility and accountability on the man in a way where your husband stands before God to give an account for his life. He is going to be challenged by God and asked by God how he led his family in ways and to a level of accountability that you as the wife will not, of course, you as the wife, are accountable for how you loved and how you. How you were as a husband, a wife, a mom, all of those things. But we've got this extra layer of responsibility within that dynamic of the family. It starts. There's a passage in Ephesians you can read, if you want to kind of read for yourself, what God outlined in the Bible. It starts with mutual submission, which I think is the part we forget. It says, husbands and wives submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. So really, the husband isn't the head of the marriage. Christ is the head of the marriage. Christ is the head of the marriage. Meaning that both of you, in submission to Christ, will follow his lead and will follow his plan and his principle together. Now, the man underneath Christ has a unique responsibility to lead his family closer to Christ and in Christ's example, to be a servant. Leadership. In the Christian world, leadership, as we follow Christ is wrapped up in service and sacrifice, not in domination, not in ordering others around. You know, the Bible says that's the world's way of leadership. Christ's way of leadership is to serve. So the man needs to be the chief servant of the home. He needs to be the one who is the first, the first to go when a sacrifice is to be made. He's the one who needs to, you know, roll up his sleeves and dive in with whatever the challenge is. And also the first to sacrifice. You know, he's the one that needs to jump in front of a bus to push his family out of the way when it comes to that. Because just as Christ gave his life for the church, he calls husbands to be willing to give their lives for their wives and for their children. And so if you've got a husband who's willing to do those things, and.

It sounds like in this question she.

Does, to die for you, to serve you, to protect you, to provide for you, then yes, you as the wife should have huge input on every decision. I think that especially in any decision, that's a matter of preference. I think husbands should submit to your wife on any matters of preference. What the wall color should be, where we're gonna eat dinner, what you wanna watch on tv, what house you wanna buy. Most decisions are preference decisions. And a way that a husband should serve his wife is to defer to her on all issues of preference. But on issues of principle, when there is a place where maybe you two can't agree and there's not a majority, it's one to one. And which way are you gonna go on those few life decisions of do we go left, do we go right? Then both of you seek the Lord, and I believe he will lead you to a place of unity. But in those very rare instances when you're both seeking the Lord and you don't have unity on it, then I believe that God challenges the wife to say, follow your husband's lead on this because he's the one who's going to be held accountable for this decision. And if you support and if you love and if you cheer him on and continue to seek God through the process, then you're going to have done your job. And really the responsibility for that decision and its outcome is going to fall on him in a very unique way and so support him in that. And I know that in a world that is. In a world of feminism, in a worldly way of feminism, that's a tough pill to swallow to say that one spouse should ever have any kind of authority over the other. But in God's economy, where it's rooted in love and service, this really is a beautiful thing. And it's never to minimize someone. It's really to protect everyone involved. And we've written a lot more about this. We have kind of blogs that dive into this in more detail.

And I would say, too, that in the question at the end, she was just saying, you know, I'm afraid, how can I look to my husband as a leader of our home and respect that leadership while being a feminist and also not allowing him to eventually just dominate my life? And she was being very vulnerable with that. But that's what I believe. It's rooted in fear. It's a fear that you can't fully trust your husband. It's a fear that, you know, if he is the leader and he knows he's the leader, what's he gonna do with that kind of power?

I've gotta hold something back, right?

Exactly. And that's not how God designed it. It's not how God designed it at all. I think in most time. Most of the time, just like Dave was saying, we're gonna. We should talk about everything. We should try to be unified on everything. But there are those rare moments where we don't know which way to go, and they are very rare. I think most of the time, God's gonna. He's not gonna call you to something where you're both not feeling a peace about it. I don't think this means, like husbands, you just make whatever decision while you're.

No, no, that's while your wife's in the corner crying and reckless.

That is not what we're saying. Yes. So, you know, most of the time, you're gonna be able to work it out. You're gonna have peace. And that's when you both are submitting to the Lord. And so, you know, it's in those verses in Ephesians, the first thing it says is that you both submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And I just love, love that because that's showing that mutual submission there. And that's really where we start. But when it comes to the leadership, to the male leadership in the home, it really is, again, about responsibility. It's not about worth. It's not about the man having more worth than the woman or better insights than the woman. It's really just kind of giving again, like a roadmap to what God has called us to do and to how we can work through things. But it is not meant to abuse. And that's why he follows up that those verses about leadership with you should be willing to lay down your life for your wife and that you are.

Laying down your life husbands, and you're doing that through constant service, through you should be the first to serve, the first to defer. The leadership again, that Christ modeled for us is one that washed feet and one that served and one that ultimately gave his life. And husbands that, that. That is what God calls us to. That's the kind of husbands we're called to be. And if you're serving and loving and sacrificing for your wife and family in that way and following the Lord in that way, then you're not going to be domineering. You're going to be the safest place on earth for your wife to trust her heart and the safest place on earth for her to follow you as you follow Christ. But if you're not following Christ and you're not doing those things, then don't expect her to just blindly go along with your demanding ways, because that's not healthy and that's not biblical. So the whole idea here is that we all trust Christ, and as we trust Christ, we trust each other and love and serve each other. So great questions. Send those questions in. NakedMarriagePodcast.com is where you can send them. Man, this has been a great episode. Special thanks to our producer, Brittany Wilcox, and our sound engineer, Chris Stetson, a couple of audio ninjas over here making this happen, and the whole team at Marriage Today, the ministry that we're a part of. In fact, if you go to marriagetoday.com you can get access to incredible videos, articles, teachings from Jimmy Evans, from us, from others. Just a huge assortment of resources to help you. And one resource in particular, we always like to point out is our book, the Naked Marriage, which will really help you be transparent and vulnerable in marriage. And it will help you in every aspect, emotionally, spiritually, sexually. I think every aspect of your marriage can improve. So go to nakedmarriagebook.com or Amazon. And an audiobook is also available. So if you're not tired of hearing our voices, you can hear us narrate this book.

That's right. Thank you guys so much for joining us on this episode, and we will see you next time.