I Thought I Married the Wrong Person | Jimmy Evans | The Naked Marriage Podcast

Hey, there we are, Dave and Ashley Willis. Welcome back to the Naked Marriage Podcast, where we uncover God's design for lifelong love.

And we are so excited to be back doing this podcast again. So thank you again to the Naked Nation, all the listeners out there, for your faithfulness to jump back in with us as we get rolling again with the Naked Marriage podcast. This is our second episode back, and it is a good one because we are going to be interviewing this ministry's founder, the guy I call the godfather of marriage ministry, Pastor Jimmy Evans, and he's going to share some profound wisdom with us. So you're going to want to stick around, as always. We're always going to answer a question at the end, and today's question is a good one, and Pastor Jimmy's going to weigh in on that with us as well. So stick around to the end. Let's dive into today's episode. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Well, you guys are in for a real treat with this conversation. Pastor Jimmy, welcome back to the Naked Marriage podcast.

Thanks so much.

The godfather of marriage. Marriage ministry.

That's right.

Is. Is among us today.

That sounds a little bit, you know, criminal.

Well, it's meant to be a compliment because, yeah, I'm sure familiar. Our listeners are very familiar with Pastor Jimmy Evans, the founder of this ministry, also the founder of the Tipping Point ministry, which we'll talk about a little bit today. Prolific author with not only marriage books, but also end time resources. And his. His book Marriage on the Rock and Four Laws of Love are classics in the marriage space.

Yes.

I know you in your counseling practice still, like, recommend them, and people are impacted deeply by.

They are. Pastor Jimmy, I didn't even get to share this with you, but in my biblical counseling and coaching practice, one of my favorite marriage resources is the Four Laws of Love. And I'm telling you, it's just one of the most practical biblical books on marriage out there. And I just love seeing, like, having a front row seat to the difference it makes in couples lives. Like, you see light bulbs go off in, oh, I can actually do marriage God's way and, and have success at it, as you always say.

I love that.

Yeah.

Thank you.

It's true. And it hurts my feelings a little that Ashley never recommends any of my books.

That is not true. I think they would think I was

top of the reading list. She's like, you got to read Jimmy Evans. They're like, anything from Dave? She's like, you don't need anything From Dave.

Not true, not true.

But no, we, we, we've all been impacted by your ministry. So welcome.

Yeah, great to be here. And you guys are, you know, you're, I think you're making Marriage podcast is like one of the most popular podcasts in America. And so, you know, you guys are in and out of the park too.

Well, we, we love, love getting to do it. It's, it's, it's so exciting to be back. The Naked Nation, as we call the. The listeners are just an amazing group. So thank you guys for, for listening and sharing. We have a great conversation today. So Pastor Jimmy, bring us up to speed a little. There's some really exciting things happening with XO with vision retreats with content to equip churches and individual couples. So tell us a little bit about what's going on.

Well, Karen and I have been teaching people for many years how to have vision retreats and it transformed our marriage. And even when our marriage, after our marriage had been saved, when we started having vision retreats, it just took another level. This last weekend we had a vision retreat here at our facility and we had about 20 couples. Next month we'll have 40 couples. And it's just the two day experience is fantastic and we're going to have those all year long. And next week we have one. If people are watching right now, you can go to XO Marriage. We may already be full, but if we have a slot available if you want to come next week. But we have later in the year too. It's fantastic. Couples absolutely love it. We are creating a lot of new video resources this year. Some will be on XO now and then, some will just be a la carte available to people. And so that's something that we're really excited about. And church resources, churches are on the front line of helping people in their marriages, as you guys know. And so we want to help resource churches and to create a lot of new resources there. So we have a lot of things happening at EXO Marriage that are very exciting. Awesome.

Yeah, I love that.

I love it too. And before we actually started recording this conversation, I was having a really great conversation with Pastor Jimmy just, you know, before we started hitting record and it was all on marriage and kind of the state of things with marriage and family. And I would love for you to share that with the listeners because it was just really enlightening and really just points to why we do what we do. But can you talk about that, Pastor Jimmy?

Yeah. You know, in Genesis chapter one and two, God created marriage in Genesis chapter three. Satan attacked marriage when you read Genesis three. So that's the fall of man. Well, Satan didn't have anything to do with Adam when he was by himself. God created Adam first. But once Eve was created and marriage was created, Satan attacked. Genesis 3 is the fall of marriage. Satan hates marriage. He's always attacking it. And so in America today, we're depopulating. The birth rate has never been as low as it is now. Many young people aren't getting married. They're waiting until their late twenties if they do get married. And then if they do get married, many are not having children like they did before. And I was mentioning Ashley in the Dallas Fort Worth area. They're closing schools. They've closed an amazing amount of schools because they don't have the kids. They just don't have the population. And so now Muslims are populating. They're having seven children per household. Wow. And we're having less than two. You have to have 2.1 children per household just to keep a population the same. And now we have less than that. And so the future looks bleak. However, you know, Charlie Kirk left legacy, and he and Erica and Charlie was going to campuses all over America telling young people, get married and have children. Yeah. And that's. They need Jesus first, but they need to get married and have children.

That's a. Yeah. Our son was at one of those. One of those rallies last year with Charlie, and. And that message, it stuck out to him because you're not hearing it. They're not hearing that. They're saying, no. The message they're hearing is just, you know, pursue career at all costs. And Charlie's coming with this biblical mandate of saying, hey, get married, have kids. Family's your greatest legacy.

That's right.

And I'm so glad that message is getting out there, even in the tragedy of his death. One, I guess, redemptive aspect of that is it's given a bigger microphone to his message.

Yes.

And I hope that that continues.

And there's revival happening in many high schools, many colleges. And that revival really. And he was an agent of that. But the. But the revival really is the younger people today are going back to more traditional thinking, and that's a real positive thing. So what we do, you know, if you. If you give people Jesus in marriage, they're rich. If you give people Jesus, but they're not married. You know, God. God said it's not good for man to be alone. It's not good. It's not God's design. God made us for marriage. And the older that we get. We were talking. Actually, we were talking about having children. And, you know, having children is a sacrifice, but it's the greatest blessing in the world. Oh, yeah. You know, and the older they get. We've got five grandchildren, you know, and I say grandchildren are better than children. They say that grandchildren are the reward for not killing your children. And so. But it's just wonderful to have family and watch your kids grow up. And when you get later in life, you know, when you're not having children, you're later in life, you don't have people take care of you, you know, and that's the thing about children as you get older. We're in our 70s, Karen and I are. And we want to be, as we get older, around our kids and grandkids because they're going to be taking care of us at some point. So it's. It's a concerning, very concerning trend in America today. But there's hope. But. But people need to understand the importance of marriage.

Absolutely.

That's so good.

You know, I know a lot of people listening, especially maybe if they're not as familiar with your testimony. Maybe there's some wives listening and think, oh, if my. My husband was just like Pastor Jimmy, because he's probably been a perfect husband forever, since day one. The one thing I love about you and Karen is your authenticity and your transparency in sharing really, how difficult the early years were. And I know you've shared that powerful story many times, but I know a lot of our listeners haven't heard it. Could you just rewind the clock a little bit and tell us kind of how this whole journey started? Because I just think it's a profound story of you feeling like an unlikely candidate to step into such a large marriage ministry, but how God had to get ahold of you first and teach you what it means to be a husband. And that gives hope to those listening and watching right now that feel like I'm too. I could never do that. I could never be a leader in my family. I could never do any of these kind of things. But your story is. Is an inspiration for those.

Those people. Well, thank you. The. We got married at 19. We dated in high school. I was very. I was not a Christian, and I was not a good person. And a week before we got married, Karen told me she would marry me because, you know, my bachelor party was not a moral event. And when she found out about. Well, that's when I received Christ, was a week before we got married. Not because she told me she would marry me. It wasn't because of that. It was just because I was a good sinner. You know, I was really good at it. And I woke up, had a lot of friends, and woke up every day to sin. And I was successful at it, but it was empty. They're just not the joy that. And I'd heard the gospel. I had never said yes to Jesus because I didn't want change. But I got saved. And Karen found out about that, and we talked and we ended up getting married. But I was a terrible husband. Just didn't know anything about being a husband. And my only dream growing up was to be a professional athlete. And so that's all I wanted to do. And I wanted to play baseball, that was my favorite sport. But I had to have surgery on my elbow. And I was a pitcher, so that put me on a baseball. Then I wanted to be a golfer. And so I was obsessed with golf. So I was either working or golfing. And I just. I just was terrible. And I was a male chauvinist pig, too. I grew up in a home and a family of chauvinism where men were just better than women and women were there to serve the men. Karen didn't train well.

Unfortunately, he didn't get that memo.

So she. She would complain about me not being around and me golfing all the time. So we've been married about three years. And I told her one crying me one day about it, not in a bad way. And I just told her to get out of the house, to leave and pack up and leave and get out. And she went in the bedroom crying and. And I just wouldn't sit down in the living room. We had just been fighting all the time. Well, that morning I read my Bible every morning, went to church every Sunday. But, you know, I was just terrible, terrible husband. And I had read that morning where Jesus said, when the Holy Spirit comes, he'll lead you into all truth. And when I read that, it just kind of thought, is it true? You know, you all truth. And it just kind of stood out to me. Well, that night when she was crying in the bedroom, when I told her to leave, I went and sat in the living room and I remembered that verse again. And I said, holy Spirit, teach me how to be a husband. I don't know how. And when I said those words, it was like. What I thought was, I married the wrong woman and she's the problem. I strongly believe that the minute I said that prayer, it Was like all the deception fell off my mind. And the next instant I thought, I am the biggest jerk in the world and she's the most precious woman in the world. So I went and in the bedroom, called her I'm sorry. And the first time I'd ever said I'm sorry. Hung up my golf clubs, didn't play golf for three years. Next time I play golf, she told me to go play golf. That's you. She wanted you out. She.

I loaded old space.

Yeah. And so that it began, the healing process. Now, things were still chilly because just I'd done a lot of damage. But the next morning I woke up and I said, I need you to teach me how to be a husband. And the Lord led me to Genesis 2, Genesis 2, 24 and 25, which I didn't understand at all. For this cause man will leave his father and mother cleave unto his wife, they too should become one flesh. And man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed. And I read that, and the Lord just kept saying, read it again. And I just read it again. It just means nothing, you know, just one of the churchy things you hear, you know, And I probably read it 20 times. I just kept looking at it. All of a sudden I saw the four laws of marriage, the four laws of love book. That's where it came from. And I looked at it and I. When I saw it, I thought two things. One is, I've broken every law every day. I've broken every law of marriage every day. See, God creates. God doesn't create anything with chaos. He doesn't create anything to hurt us. Laws create order, consistency and safety. Without laws, think about the universe without loss. So a lot of people mistrust marriage because they say I have a 50% chance of failing. No, you have 100% chance of succeeding. So as a 22 year old young man by myself, without the help of anybody else, I saw the four laws of marriage. The second thing I thought was, I can do that. They're simple. They're not complicated. They're very simple. Marriage has to be first. You have to work at it. You have to be equal partners and you have to be careful. Those are the four laws of marriage. So I left that day and came back home that night. And I just started putting Karen first. I started working, trying to meet her needs. I started. Stopped being dominant. I was dominant. And I started being careful in the things that I said because verbally, I was just really terrible. And so, you know, after a week or two you know, we started enjoying each other again. After a month or two, we were deeply back in love and it completely healed our marriage. So that's where our marriage ministry came from. Well, then people started coming to us for help in marriage. You know, we'd go to church and stuff and people would start asking us for advice in marriage. We were thinking, why aren't you asking us? And so one day the pastor came up to me in a hall at church and he said, hey, I want to talk to you for a minute. So we went in his office, he said, I want you to come on staff as a marriage counselor. I said, I have no credentials for that. I was in business. I said, I have no credentials for that. He said, where? If I comes to you for marriage counseling as well, do it up here. So I went to work for the church as a pre marriage and marriage counsel Counselor. And after 10 months, he left and took a church in Florida. And I became the senior pastor for 30 years. But that's when exomarriage was born. During those years. So, you know, people look at us and say, my gosh, you know, you just, you know everything about marriage. We almost divorced. If it wouldn't have been for the grace of Jesus, I'd have been, I'd been divorced multiple times because I was just so completely ignorant. Man.

It's a powerful story.

It is. And like Dave said, over the years, we've heard it so many times, but I never tired of hearing it because it's so powerful. And I know in your book, you know, the four laws of love, you share that so poignantly. And I, you know, one of the laws, I'm not going to give all of them away because you guys go get the four laws of love. But one of the laws is a law of priority. And I, you know, whenever I'm meeting with a couple or we're meeting with a couple, I feel like this is one of those laws that a lot of people have trouble with because, you know, we tend to go where we feel like we're winning. And I think so many times people don't think they're winning at home. They feel like they're winning outside the home. Or maybe even for people, like maybe for a stay at home mom, she feels like she's winning at home with the kids, but not with her husband, you know, and the husband's like, every time he comes home, he feels like he's failing at something. And so what do you think is like one of the most powerful ways that a couple can really live out the law of priority where they're like, you know, I mean, it sounds so simple, but simple doesn't mean easy. Like, what's the first step they could do?

Well, there has to be a time. No technology, no children, every day. And one of the things that healed our marriage was tremendously helpful. There were two things, actually. One is we. We walked together every morning when the kids got old enough. We walked for an hour and a half every morning, and we would pray for 45 minutes and talk for 45 minutes, and we did that for many, many years. The other thing is we had evening time. Once the kids were. When they were young, we'd put them to bed. We didn't make them go to sleep. We let them read, but we went to bed. But we trained them. Mom and dad are gonna be alone now.

Yes.

And so we would go. We had a little sitting area in our bedroom, and we pop popcorn and stuff, and we go sit in the bedroom, and we just talk and just sit there. One of my favorite things to do, I was not good at communicating with Karen early. But you can't have telephones. I do a message called virtual marriage, and I give the statistics about smartphones. Smartphones destroy marriages. Many, many marriages today are being destroyed. Did you know that 10%. This is Naked Marriage podcast. 10% of spouses check their phone while they're having sex.

Oh, my goodness.

Wow. That's a real statistic.

That's wild.

While they're having sex.

Wild.

That's really good. During sex.

That's amazing.

You know, checking for a text or checking for social media or something. And it was so the phone. If you can't turn that phone off, you don't own it. It owns you. Yeah.

Yes.

And phone is so. And the other thing is, like a smartphone, it takes up two things. Your hands and your eyes. Guess what? You have to. Have to have a relationship. Touching and looking. You communicate with your eyes. And so people. Technology is drowning people's lives. So put the phones away. Don't put them in the bedroom. Put them away. Put them. No. No tv, no tablets. Just get an alone place, technology free, where you can sit face to face and talk. And then we would plan sex. So, you know, we didn't, you know, take a chance on spontaneity. You know, sometimes, you know, we have a quickie sex or something, but we would just say we had. Our code language was, we're going to be together Tuesday night. And so. And I would say, karen, rest up. Don't have any Rest. I'll do anything. I need you fresh. And so we would. And then the other thing we do is we say, we're going to have your night. We're going to have my night. Because her night looked different than my night. And so that way we were both meeting each other's needs. But you plan it. So some people say we're just too exhausted. Whatever. Well, if you're too exhausted to be together, get rid of something else. Don't get rid of your marriage.

Exactly.

You have to make sacrifices. And some families are just so stressed out. The kids are going everywhere, the couples going everywhere. They're always going where you need to stop. Yeah. You know, you've got to have a Sabbath. You've got to have a time where you can stop because kids get exhausted too. And so we were staying with our daughter one time and she. We have twin granddaughters there, probably around 12 or 13. And she said, y' all aren't doing anything this weekend. You're staying home. We're all worn out. And. And they were, they were relieved. Yeah. You know, they said, great. So they just.

Yeah, no, we're training our kids to, to just go at that breakneck pace. It's not healthy. We need margin.

It's crazy. Number one reason for doctor's office visits or stress related illnesses. Number one reason for prescribed medication or stress related illnesses. Yeah. God didn't make us to live in stress. He made us to live in peace. God's pace is peace. And when you don't have peace, you're not going to God's pace. And we get sick and God doesn't give us grace for it because he didn't design it that way. Yeah. His answer is stop.

You know, it's our body's way of saying, hey, I'm keeping score here, and you're doing this wrong. You got to slow down.

Absolutely. We just can't do it. So to be able to relate as a married couple, we just need time, you know, good quality time. And I would come home from work and we would eat dinner as a family and we'd spend time with the kids and I would put the kids to bed every night. And then Karen and I were together and we just turn the TV off, we'd go be together. We always. And the other thing we did, you know, because I was very busy as a pastor and all that stuff Karen and I always had on our calendar five or six, every five or six or seven weeks. And we didn't have any money, so we didn't Go to hotels. We went to motels. Yeah. And we'd drive 30 miles or 60 miles. We'd put the kids with my parents or something. And we would literally walk into a motel room for 24 hours or whatever and we never opened the door again. We had everything with us and we would spend that time alone together. And when we left, we just felt like we'd been refueled. Yeah, right. We always had that on our calendar. So it's on purpose. It's intentional. We prioritize our marriage period. Above the kids. We love the kids. But see, children need to be trained to respect their parents. Marriage. Yes. Now, I was talking about being alone in our bedroom. So I think Julie, our daughter, was around 12 or so. You know, your kids just want 24 hours.

Oh, yeah. They.

They want.

They want to own you.

That's what I tell. I tell people. I said, children are really very simple little creatures. There's only one thing they want. They want to possess your soul. So we're together in our bedroom having sex and Julie picked the lock on her door and walked in. She'll never get out again. We scared her. Shake. She became a nun. No, no. It was. But you know, so it's just something that you train your children. We, we love you. We're going to take care of you. But our marriage comes first. To see the wonderful thing about it is both of our kids, that's the way they train their kids. How are your children going to succeed in marriage if they don't see you succeeding in marriage?

Absolutely. Well, that's why so many kids are afraid of marriage, these young adults, that they're afraid to get married. And I think it's because they haven't seen good examples.

That's right.

They grew up in child focused homes.

The parent.

The marriage wasn't good. They look at that and they think, if that's what marriage is, maybe I'll live with somebody, maybe I'll be in a relationship, but I'm not getting married.

Exactly. You know, in marriage. Really. Like I said, At 22 years old, I saw the four laws of love. You know, God in his mercy showed me the four laws. And I'm sitting there 22 years old thinking, I can do that. Isn't there not. It's not hard. It's hard not to do it. Yeah. You know, if you don't do it, you're going to fail. The law of gravity is just so impersonal. It doesn't matter if Dave or Jimmy gets up on the roof and jumps we're both going to fall the same rate, you know, and so gravity doesn't care. The laws that God created for marriage, they're impersonal. And what that means is they work for anybody. And so it doesn't matter how smart you are, doesn't matter how good intentions you have, if you follow those laws, you're going to succeed. If you don't follow those laws, you're going to fail.

Yeah.

And the law of priority is the number one law. If you don't put marriage first, it just doesn't work in any other place.

Yeah, right. You know, one of my favorite quotes from you, sweetie, is time is the currency of relationships. And I think. I mean, what. That's what you're saying, Pastor Jimmy, is if you don't invest the time, you're not going to see the changes that you want to see. So it takes making the time. And I think as adults, sometimes we forget that we have agency when it comes to creating our schedules. I mean, yes, there's certain things we have to do. We need to go to work, we got to do, you know, wake up in the morning, do certain things about our day. But we have a lot of choice in what we do when we do it. And we don't have to have our kids in every activity, and we don't have to volunteer for every little thing, because I think where. Where it becomes an issue for. For a couple is they have different ideas of what marriage is supposed to look like. Like, they have two different pictures of what it's supposed to look like, what the schedule's supposed to be, and they have all these good things on their schedule. And I think that's where it's hard, is they're like, well, I have to take this good thing off my schedule to make room for my marriage. But it's like, yes, you take the good thing off to make room for the better things, which is a strong marriage, which is going to feed into making all of your life better. Because when things are good at home, things are better at work, things are better with your kids, things are better, you know, in every facet of your life. But when it feels like total chaos at home, it affects every part of your life. And so getting this one thing right. And it's not going to be perfect because none of us are perfect. I mean, there's many imperfect examples of marriage in the Bible, but that, to me, is good news, because that's not the goal. The goal is not perfection. But we can have progress and we can have Unity, right?

Yeah. And I like the saying that the best person does the right thing first. And so you might be in a marriage where things aren't working well. Don't. Don't wait till your spouse change. You change. And just go to your spouse and say, listen, I've been too busy. I haven't been focused on you. I'm going to say, notice some things and start meeting their needs. And then all of a sudden, it's demotivating. When you have a bad marriage and you have all these things on your schedule. Why would I give this up to all be miserable?

Exactly.

No, give that up so you can go home and do what you need to be doing. Yeah. And create the. See, it's called the honeymoon phase. You're focused. Okay. When it says the honeymoon is over, what happens? He begins to focus on work, she begins to focus on the kids. That's the traditional thing that happens. Then the marriage starts going downhill. Your marriage should get better every year when you're doing it correctly because you keep your focus. You're always first. And that then creates the energy where you want to be. It's like it attracts you back because you're my safe place, you're my best friend. I want to spend time with you. I have my best times with you. So I'm going to say no to this so I can be with you. When I was playing golf all the time, my best times were on the golf course, but my home was miserable. Doesn't matter how much money you make, if you take it home to a miserable family. Yeah. You know, and so in your children's security is most derived from you. They want, they need their parents to have a good marriage that makes them feel secure. And so that. Heard the statistic one time. If parents are having financial stress, if they never discuss it with the children, the children intuitively know it, and they begin to internalize it. And a lot of times they begin to have digestive problems or some kind of physical manifestation. They're internalizing your stress. But what they need to see is you guys getting along. If you have something to discuss, you go behind closed doors and you discuss it till you come into an agreement. And so these vision retreats that we have are fabulous for proactively discussing things, getting in front of the curve and having a life of peace and prioritizing your marriage. But it's. It's just something that is. It's the most important thing in the world. A lot of people, they've never seen a good marriage. You know, it's true. It's true.

I mean, we've. We hear that from people all the time. And.

Oh, yeah.

So that's. And that's sad. And maybe you're watching, you're listening, and you're like, I want to do these things, but I've. I've never seen it.

Right.

But God lays it out. Like you said, those laws, they work for everybody. It doesn't have to be as complicated as we make it sometime. Yeah. Here in just a minute, we're going to close out with our question. I want to ask Pastor Jimmy one more thing before we do, and he's going to stick around and help us answer today's question. But before we get to that, one kind of final thing. You mentioned dominance earlier and how a lot of couples fall into this cycle. One thing that I've plagiarized from you when we're speaking is. And I'm going to have you explain it because it's your thing, but I love using it. Raising your hands. If you grew up in a certain kind of home, for people that are listening, they're like, we. We're in that dynamic, and I don't know how to break out of it. One of us is the dominant spouse. We're not a partnership. Did you talk about that exercise you do at a lot of your live speaking events? And then if a couple is in that dynamic, how they can break out of it?

Yeah. All over the world, for 30 some years, when I'm speaking at conferences, I'll ask people, if you were raised in a home where one of your parents was clearly dominant over the other parent, would you raise your hand? 70 to 80% hands go around. They put their hands down. So, okay, so if you just raised your hand, if you believe that dominance had a negative impact on your parents, marriage, and the family, raise your hand. All the hands go straight back. Absolutely. Most people were raised in a home with a dominant parent. So was I, and I was the dominant person in our marriage. Dominance never works. You cannot be intimate where there's dominance. And because the dominant person is disrespecting this person here, and the person that's being dominated feels disrespected. So there's all this distance. Well, I was dominant. That when you're dominant and dominance is gender neutral, there's as many dominant women's dominant. Well, dominance, the way you know that there's dominance is because you pay a price, is it's a. You train a person, the dominant person trains this person here. That if you Cross me, you're going to pay a price. You know, I'm going to punish you, I'm going to withdraw. I'm going to do whatever. And so. But if you comply, you know, we'll get along. Well, this. It never works. So Karen grew up with a lot of verbal abuse. And she had. She was. She was full of self hate. She didn't have just low self esteem, she had self hate. Well, I had. I had confidence. I mean, I was just very confident, cocky kind of a person here. Well, when we got married, I mean, she was here, I was here, and I just dominated her. And I grew up around chauvinism. Well, she didn't like it, and she began to. The more healthy she became, she began to bump up against it. Like the day she told me about golfing and I told her to get out of the house. Well, then the more she began to do this, the more I tried to push her back down. And so when you're a dominant person, you just need to realize you'll never have goodwill and intimacy in your relationship until you're equal partners. This is. They too shall become one flesh. This is a law of partnership. If your marriage is a corporation, you both own 50% of the stock. No one has a bigger vote. And if you punish a person, if you punish your spouse for disagreeing with you, that's dominance. Okay, now you can disagree, but so with Karen and me, we make all of our decisions together. All major decisions we make together. There's no brow beating, there's no punishment, there's no withdrawal, there's no yelling anything like that. So regardless of what we're talking about, if we don't agree, great. We pray about it, we talk about it, we agree. So our house is just full of peace. But when you have dominance in a relationship, you have this. Whether it's a dominant man or a dominant woman, you have this. Okay? The dominant person has to sit down. And the good thing about dominant people is they can do that. You know, when you're dominant, you. Okay, I'm not gonna do that anymore. This person has to stand up. This person has to learn to be. Sometimes they become emotionally lazy because even though they complain about being dominant, they don't have to make decisions. You know, they don't have to take risk and invest themselves. This person has to stand up and become a partner. And when you have this right here, this is what marriage was designed to be. In Genesis 1 and 2, before the fall, there's never a reference to Adam being over Eve Or Eve being over Adam. They were just a couple there to complement one another and to be a married couple. Dominus came in the fall when God said to Eve, because you've done this thing, now, your husband's going to want to dominate you. You're going to try to dominate your husband, he's going to dominate you. In other words, it's going to be a cat. It was a part of the fault. So the dominance is deadly. It never works. University of Washington, where they do a lot of research there, they had 130 couples that they tracked for a number of years, and they were trying to find what the common denominator was in good marriages. Okay. And they were looking really at specifically communication styles. What they found out at the end of the study was shared control was the number one feature of the good marriages. In good marriages, there were shared control. In the bad marriages, there were dominance.

Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. I want to say something really fast, then we'll get to our question. But you talked about punishment, like, for people to identify, you know, are we in a marriage where there's dominance? You know, punishment can look like you shut down and just stop talking whenever there's a kind of a disagreement, you punish your spouse, you withhold sex, you, you know, fight, you call names. Like, it can look a lot of different ways just trying to rule over each other. Or on the flip side, if you are the person being dominated over that, you constantly are pushing down your feelings like, you're never actually going, like you said, stepping up and speaking out your emotions and trying to, you know, make yourself be heard. And that just leads to resentment. I mean, such resentment. And so if you found yourself there, the good news is there is hope. Just like Pastor Jimmy has talked about, you know, go get the four laws of love. That's a great place to start in understanding what biblical marriage looks like. But it takes one of you going first. Like he said, it takes one of you going first. So if you're the one listening today, that's. You go first and know that God has good plans for your marriage and you can do this. But. But you gotta take those steps necessary to get healthy when it comes to your marriage.

Can I say one thing? Yes. Well, you're. You guys are counselors, and you guys are available to help people. But we also at XO here, we have coaching and intensives. If your marriage is in a bad place, if you can't get out of something on your own, getting help is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of wisdom. And so at Exo Marriage on our website, you can go on there and we have coaches available. They'll do telephone zoom calls in person. And our intensives can be half a day, a day, two days if you're really having problems. But it can get you off high center, it can help you to resolve issues. And so there's help available. People need help. Yes.

Go to exomarriage.com and those intensives can be life changing. We've seen the fruit of that. We've been through the process ourselves of going through an exointensive with some of the mediators and it was really impactful for us. So go to exomarriage and you can get all the information there if we want to help your marriage. And this ministry has a lot of resources to help. So we always end our episodes with a question and we've got a great one today. If you'd like to send in a question for us to talk about on air, you can do that a number of ways. You can write us on Instagram Ave and ashleywillis or if you want to send an email, send an email to the producer of the Naked Marriage podcast, our dear friend Marcus, who's also single ladies. So he's the best guy I know and if you have a good Jesus loving. That's right, single woman, it would like to meet the best guy in Dallas. You can also email marcus somarcus.com with those questions. I'm sorry, Marcus, we love you and thank you to Marcus and the whole team for as always getting this podcast together. So today's question is this. My wife's brother is always asking us for money. He can't seem to hold down a job. She always wants to help him and feels sorry for him, but I think he's got to stand on his own feet. It's becoming a wedge in our marriage. How do we get on the same page?

Ooh. Well, it. He's manipulating her. Yep. And so she's a fixer. She, you know, she thinks if she keeps giving you money, he's going to fix him. The husband's right. They need to do this together and to be a team. And they need to have a conversation with him that says, here's an amount of money, this is all okay and you know, no more. And you're gonna have to find a job, find a way to make a living because we, we can't keep doing this. First of all, it's unhealthy for their marriage, you know, but secondly, it's not fixing him, it's enabling him.

Absolutely right.

If he was willing to work and hold down a job, when you see people like that person, they don't get better. See, every, every addict has to have an enabler. Every, every person whose stays messed up, there has to be a fixer there to help them do that. And the way to fix him is just to love him, tell him the truth, give him a little bit of money and say, this is the, this is the end of the road, and don't give him any more money. Right. And, and for there to be an agreement between the husband and wife, you're not going to sneak him on, you know, you're not going to give it back. It's. The husband is right. The wife is not wrong to give him some money. She's wrong to keep giving him money because if he, there's a lot of work available if he wants work, and it's an unhealthy situation for them to be divided over that.

Such a great answer. And I think for a person who's a fixer, whenever they have to put down a boundary with someone they love, it feels like it's unloving. But God is a God who has boundaries, right? We see that all throughout the Bible. Boundaries are how we love people.

Well, that's exactly right.

And like you said, Pastor Jimmy, ultimately this could be the thing that actually gets him on the right road to being autonomous and not needing this money.

And he may, we're talking about punishment. Punishment. He may withdraw. He may say, well, I'm not having anything to do with you all anymore. You know, okay, let him, Let him go and just pray that he'll be okay someday and he'll come back. But don't give up your marriage. Right? This is where priority comes in. You have to prioritize the marriage over this because he's going to break you, but you're not going to fix him, man.

So good.

Such wisdom, guys. So thank you for that question. Thank you, Pastor Jimmy, not only for that answer, but thank you for all the wisdom you've shared. You can learn more about Pastor Jimmy in a lot of different ways, including the books we mentioned, but also follow the Tipping Point podcast. It's not a marriage podcast. It's about end times prophecy. And he's the best there is at teaching on that. I know you think, how can one guy have so much talent? I don't know. But he does. So check out. So check out the Tipping Point. And Pastor Jimmy, thank you again for being here.

Great to be here.

Thank you guys very much. Thank you guys for tuning in. And please help get the word out. The Naked marriage podcast is back. We're so excited. So, like, share, subscribe, tell a friend.

That's right. And we'll see you next time on the Naked Marriage Podcast.