Kim & Penn Holderness Interview

Hey, welcome into Walgreens.

Hi there. Hey.

All right, hon, I'll grab the gift wrap cards and, oh, those stuffed animals the girls want.

Great.

And I'll grab the string lights and some. How about I grab some cough drops?

This is not just a quick trip to Walgreens.

I'm fine, honey.

Well, just in case. You know what they say, tis the season.

This is help staying healthy through the holidays.

Walgreens.

Hello and welcome back to the Naked Marriage podcast. We are Dave and Ashley Willis, and on this podcast we address the truth about sex, intimacy, and lifelong love. And today we have a very, very special treat for you. We are interviewing the Holderness family, which, you know, I know you guys have probably heard of them.

Oh, they're so fun.

They are the family that provides all these hilarious videos, which this past year have meant than any other time because we need laughter in our lives. But they actually have an amazing book about fighting that's out, and so we're gonna unpack that with them later. But before we dive in, I wanna share a recent review with you again. Thank you, thank you, thank you to those of you who have already left reviews. It is the best way to get the word out about this podcast and it also really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Today I'm gonna share a review from CVS nurse and all she entitled It Was Love, which I loved, and she says this is the best podcast. I listen to new podcasts on my way to work. So enriching and enlightening to my newlywed marriage. Love this couple and I just want to say thank you so much for leaving that and congratulations on your new marriage. And we hope that you continue to listen and get lots of help through the Naked Marriage podcast.

Yeah, again, we really appreciate taking the time to do that and your words keep us encouraged and we're so excited you guys are tuned in today. I really think this is going to be one of the most fun episodes we've ever had because you cannot not have fun if you're hanging out with the Holderness family. But even more than being fun, they have got so much wisdom to share with us from their own experience, from their brand new book, which is titled Everybody Fights, so why Not Get Better at It. And they're gonna teach us in new ways, practical ways, but also some entertaining ways how to work through disagreements in marriage. I know you're gonna be blessed by this and entertained by this. So Kim and Pen Holderness are the founders of their own family company that creates viral videos online. Most of those videos are just H in nature. And we're living in a time when we need that comedy more than ever. But they also have so much depth, so much insight, and they're going to share that with us today. So let's dive into today's episode. Well, like we said in the intro, we are super excited to have our guests on today. Kim and Penn Holderness. They are legit famous. Like, I mean, you've seen their videos, and they are some of the funniest people maybe on Earth.

Yes.

They are the reason I go to Facebook. I want to see YouTube and YouTube. I need the kind of joy they bring in our lives. And it's never been needed more. I mean, it's a grumpy time on planet Earth, and the Holdernesses are just sprinkling stardust of joy. They are all around.

I love that, sweetie. That's great.

And I'm for it.

So grumpy time on Earth, and we're sprinkling stardust of joy.

First of all, I'm coming back on this show weekly, if you'll have me, because. Cause this is the ego boost I need.

We'd love it.

Grumpy. I love grumpy talk.

I've never heard that. So let all this be an inspiration. If I can inspire you guys to take anything from this interview and go and make some beautiful, funny art with it. Yes. That's good. Because this is what you guys are to planet Earth. We, for the first time, like, a couple weeks ago, we got this injection of, like, this vitamin infusion.

Yes. Which we'd never had.

It felt like I was getting, like, an illegal drug. It wasn't. It's very above board. You get this injection of, like, all these B vitamins and all these things, and I felt like Superman for a solid week. And that's what you guys are for the soul. You're like an injection. Vitamin to the soul.

Maybe illegal, but it feels.

Yeah, it feels a little naughty, but it's totally above board and fun. No.

Yes, they are.

That is the best compliment ever. Slash, have your producer email me what that was. Cause I need it stacked.

It's awesome.

It really is.

It's awesome.

It's becoming a thing. The vitamin infusion thing.

Our producers had it too, and they would agree. They're nodding their heads right now.

I'm telling you. I felt so energetic.

A literal shot in the arm. It was amazing.

It was. It was so good. So I'm ready to sign back up, but that's.

Let's talk about Fighting.

Yeah, we're not talking about injections here or stardust. We're talking about fighting in marriage. Yeah. So you guys got a great new book out just to prove to the world that you are the most multi talented people on earth. It's like, we're all so amazing authors.

Yes.

And they really are. The content is so rich and so practical. So tell us a little bit about the motivation for writing this new book. Everybody fights, so why not get better at it? I love the title too. So this is such a practical book for anybody married, which of course is our audience. But for any relationship you might be in, there's some nuggets of gold in here. So give us some of the inspiration.

Well, thank you. So you kind of set us up perfectly using the kind of positivity, creativity, all the stuff that we normally do. I think people would not expect us to write a book about fighting. And that was kind of the inspiration for it. It was kind of looking down on the YouTube comments and people saying, you guys are the perfect couple. And we're like, no, no, no, we're not. In fact, I think at one point, maybe four or five years ago, we looked at one of the comments and we looked at each other. We're like, dude, I'm like, we're doing.

A disservice to the population if people think that we are a perfect couple or hashtag couples goals. Because in reality, our marriage was fine. It was gonna be fine.

It was good.

It was good.

Solid B minus.

But we were. Several years ago, we had hit a rough patch, as I think most marriages do.

Yes.

And I'm a child with divorce. And I saw my parents worked it out for 27 years. They fought their way through it for 27 years. And I saw us heading down a path. I'm like, this feels really familiar. I think that nobody walks down the aisle with the intention of splitting up. Right. But as Penn, there's like a little kind of introduction in the book. He puts, you know, our cars, we take them in for oil changes and tire rotations, and we do all this maintenance work on our car that we don't ever do on our relationships. So we did the work, we went to counseling and we were having. Because we were having these same fights over and over again. And there was these. There are these simple principles and these simple ways of talking to each other that changed the foundation of our marriage. It took us from having a fine marriage that, you know, we were kind of living as roommates for a while to having a really Connected experience and a great partnership and the way we live our lives. Right. Like, if there's a water bottle. I love or something. I love. I want to tell people about it. Like, we kind of share what's happening in our lives. And so this seemed like a natural extension of, like, this is what's working in our life right now. And we want to tell you about it.

This is our hydro flask.

Yours. And it just seemed like if people had these really simple conversations, these magic words we talk about. I mean, there's literal scripts we put in the book. It could change the course of an argument and it can change the course of a marriage, I believe.

Yeah, I love that. I love it. You're so right. Like, whenever we find something we love that's working for us, we want to tell everybody about it. So that's a great. I mean, that's awesome. And you're real people. And I know people see you in these hilarious videos, which are just awesome. But it's so good to see a little bit behind the curtain and to see you're real people who deal with real things. And here's what's helped you. So I just love that.

It's great. Yeah, it really is. And it gives people that hope of saying. Cause I think that there's, in our social media culture, there's this temptation to look at anybody on social media, not just public figures, but anybody our friends. And we're seeing sort of this airbrushed version of the life that we project online. And then you scroll through that and you're comparing your behind the scenes struggles to somebody else's airbrushed highlight reel. And you think, my life's terrible, their life's perfect, and I can never measure up. And so you guys just having the courage to be real about the struggles that everybody goes through, not just you. But you're right. Everybody fights. There are gonna be disagreements in every single marriage. And finding a way to do that in a healthy way to get better at it, like you guys say, I just think it's so good. And so when you guys use that analogy of kind of the maintenance. We do maintenance on our cars, why not maintenance on our marriage? Peel back the curtain a little bit. What does that maintenance aspect look like in your relationship? What are the things you guys do to intentionally build your marriage?

The first chapter and the first thing that you'll read about in the book is meta communication. And that's the starting point for all of this. And this is, by the way, this all comes through for us. It came through counseling, like active counseling. A person who co authored the book with us, really, his name's Christopher Edmondson, who also happens to be an old friend of mine and the pastor at our church. He just specializes in.

He specializes in marriage.

Very hard. So anyway, he's kind of the one who showed us. And great. Actually, you guys know this a great venue for this is a place like a podcast, where you can kind of sit down and just be the two of you and talk about the thing that happened from a 30,000 foot view. And we started before even knowing any tools or tricks. We kind of took account of what was going on in our lives as this fight happened. Like, were you tired? Were you hungry?

Were you drunk? Did you have too much to drink? And so when you can talk about how you fight, which sounds so silly, right? But the next day when it's not as tense and things are as calm to talk about, hey, and you use that I feel language. Like I felt like I. And you have to get really self aware. Like I felt really tired and overwhelmed and I was panicking about this thing at work. And so I probably didn't give the best. I probably didn't have the best answer to this. And you have to get really self aware.

Yeah. But it starts out in a counselor's office and then a book, and then you kind of learn how to do it on your own. And then there's, you know, the book will go through all these different things that we fight about, from money to interrupting to sex to, you know, from one argument jumping to another one accidentally.

And we picked the fights that we think. Like, there are 10 fights every partnership I believe have. It's, you know, it's, I do everything, you do nothing. Yes, Sex. Why aren't we having more of it? Why are you spending so much money? Why are you spending so much money? Like, all of the fights that I believe, if you went into any house on our block, I think they're probably having the same fight. And then how we navigated through them because we kept fighting about the same thing and we got out of the cycle and we still fight. By the way, we believe fighting is a love language, but we have like a real intentional way of doing it. And we're not cussing at each other. We're not slamming doors, we're not doing the things that I like. I used to like, grab the keys and take a drive for a couple hours. I used to just leave, which is like, not cool. Like, don't do that. So it's really changed the foundation. Foundation of our marriage.

I love that. And you're right. We have to know how to fight well, you know, and that's what your book is gonna help people do. Because fights are inevitable. And I think people are scared to use the word fight. But I mean, disagreement, argument, whatever you wanna call it, I mean, we're all gonna have it. It's just semantics on what you call it that day. But really it's fighting. And you know, there is a right way to do that, a respectful way to do that where you can both win. Cause I think the whole thing where it's like, I do everything, you do nothing, which is such a common thing. I mean, my goodness, it's just such a common thing. And I think that in different seasons, it can get worse than others. But you know, when you kind of slow down and self assess, which I hear you saying, you know, that I feel. You can't fault your spouse for how they feel. They feel how they feel. And I love that. Go ahead.

That is the biggest magic word that you can use as I feel. And it's almost always a good substitute for you.

Always. You always.

Or you know, like projecting on somebody else immediately. First of all, your position in the fight is leveraged and you're probably. If you're looking to get something done, or I don't want to say win, but like actually advance during the fight. You have to put your feelings first. And remember this, Ashley, your feelings, people can't disagree with those. No, those are yours. Those are infallible.

Right?

So, yeah, absolutely. That's one of the big things we talk about. And it solves a lot of the problems that we have.

Yeah. One of the biggest advice we had, like, he made the mistake of like doing the.

You always.

And like you're getting really snippy and you always. And after like three hours of. It was one of our bigger fights of just. It was not. I'm not proud. We were screaming at each other. It was. It was not. He finally. We finally got down to, I feel lonely. And I was so busy on something else. I was so busy. And he's like. And I was. We had not had time to connect. We had not. And the minute he said, I feel lonely, I'm like, oh, like the fight is over.

It's so disarming. It's so vulnerable.

I didn't know you were feeling that way. I mean, I'm like, you know what?

I have not. I've been so preoccupied with this, this, this, this, this, and really none of that stuff matters. You're right. This stuff like help me do this stuff and we can connect like we're gonna and like the part it was back. We were back on track.

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Yeah, No. I love that. I'll never forget one of our biggest fights we've ever had. We've been married almost 20 years this May, and I remember one of our biggest fights. We had just moved. We had two young children at the time. We now have four, but they were two. Like, we had our first two really close together and we had just moved. It wasn't a really good work situation. We were in temporary housing. And then we finally got to the house we were gonna live in and it needed some work. And I remember I was trying to put a curtain up, and Dave was getting ready to go for a run. And he looked so happy. And I was so mad that he was so happy. Cause I was so miserable. And he said to me, he said.

I had asked, like, he asked me.

If I needed help.

And she said no. And I made the mistake of thinking she actually meant no. Yeah, no, which is terrible. I was supposed to know that, like, no, this. I need you. You shouldn't even have to ask.

What word did I say? I said, no. No, it's.

It's fine. And I'm like.

Which we call the F word. It's the F word in our house because it always shuts down things, you know?

Let me ask you this, Ashley. Did you want him to help you, or did you want him to understand how you felt? What was more important to you at that point?

She wanted him to read her mind.

Yeah, exactly. That is my mistake. In the early years of our marriage, I was terrible. I always put him in these terrible positions of trying to be a mind reader. And he really. It's like he was always so good if I would just tell him what I actually needed or wanted or how I felt. But I didn't. I was expecting him to figure it all out. To figure out I needed help. To figure out I was miserable. To figure out that I was ticked at him, too. And so, you know, he goes on that run. Thirty minutes later, I'm still wrestling. I could not get this screw in the wall. And I was so mad, and I am just fuming. And he walks in that door, and he's got the, like, endorphins going from his run.

Oh, I felt amazing.

He did. And he's so happy. And I was so mad that he was so happy, and he didn't figure out how I felt. And I just blew up on him. I mean, I blew up.

I'm like, hey, so he has it going. And she said, I can't even look at you right now. I did.

And I'm like, I did.

With that voice got very deep. Yeah, it did. It got very deep. And I realized I played it back in my head and I like, oh, my goodness. Like, she wasn't fine the whole time. Not at all. It's like when you watch the Sixth Sense for the first time and you realize Bruce Willis has been dead the whole movie, and you don't figure it out till the end. And I'm like, I've been dead the whole time, and I didn't even know it. Like, she wasn't fine, but, like, those little. And I've done stuff like that, too. But you have to just learn each other's rhythm and learn to lean in and listen.

Yes. And speak your mind reader.

Say what you're feeling.

And a mantra for our marriage. And we talk about the book. Because it's. Mature people ask for what they want.

Yes.

And I expect. And so down to Ashley, Friday night, we get takeout. What do you want? Oh, I don't care. You know, I'll go. Mature people ask for what they want. I'm like, I want sushi.

Well, here's why.

Because she'll say, get whatever, and then I'll get whatever.

And like that I like.

I look up, I bring the dictionary where it says whatever. And then you know what the definition of whatever is?

No.

Whatever.

Whatever.

Whatever.

And so I've learned that, like, down to I need help hanging curtain, down to, like, in the bedroom, make sure people ask what they want. And we have, like, a whole chapter, like, a really awkward chapter that my mom had to read on it, so.

Well, you told her not to read it, and then you.

I gave her the wrong chapter number.

No, you gave her. We did one and a half chapters on sex, and she gave her one chapter, and then we were talking about something else, and then all of a sudden, like, boom.

Boom.

Orgasms.

Yes.

There we go.

Hey.

Now, this is really weird for our parents that we talk about orgasms for a living and they have to listen so they live, like, in her mom's words. I'm really proud of you, but this is always gonna be weird for me.

Yeah. No, but I love that you're right. And we talk about this on our podcast, too. Even when it comes to sex, you know, where it's not like, it's fine, figure it out. You know, we even use this thing. Fine. You know, F I, N E means faking, ignoring, neglecting, evading. For us, it's like, it's the F word. It's the word that shuts down communication. It's the word that only leads to fights, and it's the word that doesn't lead to understanding. And so, yeah, I just. I love that you guys are just really, you know, putting a spotlight on how everybody goes through this. You're not damaged, you're not ill fit for one another. You know, it's like, you can actually get through this, but you're gonna have to be mature adults who say what you need. You're gonna have to slow it down and recognize your own kind of how you're feeling in the moment. I love that you talk about being hungry, tired, like, what were the circumstances? Why would I be so snippy? You know, what was it? But I love that. I think it really will give people so much more understanding about how they can feasibly fight. Well, yeah, it's just.

It's full of gold because, like, everybody, like you've said, everybody goes through this. Everybody has these moments of tension and these miscommunications, and yet we don't always approach it in a healthy way. And the difference between the couples who make it and really make it last and success in marriage isn't just longevity. I mean, you can, you can stay married for 50 years by just avoiding each other and by like just living two separate lives. The goal is longevity plus intimacy, where you're growing closer through every season. And you guys, through your experience and through this book, I really believe are giving people a roadmap for how to do that for like what that can look like in super practical ways. Like this is so super practical, but in pure holderness fashion is also super entertaining because you're gonna stop. Like if you're reading a boring book, even if it's practical a couple pages in, you're gonna be like, this is lame. There might be good stuff in here, but I can't do it. But reading this book, you're gonna be like, this is so fun. I feel like these are my friends and I'm being entertained. I'm laughing on nearly every page. But it's really also cutting to the heart and showing me some things that I need to look in the mirror and say, okay, these are some blind spots that maybe I've had. This is going to spark some new conversations where we can talk about things in a new way based on this new perspective. And so for those reasons, I just, I think this is a gift to the world that you guys have created that's really going to help a lot of marriages.

Absolutely.

Well, thanks.

We really are that great. And he's being so nice. I don't know how to process all this.

Thank you.

Very effusive. So here's, here's. Like, I want to talk about a couple of things you said that I totally agree with you on, actually. Yeah, first of all, fighting. The one thing you should do at the beginning, and you guys know this, to destigmatize it is to tell people, because this is the truth. Fighting is how you get to know your partner better. It's how you learn about their vulnerabilities. It's how you learn about what's important to them. Right. So fighting is good. It's also a way to release energy like a hurricane or a forest fire. That sometimes is necessary. Right. And if you don't fight, like you mentioned that healthy 50 year marriage couple. That's a problem. You have to find ways to describe who you are. You're not an undifferentiated ego mass. You're two different people with your own values.

So, yeah, we got a little kickback from some people in our audience. Like I don't fight and I think they're imagining Us, like, slamming doors and cussing at each other. That's not what it is. It's like. I mean. I mean, there have been our times.

Which is why we don't do it.

But I mean, like, things we just disagree on. And I feel like if you're never disagreeing on anything and you're never having, like, a discussion about it, everybody discusses. And every. That wasn't a good book title.

So that is the truth.

Yeah. So we. As a terrible book. I mean, we went through some bad titles, too. Let's be honest. The really super polished Instagram model of marriage does not exist. We get into this, like, when we're dating, we tell our girlfriends if we're fighting with her boyfriend, but we don't do that in marriage, whatever reason. It's like, we never have those discussions. There's like, this veil of secrecy. And when. When friends found out, because we've been working on this book for two years, that we were doing this research, that we're doing this. We were writing this book. We've had so many people reach out to us for advice and admit there was issues and, like, we should just normalize the fact that marriages are not perfect. Like, just normalize the ugly part of, you know, it's. And that, to me, has made our marriage a thousand times better. To me, just, like, being able to talk about how imperfect it is anyway.

Yeah. No, I love that it does. It takes the stigma off and being able to be open and honest, because I do. I think that the reason people don't reach out to a counselor. I love that you start the book with a counselor. I mean, our listeners probably get tired of us talking about going to a counselor, because nearly on every episode we talk about it, you know, they don't go because they think they're the only ones. You know, they think they're the only ones dealing with whatever fight they're going through that time, you know, And a counselor, you know, somebody who can really help you, who's this neutral party who can kind of really help you look at it, is just so vital. And I always say, you know, there's not. People think, oh, I need to wait till it's like this desperate situation. And, you know, that's why they keep on putting it off. But really, there's such wisdom and strength in going to a counselor. I mean, they're trained to walk you through this, you know, and they. There's nothing that surprises them. You know, it's like everybody goes through tough things, and I just love that. And I'm hoping that, you know, and I know when people read your book that they will. They'll be more open to that because it will take. It'll take the stigma off.

Yeah.

I mean, counseling is. Guys don't wanna go to counseling. I'm just gonna be.

Let's, like, lean into some gender stereotypes.

I'm gonna lean into a gender stereotype. Guys are afraid. They don't wanna go. Cause they're afraid that they're going to get called out and there's going to be something that they're doing wrong. And they're going to be afraid that they lost the fight by going into.

Counseling or that, like, it does mean that it's catastrophic, you know, and it's not. Right.

That's another thing.

But.

But like you a good counselor, and most counselors are good, you're not winning a fight. You're. You're neutral like that Ashley. And that's something that's very difficult for people to understand. Until I was. This was my best friend, one of my best friends that I was going in to have counseling with. So I was really nervous. And very quickly I wanted more of it, because instead of telling us who was right and who was wrong, he explained what was going on.

And that, by the way, that friend relationship was easier for Pen to go when he was confiding. But some people would prefer Total Stranger. And I would also say I've gone through just therapy by myself, like, on and off my whole adult life. Me too. You just need to find the person you click with. And don't you love now that, like, Zoom is so normal. You can do this all over Zoom now. So it doesn't even have to be somebody in your neighborhood that you might run into in the grocery store. So for some people, they want somebody who's a stranger. For Penn and I, it worked that, like, this was his specialty and his line of work, and he happened to be in our life. And it was. He actually. It gave context. Like, he already knew that I'm an introvert. He's an extrovert. He could jump in in a very impartial way, knowing our personality. So just a little FYI for people looking for good therapists and counselors.

Yeah, that's so good.

Yeah, that is. It's gold. I'm telling you. And if you listen to this, and one thing that comes from it, besides getting this awesome book, is that it's prompted in you that spark to say, you know what? It's time. It's time for us to get Counseling. And that one decision could be life changing. It's been life changing for us in the past. And that's why we talk so much about it. That's why Kim and Penn talk so much about it. So don't let those stigmas or those fears, whatever it is that's holding you back from it, keep holding you back. Because like Kim just said, the barriers have been removed. Especially now with technology. We offer some online kind of counseling coaching options. We have trained coaches here@xomarriage.com coaches. We have counseling partners that we partner with that can provide all this again via Zoom. Faithful Counseling is a group we partner with. You can find them@getfaithful.com nakedmarriage and so, yes, get counseling. Kim and Penn, I don't wanna, like, take up all your day because I need. The world needs you to get back to making Internet gold and I don't wanna hold up one minute of that. But before we let you go, what final words do you have for us and for anyone that has been living under a rock for the last five years and don't know where to find you, already tell people where they can. They can find you.

So the easiest way is just to go to the Holderness family on any of your social media platforms or just type it into the search bar. We also have the HoldernessFamily.com the book is EverybodyFightsBook.com, but again, Google is amazing. Just put our name in there.

Can I tell people it's wilderness but with a hoe.

Oh, the spelling.

Yeah.

Holderness.

I like it.

Yeah, yeah. And we're Instagram and Facebook and all that good stuff.

And I guess the one thing I would tell people that I would leave them with is thank you for like letting us have a job where we can just be ourselves. And that's our job. And that's not possible without people who watch videos. So thank you for that.

Yeah. And we thank you for making them.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you guys for.

What was your quote again? The drops of joy.

No, no, no.

Stardust or something.

Stardust.

Stardust.

Stardust. Sprinkling.

He said grumpy world.

You said it's a grumpy world. That was my favorite start. And then you said that we are sprinkling little rays of unicorn sunshine.

No, no, it was sprinkling stardust. Sprinkling. Stardust of joy.

Stardust of joy.

Yes. So make that your new bio ego boost.

So thank you.

I wanna go to Instagram and see Holderness family in a Grumpy world. We're sprinkling stardust of joy. And that be your new bio, so feel free to use that or get a tattoo of stardust and then just say thanks, Dave in ink under your arm. Whatever. You. I don't wanna pressure you into these decisions, but I feel like that would be an appropriate response.

And add a unicorn. You had a unicorn and rainbow that you need that, too, so. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, thank you guys so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us. I know our audience is gonna love this talk. And thank you for writing your very important book.

So, yeah, thanks to the book is amazing, guys. Again, get the book. And holding his family, praying for you, cheering you on. Keep doing the great work you're doing. Keep sprinkling that stardust. You're doing great things, and we look forward to seeing you next time and hopefully connecting in person someday. If you ever meet us in person, you'll find we're much shorter than you'd expect, but online we look fairly tall, so we like to keep things on zoom.

And David's standing up.

He's already standing, guys.

I'm standing on the chair right now.

I'm actually very short. I'm of normal size. He's a giant, so it's weird.

That's awesome. Well, I think you're both just perfect.

You're both just right.

So thank you guys again.

I want to go hang out with you guys. Just talk to me like this. This is amazing.

Yes.

I'm a teenager. I don't hear this stuff very often. So thank you.

We're happy to do it. It's all true. You guys are awesome. Well, thank you again, and we hope to connect sometime soon.

And for viewers, stick around. We'll do Q and A right after this.

Well, it's time for one of our favorite parts of the podcast that we have. Every week we're doing our Q and A. And again, we don't see these questions until we are recording this. So we're just seeing it for the first time. And if you would like to submit a question, the questions that we answer on air, you can submit@nakedmarriagepodcast.com you can also reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook. But if you want your question on the episode, you have to go to nakedmarriagepodcast.com so our question today is, is it okay to be attracted to other people when you're married? My husband says it's okay because he's not acting on it and still Continuously choosing me, regardless of who he sees. It deeply hurts my feelings to hear him say that. I feel like attraction is one step away from lust, which leads to sin. I would love to hear your wisdom on this subject. It's a good question.

It's a great, great question. And it's very nuanced. And it's one where there's a lot of feelings involved because we obviously want to have eyes only for our spouse. But we live in a world where you're going to see other people, and we can't pretend that those other people don't exist. And there's certainly a distinction between noticing that someone's an attractive human being and allowing lust to take over. Where we're playing, like, geographic sexual fantasies with that person out in our mind. There's a world of difference between those two things. So I think there's maybe a lot going on here. But first, thank you for the question. I think that this is something that's a dynamic in a lot of marriages. Is your husband doing everything possible to make sure that you know that he chooses you completely, that he has eyes only for you in terms of, you know, all of my desire is focused on you, and I love you and I adore you and choose you and respect you? And when I say that I notice that another person's attractive, I'm not doing it in any way to take away from you, though it's probably maybe not the wisest thing for him to point out that it's attractive. You can have that thought in your mind, like, that's an attractive person, without having to plant seeds of insecurity by saying, oh, that's an attractive person. Here I'd recommend, as a next step to help both of you, a book for each of you to read, a little bit of homework. And neither of these books are our own, but they're books that I think that could help each of you in different ways. For the husband, I would recommend the book Every Man's Battle, which is all about lust and how the Bible teaches clearly that lust is sin. To objectify human beings in our mind is a sin, and how to just control the battle in our minds as being visual creatures. And it could be a really helpful book for you as the wife. A book by our dear friend Shanti Feldhahn, who is a wonderful Christian writer, researcher. And to help women kind of understand the male thought process and maybe not feel so. Not to feel insecurity by it, but to help really understand. She wrote a great book called Through a Man's helping women understand the visual and nature of men. If you would read that book and at the same time your husband would read the Every Man's battle book, I think it could prompt some really healthy new behaviors in him and also some mindsets in you that are going to help you just navigate this together with more unity.

I love that. Those are awesome resources. But I also wanna say too, I think you need to make it clear to your husband that him telling you this is just so deeply hurtful because. And maybe in his mind, he's like, I'm being honest with you. I'm just being honest with you. But what you hear, if I'm understanding correctly from this question, is you hear, not only does he think that person's pretty or hot or whatever, but that he's also thinking about that person like that. For him to tell you that person is attractive, that means he's given it more than just one. He's given that person more than a glance. And that is hurtful because that is when it takes root. I mean, when you, you know, like Dave said, you can't control the attractive person walking by and the fact that they're attractive and that your eyes notice them, you can't help that. But lingering on that thought of how attractive they are or, you know, even possibly having fantasies about that person, that's where it's a problem. And so I think that maybe just making it that crystal clear to him and saying, like, you know, how would you feel if, you know, the attractive neighbor next door that we both know is like a really hot guy, if I constantly pointed out how attractive he is? I mean, would you like that?

No.

You think our neighbor's a hot guy?

No.

No.

But you know what I'm saying, Like, I think men and women both can recognize when someone's attractive. Like, it doesn't take rocket science. I mean, and granted, I know there's the eye of the beholder, right? Am I saying that it's in the eye of the beholder? Objective.

But I think, you know, most people can.

You can say, yes, that person is pretty, that person is handsome, whatever. But I think that constantly talking about it, it does make you wonder. It makes you think, well, why are you. If this is something you want to talk to me about instead, let's flip it and let's talk about how we can really deepen our attraction for one another and have more intimacy. Let's focus on us and not these outside people, right?

And have the discretion we want to have.

Full discretion.

Honesty in Marriage. But there's a big difference between deception and discretion. And so discretion means, like, every thought that pops into your head that might be hurtful to blurt out, you don't have to be, like, telling your spouse, like, oh, that's a hot girl, or whatever. But when those thoughts come into your own mind, to take those thoughts captive, take them captive, like Ashley just said, which is a biblical principle, and say, you know, I'm not gonna dwell on that. That's an attractive person, and I'm gonna move on. But that's not my wife. And that's. Every time I see a pretty woman, I think to myself, well, that's not my wife. That's not my wife. Because my wife is the one person where I can focus all of that, that energy and all of that desire. And focusing that desire anywhere else, whether it's a person walking by or a digital image on a screen, is out of bounds. And it's ultimately going to hurt me. It's going to hurt my marriage. And so I hope that that gives some insight and those additional resources that we pointed out can help deepen the conversation and understanding in your marriage. And in addition, you know, for this issue or really any kind of struggle we might be facing in marriage, we offer help. Here at ExoMarriage, we have a team of trained mediators that provide coaching and mediation. They can do it with you via Skype or Zoom. And here's a website. I want you to check out this site. It's xomarriage.com help. And every couple needs help sometimes. And there's certainly no shame in it. It's not a sign of weakness to reach out for help. It's a sign of strength. And in addition to the mediation we offer here, we also have a counseling partner. We're partnered with an online Christian counseling ministry that provides individual counseling for any struggle you might be facing. Depression, anxiety, past hurt, baggage, whatever you're facing, there's a trained counselor to help, and you can find them and also get a discount as a listener of this podcast by going to getfaithful.com nakedmarriage that's right.

And we appreciate you all tuning in today. We will see you next time.