Summer Quickies: My Spouse is a Narcissist | The Naked Marriage Podcast | Dave and Ashley Willis

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Naked Marriage Podcast. We are Dave and Ashley Willis. On this podcast, we undress the truth about sex, intimacy, and lifelong love. And I'm so excited about today's episode. I'm really excited about every episode, to be honest. But today marks the beginning of a brand new summer series. Every summer. If you've listened to the Naked Marriage podcast over the past few years, you know that in the summer we switch up the format a bit and we do what we call summer Quickies. And one, because quickie's a fun word. But two, it's because literally these episodes are going to be a little quicker, a little shorter, and a little more focused on one specific issue. And the specific issue we're going to do during this summer, Summer Quickies is the Q and A. So at the end of every episode, my favorite part of our episodes is the question and answer that comes at the end. You guys submit questions@nakedmarriagepodcast.com and then at the end of every episode, we answer one. And so this year, for the first time, we're gonna dedicate the entire episode just to the question and answer to.

One question, most of the time, unless it's like a super short one. But we're so excited about it. And these questions we take from the Naked. Naked. Naked MarriagePod, nakedmarriagepodcast.com and, you know, we have put some feelers out there on Instagram, and so we did pull some from Instagram kind of earlier this year. But if you want, in the middle of this series, if you want to have your question answered, whether it be part of the summer Quickies Q and A, or when we get back to our regular seasons, we also do that at the end of the episode. You always want to submit that to nakedmarriagepodcast.com so we're really excited about it. Super excited. You know, we never see these until we actually do the recording. And so it's always, you know, fresh. And, you know, we're. We're doing the best we can to answer it. But before we dive in to today's question, I want to share with you something different than we normally share. You guys know, if you listen for a long time, we like to share your reviews about the podcast. But right now, we want to share some reviews about our new Naked and Healthy book, because we've been getting those reviews in. It's been out since late February. And so we're going to share one review with you today. And it's from Angela. She gave us five Stars. Thank you, Angela. And she entitled this review amazing book. Very real and helpful, she says. I got the audiobook yesterday when it was released and I finished it in one day. And this book is amazing. Dave and Ashley really know how to talk about and relate to hard topics in marriage. I have listened to a lot of the podcasts and also listen to the Naked Marriage audiobook and it is amazing. Very helpful. I am so thankful that I stumbled across them last year. So sweet. Thank you, Angela for taking the time to do that. If you have read Naked and Healthy and whether or not you got it from our podcast, from an ad that you heard about it, or if you got it from Amazon, or if you got it at one of our conferences, please go to Amazon and leave a review. It is the best way to let people know about our book.

Absolutely it is. And so we love hearing that feedback. Thank you again to those who not only leave reviews for the book Naked and Healthy, but also those who do leave reviews of the podcast itself.

Yes, we love it.

And thank you to those who send in questions like the one we're going to read today. Ashley mentioned Instagram a bit ago. If you're not following us on Instagram, we're doing a whole lot more there than we've ever done before. And so look up Dave and Ashley Willis. It's a long handle all spelled out. Or just search Dave and Ashley Willis in the search bar and it should pop up and click follow. We would love for you to join the conversation there as well. All right, so today's question, and it's an important one. All these questions are going to be important and none of them are easy. These are all hard hitting real life.

We like the hard questions.

Yeah. So we love the hard ones. All right, question today. Is it possible for someone with narcissistic traits and behaviors to change? My husband of 41 years has so many good qualities, but the narcissistic ones are destroying us and he can't see it at all. And man, that's hard, isn't it? Because you know, you've been married to someone a long time and there's so much good, there's so much you love about them, but there are these certain things, these self destructive and potentially destructive to others habits and traits that they're living out and refusing to acknowledge is a problem.

Yeah.

And what do you do in situations like that?

You know, it's so tough, you know, I don't know. Again, if this person has been actually diagnosed with narcissism, like if Narcissistic personality disorder, if they've been diagnosed by a psychologist or a counselor, or if this is just a spouse who's like, yeah, they're a little bit, you know, narcissistic. But either way, it is tough. And it is something where I do believe getting clinical help is necessary. You know, we actually did a podcast not too long ago where, with Dr. Cassie Reed, where we actually talked about this. So if you haven't listened to that, I believe it was called Mental health or something very just simple like that. But you can go back. It's during our Naked and healthy series. And Dr. Reed really brings up a lot of different things to think about when it comes to this in marriage, because it is hard. You know, clearly you love your husband and you can recognize that he has lots of good traits. But narcissism, it can really cause a lot of issues in the relationship because when it comes to marriage, we need to serve each other. You can't be all about yourself. You can't only think about your own needs. And narcissism, at the very kind of root of it is selfishness. And when it is something that is clinical, that's where it gets a little bit tricky. But I think the key here is your husband being made aware of this so that he can maybe be more intentional with his responses to you and be more open to what you have to say about his narcissism. And the only way to do this, because right now you're saying, you know, I try to show him this, but he can't see it. And that's another issue with narcissistic personality disorder, is they can't see it because, you know, they only see kind of what they want to see. And so it would take clinical help from a Christian counselor, from someone who understands the mind and how it works to really help them to see it. Because like with any mental disorder, that's what we have to do, is we need to seek help from the professionals and also be very self aware. And there's a lot of healing that can happen there.

And we talk about counseling all the time on this podcast for that specific reason. And we try to give you options to help connect you both in person and online to different counselors who can help. And again, you'll hear us talk about some of these links quite a bit. But we have a counseling partner that can do individual counseling and they do a great job. Their website, where you can get a exclusive discount as a naked marriage podcast listener, is getfaithful.com nakedmarriage. And then we also have a team of trained coaches and mediators here at XO Marriage who can do an amazing job to just listen to your story, pray with you, encourage you, and offer a practical next step solution to whatever you're facing. They can do that through a one time phone call or through a full day mediation and through a variety of different options. And you can find out about those different sources of help@xomarriage.com help. But the bottom line here is in this situation with the narcissistic spouse or any situation that's related to this is it usually is going to take that outside counseling. It's usually going to take that, that person who's really trained to help identify and help lead you through it. You know, it's kind of like a little anecdotal illustration to kind of point to this. I learned something this week that I just thought was, was interesting. It, maybe it sounds random to you, but this was like really interesting to me that Amazon put out a report of the most highlighted book passages of all the Kindle ebooks they've ever released. What are people highlighting the most? Because every time you highlight an ebook, there's a little digital footprint of that that keeps track. Keeps track, yeah. And so the most highlighted sentence of any book in the history of Amazon, I was really fascinated by what was highlighted more than anything else. And it was a line from the book Catching Fire, which is book two in the Hunger Games trilogy series. And it was one simple sentence that you could like read over and not think a thing of. But more people had highlighted this one sentence than anything else on all of Amazon. And the one sentence says simply because sometimes things happen to people and they are not equipped to deal with them. That's all it says. And that must have resonated so deeply with so many people. And I think the reason why is because all of us in life are going to face moments where we realize, I'm not equipped to deal with this. Like my, my training, my life experience, like I'm not equipped to deal with this. And that's okay because we don't have to figure it all out in our own strength. There are other people with, with other training and other experiences who can come alongside us, who are equipped. And in this case it's that trained Christian counselor. It's that person who can sit down and say, let me help you identify this blind spot. Let me help you work through this together. And just knowing you don't have to figure it out in your Own strength is freeing. It's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength. To say, I'm going to reach out and get the help that we need.

I love that. And I think that line is so telling about just human nature because we want to feel like we have it all figured out or that we always are equipped. But the truth is, you know, God just didn't design life that way. Life is unpredictable. And really he wants us to depend on him as Christians, he wants us to come to him. We're going to have a lot of times in our life where we don't have the answers, but we do know who the answer is, and that's Jesus. And so we need him. Especially in these situations where you're dealing with some kind of clinical diagnosis with a mental health disorder and you're like, I don't even know, you know, if this person can even get better. You know, that's essentially what this wife is asking, is like, is it ever going to get better? Unfortunately, we can't definitively say yes or no. But I do know that there is always hope. There's always hope in things moving towards a healthier place. And I think, you know, I just want to commend you on being such a supportive wife. I can tell that this is coming from a place of a tender heart, of someone who loves their spouse so much that they want to get them help. But then there's the catch 22 of your spouse maybe not even recognizing that there's any issue. And so I think the best way of approaching your spouse is saying, listen, I love you. And you have these tendencies you're not aware of. And I just want you to know that sometimes you hurt me. You know, you don't mean to. I know that. But when you do this, it hurts me. And so would you go see a counselor with me? Maybe you go with him those first couple of times and just, you know, he can learn about how to be more intentional, but also you can learn how to set healthy boundaries. Because a lot of times it comes to boundaries and saying that's not okay. Like, you being, you know, doing these things in this selfish way is not okay. I'm not saying that to hurt you. I'm not saying that to make you feel less than. I'm just saying that this is not healthy for our family. And I think that that's why, you know, we. Gosh, I know so many times you guys are probably sick of hearing it. That's why we're such. Such fans of of Christian counseling is because it truly is a game changer. But I want to say this. Sometimes that first counselor you see doesn't seem to get you. Sometimes it's just not a good mix and you might need to go see another one and then after that you might need to go see another one. And just because you don't see changes right away doesn't mean it's not working. I want to tell you, give it time. You know, I've shared on this podcast many times. I went through a four year battle with anxiety and depression and during that time I saw several different counselors and they all taught me something different. But there was one that was probably more effective than the others. But I want to tell you, I don't regret going to the other ones because there's little nuggets taken. And so it's not a waste of time, it's not a waste of money. It's something where you can learn a little bit each time. But I will tell you, if you don't give up and you just keep going for, you know, towards healing and really putting in the time, it is a huge time commitment and sometimes a financial commitment. But I'm telling you, eventually you will start to see those subtle changes that turn into bigger changes. And through it, what God honestly does when we go towards him and we move towards healing and we honestly surrender, just surrender our lives and our relationships, our spouse, you know, to God, knowing we can't change our spouse, that only he can, what happens is he honestly draws our hearts closer together to him and also to our spouse.

Man, that's so good. And to leave you guys with a little bit of encouragement when you find yourself in one of those situations, you're just not sure how things are going to play out and you feel stuck and you feel unequipped to handle it. That Amazon also released the most highlighted passage from the Bible from all the people who've read the Bible on their Kindle. And it's one of my favorite passages and I think that it's certainly encouraging in situations like this and in others. And It's Philippians, chapter 4, verses 6 and 7, which says, don't be anxious about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. And so, friends, we've got a savior who wants to give us peace. We have a savior who's bigger than our biggest challenges. We have a savior who's not surprised by the issues we face. And even when we face something and we feel completely unequipped to deal with it, he is bigger and he is able to walk with us through those storms and through those valleys and help carry us. Even in those moments we don't feel strong enough to to do it on our own and we're so thankful for that. Guys thanks so much for listening to this. Do us a favor and if this encouraged you today would you share this share this podcast whether you're listening on YouTube or iTunes or Spotify or wherever you're listening just grab the link and put it on your social media or text it to a friend or two and say hey I really think that this would help you. And together when we share messages of hope like this then together we're part of something that really is bringing hope all over the world and we certainly are honored to be on that journey with you. God bless guys. We'll see you next time.

Sam.