When Family Dynamics Test Your Marriage

If your marriage feels busy and like you don't have much time to actually slow down and dream together, we want to tell you about something really special from XO Marriage.

The Vision Retreat is a guided experience for married couples who want dedicated time away to grow stronger and get clear about where they're headed together.

This is more than a getaway. At an XO Vision Retreat, you'll take time to honestly reflect on where your marriage is now, appreciate what you've built, and identify the values and priorities shaping your relationship.

You'll cast your faith, your family, the legacy you want to create, and walk away with a practical, actionable plan to help make that vision real.

And it all happens in Southlake, Texas, an incredible setting designed to help couples step out of the daily grind and really reconnect.

If your marriage could use clarity, alignment, and intentional time together, you can learn more about the Vision Retreat at xomarriage.com.

Hey there, and welcome back to the Naked Marriage Podcast. We are Dave and Ashley Willis, and on this podcast, we uncover God's design for lifelong love. And you guys, we're continuing in our, our series called What Is a Naked Marriage? And today we have a really good subject that we're going to talk about.

Yeah, I'm excited about this one. And stick around to the end, even though during the body of this episode, we're going to talk about family dynamics, in-law relationships, parenting, how all that affects your marriage and how your marriage affects all of that. But the question at the end today, which is not family dynamics. It's actually about fetishes in the bedroom. And I think it's going to lead to a really important conversation as well. So stick around to the end for that little bonus. We're going to have a lot of fun today. We're glad you're here. Let's dive in. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Well, I think this is a really important discussion that we're going to be having about what the naked marriage entails. And that is, what are family dynamics supposed to look like within the context of having a naked marriage? And you're probably thinking like, family dynamics? I mean, I thought it was just, you know, the husband and wife, but you know, we don't exist in a vacuum. We each come from families. And with that, whenever you come into marriage, you know, there's that old adage that you're marrying into the family, right? And so we wanna talk about, what are family dynamics supposed to look like if you're trying to live out this thing called the naked marriage? And we know that we've talked about communicating and prioritizing time with each other and really, you know, making your marriage connection point just something really special for the two of you and that safe place, that soft place to land. So how does family play into this? What would you say, sweetie? Where would you like to start with this conversation?

There's so many places you could start really, 'cause like you said, you're not in a vacuum, your marriage, the strength of your marriage or the lack of strength in your marriage is going to have an effect on the generations ahead of you and below you. And your siblings and in-laws and all that too. So it's gonna impact how you deal with your parents and your mother and father-in-law, your children, your future sons and daughters-in-law. I mean, it's all interconnected. And so you're trying to create a culture, a family culture through your marriage, that's one that is inviting, one that has healthy boundaries in place for everybody involved and one that's consistent, one that values marriage, one that values helping everybody else in the family have a good marriage. You know, one of the biggest challenges I ever got thinking about long-term for our family is we were in, I think, Colorado. We were staying in a hotel. I got up early. I went to the hotel gym. And it was like just a few machines. It was like 2 elliptical machines. I got on one. After about 5 minutes, this other guy comes in and he gets on the other one. And at first I was really annoyed because—

You wanted your private gym experience. Right.

It's early. Like, I don't want to be next to somebody. It was a tight space and I'm already sweating and uncomfortable. I don't want another person.

Could you smell his musk?

There. He smelled pretty good, you know. But anyway, we kind of got talking because we were awkwardly close to each other and there was nothing else that we could really do. And I think it was God's providence that we were next to each other because this guy was older than me and he asked, you know, kind of the obligatory, like, well, what do you do? What do you do? And he's a dentist. And I said, well, I do— my wife and I do marriage ministry. And like, that really intrigued him. He talked about his marriage. They've been married for like 40 years. But this is the part that really challenged me. He said they had like 4 or 5 kids that are grown and all married. He said, yeah, we, my wife and I, this last year, we did something that we just really felt compelled that like, hey, you know what? Part of our whatever legacy we want to have is we want to pass on like a strong marriage. So they at their own house organized and hosted a marriage retreat for all their kids. Like they paid for the childcare. For like, don't bring the grandkids. We love the grandkids. We'll have them another time, but leave them. This isn't like a family, this is like for marriage. And they had like, I forget the structure, like if they had somebody there teaching or what they were going through, but it was a very well thought out time for each couple to have private time, alone time, enrichment time. And they were blessing them and feeding them well. And it's just for your marriage. And I just thought the intentionality of that, the investment in that to think, of all the things we could spend our time and money on, to let's leave a legacy that is valuing and celebrating marriage. I think that's something I want our kids to remember. And our kids aren't married yet, but as they get older, I'd love to do things like that with them and for them. And so I'm so thankful that I ended up in a crowded hotel gym that morning because that really stuck with me. And I just filed that away. It's like, you know, as our kids get older, I wanna do those kinds of things. And hopefully them just seeing that we love marriage and value marriage will in itself be something that they wanna learn from. But I wanna invest in theirs. It's like, your marriage doesn't have to look exactly like ours. You know, go, you be the healthiest version that you can be. And we wanna cheer you on, support that, and resource that, provide space for that, babysit so you can go do those things. And I'm looking forward to those days.

Me too, 'cause it is something where sometimes we need to think outside of the box. We don't have to just go with whatever culture says or with whatever, you know, our families of origin did. We can create a new legacy. And that is definitely outside of the box, what that guy's doing, to do that within just their family and to invest into the marriages within their family. I just love that. I think that, I mean, what a wonderful gift to give, a great, way to spend your time and your money. And yeah, definitely a good thing to file back. You know, I'm glad that guy was next to you.

But what about right now? What about the people that have young kids at home? Maybe they're trying to figure out how to get on the same page with parenting. They're trying to protect their marriage in that. They're also dealing with maybe stressful in-law dynamics, which in full transparency, we did. We wrote a book here with XO called Married into the Family that has a lot of that story in it. What do you do to protect your marriage and at the same time try to build healthy in-law relationships and parent relationships and family culture dynamic when you're not in total control of that because there are a lot of other people involved?

There are. And you know, if you guys haven't listened to our podcast episode with Jimmy Evans that we had fairly recently, go back and listen because I love how Jimmy in his book, Four Laws of Love, he explains what he calls the law of priority, which is, Biblical. And the law of priority is basically just really looking at the Bible and how God lays out what our priorities need to be as married people. And first and foremost, God comes first, and that's our relationship with God individually, right? Like how we pursue that relationship, that's reading our Bibles, praying, and just working on that relationship that we have with the Lord first and foremost. But then, and that doesn't necessarily mean church up there, okay? And we've talked about that before. But just our relationship with God, and even as a couple, like praying together, like we've talked about, But then right underneath that, as a married person, is your spouse takes top priority as your human relationship on this earth. And then underneath your spouse is your kids. Not your kids before your spouse, but your kids come after your spouse by God's design. Because when your marriage relationship is really strong, your kids benefit from that. But when you have a really strong relationship with your kids and you're constantly putting your marriage on the back burner, your marriage is gonna suffer. And ultimately your kids end up suffering, even if you've been giving them all of your time and your best attention. And I think that that is where we often get the family dynamics things wrong is because the culture tells you, oh, kids come before everything else. And I think where this is especially tricky is if you have a blended family. And that's where I hear this all the time. People say, I get you, I want to have, you know, I wanna live out the law of priority, but in a blended family, it can be a little complicated because you're bringing kids into that marriage. You know, and so what would you say to that? Because that is a tough dynamic.

It really is a tough dynamic because, you know, you've made— there's a lot of different situations that lead to blended families.

Absolutely.

And so not every dynamic is the same, but you just think, well, maybe you were a single mom for a time. It was kind of you and your kids against the world. You had to have a survival mentality. You were everything to them. Mom, dad, everybody, their safe place. And then you get married, a man comes into the picture. Maybe he has kids of his own. And then all of a sudden you're now with this guy and you feel like, well, but there's nobody watching over my kids like I could. I have to put them first still. It is more complicated, I would say, than if you just get married, have kids with a person, all you have are your own children. Blended families, you gotta have a unique measure of grace. And we have here at XO Marriage, there are a lot of resources designed specifically to help. So I just wanna, as a side note, say, you know, the videos on XO NOW, books, podcast episodes, articles aimed specifically to your dynamic. We want you to know you're seen and we want to help equip you. But even still, even in that blended family dynamic, the laws of marriage have to be consistent, that you have to be able to get to a place where you say the marriage is still first. We'll do anything for our kids. I mean, you jump in front of a bus for your children. But the marriage has to be the primary relationship, not at the expense of completely neglecting the children. But the kids need to see that. Otherwise this— I think one of the reasons why second marriages tend to have an even lower success rate is because it's more common that it's a child-focused marriage in that second marriage. And the marriage is never the priority. And no marriage can survive when it's not the priority.

It's so true. And so my heart goes out to that dynamic, 'cause I know it's hard. And here's the deal though, is you still can have a thriving marriage, okay? We're just trying to say it might be a little trickier because there's multiple parties involved here. There's children, like you said. I mean, and it could be that one spouse passed away and then this, you know, one spouse is raising the kids by themselves and then gets remarried. And so there's all kinds of different dynamics. So have lots of grace and patience with each other, but try to get to a point where it's still God first, and then your spouse, and then your kids, because that brings such security to your kids. There is such security that they get from just seeing two parents that love each other and that are committed to each other and would do anything for each other, even in blended families. I mean, there is such a beautiful security that can happen with that. And so work towards that. And so how do you work towards that? You prioritize your time, okay? Like we said before, Dave often says, time is the currency of relationships. And so you have to look at your calendar first and foremost and see where are you prioritizing your marriage? You know, we often do this with couples. We'll say like, hey, look at your calendar. Where do you show your marriage as a priority? Like in your day-to-day, in your week-to-week, in your month-to-month. And I know this can sometimes be stepping on some toes, but it's a very easy way to see where you're prioritizing each other. And if you are, or if you are not, you can also look at your bank account and say, where are you spending your money? 'Cause that shows where our treasure is, where we spend our time and our money, right? And so just really take a long, hard look at that. And if you don't find that you are spending any time together and prioritizing time together, then start doing that. Start with looking at your day. How do you end your day? How do you start your day? Make sure that you're making time to send each other off well and greet each other at the end of the day well. And then make sure even in the midst of having young children, that maybe you put them to bed earlier than they would like or earlier than most kids their age. It doesn't matter. You do you and your family. Put them to bed, have that time together, because that is a lifeline to your marriage to just take a breath at the end of the day. Remember why God called you together in the first place, and really just make sure you're making time for communicating and connection. That's so important. But then look at your week. And if you can't have a date night every week or a day date every week, it doesn't have to just happen at night. But make sure that either every week or every other week, or maybe once a month, you're having a prioritized date night. Like you set time aside for that date night. You book a sitter ahead of time. You swap families, meaning like maybe you watch your friend's kids one week and you watch their kids the other week. This can look a lot of different ways. Look up your YMCA, see if they have a parents' night out. Look up gymnastics places in your community. They usually have a parents' night out. These are all people that have been cleared with background checks. Churches sometimes put on parents' night out. I'm telling you, when we were in the season of raising young children, I would get those family magazines that used to be in paper form, but now are online, there's apps, and I would go through and highlight where we were gonna have our date nights, 'cause we had a little budget. It wasn't much, but we would make sure that we made time. We were gonna make this happen and then protect it. Don't let it be the first thing that's thrown off the calendar. Make sure it's the one thing you don't change. But I think that we have to make sure that we have a family dynamic where the marriage takes priority. Now, this doesn't mean that you don't make time for your kids. Have lots of family time. Have times where you're all together. You know, have little singular dates with your children if you have multiple kids. That's one of my favorite things that we do. And it's just so fun to get to spend that one-on-one time with them. You know, definitely make time as a family. Have family meals together regularly. If you can't do it every night of the week, aim for 3 or 4 nights a week. Make sure you go to church, make sure you have these rhythms in your life where you're prioritizing your marriage and you're prioritizing your family and your children. But I think it's just important in all of this that I'm saying that you realize that you get to choose, okay? We are adults. We get to choose. There are some things that we have to do. We have to go to work. We've gotta make sure we put food on the table. And there's different meetings we have to go to with our kids' school and various things that we need to do. But there's some things that we think we, have to do in quotation marks that we really don't have to do. And sometimes what I've seen, you know, in our own lives that we've done in certain seasons and also with couples that we work with is we can use these good things that we feel like we have to do as distractions to really working on the marriage because we like doing those things and we don't wanna say no to it in order to say yes to our marriage. But the truth is maybe what we need to do in this season is say no to this good thing and say, hey, maybe in this season we don't do this thing so we can make room for the marriage and get the marriage in a better place and then get some rhythms in place where we prioritize each other. And then maybe one day you can incorporate that thing once again. But we need to make sure that our marriage is a priority when it comes to setting our schedules and our calendars.

And when you do that, what you'll see is it's actually a blessing for your kids. Absolutely. Because I think sometimes we think, oh no, if the kids aren't first in everything, if it's not just their activities then they're gonna be neglected and feel unloved. And kids are overworked, kids are stressed out. You know, kids are doing so much.

Yes, there's a thing called rushed child syndrome. They literally have a name for this, rushed child syndrome, where we just have this epidemic of kids being in too many things, never having a moment just to have reprieve. And that's why it's actually breeding anxiety. And I really felt convicted by this, 'cause I'm that mom sometimes where we're always rushing somewhere. And when I heard this, I mean, we talked about this and it's like, okay, where are the pockets of reprieve to just be? To just have Sabbath, you know, have a Sabbath day.

Have peace.

God wants us to have that.

Shalom. Yeah, margin. God wants that. And not only does God want your kids to benefit from the peace and the rhythm of rest in a world that pushes chaos, he also wants your kids to see a thriving example of marriage in the home. Because nothing gives a child a sense of security like seeing mom and dad in love with each other. Nothing. I mean, it might— they might act grossed out when you kiss. They might like roll their eyes when you leave them with the babysitter to go on a date night. But they have security seeing that you two are prioritizing your marriage. And it's raising them to have a desire for marriage in a world that's scared of marriage now, instead of having a codependent relationship with you that will sabotage their future romantic relationships and marriage. Because when you put the kids first, that's what it does. It creates this codependent relationship that gives them a setback instead of a leg up when it comes to future marriage. And so one of the best things, when you do it God's way, everybody wins. It's just the way he designed it.

Absolutely. Now we're gonna talk about a really touchy subject that I think most people have feelings about. So when I say this word, you're gonna think really great thoughts, or you're gonna be like, ugh. And I rarely have anybody have a neutral reaction to this. And that is the subject of in-laws, okay? I know, I know, if you're listening to this driving, you literally, some of you had a smile on your face and some of you let out a groan. Like some of you were like, tell me about it. And you know, it's because it can be tricky, okay, navigating all these family dynamics because—

It can be very, very complicated.

Very complicated. And this is part of our story, okay? We walked through—

And honestly, what encourages me is when you read the Bible, all the family stories in the Bible, like every single family in the Bible had all kinds of dysfunction.

Oh yeah.

Like, so it's encouraging, I guess, in a weird way to be like, well, every family's had struggles. In fact, there's a funny— I'm not recommending you watch The Simpsons, but there's a famous clip from it where Homer Simpson reads the Bible. And at the end of it, his takeaway from reading the whole Bible, he's holding the Bible, he says, He goes, everybody in this whole book is really messed up except for this one guy.

And talking about Jesus.

And I'm like, that's actually pretty good theology that like, we're all pretty messed up except for this one guy.

Because we need Jesus.

Yeah, he's the only one who's perfect. And the more of him we invite into our families, the more peace we're going to have. But every family is imperfect, broken people.

Yes.

And when I remember that, it helps me to have more grace for the people who think differently than me, have quirks that are different than my own traditions that are different than my own. And when people marry into your family, you have to have that same grace. You might in your mind be thinking, this isn't who I would've picked for my kid. But instead you have to say, you have to welcome them with open arms and say, this person is a gift. I'm gonna love them unconditionally, the same as I do with my own child. I wanna make coming into our family a joy for them. I want them to feel acceptance and love. I wanna treat 'em that way, even if I'm not always treated that way in return because of whatever brokenness they might have.

Sure, yeah.

And it's so hard because, you know, as you marry into family or people are marrying into your family, they do bring their brokenness.

They do.

And we have our own.

Right, right. And sometimes, sweetie, it stems from just different expectations, different pictures that we don't even realize we have of how it's supposed to look, how holidays are supposed to look, how extended family vacations are supposed to look or even occur. I mean, you may have one family where they're like, oh, the date doesn't matter. We just wanna be together when it comes to holidays. We don't care what date it is. And where another family's like, no, if it's not on Christmas Day, then you don't love us, you know? And so there's a lot of confusion that can happen, but what it really boils down to, like if you are the married couple who has maybe some tricky family dynamics when it comes to in-laws or maybe your family of origin, the greatest thing you can do is to make sure that you two, as husband and wife, are on the same page. And one of the greatest things you can do too is you come up with ground rules on how you as a unified married couple wanna show up to your families. And I will tell you this. So like one of our ground rules as we navigated a very, very tough season with tough family dynamics and in-law situations is, and we didn't do this on our own. I think I shared in a previous episode that we went and saw a counselor and that helped tremendously. 'Cause we felt way like this was beyond anything.

Oh, we were so out of our league.

We didn't know what to do. It was devastating.

It was, yeah. We can't oversell how hard this was for a long period of time.

Gut-wrenching.

And, you know, in fact, even fairly recently, there was a kind of a revisiting of some of that, as some of those things were brought back up. And, you know, it was—

It was hard.

It was just hard.

It was. But like back in the early years, and this went on for, I would say, like a good 5 years, back and forth, you know, kind of some ups and downs through that. And the early years of our marriage where it was, I mean, really a lot of heat, a lot of misunderstanding. We did see a counselor. He helped us navigate kind of these complicated situations. He recommended the book "Boundaries," that's been around forever by Drs. Townsend and Cloud. It's great. It's got all kinds of great tips in there on how to establish boundaries. But he was like, you know, encouraging us, before you establish boundaries, talk about ground rules, like ground rules, that the both of you, as you show up to your families, that you're gonna have each other's back, and what would that look like? And I know for us, one of our ground rules was that we wouldn't allow our families to talk badly about our spouse, whether the spouse was in the room or if it was behind their back, because that was just not gonna happen. That wasn't okay on our watch. And so there were situations where I had a family member who wasn't getting their way and would really, who was used to having a lot of control, would really pitch a fit. And I'm talking use every tactic they possibly could. And it just, it wrecked me at first. But after going to the counselor and having a lot of prayer, talking to Dave a lot and establishing these ground rules, I realized that in order to adhere to the ground rules and establish a boundary, that I had to stand up to this person. And I remember one conversation in particular when they were wanting to just talk badly about Dave 'cause they weren't getting their way. And I said, listen, I love you, but I don't think it's right that you're talking about my spouse behind his back. And if you continue to do so, I am gonna have to get off this phone. I don't wanna do that. I wanna continue to talk to you in a calm way, in a productive way. But if you continue calling him names and saying bad things, I'm gonna have to hang up. And this person kept doing it. And I repeated myself again. This person kept doing it. And I said, well, I've told you this, I love you, but I'm gonna have to hang up the phone. And I hung up the phone on this person. And you guys, like, I remember that day hanging up the phone and just crying, like just bawling, because it felt so against everything I'd been taught on how you respect your family members and what honor looks like. And I felt really sad. But what I realized is I'm a married woman now, and honor looks different when it comes to your parents on friends and family members once you're married than it does before you're married. And I knew that I ultimately, first and foremost, needed to honor my husband. And it didn't mean that I would bring dishonor on my family per se, but I couldn't allow my family to talk about him that way. I couldn't stand there and do that because that would be dishonoring him. And Dave and I talked about this, talked to the counselor about this, and he was reassuring me like, listen, You said it kindly, you didn't call names back, you weren't mean about it. You gotta hold that boundary. And if this person really loves you, they will come back to you. There was a time where this person didn't speak to me for a while. I wanna say it was probably 5 weeks at that time. And it was horrible, it was absolutely horrible. But I kept praying, I kept being available if they wanted to talk kind of through other family members. And eventually this person came back around and started showing up a little differently themselves. It wasn't perfect, but they started respecting that boundary and didn't push me on it like they had previously. So things can turn around, but like Dave alluded to, gosh, decades later, we were having a conversation and some things came up. And Dave said a statement that was true about the past and just how hard it was. And this person again, just kind of went back up against it, didn't like the fact that he spoke that truth in love. And didn't talk to me for 3 weeks. And it was gut-wrenching. And it was, I was like, Lord, how do we find ourselves here again? I mean, we've been married almost 25 years. Like, I just can't believe this. But it just kind of reminded us of just how delicate these dynamics are. But I will tell you, we have since, you know, we've made amends and it's okay. God's still at work. But the reason I'm sharing this with you guys is just to show you that no family's perfect. We all go through stuff. And here we are still 25 years later dealing with some of that. And I realized how emotional it is because we love our families as we should. And we love our spouse as we should, but sometimes we can feel caught in between. And, you know, unless there's like a situation where your spouse is being abusive and your family is like calling out that abuse, that's an entirely different situation, right? 'Cause they're trying to bring you to a place of safety. But if it is just a situation where they're just being critical of your spouse because it's a power grab, That's one where in how God created that law of priority, our spouse is our priority.

Absolutely.

And we have to set that boundary.

And that's what you have to remember to have peaceful family dynamics is if you disregard God's laws to appease strong personalities or whatever, whatever your reason, then it's gonna create chaos. It might temporarily, make you feel like you've got this artificial harmony, but it always will create chaos in the end. And you've got to stick to God's laws. And anybody that doesn't respect that, you know, you love them and you respect them, but you have to put boundaries up that you do not let people cross when it comes to the sacredness of your marriage. And if you'll do that in the long run, it will create more peace and stronger relationships, not only in your marriage, but throughout your family. Well, friends, we're going to pivot to our question of the day. And as always, we, we like to end episodes with answering one of your questions. You can submit a question to us that might end up here on air. You can do that by writing us on Instagram @DaveandAshleyWillis or by going to nakedmarriagepodcast.com. Today's question is sexual in nature, and before I read it, I want to let you know that Ashley and I have a free resource that's specifically designed to help couples talk about sex. And so it's a free ebook. You can find it on our personal website, daveandashley.com, right on the homepage. It's called 9 Days to Great Sex. And really it's designed to help you guys communicate about things like this. Yeah, and all things related to sex. So here is today's question. It says, my husband has a fetish and only wants to make love to me if I'm wearing certain items. It makes me uncomfortable and it bothers me that he doesn't seem interested in me apart from this fetish. I want to give him what he wants, but I don't want to enable unhealthy behavior. What should I do? Yeah, that is really hard. I mean, on one hand, I do think, unless a fetish or a preference for certain things is harming you or going clearly against scripture by causing pain, by coercing your spouse, or by certainly bringing in another person, either digitally virtually through porn, or of course in person, which is an act of infidelity in itself. I think you have a ton of freedom in the bedroom. Now, the problem with situations like this is the guy seems to be so fixated on this certain preference he has for, I don't know if it's like articles of clothing or costumes or whatever it is that he wants her. Yeah, if you're not wearing this wig, if you're not wearing this thing, whatever it is, then I'm not interested in you sexually, which is deeply hurtful for the wife. So at that point, she just feels like an object that he's using to live out this fantasy, this fetish, instead of connecting with her as a spouse, as a partner, as in the sacredness of sex that God designed. And so she's feeling that tension. And it's a great question of like, I want to— I mean, she clearly, she wants to love and connect with her husband and to do what he likes and all this stuff. But at the same time, she's like, is this enabling this unhealthy behavior? And if so, like, how do I back off that? Do I just say, make a boundary and say, I'm not gonna do it at all, this fetish? Like, if you wanna make love, we're gonna just do it, like, without all that other stuff? What would you suggest?

Man, it's layered, you know? And again, I think that in working with couples, we get a lot of questions like this. This is not the first of its kind. And I think sometimes, When a wife receives this kind of message from her husband, like, listen, I really like it when you can put on, like you said, this certain wig or these certain pieces of clothing or whatever, she often wonders like, well, what does this go back to? Is this some fantasy you have that you saw in porn or that you experienced before?

Or he wants me to look more like this other person, which is deeply hurtful. It's like, here, I have to pretend you're so-and-so. I mean, that's—

Right, and then it's like, you know, what is his reaction with that? Is it like, no, I just think it spices things up and I think it's exciting. And then you have to look at what's her comfort level with this? Does this make her feel disconnected because she's doing it reluctantly? 'Cause you know, the marriage bed needs to be the safest place on earth. You guys have heard us say that many, many times. And so these things are very sensitive because if she feels like she's just, you know, fulfilling some kind of sexual fantasy that her husband has, and he's separating, you know, it's like she's having to become another person almost in this sexual scenario. That's not really what making love is all about because it's really about the two of them coming together and bearing all and knowing each other, right? Like that's really what it's about. And if these items are coming in between that and infringing on that, then they're not doing what making love is all about in marriage. And so I think it's definitely an exercise in, in kind of where they are and how they feel about this. 'Cause she's saying, "I don't wanna enable unhealthy behavior." And I think kind of reading in between the lines of this, it's, "Is this sinful?" is kind of what she's asking. And to answer that question, just wearing, you know, a husband wanting his wife to wear sexy items in and of itself is not sinful. I mean, or her wearing them is not sinful, right? Like you said, God gives us a lot of leeway when it comes to that.

[Speaker] But coercion is sinful, but— Manipulation is sinful. Objectification is sinful. And so where's the line?

It's not loving.

Yeah, yeah.

It's not loving.

And so this is messy. It's murky.

It is.

Between the line of having a ton of freedom.

Right.

But I would say if only one of you is into it, then it's not working.

It's not doing what sex is supposed to do for you.

Right, yeah. Especially if it— not that you never do that just as a way to like, serve the other. But if sex is lopsided toward always one spouse's preference, whatever that looks like, then that's way out of balance because sex is designed by God to be mutually pleasurable, that mutual connection. And if sex becomes like lopsided in terms of it's always about one person's pleasure or preference, then that's really unhealthy.

It is. And is it more about loving your spouse or more about fulfilling this fantasy? Is it more about these items being a huge turn-on or making sure your wife feels comfortable and loved by you? You know, I mean, it's really having to navigate that conversation. You know, I really appreciate this question. I know those kind of questions are not easy to ask, but I do think they're not alone in navigating these kinds of things. So this is a great opportunity to talk about it and not make assumptions. Again, not make assumptions for why he likes these things, or why she doesn't like these things, or, you know, just be open to talking about it. Like we've said before, our favorite part of doing this podcast isn't so much about our conversations, though we do love to talk about these things. We love knowing that this can lead you guys to having a greater conversation. And so I hope this opens up to maybe a much-needed conversation for you. And thank you for this question.

Well guys, thanks so much for tuning in. As always, we love and appreciate you.. And we hope that you'll help spread the word, like and subscribe to this podcast, and then also let others know about it as we continue to grow the Naked Nation. We can't wait to see you next episode. Take care. Tires matter. They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road. Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack. Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy. Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection, and convenient installation options. Go to TireRack.com to see tire test results, tire ratings, and consumer reviews, and be sure to check out all the special offers. TireRack.com, the way tire buying should be.