Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage

Dr. Greg Smalley: Welcome to Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage. I'm Dr. Greg Smalley.

Erin Smalley: And I'm Erin Smalley. We want to say thank you to all of our listeners who send us encouragement. It's always good to hear from you. It makes us feel loved that you're responding to these conversations every single week.

Dr. Greg Smalley: What's funny is even a few listeners wrote in to confess that they do the same thing, Erin, that you do. And that's that they read the last page of a book first to decide if it's worth diving into.

Erin Smalley: So I'm not that weird. I just like knowing how it ends. That way I can actually relax and enjoy the journey of getting there because I know I don't have to be all tense waiting to see what's going to happen to my best friends that I've just read about for 200 pages.

Dr. Greg Smalley: That literally just changed my life. As much as I would mock you before when you told me that, that actually makes sense in my brain. You skip to the end because you want to know how it ends so you can actually relax and enjoy.

Erin Smalley: It helps me relax. Today's conversation is going to equip you to build unity in your marriage while also honoring your spouse's individuality as well as different phases of marriage.

Dr. Greg Smalley: Later, we're going to address a topic that may feel a little uncomfortable to talk about in Christian circles. It's a question from one of our listeners about masturbation in marriage. Rather than approaching this conversation with embarrassment or judgment, we want to create a space for an honest, biblical, grace-filled discussion. All of that is coming up right after this.

Erin Smalley: Our guest today is Pastor Kevin A. Thompson. Kevin is a teaching pastor at Bayside Church in Roseville, California, and he meets with hundreds of couples every year addressing premarital counseling. He also helps marriages navigate the most serious of betrayals. He's written several books on marriage and family, and today we're going to talk about his latest called *The Creation of Us*. Kevin, we're thrilled to have you here. Welcome to Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage.

Kevin A. Thompson: Erin and Greg, what an honor it is to be with you.

Dr. Greg Smalley: We love it. You've got such great wisdom. We want to jump right in. We noticed on your YouTube channel, you have an episode on your podcast that said the marriage triangle that we've been taught for years is trash. That jumped out because Erin developed that. So she's just curious why you think it's trash.

Kevin A. Thompson: It's one of those rants I shouldn't have gone on. But I have always been irritated. I grew up in the Baptist Church in a season where the extent of your premarital counseling was just this: they'd say marriage is like a triangle, husband and wife are at the bottom, God's at the top, and as you draw closer to God, you draw closer to each other.

Obviously, there is a principle behind that that's good. Clearly, we need to be pursuing after God. But I just never have liked that from the standpoint of it almost implies that you can't be united separated from God. Whereas I see couples all the time united in their rebellion, united in their sin. They are together and couldn't be farther apart from God.

At the same time, it almost implies or guarantees that the closer I get to God, the closer I will feel to my spouse. I think an overarching picture of that is probably true, but it may not be immediately true. As a matter of fact, as I get closer to God, I might become more aware of my own brokenness and sinfulness. I might feel a little bit more shame at first before I experience His grace.

There might be a disconnect. I think there's a lot of couples who have a pseudo-sense of connection apart from God. They feel connected to each other, but they're really not. If they start walking toward God, the first response to that might feel like more disconnection. But as they're dealing with honest issues, that then allows them further down the road to feel connected. My big thing is I think we generally need to be careful about cheesy marriage advice because it has ramifications that we so often overlook. Trash is probably too strong of a word, although I think I kind of believe it.

Erin Smalley: I agree because I think it sets couples up to believe that if we're both pursuing God, then we're going to have a great marriage and we're not going to have to work at it. We're just going to pursue God both individually and together. That does influence us in our marriage, but sometimes it just doesn't work like that. We need to work hard at the marriage as well. Often we need to get help even though we are strong Christians individually.

Dr. Greg Smalley: I really appreciate what you're saying because there is a lot of advice out there that implies if you do this, then this will happen. I was in a conversation with a husband not too long ago and he was saying he was taught if you do all these things, then she's going to be so receptive to that physical intimacy. In his mind it was, "I just spent 20 minutes unloading the dishwasher, I don't see that she's any more available now than before, so I just wasted my time." It became that. So I really like going, notice that some of the advice out there kind of implies if you do A, then B will most certainly happen, and that's not always the case.

Kevin A. Thompson: We're looking for the marriage equation. If you can guarantee me the equation for success, then once I see it, I'll see what's demanded of me and then maybe I will do my part. Yet there's no equation out there for guaranteed success. So instead, in faith, I have to start doing my part, controlling what I can actually control, and then hope and pray that Jenny does what she's going to do. Then the messiness and the mystery of life, the craziness you might even say of what life looks like, then we're going to experience generally better outcomes, but at any given moment it may not actually feel that way.

Erin Smalley: Your book is called *The Creation of Us*. So how can a couple become an "us" more productively?

Kevin A. Thompson: The triangle I'm providing as I'm replacing the old one is saying it's him and her, and then at the top, the apex of the triangle, is "us." Then God's in all of it. What I saw so often was couples don't see marriage as its own entity. You see the two individuals who are involved, but you ask them, "How's work?" and they can tell you if sales are up or down. You ask them, "How's my golf game?" I can give you exact details of where my golf game is right now. You ask, "How's the family?" and they start telling you and giving you a report on where all the kids are.

But if you ask them about how the marriage is, you tend to get this blank stare because they don't see it as its own entity. Whenever you don't see it as its own thing, it's very difficult to evaluate it. So what I'm trying to encourage couples to do is, without a sense of losing yourself, a marriage consists of two individuals flourishing, living out their skills, giftings, callings, everything God's called them to be, and then to come together to create this third thing, this sense of us.

The way a couple goes about doing that is by creating these rhythms and patterns, this identity that's out there, this value and love for each other, this mission and purpose that we're pursuing after God. God is doing something in us together that would be different if we were married to somebody else and to begin to see marriage is literally all three angles at play, not just two.

Dr. Greg Smalley: We often poke fun at that traditional wedding ceremony, the unity candle ceremony, to where the two lit candles come together to light the big marriage candle and then they inevitably blow out the two individual candles. That's really what you're saying is don't blow out anything. Make sure all three stay lit and give equal attention and care to both individuals and the marriage.

Kevin A. Thompson: In secular culture, where individualism is the idol of our day, marriages outside the church, the temptation is to never create a sense of us and just to live parallel lives. I think if we're not very careful inside the church, we can take the idea of two become one from Genesis repeated by Jesus, and then even the idea of we're supposed to die to ourselves, and all those are true principles and ideals. But we can think that what that means is for a healthy marriage then I have to erase myself.

I don't think that's the aspect at all. I think a healthy marriage is two people that fully alive come together and create this new thing. Whenever very often that I hear school begins back in session and maybe somebody takes their youngest off to college, they might sit in my office and one of them might say, "I don't even know who I am anymore." That's a natural transition and season in life, but it's a failure of marriage too. I hope that my love for Jenny helps her become more fully alive, more fully everything God has created her to be and desired her to be. I know her love does that to me so that our marriage is not the extinguishing of the two of us for the "us" to happen, but instead it's the flourishing of both of us individually and then this new thing that we've created between us.

Erin Smalley: So often I have women sitting in my office that feel like being a good wife is erasing themselves and just pouring out, pouring out. It's selfish if I focus on me and it's selfish if I go out with my friends and my kids don't like that so I'm not going to do that. And you're right because then comes the day where they're like, "I've been the good wife and I have no idea who I am and I have nothing really to give. And often I don't even know who he is." And that is an issue versus a husband that is supporting a wife or a wife supporting a husband to really become the best version of who God created them to be.

Kevin A. Thompson: Women have a responsibility to see that there is a temptation to lose myself in the midst of parenting, in the midst of marriage, in the midst of all these things. Many women are this way, much like my wife, she will serve everybody else at the expense of herself and not prioritize herself. It's honoring in so many ways, it's noble, and yet there is a responsibility for women to notice that's not what God is calling you to do to totally lose yourself for those things. You can prioritize friendships and dreams and goals even while parenting.

But there's also a responsibility men have, husbands have, to make sure we're creating the climate in which our wives can take the time, feel refreshed, know that I'm going to bear the load of what's going on, that she's not going to now have to double up the next day to do more work. Next thing you know, creating friendship is actually more work on her instead of a respite. At the same time, I think churches have to take some responsibility that we have often miscommunicated what a healthy marriage looks like. I would say many couples really do not know and have a good definition of what a healthy marriage looks like, which is why in *The Creation of Us* the very first two chapters are just laying out what I think is a biblical approach to what a healthy marriage actually looks like.

Dr. Greg Smalley: How would you define that healthy, thriving marriage?

Kevin A. Thompson: Biblically, it's the picture of wholeness from which we get the idea of holiness. It's every piece and part fitting in together, not losing itself, not losing its own identity, but as they come together they create something bigger than themselves. You think about in the world of psychology, Dan Siegel down at UCLA, founder of interpersonal neurobiology. He talks about what a healthy brain looks like. He says a healthy brain is when the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere each does what it's designed to do.

The left hemisphere is the language, the linear, the logical side. The right hemisphere is the autobiographical information, the spatial awareness, beauty, art, all those kind of things. Siegel says a healthy brain is when the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere each distinctly do what they're designed to do. They're differentiated, but then they're linked together in the midst of communication. That linking together now empowers the brain to become something far greater than it could ever be on its own in two individuated parts.

Siegel actually says that every form of mental illness is some breakdown of either one or both of the hemispheres not doing what it's supposed to do or a failure of communication. Whenever I think about a healthy marriage, I think it is Jenny and I both individually living out who God has called us to be, the callings, the giftings, the skills, the backgrounds, the histories, the passions, the desires. We're both living those out and then we're communicating, we're linking together, sharing resources, sharing desires, supporting each other so that we are actually becoming more and greater together than we ever would be apart. In the end, a healthy marriage is all three of those angles flourishing.

Erin Smalley: In your book, you talk about good dependence. There's this healthy dependence because I think, again, going back to so often it's individuals that aren't connected versus how can we have good, healthy dependence versus codependency?

Kevin A. Thompson: Good dependence is a recognition that human beings were created to be in relationship. It's not good for man to be alone. We can share in community, have needs met, marriage being the ultimate example of that, but not just marriage: friendships, families, churches, communities as well. But the temptation, the way that we get that wrong, is one of two ways. In society, it is independence. In our culture, the idea or the thought is that the happier I will be is dependent upon me having no restraints, being fully able to express whatever it is that's inside of me, and I don't have to submit to anything, no demands being made outside of me.

Culture says independence is the way to happiness. Obviously, that's not working very well for us as a culture. At the same time, we don't want to swing the pendulum too far the other way where you have this sense of enmeshment or codependency. Next thing I know, I lose my own sense of emotion and I have to use you to figure out even who I am or what I feel. So instead of independent or codependent or enmeshment, I want good dependence, which means I now have the ability to soothe myself, to meet my own needs, to recognize who I am and, at the same time, to see that Jenny is there to love me and support me.

I can in a healthy way leverage her for my own well-being, she can leverage me for her own well-being, we can co-regulate, we can encourage each other when we're down, we can bear each other's burdens and now to live this out in a very healthy way. A simple way to look at this is good dependence is the byproduct of secure attachment, whereas independence is avoidant attachment and enmeshment or codependency tends to be anxious attachment.

Erin Smalley: I was thinking that's secure attachment. That's what he's describing. What advice do you have for couples working toward that healthy, secure attachment?

Kevin A. Thompson: Marriage really can be the classroom and the discovery room. It can also be the operating room in which you begin to understand what your own patterns are. I had some awareness about some of my tendencies before I got into marriage, but it really wasn't until I met Jenny and got into that relationship that really the fullness of both the good and bad parts of me began to be revealed and to see that how I had some ways that I had adapted based on my family of origin that I was then taking and assuming that that would work in my relationship with Jenny, and it really doesn't. What saved you in the past will kill you in the present.

But then marriage, when done right, when we love each other well, there's a healing that takes place. Jenny is not responsible to heal me. I can't heal her. But we can, as we love each other, create a climate in which that healing takes place. Our greatest wounds in life are most often caused by somebody who was supposed to love us and didn't. All too often we bring in these wounds from our family of origin, not because they didn't want to love us. Love is more than just intention. It's also ability, availability, skill. None of us were loved in perfect ways; we're imperfect people loved by imperfect people.

But here's how God so often heals those wounds. Our greatest wounds were most often caused by people who were supposed to love us and didn't. And yet God so often heals those wounds by pouring His love through somebody who didn't have to love us and yet chose to do so. Jenny doesn't have to love me. She's chosen to do so. What I've noticed is as I've now begun to grow into this climate of love, that that love that God is pouring through her is healing me. So I see marriage as not only the discovery aspect of where we see our own brokenness, it's the very classroom in which God wants to begin to teach us new habits, new patterns, new pathways that can lead to Him.

Dr. Greg Smalley: Kevin, you used a term that struck me because I thought it was really funny, it's an acronym for MAD: Marital Attention Deficit. Explain what that is.

Kevin A. Thompson: I really do think attention is the issue of our day, specifically whenever it comes to marriage. We live in the attention economy where there are mega companies who are spending billions of dollars a year to try to get our attention as best as they possibly can so that they can sell to us and ultimately so they can actually sell us to others. There's just so many specifically for leaders. You have so many opportunities of ways that you can help others and all the chances that are out there to do really good things.

Yet think about this, we only have so much attention. We were created to be known, seen, loved, valued, heard. We have all of those attachment needs within us. Many times whenever those needs are not met, it expresses itself in the midst of frustration. But when we don't recognize what the real issue is, we'll think that whatever is frustrating us in the moment, whether it be the dirty dishes or the un-mowed lawn or the laundry that's everywhere or the kids that are running around the house, whenever those things frustrate us, most often what's going on is that's a symptom of a deeper disease.

The disease is our attachment needs are unmet. So one of the patterns I've created within myself is whenever I get mad, whenever I get frustrated, the first question I need to ask is: am I really frustrated about this situation or do I feel unseen, unheard, unvalued, unloved right now? Because if it's the latter, then that changes the conversation that I need to have with Jenny. If it's the former, we can go after the issue. But if it's the latter, then instead of making the symptom the issue, I need to say, "Hey, this isn't about the dishes. I really feel disconnected right now. Is there a way that we can connect?" This is something I think Jenny and I have gotten much better at now 26 years into marriage than obviously we were early on, but we now have this awareness of what we feel, this disconnect. So the frustrating issue isn't the actual issue. So I call it Marital Attention Deficit. Whenever you get mad, ask yourself that question: is this about that issue or is it actually about attention?

Dr. Greg Smalley: When you then have that self-conversation or you're having that with the Lord through some prayer, but going, "Yeah, what is really going on here for me?" If you're able to identify, "Oh yeah, this is, I'm feeling unseen, I'm feeling invisible, I'm feeling devalued," how do you then encourage someone to then, before going to your spouse, to deal with yourself?

Kevin A. Thompson: Especially people like me who can have a tendency to have a more anxious pathway, we tend to think that we have to have somebody else to soothe us. We have to have somebody else to solve our needs. Somebody with an avoidant pathway, they won't think that at all. So if you have a more avoidant pathway, I would probably go to your spouse quicker because you're tempted not to go to them at all. But somebody like me, I just notice in my brain anytime my first thought is, "Well Jenny needs to do this," or "My kids need to do this," or "My boss needs to do this," anytime my first thought is that I can't do anything until somebody else does, I recognize that's an anxious pathway.

That's not who I want to be. A secure pathway looks at that differently: where am I empowered? What can I do? So I can in that moment go to the Lord and begin to recognize: my identity comes from You, it doesn't come from my marriage, it doesn't come from Jenny. I can tell myself the truth: Jenny loves me, she's for me, she's proven that over 26 years. I may not feel it in this exact moment, but she's busy, she has the bands in her own life, she would never do anything to intentionally harm me. I can come back to this reality of where I actually am, begin to calm myself, and then when I go to Jenny, not only am I coming to her already in a better place, I'm in a much more open, less threatening, less protesting kind of way.

I say in *Love Styles*, a finger of protest and a fist of defense, that tends to be the pattern of anxious and avoidant. They tend to operate in this pattern of protest and defense. But the problem with a finger of protest and a clenched fist of defense is you can't hold a hand with either one. So you literally have to open your hand, stop defending yourself, stop protesting about the issue, and come open-handed to your spouse. So I think primarily if you have an anxious pathway, to learn to soothe yourself and then go to your spouse is a much healthier way to go about it.

Erin Smalley: Can you tell us about the "Box of Us" that you describe in your book?

Kevin A. Thompson: For our first anniversary, we were in seminary in Birmingham, Alabama. Jenny was working, I was going through graduate school. Typical me, I didn't have a great gift. I didn't know what I was going to get her. I felt this pressure of the first anniversary. So very last minute I just ran to this place and I saw this box, this antique box. I thought, "All right, I'm going to buy that." Then I took it home and during our dating time, she worked at Glacier National Park up in Montana, I was in Phoenix, Arizona working at a church, and we had written email back and forth every single day back when that was a thing.

So I printed off all those emails that we had sent each other and bound those together into a book, put that in the box, and then just began to collect movie stub tickets and various things from college and then into graduate school, put that in there and gave it to her for our first anniversary and said, "From this point forward, this is the box of us. This is where we're going to put things to remember the times that we shared together and this now defines us." So along the way, we'd go on vacation and I would take little tickets, the airline tickets back when you used to print those out. I would get home and throw them in there.

When Ella and Silas were born, when we got home and the little hospital bracelets, I cut those off their little wrists, put them into the box. Over time, I just collect things. To be honest with you, I don't think Jenny has maybe ever put anything in the box, so it's just the box of Kevin. But she has interacted with the box in a way that I haven't necessarily. I tend to put everything in there; she doesn't. But she told me about a time in which about 10 years into marriage, she was extremely frustrated with me and was trying to figure out what was going on. She went back and opened that box up and just began to look at all the memories.

She said, "Literally Kevin, in 20 minutes, I went from being frustrated with you to being deeply in love with you, and you didn't change one bit. I just remembered all the things that we had actually created." I think as simple as a note in your phone where when good memories come to mind, just write it down, and then in moments of frustration, go back and read those. It doesn't excuse bad behavior, it doesn't minimize anything like that, but it allows us to put individual circumstances into a much broader context because what happens specifically with frustrations and disagreements is they can become all-consuming, instead of recognizing this is one issue in the midst of a much larger love story, and it allows a different context in those ways.

Erin Smalley: Looking in the box and seeing all the memories, our hearts reopen and then God's love flows through us and back to the other person and we connect.

Kevin A. Thompson: You know who loves the box of us more than anybody? My daughter, Ella. Ella's 21, has Down syndrome, she's in a college program here at UC Davis, but she more than anybody else asks, "Can we go open the box of us?" because she loves to hear the stories. Think about how comforting that is for a child, even a young adult child, to know they come from a foundation of love.

Dr. Greg Smalley: Kevin, it is always so much fun to have a conversation with you. You've got so much practical wisdom. You're just helping us to remember that there are two individuals and an "us" together. Thank you so much for your words of wisdom.

Kevin A. Thompson: Well thank you Greg and Erin. What an honor it is to serve alongside of you and what God is doing there at Focus and what God has done in the midst of y'all's marriage and how your love for each other has a ripple effect and is literally changing generations.

Erin Smalley: As your relationship grows every single day as you show ordinary acts of love, Kevin's book will equip you with biblical insight, psychological principles, and real-world experiences to help you cultivate an amazing marriage that'll stand the test of time. We want you to get your copy of *The Creation of Us* for a gift of any amount when you click on our show notes.

Dr. Greg Smalley: We all know that there are different stages to a marriage. Think about the honeymoon phase, this is full of romance and passion. There's the realization stage, you're realizing that life has its routines and unmet expectations, these things will happen. There's usually a power struggle phase when there's some friction and conflict. Erin, what are some other phases to a marriage?

Erin Smalley: Well, there's the adjustment phase where spouses begin to learn to communicate through disagreements. And the companionship phase where the steady bond forms based on shared history. And then the deepening love commitment phase when you've weathered the storms and there's a profound comfort in one another. It could be so good just to have these moments to where we actually think about these phases, what phase are we in, and what do we need to look out for? How do we maximize that time?

Dr. Greg Smalley: Let's take the first one: the honeymoon phase. What's your advice, almost like don't make this mistake?

Erin Smalley: Because in the honeymoon phase the connection comes pretty easily, just making sure that you're recognizing that the patterns that you're setting, especially in that first year of marriage, are the patterns that will continue forth in your marriage. You're basically laying the groundwork for your future marriage. So you want to make sure that even though connection is coming easily, and this isn't for everybody, this wasn't what we had in our honeymoon phase. It was hard and we had to work hard.

But often couples report and in our own research, the Marriage Health in America study that Focus on the Family did, they found that a third of newly married couples report zero problems in these early years. Which is wonderful, but it can trick you into thinking you don't need to build healthy habits. It's so important to build those healthy habits. We'll go ahead and put a link so you guys can check that out.

Dr. Greg Smalley: For couples who are in the realization stage, how can they learn to grow closer?

Erin Smalley: What often happens, what we mean by the realization phase is you're realizing a lot of things, but specifically around expectations. There might be some frustrations in your relationship, some things that are bothering you like why isn't this happening? He or she's not loving me in a certain way that I really want. That's when we really encourage you to try to get clear on your own expectations. My frustration, my disappointment, my hurt within the relationship, is that tied perhaps to an unrealistic expectation that I have?

We hear a lot like, "You should just know what I need and I shouldn't have to tell you." Talk to your spouse eventually. Begin to think about it so that you guys can have that conversation because then that's when you and I together can say, "Okay, what is realistic?"

Dr. Greg Smalley: The power struggle phase, when there's a lot of conflict going on or maybe it's not even a lot, but there's enough conflict, but maybe we're not handling that in a way that's helping us move forward. What would your advice be?

Erin Smalley: It's important to identify what's really going on because often we'll make it about the other person, what they're doing to us. "You're making me feel unloved, you're making me feel invalidated," versus when you go deeper, you start realizing that, no, I actually brought some stuff with me into this marriage. These tender spots that get triggered and then I react and I do these things that I've done my whole life to survive.

Like Kevin said, "What saved you in the past will kill you in the present." And that's pretty much what happens when you react. You are doing something that you've learned, it's a coping mechanism, and you bring it right into your marriage and it doesn't work anymore. So it's acknowledging what is really happening: my buttons, my reactions, my desires of the heart. When you become aware of that, well then you can call it out when it's happening, you can take a timeout and step away and simmer it down inside and figure out what in the world is going on. And you can grow together and learn together more about what do we do when the cycle takes off.

Dr. Greg Smalley: We call this cycle the "reactive cycle." When we started to realize, "Okay, here are my buttons, here are my reactions, here's how that triggers your buttons and when you react this way, here's what it does to me," that was such a powerful realization for us. We have a free online assessment called the Reactive Cycle assessment. It's going to pinpoint, show you graphically, how your buttons and reactions look on both sides. And it also comes with 20 pages to print after you get your reactive cycle printout. We'll put the link in the show notes.

Erin Smalley: Whatever season of marriage you're in, let's talk about that. What's working well, maybe what's something in the season that we need to do a little bit differently? Because we want to enjoy every one of these seasons. Let's be intentional to discuss what's working and how could we grow, what's the best way that we can maximize the season of marriage that we're in.

Dr. Greg Smalley: It's the perfect time of day for some Q&A. Erin and I always love being able to hear your question and then to really think that through with you. Even if you're going, "Hey, that's not my issue," I tell you what, someone that you know is dealing with something like this. It's always great just to hear, "Oh yeah, I never thought about that. Hey, the next time my friend brings that up, here's a good response."

But before we go any further, we need to say that there are parts of married intimacy that many Christian couples have questions about that they don't always feel comfortable bringing into the light. Today let's talk about one of those areas, and that's masturbation. Our goal isn't to sensationalize the subject, but we really want to have an honest conversation about how it intersects positively or negatively with intimacy, our friendship, conscience, and connection between a husband and wife.

Erin Smalley: Today's question is an email from someone who wanted to stay anonymous, and this is what they wrote: "Greg and Erin, thank you so very much for your show. I'm a new listener who is losing hope for my marriage after nearly 19 years. I've always felt that my husband has used me for nothing else but sex. We have no intimacy, friendship, or emotional connection in our relationship. As long as we have sex, he thinks that all is good. I've explained over and over to him that without the emotional bond between us, I feel like a legalized prostitute. He just doesn't seem to get it. He has now been masturbating secretly in our bed while I am sleeping next to him. I feel strongly disgusted and just want to leave the marriage at this point. What is the biblical view on masturbation? How do I even deal with this situation?"

Dr. Greg Smalley: Thank you for trusting us. This is a very sensitive issue. This is very painful. 19 years of feeling used, not loved, that's real loneliness. But we'd also say 19 years is long enough. Right from the beginning, we'd recommend that you guys go to our Hope Restored intensive program. We see this routinely, couples have allowed certain issues to build to this point, 19 years later. But there's always hope.

Erin Smalley: I have so many questions reading this email, wondering has she tried to talk to him? What's happening that's keeping the intimacy, friendship, emotional connection from happening? How is this impacting her? She said she felt like a legalized prostitute, but at that deeper level, what does that mean for her or about her? That she's devalued, she's unimportant. Then, of course, as a clinician, I would want to go into what happened in both of these individuals' families of origin, where did these triggers come from, the wounds that are being carried in?

So there's so many more questions. But I think her question really is: what is happening here that we have not been having healthy connection as well as a healthy sex life? And then: my husband now is masturbating while I'm sleeping in bed and I'm uncomfortable with that. And I say it makes sense that you're uncomfortable with that.

Dr. Greg Smalley: Let's talk about in a general sense that there are times where spouses will end up weaponizing sex. One of our very favorite verses, Hebrews 13:4, let the marriage bed be undefiled, talking about that both of us are responsible for honoring our marriage. Within this situation, boy, you can just feel it how the marriage bed has become such a battleground. It's not a place of safety, it's not a place for honor. I think there are ways in which both are even inadvertently weaponizing sex.

So let's start with the husband. Connection can't be sex only. I get it's so understandable that sex is where he's experiencing that emotional connection, that intimacy, that friendship. But making sex the only outlet, that's the problem. If that's our only outlet for connection, I would even say, and again, I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, but I would call that relational laziness. That's not romance. A thriving marriage, it requires both people building it. You think about all of what we need to be doing to create the connection, the friendship, the intimacy: the financial provision, repairing conflict, going on dates, having fun, making sure the chores and our household responsibilities are fair and equitable.

Erin Smalley: Yes, but also making sure that I'm taking time to listen, to invest in the emotional connection, that I am showing an interest, being curious about my wife. Again, we don't know what happened to break that down. Was that always absent? Did something happen and it caused him to retreat? And then it's kind of a lifeline like, "Well, at least if we're having sex, then we're connected." We don't know. It might be that the meaning it gives somebody or what it says about them is not what sex was designed to be. So it's also evaluating if he was asking the question I'd be saying, "So what does it mean to you when you do have sex? What does that mean about you? What does it mean about the connection?" and really understanding that more because it might be that that's off, that that is not aligning with what is biblical sex for.

Dr. Greg Smalley: Secretly masturbating in bed after she says "not tonight" is punitive. That's saying, "If you won't respond to me sexually on demand, then I'll punish you for it." That's never okay. That's very passive-aggressive. That's what Hebrews 13:4 is talking about, that's defiling the marriage bed. That is not honoring his wife, himself, or their marriage. That behavior is not okay.

Erin Smalley: I agree 1,000 percent. So to the wife, it really is evaluating: is she making sex conditional? And I want to prelude that very carefully: if there is any abusive behavior, we don't know everything, if there's any abusive behavior, any sexual behavior that is causing her to retreat that she doesn't agree with, that doesn't feel safe for her, that's a whole another story.

Dr. Greg Smalley: But that's when, again, it's fair for her to ask the question to herself: is a part perhaps how I'm weaponizing sex within our marriage is by saying, "If you don't pursue me outside of the bedroom, if you don't do A, B, C, D, friendship, connection, all that, then I'm just not in the mood"? That's where she would really want to dig in to go, it feels like then that's conditional her availability, her being in the mood is solely dependent upon what he does. That's not a healthy dynamic.

Erin Smalley: Is she doing anything to pursue friendship connection or is she putting that all on him? And that's not fair either. But again, we don't know. She could have experienced sexual abuse prior to the marriage. We just don't know all the circumstances. The fact that he is masturbating secretly next to you at night without your consent is not okay. And therefore that's a boundary that she 1,000 percent needs to place and say that that is not okay and I refuse to be in this bed with you if that is going to be happening.

Because it's not her job to judge it as sin, that's between him and God, but she doesn't want to be around for that and I get it. So set that firm boundary of, "If I notice this was happening and if that continues or ever happens again, I will not be willing to sleep in this bed. And I will sleep in the guest room, I'll sleep downstairs." So it's setting that firm boundary because not doing that, her heart's just going to close and harden, if it hasn't already, but that boundary is going to help to protect her and to keep her heart open.

Dr. Greg Smalley: Let's talk a little bit then about masturbation within marriage. Again, the Bible never directly speaks about masturbation, so it's not like we can offer a verse that says, "Hey, here it is and here's what the Greek meant or the Hebrew meant." But I will say the Bible does say a lot about sexual integrity. Jesus talked about it, Matthew 5:27 and 28, where he's talking about if you have those thoughts in your mind about someone, those lustful thoughts, then you are literally committing adultery.

What Jesus is talking about is he's saying purity goes beyond behavior to matters of the heart. So if someone is using porn, fantasizing about someone other than their spouse, if they're cultivating lust, if that's fueling the masturbation, then I would say, "Yeah, that is sin." That's what Jesus was talking about.

Erin Smalley: Or if masturbation is taking the place of sex with your spouse. Like, "It's just easier to please myself than to engage in a relationship where it involves pleasure for both." If that's replacing that, then that's an issue as well.

Dr. Greg Smalley: And so that's when masturbation within marriage becomes harmful and that's not honoring Hebrews 13:4. So that's what I'd say to him. The bottom line as we wrap this up, the truest evidence of sacrificial love is your wife flourishing. As a husband, in our marriage, the true test of my sacrificial love that Paul was talking about when he said that I need to love you as Christ loved his bride, the church, he laid down his life, that's sacrifice.

The true evidence of me doing that is your flourishing. Is what I'm doing, how I'm showing up, the ways I'm investing in the relationship, is that helping you to flourish, to become the best version of who God created you to be? And I don't hear that here. And so I think for him, that's where I would encourage him to go is: if my wife isn't flourishing, what can I step back and really evaluate within maybe how I'm showing up as a husband?

Erin Smalley: Get help. We have the Hope Restored intensive program. Of course, they do a lot of screening and understanding of the scenario to make sure it's a good fit for Hope Restored. But it really is a pathway forward of what do we do here. Let's not go another 19 years of being miserable. Let's build something that actually works and is satisfying to both of us.

Dr. Greg Smalley: Thank you for your courageousness sending your question. Erin and I loved thinking that through with you. So look out for your copy of our book, *Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage*.

Erin Smalley: And if you have a question, we would love for you to click on the show notes and send us an email or a voice message. We know that it's hard to reach out when you're struggling in your marriage, so we appreciate your vulnerability and we appreciate you trusting us.

Dr. Greg Smalley: Thank you for joining us on Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage.

Erin Smalley: Thank you for following the show and sharing it with your friends and family. We want you to have a seat at the table every week as we help equip you and your spouse to have a lifelong satisfying marriage.

Dr. Greg Smalley: We want to see you growing spiritually both as individuals and as a couple so you can turn right around and invest in other couples to help them build a thriving marriage. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you again next Monday about this crazy little thing called marriage.