Episode 130. Reigniting Your Marriage with Gary Thomas

Unedited Transcript

Gary. I am so thrilled to have you back on the show today. Thanks for being with me. Well, thanks for inviting me back. It's always fun to talk with you, Rebecca. This is going to be fun. So I am beyond thrilled that you're rereleasing these three new, well, I almost said new. They're not new, they're there, but they're going to be new to some people in our audience.

So you are rereleasing nine essential conversations before you say I do the sacred search and a lifelong love, right? So I want to hear. Like, what was different this time around? Were there things that you went back as you read through the content and you thought, okay, maybe God. Has taught me something else or something different new that I know needs to be a part of these messages.

I want to hear about that. Yeah. Well, the first main thing that was different was COVID people that do what I do. We're not traveling much. And so I'm just sitting in an office. That's more time to write. I think it was different for each one for the nine, such a conversation. Before you say I do. I had gone with many gone through the book with many more couples, just doing premarital counseling, Steve Wilkie, Dr.

Steve woken, my coauthor had, so we were just able to revise the questions. We knew it. Some just didn't seem clear or if some were just non-starters or they were obvious answers. So it was sort of. Battle-tested a little bit more. So that, that was fun. Just to be able to take a resource and just tweak it.

So it's a little bit better. I was most nervous about the sacred search cause it's already sold so well, so well over a hundred thousand copies, it had great reviews. I was afraid of messing it up to be honest, but publishers will always tell you they want books to be shorter and shorter. The way we consume information today.

Blog posts. It literally has changed. Our brains were, so it was really more cutting it down and refocusing it. Some of it was my kids laughed and said, dad, do you realize how many times you say the phrase deal-breaker in this book? I said, if somebody took that original book, seriously, nobody would get married.

There are too many deal-breakers. And so I pushed back a little bit against my own tendency to want to warn people. Just cause like I see the consequences when people ignore red flags. So I still have the red flags in there, but, but try to be a little more hopeful. Um, and, and for a lifelong love, it really was more just about trimming it, making the book a little more reader-friendly by just shortening the chapters, refining the points and, and whatnot.

So I would say if somebody had read the first edition of. Sacred of a lifelong love or the sacred search. I wouldn't recommend buying a new one, sir. I don't, I don't think you're getting new content now. I publish it. Probably doesn't want me to say this, but I have a bond with my readers. I want to be honest with them.

It's not your you're actually probably getting less. It's just a little more refined and focused. Yeah. That makes total sense. That is the way that we are in taking information now and I love, but I just love that you got the chance to be like, all right, let me take all of this. And lay COVID against it.

Lay more life experience against it. Lay how we take in information against it and see what changes that's really good. Okay. So we're not going to get to dive in super deep to all three books, but I want to kind of touch on all three because they, they all will relate to my people. And I think the best place to start would be the nine essential conversations before you say I do.

Okay. I've been married almost two years. Well, I keep saying almost our, our anniversary was last month, so I've been married two years. And so I've sort of just went through this process of, of dating, getting married. Um, I, I still am walking with a lot of friends who were in that season of life. So I love this book and I'm curious.

So there's nine, right? There's nine conversations, but I'm curious, is there a topic that you feel many or most couples avoid may be the most and why do you think it's so important? Yeah. Well, I share your passion that you have for your listeners. Rebecca, I'm actually performing a wedding this weekend. So it really is a delight for me, especially with this couple, I have so much confidence in who they are when I put my hands on them and pray a blessing.

I can do it with full confidence because we've gone through nine. So this might sound like I'm not answering your question, but I kind of laugh. Yeah. The question that is most important for them to answer is the one they don't want to. It's both Dr. Wilkie. And I say this isn't the seven most essential.

It's not the eight. It's the nine. And if you don't want to have all nine, we're not going to do it because usually they'll conversation. The couples want to just avoid are the ones they most need to talk about. You're getting married, you know, this now marriage. Is the difference between dating and marriage should be from a Christian perspective, you could be completely naked.

And I'm not just talking about physically, I'm talking about emotionally. You're, you're sharing everything. If there's a place you're afraid to go through to, with a fiance, I'm not talking about a boyfriend or girlfriend, but when they're a fiance or fiance, if there's a place you're afraid to go to, then you're.

Should be afraid to go to the altar. Yeah. And, and so we, we get into it. We, we deal with conflict. We deal with raising a family. We deal with sexual issues. We deal with financial issues. We ask them to put together a credit report. Which is surprising to some, but I said, Hey, you're, you're marrying each other's credit scores.

If you want to buy a house in a couple of years, you want to buy a car, you might be surprised at what you find out. And so it really is a time. I think when you're preparing for marriage where it's a sort of a no holds barred, okay, this is a new level of honesty and transparency. And so whatever comfort couple says, well, we don't really need to do that session.

Then I'm going to say. We have to do that session or just, we're just not going to do it because that's what concerns me most. If there's something that they don't want to talk to their spouse about. Yeah. That's really good. And the reality of that coming out of two years of marriage is it will come out.

In marriage, it's gonna come out, right? Like if you don't have that talk, now it's gonna come. Whether you like it or not, the consequences are so much more severe couples, real life couples. I won't give identifying details, but one they'd been married nine months and the guy said, Gary, we need you to. To resolve this dispute.

I really believe God called me to go overseas. You mentioned a particular country. My wife's from the Midwest. She doesn't want to leave her family. What are we supposed to do? I said, you've been married nine months. He goes, yeah. Ben, you talk about this. He said, well, we thought we had. And I had to say, well, you know what?

Your wife wins. I go, you, you can't take a spouse overseas permissions work that doesn't want to go overseas, no missions, board worth their salt would do it. It would be a disaster. You really should have resolved this before you got married. Your, your job now is to be her husband and to find a place to live that she can stomach.

And then another couple where he was really thinking he was in the reserves that he was going to make a full-time career in the military and it came out. I don't want to be a military wife. I'm like what? It's a work couple of months away from the wedding. I'm like, okay, we got to resolve this. I brought a chaplain and he could talk to both of them or whatnot, but those are two cases, Rebecca one, right before the wedding.

And one after where those are major things, if you don't want to be a military wife, you shouldn't marry a guy. Who's planning to go into the military. And so, um, but it's amazing to me, how in the flush of infatuation. And the excitement of planning the wedding and looking forward to all that, that entails, they don't ask really crucial questions about what it's like to be married.

Yeah. They were great as boyfriend or girlfriend, but there are some huge problems to become a husband and wife, and that just often doesn't get addressed. Yeah. That's really good. You would love my husband, Gary. I'm hoping he'll get to pop in and say hello, but he's a, he's a lead pastor. And so we've. He was a lead pastor before we got married.

And I remember when we were going through premarital counseling and just in, in these conversations before he got married, he almost not tried to talk me out of it, but just, we had a lot of conversations of like, I want you to fully realize what you're signing up for, you know, and I'm so thankful that we did because I, I, I definitely have the tendency and personality where I would have had.

Pretty strong rose colored glasses on had we not had those conversations. And so I love that you encourage couples to do that because it's just, it's so important. And we, we, um, often don't go there until marriage. And so this is another thing that I am pretty passionate about, especially in my generation and the generations that follow me is how we date.

Yeah. And like this process, what, what is happening online? How people are sort of handling kind of the dating process right now? I would be curious, what are some things. That you think we're getting wrong about dating right now? Yeah. Yeah. The three primary things, and this is where I was really able to revise and make it even clearer than I did in the first edition.

Most Christians get married for the same reasons as non-Christians and none of those predict future marital, happiness and fulfillment, even. If they're existing altogether, those three things are infatuation, just strong, emotional feelings that you feel like I've never felt this way about someone before sexual chemistry.

You can't wait to get physical. You don't want to just be friends. You want to take each other's clothes off and three compatibility on dates. You just have such a great time together. You laugh. You have fun. You look forward to being together. And most people think if those three things are there, I've never felt this way.

Before that I'm sexually attracted to this person. We have such a good time when we're dating, it's gotta be a great match, but those things don't really predict future marital happiness. For this reason, we know this is neuroscience, right? This isn't a past stock and it's just neuroscience infatuation as a shelf life of about 12 to 18 months.

Yeah, uh, it doesn't predict it. It won't hold your marriage together. There. There's still times, you know this now and you relate, there's still times of intensity and emotional affection and whatnot, but it's not like it was when you're infatuated. We're just carries the relationship. Board. It's just, it's not, it becomes a different kind of thing.

Holding you together. Sexual chemistry is the same way. And usually a couple of would experiences by the second year of marriage where it's about character wanting to honor each other and love each other. But there's not that electricity now sometimes. Yeah. Some date nights get intense, but there's not that same.

Um, it's not completely new. And then compatibility on dates really only tells you how well you'll do. On vacation. And I would ask Rebecca, how many weeks of vacation have you and your husband had in the last 24 months? We just went on a beach trip and we, it was the first time that we had gotten away for an extended period of time since then.

Yeah. So I mean, people just listen, that's that's normal, especially for younger couples or whatnot. And so even if you get along very well on vacation, you're not going to put up. With a year's worth of frustration because we really like to do fun things together on vacation. And so I think they just don't realize that the job of being a boyfriend and girlfriend is very different than the job of being a husband and a wife.

And so they don't use dating to test whether it would be a good marriage. They use dating as sort of a fun thing. And look, I'm not. I don't get too intense on this. I think there's a place to just, I want a relationship my life right now, where we enjoy each other. We have fun and we don't have to get serious right away.

But when you're starting to think about getting married, that's when I think you have to be really intentional about the dates. Is this a giver or a taker? I mean, that sounds selfish, but if you marry a taker, your ability to give is going to be divided. You're, you're not going to be able, they're not going to release you.

They're going to resent that you're a giver. They want you just to focus on them. Your kids are going to grow up, feeling like projects instead of blessings. Um, can they handle conflict in dating? You can walk away from conflict. You can cool off, not so much in marriage. It's a little more difficult. And if somebody doesn't know how to handle conflict in a way that brings the two of you together, instead of pushing you further apart.

Since conflict is inevitable. Your marriage won't last. If they can't handle conflict, they're not ready to get married. There are a number of things like that that I try to bring out in the sacred search. Just saying, these are the things that you require for marriage. Marriage is a relationship. You can have great feelings for someone, great sexual attraction to someone, and enjoy going to movies or biking through the park with someone.

But do they have the relational skills? To build a marriage. Yeah. And, and, and those are the questions I'm trying to get people to consider as they evaluate the relationship they're in. Yeah. That's so good. One of the most powerful things that I took away from sacred search years and years ago when I read it and I'll never forget it is the subtitle.

And I would love to talk about that for a minute. It's this thought of what if it's not about who I marry, but why I get married? You've touched on this a little bit, but it, it was my big aha takeaway. So I want, I want you to share about that. Yeah, the job determines whether somebody is qualified for it.

Like I said, you could be a great boyfriend and a miserable husband. How can that be? Well, Serina Williams and Simone Biles are two of the best athletes in the world. But if you put Serena Williams on a balance beam, she's not going to make it to the Olympics. Yeah. And if you put. Simone Biles how tall she isn't.

I mean, professional tennis players are going to have a field day. They could just lob it over. I mean, she's, she's not, she's an incredible athlete. She's not a tennis player. She doesn't really have the build for that. And so the same thing is that you have to understand what's different about being a boyfriend and what's being a girlfriend.

And so what is the purpose of getting married? I go back and I rooted in Matthew six 33 seek first, the kingdom of God and his. Righteousness, because I believe those are the two things that help a marriage go longterm. If somebody's seeking first, the kingdom of God, it sounds so religious Rebecca. But since you asked the question, I, I know you probably get it.

People will eventually understand this person. Can't make me happy. Yeah. The most enthralling of people still can't keep you in thrawled for 50 or 60 years, right? Five dates may be five or six years is going to be a challenge. No way somebody can keep you in thrall for 50 or 60 because we're fallen humans.

You get to know them. Everybody says, uh, you know, no, Yeah, no valet looks at their person. They serve as a hero. I mean, you get familiar with someone. And so seeking first, the kingdom of God is so essential because couples need purpose. That's why I say don't worry about falling out of love. Neurologically that will happen.

Worry about falling out of purpose. If two people are seeking first, the kingdom of God, they have a reason to pray for each other and with each other. They're admiring each other because selflessness and service is something you respect and admire. And look, I always tell this to guys. I think it's true for women as well.

If you want your wife to respect you offer to serve God, because he gives you his holy spirit. And so it's not just you, it's, God's spirit working through you and you do more than you can do. And. You become more beautiful to your spouse because like, wow. I mean, that's the kind of person I could admire.

And then Jesus says, seek first his righteousness, that fulfillment is found in continually growing to become more like Christ and, and most marital issues of somebody come to me as a pastor, somebody comes to me as a pastor. It's almost always a character issue. Mm, selfishness, negativity, lust, uh, materialism, you name it, laziness, any number of things.

And so if you see marriage as a chance for us to be refined and to grow together, then that is frankly why you want to marry a humble person who recognizes this, who appreciates it so that when they see. Maybe I'm more lazy than I thought. Maybe I'm more selfish. Maybe I'm more arrogant than I thought instead of wanting to hide and run from it.

Don't look at me. Don't look at me. I'm not perfect. It's okay. I've been caught. You're a mirror to my selfishness. You're a mirror to my self upset. It's not who I want to be. Thank you that you've made a lifelong commitment. I'm going to pray about this. This isn't who I am. It is who I am now. It's not who I want to be in five years.

And then marriage gives you an opportunity to grow. So when you do that, Rebecca marriage is exciting and you end up loving the person more at 30 years than you did at 30 weeks because the fruit of the spirit grows. If you fall in love with someone because they're pursuing the fruit of the spirit.

There'll be more to love because God and makes us grow. And, and so I really think Jesus has words about Matthew six 33. If we apply them to marriage, purpose and character are really the blueprint for a marriage. If you marry someone who is self obsessed, Uh, it doesn't matter how wealthy they are, how famous they are, you're going to get bored with them.

Uh, and if you marry somebody who isn't intent on seeking first, his righteousness, you better really like them as they are, because they're never going to grow. If they don't think you need to grow, you won't grow. Uh, and, and so if you see marriage, the purpose of marriage is as brother and sister in Christ, we're going to seek first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

I think you're setting your marriage up for a lifelong fulfilling relationship. Yeah, that's really good. And, and just to think about it from the lens of like there's safety and freedom there, when we're in this covenant relationship and it, when we think about. The sanctification, the becoming more like Jesus, that takes place in our marriage.

I think the best picture of that. And you said it is a mirror, right? Like our marriages just are almost like putting a mirror up in front of ourselves and, and we see our sin and the things that we need to work on so much more clearly when you are. In that type of covenant with another human being.

Right. And, um, that's been one of the coolest things I think to us as well, but not to see that as like a negative thing, but like it's an opportunity to become more like Christ. And so I love that you bring that out. Okay. So when we have this conversation, when we are having this conversation right now, we've just went through.

An unprecedented, whatever we want to call it at this point type of year and a half. And so in some ways we have spent more time than ever before with our spouses. Um, for somebody listening who maybe feels like their marriage is on autopilot or they're in a dry season and they just feel super discouraged.

How would you want to encourage them today? I like to say, uh, a good marriage. Isn't something you find. It's something you make that removes the fear element that creeps in when your marriage starts to feel distant. Rebecca, my concern is when people say maybe I'm married the wrong person. Yeah, no, you're just not tending to the relationship.

If my plant is dying, that doesn't mean I'm necessarily killing it. It might mean I've got to fertilize it. I've got to give it some water. I've got to get it more sun. You can bring it back to life. And I think that's one of the fundamental misunderstandings about a marriage today that we look at marriage like you're planting a tree.

Uh, if you're planning a sapling, you stick it in the ground. You probably fertilize it. You water it, maybe third gear around, you put a fence around it because you know, it's, it's fragile. After a couple years, you take the fence away, you don't feed it. You don't water it. As tree becomes strong, it just grows.

You give it a good start and then it grows. That's what premarital couples do. Often they will go through premarital counseling. They wouldn't want to go through marital counseling. It seems like it's a failure, which. That's a whole different conversation, but they go through premarital counseling. They, they talk, they touch, they give each other gifts.

They do what makes a relationship grow. Then they get married and they get jobs and they have a house. Maybe they have kids. And they stopped doing what makes a relationship grow? Surprise, surprise. The relationship feels distant. So I think building a marriage isn't like planting a tree. It's like building a brick house that you put together brick by brick.

And if you stop the house, doesn't finish itself. It's not organic. You have to keep growing and. Again, when I'm talking to guys, here's what I say. Marriage changes a woman and I'd say to wives, marriage changes a man. You've got to keep talking and asking because it changes us. What's it like for you now to be a husband instead of single?

What, what do you miss? What do you enjoy? What makes you afraid now? What is difficult for you? If, if you have a child that's tremendously, uh, changing, it changes your identity. It changes your fears. It changes your focus when you become empty nesters, um, all throughout life. There are these stages where if we don't keep pursuing each other, like we did, as we were dating.

Oh, tell me about your parents or what's your favorite childhood memory or what was your biggest childhood shame or whatnot? If we stop asking those questions about what we're going through now. What's it like dating unemployed, what's it like facing postpartum depression? What, what's it like for you? I know we just had this baby it's busy and you feel like I'm married to the baby.

We haven't had sex for weeks. I mean, how are you doing? I mean, just all of those things that couples just start to stew and be frustrated about and bitter about, and they don't say, okay, how do we face this challenge? Together. And that's just the word I would give for this answer together. I want to understand you more.

I want to know you more and get rid of the, did I marry the wrong person? If I had married someone else we'd just get, it's just not true. Every marriage has its struggles. No marriage is so right. That you cannot work on it and have it continue to grow. Yeah, I had just through COVID I had three things.

This is going to sound like such a cliche, Rebecca, but I'm not planning. I'm not pretending to be a rocket scientist here. Um, but just for me, I know there are three things that I do. My marriage will continue to flourish. One is if Lisa and I will just pray together four or five times a week. I know there's some that they pray together every day.

You shame me. I wish I did. I just, I'm just being honest, being real kudos to you. Don't stop praying seven days a week, but some of you, if you could bring it up from once to four or five, it just does something wonderful. It Lisa feels cared for. It just helps us lift the load. Second, if I will be more thoughtful about once a week, what's something fun we can do together.

You can call it date night or whatever. Even at our stage of marriage, we've been married over three decades. Still. It's important for Lisa to know that I'm planning things that we enjoy together. And third, if I'm putting energy and effort into our sexual relationship, Uh, uh, a sexually intimate marriage just has a different quality.

It creates a different kind of relationship. Um, every stage of marriage, whether you're having kids, whether you're getting older, whether it's a busy work season, it's easy to make sex less and less of a priority because you don't have that sexual chemistry forcing you back together much. If I will just do those three things.

I know our marriage is going to start to flourish again again, how many marriage books talk about that? Probably every marriage book, Christian marriage book talks about that. So it's not like I don't know what to do. It's about motivation. So much of marriage is motivation. We know what to do. We just have to go back and do it.

And when we do it surprise, surprise, and our marriage feels satisfying again. Yeah, that's so good. And it's, it's the same conversation almost as. Like a weight loss journey, right? Like we know we know what it takes to lose weight. We move our bodies, we eat things that fuel our bodies. We drink water, we sleep more, we know what to do.

It's just the doing of the thing. Right. And, and sometimes like the getting such a great analogy. The, the getting started is the hardest part. When we start to see the fruit of that in our weight loss journey or in our marriage like that, at least to me continues to fuel me in that thing, whether it's marriage or whether it's weight loss or whatever, you know what I mean?

And, um, a little bit of success fuels excitement to take it further. Yeah. Like I I've been on a journey this year and actually am, am losing some weight and it's so discouraging when you start and you lose and then you go back up and then you lose. But when you finally get that 10 pounds, so you're below that, then it's like, It just gives you more motivation.

And so I'd say with those three things with me, is it maybe, you know, it's ridiculous to say we're going to pray five times a week. We'll pray twice and, and, and maybe, okay. We're gonna have one great sexual encounter a week and, and maybe we can't do fun too. A date night every week you do one a month or two a month.

And when you start to see the success often, it makes you more excited. Oh, there's a benefit. Yeah, what what's hard is in the initial stage. And this is why weight loss, I think is a brilliant, announced analogy on your part when you sacrifice and work and you don't see the success, it's really hard to keep going.

You just want to say it's just no use. And I think a lot of people do that with weight loss, and a lot of people do that with their marriage because it takes a while. For the new actions to start to bear fruit. It does. It does for sure. Okay. Speaking of weight loss journeys, um, are you running right now?

That's funny. Um, I have been, I just had to stop a couple of weeks ago because I started to develop plantar fasciitis again. Oh man. Which is that it's just. Awful that stinks. Yeah. I have been trying my, my hardest. It is getting so hot in south Mississippi though. I went this morning and I had to, I was getting some of the heat, like the heat exhaustion chills, and I had to walk a couple of times.

It's getting to that point. But, um, my dad and I it's always been our thing. Running has always been our thing and we haven't done a race together in. However long it's been before COVID and we were doing that sort of thing. And we were talking about doing a half together in the fall. And I think, I think I need that.

Like, I need something on the calendar that's going to hold me accountable. So I do, you know, one of my favorite lifetime memories is just after my daughter, Kelsey graduated from high school. Uh, I was running marathons actively at the time and she came out of track and cross country and we ran a 5k against each other.

Oh, that's so fun because you know, we knew a 10 K I would probably take her. A mile. I didn't have a hope. She would take me. We thought the 5k would, would kind of be the middle and it was really fun cause I gave it a good shot. Uh, she beat me. I could see her back the whole time, which was a victory for me because she ended up being the first female.

And if I'm within eyesight of the hearse female, I feel like that's a successful race for me. So, uh, but she did beat me and she has that for life now. Um, but it, it, so I love. You're in a father daughter running together. I wish we could, again, she had some of the same physical issues where we had planned to do a marathon together.

I don't know if it's going to happen between my body and hers. I don't know if they're both going to be healthy at the same time. Yeah. That's kind of where we are. We had signed up to do one a couple years ago and he got injured during training. And I don't know, I don't know that we could run it from start to finish both at this point, but maybe we could like do a walk run or something.

We need to do that. So, okay. Well, I have loved this conversation. What we're going to do now is hop on over to our Patrion community and go through our sort of bonus lightning round of questions, which will be really fun to get to know Gary A. Little bit better, but for now, Gary, I'm so grateful that you'd come back on the show.

Thank you for your time today. Sure.