Episode 169. 12 Books of Christmas Day 6: The Flirtation Experiment with Phylicia Masonheimer
Hey friends. Welcome to the radical radiance podcast. I am your host, Rebecca George, and I'm so thrilled to be with you for day six of the 12 books of Christmas. Today, we are joined by author Felicia Mason, Heimer to talk about her new message that she co-wrote with. Lisa. And called the flirtation experiment.
We get to talk all about marriage. It was so much fun. I love chatting with Felicia. We had her on back when she came out with her last book, stop calling me beautiful. So if you haven't listened to that episode, make sure you check it out. And I think you're really going to love this one. So help me welcome back our friend, Felicia Mason, Heimer to the show.
Felicia. I'm so excited to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. This is going to be fun. So I got to talk with you last year after it was a little bit after stop calling me beautiful had come out, but we had to be a part of our 12 books of Christmas last year, which is really fun because I was looking back today and I thought, man, Usually I catch a book like right when it comes out.
And I remember us talking a little bit after stop calling me beautiful. But now you have another project coming out with, um, Lisa Jacobson that you co-wrote with. It's called the flirtation experiment. I'm so excited to talk. Today and have that book be a part of this series as well. But before we do that, we get to talk Christmas a little bit because when this releases it's going to be during the Christmas season, in those 12 days leading up to Christmas day.
And so I love getting to chat with different friends about just their favorite Christmas traditions, things that they love doing with their family. So to start us out, what did Christmas look like for you growing up? What are some things that you remember. Well, I would say we had a pretty awesome Christmas experience as kids.
I have five younger siblings and for Christmas, our biggest deal was we always had a real Christmas tree and we would go cut it down the weekend after Thanksgiving. So the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we go cut, pick out our tree, cut it down and take it home. Decorate it. And. Northern Michigan. So it was a whole fun experience.
We almost always had snow on the ground when we go to get it. So it's just very, very hallmark ish, I guess, super fun. And we would sleep around the Christmas tree, Christmas Eve night. And then, um, on Christmas day we would, uh, open all the presents. I know some people do presents Christmas Eve or one present Christmas Eve, but we did all the presents and the stockings on Christmas day.
And so it's super fun. So fun. I love that. We never, we never did a real tree. My mom's allergic to them, but I think, I think the idea of going and picking it out sounds like so much fun. So I think maybe my husband and I need to try that one year. I think it would be just fun memory. So I love that you guys did that.
What is, um, maybe. Another memory or even tradition that maybe you've established with your family since, since then, right. We've grown up and now you have kids and a family of your own. What's something that maybe you do with your kids each year that you look back on and, and just, you guys really enjoy, well, we are not in a liturgical church setting, but we do observe the liturgical church calendar.
So we observe. Advent, um, Easter epiphany and epiphany is a holiday. That is what we call the 12 days of Christmas, actually. So from Christmas day through the new year, you're celebrating apifany, which is honoring Christ's birth, but then also his first miracle and his baptism. And so we have integrated celebrating epiphany with.
After the Christmas holiday is technically over and that's been a really cool way to connect with the meaning of Christmas and what it's truly about, about Christ's birth and then about Christ's life. And so that's something that we've added in that my parents did advent, but they didn't do apifany.
And so we've added that in and it's been really fun. Yeah. Yeah, that's super fun. I love that. And I love that you get to just continue on with those traditions, with your kids, even after Christmas day. That's really fun. Okay. So this one's a fun one because everybody's family is so different in terms of, um, maybe tradition around things that they eat around the holidays.
Is there something that when you think of Christmas, Like it wouldn't be Christmas if this was not on my dinner table. That is a super good question because I don't remember anything specific from my childhood that I would say is, was a food that we always had. Somehow, um, ginger bread or molasses cookies have become a thing in our house just by sheer accident.
I don't know how, but we make them every year. The girls love to make them and they, I think, cause Josh just loves the texture of them. I started making them and it's been fun to decorate. So instead of like sugar cookies decorating, we decorate ginger bread or molasses cookies. Hey, just interrupt in this conversation real quick to tell you about one of our sponsors.
Butterfly box is a monthly subscription box that supports and encourages you and your journey as a Christ follower, they make great gifts and, or a treat for yourself each month. And just for the radical radiance community butterfly boxes, offering a code radical radiants 20 all uppercase for a 20% discount on your first box.
By going to your butterfly box.com and entering the code radical radiance 20 at checkout. I hope you enjoy that so much and let's get back to the conversation. Okay. I love that my mom has the molasses cookie of all molasses cookie recipes. And when people try, I need to send it to you. When people try her molasses cookie recipe, they.
They are forever changed. And so that is a staple in our house. It they're so good. And they're, so I don't know how she does it, but you know how sometimes those kind of cookies are kind of hard and crunchy. Firs are just soft and almost the texture of like a softer chocolate chip cookie, but they're the molasses cookie taste.
They're so good. So good. Like my Lasker, I would like my life changed. So feel. To ask her if she, yeah, yeah. Now I'm good. Now I'm going to have to share it with everybody because I've said that. So I'll see if she's see if she's good with that. Um, but yeah, we love those two. That's so fun. So I, like I said, I'm so excited to have the flirtation experiment be a part of our 12 books of Christmas.
The subtitle is 30 acts toward far more. Laughter romance, passion, and a deeper heart connection with your husband. So I am curious, Felicia, I know marriage is something that you've taught. For a while. I'm. I just want to hear your heart behind this message. Obviously. I think it's, it's coming out for a reason right now for women and I think we need it.
And so tell us a little bit about your heart and Lisa's heart behind the book. Yeah. Yeah. So the flirtation experiment, I think it's important to know was born out of an actual experiment I did in my marriage. On my own time to just put more magic and mystery back into it because we had, and we still have small children.
We're both working and we were kind of tired. And honestly, I felt like our relationship was just a little bit boring. It was. Bad. It was just boring. And I was watching a movie, a hallmark movie, which isn't always a great example for romance, but in this case I was watching it and I thought, okay, the crux of these movies is just how, like, there's this fun and flirtatious way of that mysterious, uh, way of engaging when you're first meeting someone and that tension that's there.
And then once you've been married a while that goes away. And so. Thought was, I wonder if I could do something to like, put that back in my relationship as far as I'm able. And so that's where this experiment was born. I literally did an experiment secretly on Josh. And so I told Lisa my coauthor about it and she said, oh my goodness.
I want to try that too. And that's how this book was born. So our heart and writing this. Is it to make any huge promise or say, you know, if you do this book X, Y, and Z will happen. It was an experiment for us to see what would happen. And we were pretty amazed at how we were changed and how our marriages changed through the experiment.
And so I just think it would be so fun for women to read it and get ideas for how they can customize what we did for their relations. Yeah, that's so fun, especially in a season like we're in right now. I know, you know, we've been home more than we ever have. We have just been in such, such a weird place in our world.
And so I know many listeners may feel, man, you know, my marriage has maybe grown cold or stale because of stress. Or like you're saying, Felicia may be having small children and just demands on, on life. And so how would you want to encourage. Listeners who are there, what I just described today and to take steps forward towards positive change in their marriage.
Well, the first thing I'd say is that we obviously know we can't control our spouse's response. It's like we can't make them change, but we can control our own actions, our own responses, our own heart attitudes. And so for a Christian wife, obviously that begins with the Lord and walking with the Lord and what he's leading us to do as far as what scripture outlines for the fruit of the spirit.
You know, be gentle, be kind, be patient, et cetera. But then specifically in marriage, I think there are things that maybe we feel like we can't do that. Hold us back from feeling more fulfilled. And I know for a long time, I believed that I couldn't pursue my husband like that wasn't a womanly or feminine thing.
And I don't know where I got that idea, you know, picked it up, maybe through some purity culture books when I was younger or something, but. Thinking that I can't pursue, I can't initiate or feeling intimidated by doing that or feeling lack of, not confident in my womanhood and in my wife hood to be the one who initiated romance or fun or attraction or any of that.
And so that was what I was experimenting with. Actually challenging myself to be the initiator, to be the pursuer and how that actually gave me more confidence and made me feel actually more sexy as a wife. If you want to use that word, I feel like I'm more, I am more attractive. I am confident in who I am as a wife and as a woman, and I can reach out to my husband.
Um, that was kind of the result of the experiment for me. Yeah, that's so good. So for a woman who's like, wait, that sounds so contrary to what I've seen in culture, or that makes me feel really uncomfortable. Um, cause I know there's probably women listening who maybe think that, or maybe they've never, they've never been the pursuer of, they've never been the initiator.
You talk in the book about how the Bible invites women to be proactive in our marriages. And so will you talk a little bit more about what that looks like and maybe encourage listeners who, um, are maybe listening and thinking? Okay. That sounds really cool, but I've never done. Okay. Yes. So, first of all, I want to be clear just in case it's mistaken.
The book is not about sex. It's about cultivating your whole relationship. I think that's one thing that sometimes when you hear pursue or initiation, people go, oh, sex, but that's not what it's about. There's I think one or two chapters about sex in the entire book and there's 30 chapters. So what this is about is about cultivating.
Just that fulfilled, exciting, enjoyable relationship that either we had when we were dating or we wish we had now, and I'm not talking about marriages that are abusive or hyper dysfunctional because this book is not for them. They need to get a professional counselor, but if you're generally healthy and you just feel a little bit bored, I think.
If you're intimidated by reaching out, you're not alone because I felt very uncomfortable in initiating. And a lot of what held me back was insecurity, pride and fear. I was afraid of looking dumb to my husband or him reacting in a strange way. And what I found was the more I. I pursued him with these little different steps that we outline in the book, these ideas for, for expressing interest or, or humor or attraction to him, the easier it became and the easier it became, the more I did it.
And the more his response was positive and, and intrigued, he was never negative about it. But, you know, when. What are you doing that? Why are you doing that? You feel, you feel a little uncomfortable and like, ah, I'm, I'm intimidated, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. And it really did transform our relationship because I think I just was more confident in who I was and was more confident being in.
Yeah, that's so good. So without just totally giving away all your secrets, because the point of having you on is we want people to go grab the book, but what are a couple of things that maybe you experienced and you thought, huh, I've never thought about loving my husband in that way, but that was really, um, he received that really well.
Or maybe that was a surprise. What are a couple of those 30. 30 things that maybe listeners wouldn't think, oh yeah, I've tried that before. Like what are some, maybe things that we haven't. Yeah. So, you know, usually we think of like the kiss in the kitchen, like kiss for seven seconds in the kitchen. That's great.
That was one of the things I did. Um, but I also did, um, a practice. I wrote out throughout the day, all, every time I had a negative thought about my husband, like, oh, he didn't do the dishes or he didn't do that. Which I think anyone who's married, you have those things run through your mind where you're like, wish they'd done this better.
Or I wish they would do this every time I had one of those thoughts, I would write down a positive thought about him, even if it was unrelated to that issue. So, uh, he didn't do the dishes. But, you know what he did do the taxes and that was super helpful. And I would write that down in my phone. And then at the end of the day, I took all of those positive thoughts and I texted them to him as a, I was like, Hey, I thought of these things about you throughout the day.
So that was one of the things I did. Um, another one was, um, I set aside some money after we had, we had our third baby during the writing of this book, and I set aside some money about six weeks postpartum for him as a thank you gift for all of his help during the postpartum C. And I told them, go buy some fishing supplies with this money because he really likes to fish and he hadn't had any time to do it.
And it was in the middle of the fishing season when we had the baby. And so I set aside time and money for him to be able to pursue a hobby and. I see hobbies is kind of getting in the way of what I want done around the house. You know, hobbies are annoying to me. So instead of seeing them as annoying, I supported his hobby.
And so that's another example. And then a third one was I, we did kind of these themes for these different experiments and. The F one of them was faith. How do you put faith in your husband? And at that point, I was like, I don't know what to do for this experiment. This is a very strange, like word to be trying to find an experiment for.
So if I just asked him, I just asked him, I was like, what does it mean for me to put faith in you to like, believe in you? And he told me, and it really. Like was really amazing to hear his perspective on what does it mean to believe in your spouse? And so I took what he said and, and I, it, it happened to be a verbal experiment.
So I was like affirming him with my words and I did what he said, and that was really cool to just to change my mindset towards them. So there are some examples of, of what we did. I love that. I'm curious as you're talking, the more we're talking about this, how do, and it's okay if they don't, how to love languages play into this.
Is that something that you talk about in the book? Is that something that you really tied to, to these? Cause some of them are verbal. Some of them are seem like acts of service. Like how does that play in to this? Cause I know that's something, we're all, that's a familiar language. Yeah. So we do, we do touch on love languages throughout the book, and even mentioned like some of the things that I did weren't Josh's primary love language.
But yeah, the thing is, I think when you're loving someone, yes, it is going to perhaps have more impact if it's their love language, but they're still going to appreciate you doing something thoughtful and loving, even if it's not. So Josh is not a words person. And I. Yeah, throughout this experiment, I gave him multiple verbal affirmations, written out notes and things like that.
And. While they maybe didn't have as much impact as a quality time experiment. Did they still impacted him in a positive way? So I think it's, yes. Take, take their love language to heart for sure when you're creating your experiments, but then also don't be afraid to go outside that box. You're just trying to show them that you love them.
Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. That's really good. And I think sometimes we can get caught up, um, In like, okay, I want to do this in a very robotic way, because a lot of times, at least for us, like our love languages, aren't the same. And so sometimes it can feel really unnatural to maybe pursue that other love language.
But I think you're so right in that. It's never wrong. None of the things that we're talking about or are going to have a negative impact on our marriage, these are all great things. Um, did he first spouse, so I love that. That's so good. So when you think about, you know, this book releasing into the world and the impact it had on your marriage, what would you say is kind of your prayer for women as they walk away from the book?
I think my prayer for them would be. To see it, not as a rule book or like this hard and fast. Guarantee or guide. This is literally just the stories of two wives. One more extroverted, one more introverted. One who's been married 28 years. One who's been married eight years walking through their seasons, trying to intentionally love their spouse.
It's supposed to be a very freeing book. And so my prayer would be that it just sparks something in wives and gives them ideas for practically pursuing their husbands. The other thing I hope for them is that they would come away just feeling very confident in their femininity and then their womanhood and in their wife hood that it is actually okay.
And even God ordained to want to be desired, to want to be sexy and to be attractive to your husband, to see his eyes light up when he sees you. While you cannot control him. You can grow in your confidence. And even second or author say confidence is very attractive. It's very, uh, people are drawn to it.
And so I've seen that really transform my marriage as I've become. Lovingly confident in who I am. So I really hope that that's maybe an, an off shoot of reading the book. Yeah, that's so good. I love it. Well, by the time this episode airs, it will be out in the world. People can go grab it anywhere. They buy their books and we'll be giving away a copy again.
We've already said this, but we'll give away a copy of this one along with all 11 other authors that have written books in 2021 that we're featuring this week. So that's so exciting. And Felicia I'm just so thankful to you and Lisa for one. Um, for one doing this in your own marriage, but then I think it's really special when I, when a rider will be like, Hey, wait a minute.
This would actually set other people free too. So I love that you're doing that for other wives and I just can't wait to see what God does with it. So thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. I hope you love that conversation as much as I did, and I hope you'll go grab a copy of the flirtation experiment today.
Wherever books are sold and guys tomorrow, I will be back with the date seven of the 12 books of Christmas, where we will sit down with Dave Ramsey, personality, Christie. Right. You know, I love Christie and she is on to talk about her new book all about time management. I love this conversation with her.
I think you're going to love it too. Grab your wrap and paper. Grab your cup of coffee. Join me tomorrow. And we will chat with Christy.
