When Your Marriage Is Failing but You’re Winning Everywhere Else

Machine transcribed from the episode audio, lightly cleaned. Timestamps are approximate.

0:00
This is a struggle that many men face and few men are really willing to talk about. Everybody's quick to say that, yeah, you know, marriage isn't easy. Marriage is challenging. Guys are quick to joke about the problems, the frustrations. But they're really slow to talk about just how real the struggle is. And so it becomes a silent struggle. And more so for those of you that are successful and are nailing it in one or more areas of life, when it comes to this, a lot of times you're more quiet. Success, whether you set it up this way or not, often masks this private relational pain that you're struggling.

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Men of greatness, rise and stand tall. Your lips are ringing. Man, has this been an exceptionally heavy week. In addition to a lot of the regular challenges of leading a family and running a business, you know, every once in a while, there just seems to be this collision of challenges from friends, from clients and others that really just puts a lot of weight on me or just that I feel a lot of weight from. This week particularly, just a couple of days before recording this, I got a call, a text message first from a friend and client of mine that over the last year has, maybe a little bit longer, has been really struggling in his marriage.

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This isn't the first time I've heard of this. We've had multiple conversations over the years about the challenges that he is facing and just the contention with he and his wife and how the kids have played into that. But he reached out to me and he said, hey, it's just gotten really bad and I need some help. And honestly, when he first texted that to me, I hadn't talked to him in quite a few weeks and maybe a couple months, at least about this. And I was really, really afraid that what he was reaching out to tell me was that he had gotten so fed up that he finally succumbed to the temptation of cheating on his wife.

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So that's what I was preparing for and how I was going to handle that. And I was praying ahead of time and we were able to agree on a time and I hopped on the phone with him. And pretty quickly into the conversation, I realized that that fear was unfounded. I could just tell in his tone that it wasn't that at all, that he wasn't considering stepping out on his wife. He was trying to figure out how to lean in harder. He has been getting closer to Christ. His relationship has been getting stronger. His business has been getting actually more successful. His kids have been flourishing for the most part. You know, challenges of having kids.

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So all these things are good in his life. And yet the thing that he cares more than just about anything about is just not good. And it doesn't seem to be getting any better no matter how hard he tries. And every single time I have a conversation like this with a client or with a friend, it always reminds me of where I came from. It's been almost 20 years. It's probably been 20 years since I was in this exact situation. It's been almost 20 years since it finally came to a head. Because in January 2006, I was just steeped deep into dissatisfaction, frustration,

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and unmet expectations from my wife. And if any of you knows my story, you know that a large majority, the mass majority of that was self-induced. That was my fault. But it just constantly reminds me of how hard that season of life was. For the moments that I was really trying, I mean, I definitely loved my wife, but I just wasn't always showing it well. But for the seasons or the days or the weeks where I was really trying and not really seeming to get anywhere, you know, to get a step or two forward and then back. And it was just killing me. The thoughts of what it was going to be like to not see my daughter every single day if we separated.

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The thoughts of being alone and without my wife. The difference between me and that season, there's a few differences, but one of the main differences between me and that season and my client in this season is I didn't know Jesus then, and he did. And man, on either side of it, knowing the Lord or not, I wouldn't wish a season of life like that on anybody. I mean, we all know that marriage is challenging. If you've been married for any period of time, it comes with its fair share of challenges, arguments, disagreements, unmet expectations, frustrations.

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But when it gets to that place where you're not sure if it's going to make it, man, it's just brutal. Absolutely brutal. And as I think about it now, I think about God's Word. And one of the things that it says in the book of Psalms is that the Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and he saves those that are crushed in spirit. And I wish I would have known that then. I wish I would have heard that then. That's one of the greatest gifts that I can give to this client of mine, is reflecting back to him the Word of God that's being implanted into his heart. I need him to know that the Lord is near to him,

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that the Lord wants to save his crushed spirit. And if this is you right now, if you're listening to a very different episode, at least a tone in episode, if you're watching this and you're seeing a different posture, a look on my face, and you feel this, maybe you're in it, fresh out of it, or maybe you don't think it'll ever happen to you. And I pray to God it doesn't. I just want you to know this. If you feel lost, if you feel tired, or if you feel confused in your marriage, this is for you.

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Especially for those of you that have put your faith in Jesus, and you feel like there's a lot of areas in your life that are working well, but for some reason, this one that you want to work more than anything is not working, I want you to know that there is hope. That I'm going to do everything I can over the next 30 minutes or so to be very clear. Speaking from truth, the truth of God's word, but I want to help you to understand why we're in the positions that we're in, and what we can do about it. Whether or not it's all your fault, partially your fault, or not your fault at all. There's no chance that it's not your fault at all. But regardless of where you are on the blame curve,

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I want to help you with some practical steps forward. Because I believe that if you are in Christ, God desires for your marriage to sustain. You entered into a covenant, and God does not want to see that covenant break. And He will do everything in His power to help lead you and your spouse to health, to joy, not free of challenges, but to an honoring, a God-honoring relationship. And that's what I want to share with you on this episode today. My goal is to help men like you. And ladies, if you're listening, this pertains to you just the same. But I want to help you

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through deep marriage tension without allowing you to abandon your identity, your integrity, or your calling. I want to help you to pursue those things without hardening your heart or without enabling continued unhealthy dynamics in your household. Men, this is not about fixing your wife. This is about stewarding your leadership, stewarding your covenant, and stewarding your soul. So let's first talk about this silent struggle because I feel like

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this is a struggle that many men face and few men are really willing to talk about. I think there's this stigma around, you know, like I think everybody's quick to say that, yeah, you know, marriage isn't easy. Marriage is challenging. Guys are quick to joke about the problems, the frustrations, but they're really slow to talk about just how real the struggle is. and so it becomes a silent struggle and more so for those of you that are successful that are nailing it in one or more areas of life when it comes to this,

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a lot of times you're more quiet. Success, whether you set it up this way or not, often masks this private relational pain that you're struggling. I see and encounter many men, I am grateful, like I've definitely crossed my paths with my fair share of trashy men, of just dirtbag husbands and I try to as quickly as possible remove them from my life. I don't want to be friends with them, I don't want to be in business with them, but most of the men, I'm fortunate that most of the men I come across are faithful, they're present

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and they're committed and I hope that's you too. But I know that there is this confusion sometimes that we face of doing the right things without getting a return and I think you would agree that marriage isn't a transaction, it's not I do for you so you do for me. You'll hear me quote this verse often and probably multiple times just in this episode, but the Bible says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Paul says that in Ephesians 5 and if we take that at face value, it means that husbands are to love their wives in such a way that they will lay down their lives without anything in return.

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You see, it doesn't state that, but it's very clear because Christ got nothing in return. He was shamed. He was beaten. He was killed. His own father turned his face away. He was separated from his own father because he loved us. And in the same way, we are to do that for our wives, imperfectly for sure because we aren't Jesus. So, a lot of guys will get into this position of like, well, I'm doing the right things and I'm not getting out of it. She's not treating me the same. We're in this tough season and I'm pouring myself out, but she's not pouring herself out.

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And a lot of times we start to think that way because in business, outputs are often related to inputs. The more good that we input, the more positive that we output. That's usually what happens. But that's not always the case in a marriage. And trust me when I tell you your wife likely feels the same way. In the case of this client of mine that I shared opening up, he's the first one to admit that he hasn't had it all together. but he's been working really, really hard on himself, on his relationship with God, on his tone and his demeanor.

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And he still has his moments, but he's come such a long way. He's providing for his family. He's praying for them. He's sitting in the mess while the mess is happening all around. Yet he still feels unwanted. he's having conversations. I've been part of some of these exchanges and the conversations are draining them or draining him. They're not filling him up. And it just turns into this slow erosion. And if you're anything like him, it just begins to eat at you. So if you're sitting in this silent struggle, if you haven't really talked about this or maybe you have a little bit, but nobody really knows just how deeply

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you're hurting, I see you. I hear you. I feel you. I've been there. To understand why this hurts so deeply, we have to talk about the erosion. We have to talk about this slow burn, this slow drain on our marriage. Call it relational erosion. It's how marriages drift. We don't live in an amazing, healthy marriage today and tomorrow end up in a stranger's bed. We don't live in an amazing, fulfilling,

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laughter-filled, sex-filled, adventure-filled marriage. And the next day we wake up and we're like, man, I'm a stranger in my own home. Erosion is gradual. It's quiet. And honestly, more often than not, what you'll end up hearing when you're able to get both spouses, to be honest, they'll both say, I don't know how we got here. Like, I can feel and see some of what's happened recently, but I don't really know how we got here.

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And that just goes to show you that it's rarely intentional. It just kind of happens. A lot of times, we see unmet identity needs. This is how I see myself and these things aren't being met. Emotional unsafety. I see that happen a lot where a wife doesn't feel heard and seen in the ways that she needs to. And so she starts to shut down. This was actually my wife and I, and I didn't know this because I was too ignorant. We were going through this rollercoaster of being in a good place, being in a struggling place, being in a good place, being a struggling place. And one of the things that I noticed, and this may happen pretty commonly

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in marriages, is it was becoming more of a chore to try and get her to have sex with me. And I was frustrated. I'm like, what the heck? And to me, I'm like, okay, so she just doesn't want me. You know, which then made me more mad, right? Then maybe this is over. And years later, when we would finally be able to talk about that in a healthy way, she would tell me that she just didn't feel emotionally safe. She didn't feel seen and she didn't feel heard. And so why would she give up something so precious, so sacred to somebody that she didn't feel comfortable with? And the same happens in reverse,

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just with a different scenario. I've talked to many men that don't feel comfortable talking about their emotions because their wives check out or treat them flippantly or will actually mock them. You know, as clear as day as it is that God created them male and female and God created men in a certain way, women in a certain way, biologically, which means then our emotions are typically going to look different. We also need to be very honest about the fact that men feel deeply. They hurt. They cry.

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And if we don't feel seen and heard in those things, we're going to shut down or we're going to lash out. I also see drift often happens as the result of exhaustion, putting all of our efforts into other things because this thing being the marriage isn't working. Sometimes I see just an emotional flood, just like I just dump it all out as the relationship is eroding or even I see a self-induced masking, things like alcohol abuse, drug abuse. Just need to take the edge off. And all of those things

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create so many problems because then when you attempt to connect, one, if not both of you, just aren't fully present. And so you start to withdraw. And withdrawal, you may see that as a necessary component of making sure the peace is kept. The other one sees that as disengagement or even punishment. And so resentment just continues to grow. But it grows in silence. So you can see how easy it is to drift. You may be experiencing this very thing right now or maybe you have a friend that's experiencing this right now. You're watching this play itself out in real time. Proverbs 20

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verse 5 says it this way. It says, the purpose of a person's heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out. the purpose of a person's heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out. I need to be able to see into you. I need to understand you in order to draw the things out of you so we can address them. But oftentimes as things are eroding, we just begin to mask those things and bury them and detach from them. And for men, this is where I see a lot of strong men

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unknowingly make it worse. Again, I don't think most of you tried to put yourself in this position. If you did, you're a jerk. But I don't think that's most of you. You see, I see that most men, they end up making it worse, but they do so without trying. There's this trap that we fall into as men, and it's when strength becomes silence. You see, men have a tendency to confuse endurance with leadership. What do I mean by that? Earlier, and again, if you've been in church for any period of time, you've heard Ephesians 5.25,

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husband's here to love your wives as Christ. of the church, it's like, I need to take these things on. I am the leader. Functionally and positionally, God has created me to lead. Therefore, I need to bear the weight. And that is very true. We are to protect our wives. We are to do everything we can to take that hurt from them, to protect them when at all possible. But it's Jesus that says, cast your burdens on me. Cast your cares on me. So, ultimately, we try to become Jesus to our wives.

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And that's a disaster waiting to happen. Because we were never created to be that way. Again, we're to provide, we're to protect. we are to do our best to bear what we can. But we were never set up to bear at all. And so, as we try to so valiantly, as an amazing leader of our home, and as the man, as we try to endure all of these challenges and keep them in, what do we end up doing? We end up stockpiling resentment. Or we end up over-functioning just to keep the peace. I'll just do

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more. I'll just pick up more. I'll just take care of the kids more. I'll just make more money. I'll just do more fun stuff. You're over-functioning to keep the peace. Because you believe that effort will eventually create a desire that your wife will have for you. You believe that if you just keep doing, maybe because she's told you, you don't do enough. You believe that if you just do more and more and more, that eventually you will make her happy. And absolutely, if your wife brings a need to you, you need to consider whether or not you should be doing that. But when you start to take on

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so much that you're bearing all of the weight of the home, all of the weight of the business, all the weight of the relationship, or a large portion of that, you will be crushed under the weight of it. Another thing that I see often in this situation is in order to quote-unquote keep the peace, to avoid conflict, you avoid boundaries. You just let things happen. I definitely don't want to touch that situation. I don't want to set her up. Eventually, that will come back to haunt you. And this is what I see time and time again when I coach high-capacity and high-performing leaders. When their marriages are struggling,

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this is typically what's been happening. They're taking it on, they're taking it on, they're taking it on, and they just can't bear it anymore. They either shut down, they lash out, or they go try to find a sense of fulfillment somewhere else. None of those are right, but those are all a reality. If we are going to lead as Christ has called us to lead, if we are going to be the biblical leaders that we have been created to be, we have to see that there is a different path. The Bible paints a picture of a far different path to be a great

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leader, anywhere, but especially in our homes. What we need to see is, is that we are to exercise strength. The Bible says we are the stronger vessel, but that strength needs to be exercised under control. We are never to lord over our wives. We are to use that strength to protect them physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually to the best of our ability. We are to love our wives, but we are to do so anchored in the truth. And there is only one truth, and that comes from God himself. The Bible is very clear that we are to stand firm on the

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word of God. And so we can't be compromising, we can't be coming up with extra biblical solutions to try and solve our marriage problems. This is why I highly discourage Christian couples from going outside of the church or from Christian professionals to help them heal and repair because the world cannot offer what God does. True wisdom is from above. That's our sole source, truth. And so we must seek out individuals and organizations that are speaking from that truth. Exercising love in truth also

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means that even in the midst of hard times, we must confront wrongdoing. We must be confident. We need to do so in a loving way, not from a place of anger, not seeking retribution or revenge, but in true biblical truth, true biblical love, we need to confront wrongdoing. And we can't be fearful of that. But you see, what typically happens, back to the drift idea, is it starts out small, and so we don't want to make a big deal of it. I don't want to set her off. But before long, you end up becoming the a-hole because you're lashing out because you weren't man enough to address it when it was really small. You were conflict

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avoidant, and you were doing that in the name of just protecting the situation. You weren't protecting anything, but your own fear for confronting the situation. And then eventually it just blew up, and now what are you going to do about it? We need to set boundaries for ourselves and for our spouses. If you look to Jesus and how he led, there are a couple of things that are really, really clear that I think are extremely important for us as Christian men to consider when we think of entering into a marriage and leading that marriage well. Number one, Jesus never chased. Now, some people will

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say, oh, he left the 99 to go after the one. We can get into that in a whole other conversation. But Jesus never chased people down that ran from him. he's like, look it, come and see, come and follow, watch what I do. If you don't want to follow as I have called you to, then go be. Go do your thing. We don't need to be chasing our spouses down in the midst of their wrongdoing. This is why there are times, I don't believe, that there are many cases for divorce in the Bible.

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Very, very few. Infidelity and abuse. And even in those, I believe that God would desire reconciliation. But I do believe that there are seasons of life, there are instances in marriage when separation temporarily is beneficial. I'm not going to chase you down in your toxicity. I'm not going to chase you down in your anger. I may actually have to take some distance. And when you are ready, I will be here. Another thing you will see is Jesus never manipulated anybody. He didn't bait and switch. He didn't trick anybody.

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did, hey, come on and do this if you want this. There was no carrots, there were no sticks. There was just a black and white reality to the situation. And yes, there is a lot of gray in your marriage that you have to work through. But at the end of the day, Jesus wasn't about manipulation. He was about clarity and truth. And lastly, ! As a great leader, or as men desiring to be great leaders, we should look to the fact that Jesus never disappeared. Jesus never got into the middle of a crazy situation when people were starving, when people were possessed, shoot,

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when people were dying, dead. He never took off. Yeah, he went away to pray at times, but never in the midst of people needing him. A real man will not walk away from a situation. I understand there are moments when you need to cool off, when your spouse needs to cool off. But I've heard too many stories of men that are like, man, I just, I gotta, I gotta take a week and I gotta get out of here. I can't deal with this anymore. I've gotta check out. When I look to Jesus, who is the perfect example that we can never completely emulate, but we're called to do the best we can, and I just think of all the knuckleheads that were around him, his own friends, total idiots at times. He never

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left him. Man, when Peter outright denied him, to his face he lied to him. Never left him. Jesus wants us to stand in that gap. God wants to see peace brought into our marriage. That's what we need to do. That's what biblical leadership looks like. you may be saying to yourself, but what happens when accountability is absent? Like, I want to emulate Christ. I notice there's been some drift. I'm willing to confront this honestly and truthfully, but what happens if my spouse, they're just absent accountability? They don't want to hear it.

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Well, accountability can't be forced. I understand that conversations which require us to take ownership of our piece of the pie are exhausting, but we need to take ownership. We should be willing to step into these difficult situations in our marriages and be really clear about what needs to happen and what cannot happen without ultimatums. It's not if you don't do this then. this is what God expects of you. This is what God expects of us. This is what we need of each other. Again, my wife

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is my everything in terms of I love her more than anything. She's my best friend, my lover, my partner, my laugh factory. I mean, she is just all those things. She's not my everything. that's God's position. That's God's place. That's God's desire. So, when we step into a situation where we've been faced with a lot of challenges, we can't just be throwing out ultimatums. Now, I understand there are situations where you have to throw down the gauntlet a little bit. And I've seen this happen going in both directions where it's like, look, if our marriage is going to thrive, you can no longer spend time with this person. You have to be really careful about those

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things. But you may have to do that. I find it to be not only okay, but absolutely necessary for every married woman to demand that their husband never looks at another naked woman on a screen, on a piece of paper, in person. No excuses. And the ultimatum there is because if you do that, you've broken the covenant. But we can't just step into every situation with the if you don't do this for me, then that. That's not the way this works. We should be acting out of an abundance of

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love and a desire to honor God, not to please our spouse. You see, if we desire to honor God, we will please our spouse. But if you tell me that I have to do something or else, how do you think that makes me feel? Obligated at best, angry, or even worse in the worst. My encouragement to you, if you've been in this place where you're like, man, there's just not a lot of accountability, what do I do about this? And then I'm going to give you anchors for you if you're walking this path, what you can control, what you can't control, and then some practical anchors. But right before I get there, I want to say this, what if I can't

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get this accountability? What if I can't get her or him to step up to the plate? Galatians 6 says each is to test their own actions, meaning ultimately that's on them. And I know that's not super helpful because that doesn't bring you two together. But if I don't want to be held accountable, there's nothing you're going to do to force that on me. Again, you can give me ultimatums, and I may succumb to them, but I'm going to do so in frustration, in anger. Our goal is to test our own actions. You see, that's why I've

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often said to men that come to me frustrated with their wives, I've said to them, look, I don't want to hear about what your wife is or isn't doing. What I want to hear is what you are or aren't doing. How can you improve your own actions, your own words, and then you let her worry about her? Well, at least always start there. Like with my client, we started there. I'm like, dude, here's some suggestions. Check your own heart. Check your own intentions. Check your own responses. But as we've gotten into this further and further and I've watched him grow in this area and nothing is changing, now I'm starting to say, okay, you do have to

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confront her with the truth. You do have to set some standards, name some conditions, but you still need to make sure you're always checking your own actions because no matter how bad they can be, that is never, never a green light for you to be bad too. And again, this happens all the time. She wasn't doing this, so I did that. She talks to me this way, so I said that. I feel abandoned, so then I went and stepped out on her with this other one. Those are weak. I get it. I just don't accept it. You're better than that. Men, we are better than that. So if this is you, what can you actually hold on

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to in a season like this? What do you do if you're like, Ryan, this is me. I feel this way. Maybe not to the degree that my client's facing right now. Maybe there's just a little bit of frustration, but you see it starting to build. Maybe you're just not getting everything you'd hoped for out of your marriage. What do you do? Well, here's some anchors for you. Starting off with what can you control? This is what I always want to encourage men to filter through is to start off by saying what can I control? You can control your integrity. That's first and foremost. You can stand

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strong on who God has called you to be. no matter how anybody else treats you doesn't take away from what God is asking of you, of who God is asking you to be. Do right, do well. Never give anybody a reason. Never give your spouse a reason to drag you down with them. It's not about being better than them. It's about doing as you've been called to do. Two, you can control your regulation. What I mean by that is you can control the volatility by which you are feeling and speaking these things. This is controlling your actions, right? You can go into a situation

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confronting a bad situation with the truth without doing so with vengeance, without doing so defensively. I know what's going to happen. So I've been encouraging my client on how to kind of go back and forth with his wife and he's trying to go to a place where they can have a face-to-face conversation. A lot of this has not happened that way yet. And I had to warn him. I said, just be ready. She's hurting. She is going to hurt you. Even if she doesn't really want to hurt you, she just needs you to feel what she's feeling. And because you know that to be the case, you need to protect yourself. And protect yourself isn't to avoid it. It's to prepare yourself for

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it. And so if I know that that's going to happen, then I can prepare myself to not get defensive, to not lash out in response to being lashed out on. Thirdly, the thing that you can control is your obedience. Like what? Obey my wife? I mean, maybe you can do a better job. Fall in line. No. What you can control is your obedience to God. What God requires of you is to love your wife unconditionally. It's to serve her. It's to sacrifice for her. It's to honor him. It's to not let unwholesome talk come out of your mouth. It is not to commit adultery physically, mentally, or emotionally.

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So regardless of what people are doing to you, you can be obedient to him. In the same way, I mean, Jesus had every reason in the book just to wipe that place clean. I mean, they were beating on him. Boom! With a snap of the fingers. Smoked him. He's walking to the, you know, carrying the cross, walking to the hill to be pinned to it. And they're beating him, mocking him, spitting on him. Boom! Could have killed them all. Up on that cross, at any moment, they're pinning him. He's in pain. They cut his side open. In pain. Beating him. In pain. Stripping him. In shame. Any moment. He had every right as a human being,

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never mind the God of this universe, to lash out. Instead, he says, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Because he knew the will of his father was for him to go to the cross to atone for the sins of all that would put their faith in him. But it was also the will of the father to show the world that mediation with God was not going to come by way of force. It was going to come by way of sacrifice. So that's what you can control. What can't you control? Two things come to mind for me. The first one is you cannot control your spouse's healing. I wrote all about

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this in my book Wounds. We experience a lot of trauma. I was with a friend last night and we talking about his relationship and dating relationship and he was sharing that in his relationship he had found out that his girlfriend had experienced a lot of trauma going up. I won't get into all the details, but her trauma, her experienced and lived trauma doesn't give her an excuse to treat him negatively. At the same time, he can't control how she heals from and through that. And so he can't be a fixer. You can be a listener. You can definitely respond to

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and support the things that they're asking of us, but we can't heal them. They can't even heal themselves. That's what's so crazy. Only God can do that. We also can't control their readiness. We can't control when our spouses are ready to step up to the plate. When they're ready to put down the sword and engage in real conversation. I think about my journey to get where I finally realized just what a mess I'd made of my life. 28 years I had some great years, but I also had some brutal ones.

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And many times along the way, definitely when I was younger for a period of time, and then in the last probably five or six years before I came to faith in Jesus, I had a couple of people that were regularly in my ear, doing everything from loving me into showing me who God was, all the way through to looking me in the face and telling me what an idiot I was for participating in the things that I was. And guess what? I wasn't ready. That didn't mean that they needed to stop. I just wasn't ready. And in the same way, until your wife is ready to change, until your wife is

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ready to accept the reality that not everything is great and things need to be worked on, you can't do anything about it. So my encouragement to you practically are a couple of things. The first is, initiate clarity, not arguments. Stop trying to fight your way into reconciliation. Speak honestly, speak truthfully, speak clearly about where you're hurt, what needs to change, but do not engage in the argument. All it does is make it worse. Secondly, set conditions, not threats. Again,

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this is how we need to speak to each other. This is how we need to act with each other. This is the role that I desire to play. This is the role that I expect you to play. And there's going to be some compromise and there needs to be mutual agreement there. But we cannot threaten people. You cannot threaten to withhold things, money, presence, your voice, sex. We can set conditions biblically, but we can't threaten. The third thing is, stay present without chasing her down. do not withdraw. Be the man that God calls you to be regardless

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of the woman that she is currently being. Show up. Love. Provide. Sometimes, what they need to see is our consistency through their inconsistency. And finally, what love your wife without self-erasure. Love your wife without erasing yourself. You know, as I've been researching this topic, that kind of phrase came up and I was like, gosh, what does that look like? And I started reading more about that idea of we love people so much that we begin to

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erase ourselves. We put all of ourselves away in in order to try and love them back into a healthy relationship. And kind of a funny story about that is my wife and I have been big fans of Landman. It's a show on Paramount Plus with Billy Bob Thornton and Ali Larder. And Sam Elliott has recently joined the show as Billy Bob Thornton's dad. And so Tommy, that's Billy Bob Thornton's character. His dad comes into the picture and you find out pretty quickly that his mom, who passes away shortly after being

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introduced just into the show, was an addict and beat Billy Bob Thornton growing up and just was just a horrific, horrific. And Billy Bob Thornton's angry at his dad, Sam Elliott, because he's like, you abandoned me too. And it was very fascinating. Obviously, this is not real life, but it portrays so much of what happens. Sam Elliott's character as the husband to this addict lost his life, lost his identity, protecting

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his wife through her addiction, trying to get her better, and ultimately being hopeful that one day she would fix herself. But eventually she just succumbed to it all. And in the process, Sam Elliott's character, Billy Bob Thornton's dad, lost his own life, at least the sense of it, all the while that was happening. He damaged his relationship with his son to almost disrepair. And I just think to myself, how many of you are doing everything you can to love your spouse and you're losing yourself in the process? We can't have that happen. Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, you'll find it on the bottom of an in-and-out cut from time to time. You'll find it on posters and t-shirts and all kinds

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of things. It says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. That verse is so relevant here because the oftentimes we get into these situations where we're just like, man, how did I get here? And so you try to do everything you can to fix it. Nothing seems to work. You try, you try, you try, and you just end up right back in the same situation. Maybe you end up in a worse situation. I mean, my client, my friend is now like, I just don't even know what to do anymore. And I don't want to be trite or trivial, but I just had to tell him. man, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on

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your own understanding. Because in my understanding, this is not going well. And eventually, this is not going to end well. God, the God that spoke the world into existence, the God that parted the sea, the God that sent his own son, God himself, down to die to make peace with the world, that resurrected from the dead after dying himself, that holds all things in the palm of his hand, that healed the blind, healed the lame, cured the sick,

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fed thousands with very little. God's wild. God does things that just don't make sense. Coming up on 25 years of marriage this March. But in August of 2006, I was in my last days. I don't deserve to be married 25 years. I also don't serve a God that makes sense and seems to constantly give undeserving people things they don't deserve. I just want you to hear me loud and clear. It doesn't make sense. Even when we can put the pieces together as to why we are in the place that we're in, it still doesn't make sense.

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Why can't God just fix it right now? Why does it have to be this way? I don't know. But my encouragement to you is to trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding because we just can't always understand it. I also want to reinforce the fact that this season of life, the season of struggle for you does not define your worth and value. This does not make you any more or less of a man. I also want to remind you that leadership with clarity is not failure. You can only control the things that you can control. And finally, I want to remind you that God honors anchored men,

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anchored to Christ. God, in my life, and in the lives of every man that I've ever coached and watched grow and heal and become better, in every couple that I've counseled that has reconciled and restored itself, in every situation where it looks so bleak, and years later we would turn around and go, oh my gosh, in every single one of those people, in every single one of those relationships, in every single one of those situations, I was able to look back and say, God, He often does His deepest work in us before He restores what we're praying for.

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Leave that. And I just want you to know you don't have to walk this alone. He often would have my client, though he has friends, had recently shared with me that apart from me, he wouldn't have even known where to go. And as heavy as a burden as that feels for me, I am grateful we're in that relationship. This is what we have, our community for, men of greatness, doing everything I can to try and foster more real, authentic, transparent relationships between the guys so they can open up to each other in this way. You're not the only one. This, unfortunately, is a regular part of life. And we need to fight like heck to try and protect it or prevent it from happening. But if and when

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it comes, we want to be ready. And we want to be there to support you. We want others to support us when we get there. So if this is you, if you feel this way, if you're listening to this, if you're watching this, find a way to get a hold of me if you need some support. This is not a sales pitch. This is my heart. I believe that God led me through that valley of the shadow of death, near death of my marriage. Not just to heal me and give me a better marriage, but to show other men what's possible and to help lead them down the same path. You're not going to do what I did,

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and I'm not going to ask you to do that. What I'm going to ask you to do is look to the one who solved it all for me, and I am absolutely certain that in the end, it will all work out for your good too. Peace.