Brave Men S2E24: Dr. Bill Harley - Epic Marriages

This is the Brave Bend podcast with Paul Cole. I'm Brian Boyd and today Paul you're still in the Miami Airport. Yeah, I'm in the Miami Airport. Yeah, I get out of the airport. It's well, I've got quite a long layover. We're headed to Peru and Paraguay in Argentina and we've got amazing results that have happened over the last 25 years of ministering in Peru and then Argentina over the last 10 years is just started to unfold with thousands of churches really using the curriculum helps men be men, which is what leads perfectly into this conversation I had with Dr. Bill Harley. He's probably best known as the author of his needs her needs building in a fair proof marriage. I was I was really knocked out not only by his depth because he's a counselor and psychologist and all those but he has a practical depth in this conversation I learned some things I'd never known before I've been married over 40 years and I learned something new. You're going to love this conversation with Bill Harley today. It's Brave Man with Paul Lewis Cole wisdom and courage for the journey. So today on Brave Man before we get into this amazing discussion, I know you're talking about marriage tips and recently on Saturday Night Live there was a skit called Sleeping on the couch. Oh, really? Yeah, and it started off. I'm not going to do a justice. It started off with a husband coming in and apologizing for something he did and it was a real long drawn out apology and he ends up on the couch. By the end of the skit, the husband brings flowers and is immediately on the couch. He has chocolates and she doesn't let him talk. She sends them right to the couch. So what are the three tips that from from to keep you off the couch? Keep us off the couch. Yeah, goodness. Well, I frankly in my wife will say this is true for 99% of the ladies and wives is she goes, flowers work. She said, we were talking about it with a couple of while back and she goes, flowers always work. That's awesome. So that might help you know, the thing is is that there was a there's a famous line I put it in. I think I put it in bartender or the first first book I wrote Darryn. When a man came to get a golf lesson from a very famous golfer Sam Sneed. He said, Mr. Sneed, I want to learn how to get out of a sand trap. You know, you get in there in the sand. How do I hit it out? He said, I'll give you a lesson but the first lesson won't be how to get out of the sand trap. It'll be how not to get into the sand trap in the first place. That's right. And I think the couch issue is really things we know the right thing to do sometimes, Brian. We don't do it. So when Bill Harley, when he wrote this book, his needs her needs. And by the way, you're going to love this part, Brian. In the middle of the conversation somewhere in there and maybe I did it off mic. I can't even remember. I talked to him a couple of days ago. Oh, no, I think I did it on the conversation. And I said, thank you for writing his needs, her needs. And thank you for putting his needs first. Oh, no. That's great. He cracked it. He laughed. He said, well, how else would I get men to read it? So women will read it anyway. He said, but men, he said, not if it's going to solve their needs. Well, the interview is coming up and it's great. But I want to remind our listeners that this podcast is free. And we encourage you to subscribe and share on Apple podcast, click the subscribe button. And you'll always know when a new episode is released. And also many materials supporting today's interview and more about marriage and integrity and being a man, et cetera, is available at cmn.man. That's a great website address, Paul, cmn.man. Well, Christian men is nowhere to see men. But here's the thing. You want to stay off the couch. It really starts with you, not her. You know, when we're talking about marriage and oh, and this is great. I'm not going to, I'm not going to do a spoiler. I asked him at one, okay, I asked him how often is it her fault? How often is it his fault? Or is it always, always the man's fault? And he had an answer. He didn't just kind of, oh no. Oh, yeah, he had a solid answer, man. You're going to love it. You're absolutely going to love it. I think I know the answer is, but I'm probably wrong. No, no, no. And so I went home. I went home and I told my wife. I said, uh, here's what Dr. Harley says. Well, this isn't the plug for traitors, but I will tell all the guys out there that traitor Joe's has great prices on flowers. Yeah. And you come home with a $50 looking bouquet for $12.95. So that's my tip. Hey, whatever it takes, I think that's a great tip. Let's go ahead and listen to Paul's interview with Bill Harley. With me today on Brave Menace, Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr. PhD. Bill Harley, you're the author of his needs, her needs, building an affair proof marriage. And that launched this amazing ministry. You've done all kinds of seminars and, you know, what was it that started this bill? I mean, what was the genesis of this? You'd gone to school. You've been working with marriages and then something snapped. And then this came out of it. What was that? Well, basically I was a clinical psychologist and I ran 32 locations here in Minnesota. I clinics all over the state and I did a lot of work in mental health. And one of the things that kept drawing my attention was marriage problems. And I could see that marriage problems created mental health problems and mental health problems created marriage problems. And as a mental health specialist, I became more and more interested in the problems of marriage as a way of dealing with mental health. And over the period of years, I felt the Lord's calling quite frankly to focus on marriage as opposed to just the broad areas of mental health. Right. And I became quite concerned about the fact that the programs that were available were not that effective. And so I set out to try to create something that that I knew that a year later after I had worked with a couple, they'd still be together and they'd be happily married as opposed to other programs that I've seen. And interestingly enough, I had a client that worked for a publishing company and I gave him some reading material. And he said, you know, you need to publish this. Really? And that was his knee. I was his knee turnings. I had written a lot of stuff on a lot of different marriage issues. And so he took it to his publisher. And that was in 1986. And I had already been running my clinics for 15 years, well, as he 10 years by that time. Yeah. So when his knees, her knees came out, it became such a popular book that I changed direction. I eventually gave up all the clinics that I had gave them all to people that work for me. Yeah. And went into marriage therapy full time started my website marriagebuilders.com in 1996. Wow. So I've been doing this ever since. I focus all of my attention now on solving marital problems. So we get 20, 20 books now. Yeah. And they're, they're incredible. You've got now his needs her needs is, is if you will foundational, but you've got how to fall in love and stay in love. And you know, you've got a number of the seminar. You've got a number of other books, as you mentioned. I want to, I want to write off the front, say marriagebuilders.com is your website. You've got a daily radio show. And I would encourage guys to get on there. There's also free things. There's, there's articles. And all kinds of helps. And then what that would do, I would think, Dr. Harley, is that would help a man begin to reorient himself to moving into some of the tools seminars. You've got online seminars. Right. Yeah, we have, we have all kinds of opportunity. Basically, my whole approach to helping people with marriages is, is first of all, I, even though I don't state it purposefully, I'm really directing all of my energies toward men. Really? And, and when I started the website back in 1996, the purpose of it was to reach men, because at that time, the vast majority of the people that were serving the net were men. And I thought that this would be a great, great opportunity for me to, to reach men. And to some extent, that radio show that we have more men listen to it than women. We get more emails from men. And then we do women. And guess, the guests on our show are the majority or men. Wow. And so the basic, basic feeling that I have is that, is that I'm trying to reach the husband. I'm trying to reach the, the husband to show him a path, a path that leads not only to saving the marriage, but to become a better human being, you know, a better person. Well, yeah, it has to start, it has to start internally before it happens with the other person, right. You have to manage yourself before you manage others. So, so one of the things that I thought was great, and I just want to say thank you is in the title, you put his needs first. Yeah, many people, I don't know if that was so. You did or, or you, well, many of people have said that I should write another book called his needs, his needs or her needs. Basically, it's a, yeah, the basic and I get criticized for this from feminists, you know, they hooten how, if you want to read Amazon's one star comments on his needs, her needs, you know, they will tell you that the book, the book is way too focused on the needs of men. Now that's not really true. But from a feminist point of view, it would be. And so that's the basic criticism I get is that why are we talking about men so much. And of course, that's the purpose of the whole book. I'm trying to reach men. Yeah, exactly. And so I understand that. So the subtitle is building in a fair proof marriage. That's fascinating to me because it didn't say building a wholesome marriage building it, it really went right after an issue. How big of an issue is that in our. Now here's an interesting issue that I face today. My publisher has wanted to change the bullet line. So, yeah, so as of March 1st, few days ago, the new book, there's a new book, new cover, and it is building a marriage that lasts and they've taken the building and a fair proof marriage out of the thing. Now, my argument has always been that his needs, her needs is about building a marriage that lasts. I mean, without a doubt, it is about building marriage at last. But I focus in the book in reading the book, which by the way, the text of the book has not changed. The text remains the same. It's just the cover. It's just the cover says building. And they feel that people get to get, you know, they don't like seeing affairs in the title. But the basic, the basic idea that I have is that infidelity is a huge problem today, huge problem. I mean, you know, we heard about it. But I, yeah, we've done, I've done surveys myself about it. And we have people that I know have had an affair. I mean, they come to us because they had an affair. Yeah. And they have actually, um, their wife knows they have an affair, the husband knows the wife said an affair and they recovered from the affair. And I asked the question, if somebody were to survey you and ask you if you have had an affair, would you admit it? And 50% say they would not. So I suspect that almost all of these, and these are people that their spouse knows they're having an affair. Now, what if you call a person that's having an affair and their spouse doesn't know that they're having an affair. Would they admit it in a survey? Of course. So my, my argument is that all of the scientific research that's out there regarding the incidence of infidelity is way too minimalized. It's, it's seen to be about 25%. I, I see it as double that, maybe even triple that. Wow. And because of the fact that people are reluctant to admit that they've ever had an affair, especially if their spouse doesn't know about it. Well, you know, it's what we deal with with Christian men's network and our work with men is the biggest issue we have, the biggest obstacle, frankly, is most churches are administered led by men. And so when you say, well, here's this curriculum that will build wholeness and courage and these things, most guys go, no, we're good. Well, I find it easier to work with men when they're in a state of crisis. Well, isn't that one long? Yeah, isn't that when most men come to Christ anyway? Yeah, I don't think we, you know, we don't come to Christ after, you know, saying, you know, I just like a little bit better. I'd like a little better in my life. I come to Christ knowing that your life is not working out very well. Yeah, it's that Dr. Phil, how's that working for you? You know, I, I've only met, I think Bill, I've only met a couple of men in my life that said to me they came to Christ out of a logical exploration of, you know, what's out there. Most of them there was a crisis like even CS Lewis, when he said, well, I, you know, researched and I moral law and all these things and yet he still had a crisis in his life, right? And not only that, but my personal relationship with Jesus Christ is personal, you know, and people have come to me and said, you know, I wish I could have faith like you do. And I said, well, it has to do with the fact that he is within me. And it's hard to deny what is within you. Yeah. And when I received Jesus Christ as my personal savior, he became a part of me. And my faith is based on the reality of his relationship with me. Yeah. And they will tell me, I wish I, I wish I could have, I wish I could experience that reality. And of course I tell them, you can, you, you can have that experience. And, and, and, you know, it's an interesting problem that people have that they come to Christ in a crisis, often they will say, I mean, need, I'm great, I'm in great need. Please help me. And if there's a God out there, please give me some help in this situation. And, and then the Bible points the way to how to actually get that help. Right. And who to talk to and who to pray to and how to understand the whole thing. And so, you know, from my perspective as a Christian, you know, the faith issue, which is a big, big deal. I mean, we are saved by, by grace through faith. Right. You know, from my experience, Christ came to me. Christ came to me. And he came to me in a situation that I needed help and, and, and, and he's been there ever since. And so that's basically my witness. That's how I went to people. You know, let me give you a, how do you have that? Let me, let me give you a little just a stream of, of thing. For me, faith is, is, of course, the opposite morally of fear, but experientially, the opposite of fear is confidence. And so confidence comes from definition. Definition is what defines me is my identity. Identity is the story I tell myself about myself. That's kind of the way we've taught it. And, and because definitions become your decisions, decisions, your destiny. So, would you say that what most men are believing is when they, when they got the marriage and things aren't working right. They're, they're just believing something that somebody else told them. Or in other words, they're not turning towards faith. They're turning away. And they don't have that confidence. What's the biggest obstacle that you're seeing to men getting actually getting this stuff fixed? Well, I'm, I'm a, even though I'm a born again believer, I am a secular therapist. In which case I work with Christians and non-Christians both. And the morality of the program that I work with is based on a, a, a, a basic Christian, based Christian principles. They, they will know you are my disciples by your love for each other. Right. And, and I start out with the concept of we as Christians believe that we should care for other people. And that we should do it sacrificially. And, and that basic basic premises of Christianity help me understand the importance of marriage in the, in the sense that it is a relationship, I call it a relationship of extraordinary care. So when I'm working with a man, I am telling him that, which is in the Bible, it says that a husband should love his wife as Christ loved church. Right. And, and I'm talking about extraordinary care. What, what, what is extraordinary care now in that I'm not working exclusively with Christians. Non-Christians can see that the importance of that concept as well. And so I say, what I'd like you to do, I'd like you to learn how to do is to love your wife with extraordinary care. And, and that comes in two forms. It comes in two directions. Number one is don't hurt her. Don't hurt her. Don't do anything to hurt her. And do what you can to make her happy. And you know my, my basic, my basic concept of the love bank, you build love units. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to get into that, the love bank and the love units, because that's a real kind of a core part of your practice. But, but the point is this that you build the love units through extraordinary care. See, so, so the whole morality of marriage is that you have one person here. One who, as a Christian, I would say God has given me one person, my wife, to show maximum care to not to hurt her to make her happy as unto the Lord as Christ loved the church. And so the basic feeling that I have about working with men is I have to get the concept across of making sure that your wife, it's number one in your life. And, and I explain what that means. Now, I have a rule that men have a hard time following very, very difficult. And that's called the policy of joint agreement. The policy of joint agreement never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse. Wow. You know, you mean like me, you mean like buying that fishing boat. Yeah. But it was going to, but dude, it was going to make us both happy. Yes, yes. You'll be happy. Yeah. You'll be happy eventually. It's not the way marriage works. If I'm happy, she'll be happy. Exactly. So anyway, so I, so what I do is I work with a man and I say, you know, that is a rule that defines thoughtfulness. It's a rule that defines thoughtfulness. It's a rule that defines care. And in other words, if you have a struggle with making decisions with your spouse that she can agree on. Wow. You're, you're being thoughtless. You're being thoughtless if you have a problem with that. And so, and they say, you know, but how can this possibly work in practice? If I end up, if I end up, I'm dealing with a guy right now, okay, good example. He is training his 16 year old son to become a computer programmer. And the kid is doing really well. And it's already got a job with a company actually doing coding for another company or company earning or living doing that. The father has, he is now 16 year old and is taking college level classes. And, but he's left his wife out of the loop. His wife has had no influence on on the decisions he makes. He just goes ahead and doesn't now. I look at this and I say, wow, that's a great thing for the father to do. Yeah. He's taking the son, caring for the son, training the son. The son actually thinks it's fabulous what the father is doing. But because he let, he didn't do this with the wife's agreement. And the wife just was left behind. His wife is threatening to divorce him. Oh, my goodness. He is now separated from his wife. And I'm trying to get them back together again. What initial response was why, why would she be upset at that? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And so basically, I've told him I said what, what I'd like you to do is to suspend the work that you're doing with your son for two months. While you and your wife are getting back together again. And then after that, the decisions you make about the training of your son have to be done with her agreement. Well, he's been writing me long, long letters about how she's never going to agree to anything. She never has agreed to anything. All she wants to do is watch him suffer. And she has no concept about what, what, how much value he's got to raising his son this way. And I said, you know, the son is not going to turn out all that well if you guys, and your relationship is a horrible relationship. Because you're doing something great for your son that she was not a part of. Yeah. Wow. See, so it's a good example of a father being a good father from everybody's perspective except the wife. You know, that reminds me, Bill, of the tentations of Christ, that not one of the things that Christ was tempted by the enemy to do on his 40 day fast was a bad thing. In other words, making bread is not bad. And every single thing, in other words, they weren't evil things. But they were all outside of the will of God. They were all outside of union. They were all outside of what was the word not exhilarating agreement. What was the extraordinary extraordinary. Extraordinary care. I have. The policy of joint agreement. Policy of joint agreement. Policy of joint agreement. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So is it always the guys fall. This stuff always demands. I say 70% of the time. Okay, 70%. Hey, you know, I can live with that. I can live with that seriously because. Because I remember. I remember I was doing a men's Bible study. We were doing a going through maximize manhood with some guys that. And a guy. And I. And we knew his wife. At. At one point in the lesson, he took his pencil through it across the table. We were. Literally. We're all writing in answers. Throw across. He goes, there's no way it's always the guys fall. Yes. And. And I looked at him. His name is Pat. And I said. I said. Bro, in your case, you're probably totally right. Well, I'll take 70, 30 because I, you know, men get beat up. Don't we. Don't we beat guys? Yeah, exactly. Especially in the culture we're living in right now. But. But I will say this is the biggest mistake that a man makes. I wrote an article for new man magazine that used to exist years ago. Yeah, yeah. And. And it was called Why Women Leave Men? And it's it's in the article section of my of the marriage builders. That's why women leave men. And the problem is in what I call independent behavior. Where the guy will just simply do what he does, whether his wife likes it or not. And she starts out in the marriage trying to cooperate with him, trying to give him lots of latitude, trying to understand why he wants to be with his friends instead of being with her. He tries to understand why he does these things that the chief explains doesn't a bothers her, but she but he goes in does it anyway. And then and then what what happens is that you see illustration of a house that the man's got rooms in his house to represent the roles he plays in life. And in those rooms, he doesn't let his wife in. Wow. And he doesn't have and it doesn't have the right to use the policy of joint agreement in any in a lot of these rooms. So she's cut out of of these various roles that he plays. Because he thinks that he should have the right to make all the decisions policy of joint agreement wouldn't apply. I told I writing the book that is from my from my analysis of of of of government statistics that go back 30 or 40 years. 80% of all divorces are caused by neglect. Oh my God. And what that means is that he has has has carved his wife out of his life. And I use the illustration of in in in in Revelation Jesus stands at the door knocks. Yeah. Many man here's my voice all open the door and talk and and and some of them and he with me is talking to Christians, you know. Yeah, it was a picture of the Passover celebration. Yeah, well, it's a it's basically one of the churches and the problems that they're having the trick, but the basic argument that I use is that you're your wife is standing outside the door. Wanting to come in and you're not opening the door for her. You're not letting her become a part of your life. Wow. And so to the extent that I can encourage men to become integrated with their wives. And the way that they raise their children. And and then furthermore that in many cases, the husband really isn't good at raising his children. The wife's participation can really help them out. You know, and and to the extent that the husband and wife are are bonded together and working together. The children do so much better. Yeah. How many. How many children do you have, Dr. Harley? Two. Two children. I have a son and a daughter and I have and they have two children and their children have their two of their children that have two children. So I'm a great girl. Oh my gosh. Boy, that happened quick. So now. Yeah, and I want to get into some of that in just a second, but. I want to mention this again to everyone of our friends is listening marriagebuilders.com easy to find. We'll also put. I'd love to put that article why women leave men on our site. Sure. Go ahead. Yeah. That's great. Dot men. And I'd love to invite your maybe your son to come down and speak one of our seminars. You know, he is in the ministry with you in this. Yes, he is. He'd be delighted to do that. I'm sure. That'd be fantastic. You know, I just so appreciate what you're doing and we're just touching the tip of it. And my hope is that. Is that you listening my brother you right now you'd go to marriagebuilders.com. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, there's a number of articles that one article I think is great is on conversation. You know, what a what a concept. But you break it down as to what that actually means. In other words, a meaningful conversation in which you're not beating each other up. And what you actually share ideas. You know, that that sort of thing, but one of the things that that we hit all the time now in the church and outside the church outside the church, if you will, it's it's kind of accepted as the norm. We don't think about it much. For instance, the, you know, the new prime minister of England, you know, had somebody they lives together with his partner. And I think he's she's having a baby so they got engaged. Well, you know, good for them. But I mean in the church and outside the church, it seems like well, we're just living together because we know that we're connected. And we think this is going to be good. And we're just trying it out. Conceptually sounds like well, okay. But what's the danger in that, Dr. Harley? Well, first of all, again, going back to government statistics, there was an interesting article that came out. And the government actually hid the article after I was able to read it before they hit it. But basically they were arguing in this article that 90% of all domestic violence is with people who are not married. Or who or who have never lived together. Wow. So you have the combination they've never never lived together. I'm sorry, 90% of people that, okay, let me say it again, that either are not married or have lived together in the past, 90% of all domestic violence. The article was saying that it's one of the most dangerous places for children to live is in non-marital domestic situations. Wow. You get the most sexual abuse in those situations in the most horrible kinds of situations. So we are saying kind of a voice crying in the wilderness that if you live together before marriage, chances are your marriage will not turn out very well if you finally do get married. And you're very likely not to stay together very long. So basically you're not going to get married point number one. Point number two, if you do get married, if you won't do very well. Now there's an article that was published by a professor at the University of California Riverside. I used to teach there actually. And he's he made a point that he wrote an article. It's very interesting that in the first six months of a relationship where people are together, they create rules of conduct with each other that pretty much stay in place for the rest of their lives together. So if you live together before marriage during those six months, you create what I call the renters relationship where you're making decisions based on short term outcomes. You're not thinking in terms of staying together necessarily, you're just kind of trying it out, seeing if it works. If that person ends up getting married, those same rules apply in marriage, which is temporary solutions, short term solutions, win lose, win lose solutions, and you have a great deal of anger and violence whenever that happens. What I call the buyer's relationship is one where people are all in all in in the relationship. You are mine for life. I will care for you for life. And you don't do that when you're living together before marriage. Before marriage, you're actually saying, I don't know if this is going to work or not. Let's see if it works. And you start setting ways of handling problems in that situation that are very, very fragile. Yeah, as a follower of Christ, I guess what we could say bill is that in one sense, you're creating a contractual relationship in which the contract can either be voided or, you know, we're going to go back and we're going to rewrite the contract or it's covenant. And covenant is, I'm fully yours and you're fully mine and you become one. And in the things that we're learning in medical science and neuroplasticity and all those things, what I look at is I look at the dopamine chemical, which creates neural pathways. And I look at this dopamine, which, which our friend Nancy Houston has taught us is the marriage chemical. You know, I look at that as when it says the two become as one, you know, it's a spiritual thing, but I think now medical science is proving that it's actually a physical bonding because my neural pathways begin to match her neural pathways. And because I'm creating thought life in which we are connected. And that connection when it's contractual, I keep my neural pathways or mine. And hers or hers and any of you can go so far as though, well, you're going off with the boys for the weekend to Key Largo. Yeah, have fun and don't tell me what you did. Well, I mean, come on, man, that, you know, that thing we talk about that being very modern and very hip and all that sort of stuff. Really what it is is it's extremely damaging. And in the deepest level of our psyche and the places we don't even know that are connected, it disconnects us. And what I love about what you're doing and medical science in the, you know, if you will, secular medical science, I think general market, whatever you want to call it, it all comes back to proving the word of God. Yeah, he had the genesis chapter three describes what marriage is. It is a man leaves his father and mother and they become united. The two become one and I start all my seminars with that verse. I start, I start there and I say that this is basically the rule for marriage. The rule for marriage is the two become one and so all everything, everything that follows should emphasize the fact that what's good for one of you should be good for the other. You should be thinking of yourselves as a united unit. And this is why the policy of joint agreement makes it much sense because basically what you're saying is that I want the other guy to be just as happy with his choice as I am. That's not this united being that the two of us have become is going to suffer. And so you basically have to be thinking all the time about how is my spouse going to be affected by the decisions I make. And that opens the doors to all of the rooms in a man's house. And he says, okay, I want you to, I want you to, I want you to be an important part of my life in every role that I play. And I want you to know what I do and I want you to be able to think now he has to do the same thing with with her too has to go both ways. But women do, you know, women do women start out with marriage wanting to be united with her husband. It's the husband who is reluctant to let the wife be united with him. And so this is where a lot of the resentment comes from women women say, you know, in the beginning of our marriage, he wouldn't often do this. And all these memories pile up and she becomes angry with him that she that I use the example of the train left the station and she's left behind, you know, and his train is all moving out there. This example I was using about the guy that has separated from his wife. He's running, he's running way ahead of his wife, his wife is left behind. Yeah. And she's divorcing him for that reason. In fact, what he's doing for his son from a secular standpoint, from an outsider standpoint. And he's highly involved. And he says that he separated his life. You know, I remember the book, the Ferrells wrote a number of years ago. Men are like waffles, women are like spaghetti. And that whole image of everything's connected. You know, Judy and I have been married 48 years. We dated for around three and a half, four years. But a song can come on radio if we're in the car. It's an oldie, but goodie, you know, from. I mean, and if it's from a moment where I wasn't, I wasn't necessarily very smart. And I messed up over and over. And if it comes from one of those mess up segments. Here we are 50 years later and she'll go, oh yeah, turn that. I go, well, I like this song. She goes, yeah, don't you remember? That's when. Yeah. Yeah, women have great memories, great memories. And for me, I'm a waffle. It's in another compartment. I don't even live there anymore. Right. Right. So it is. Yeah, resentment is a huge problem in marriage. Women, a woman's resentment of things that have done and done in the past. Huge problem. We deal with it. Matter of fact, a couple days ago, we did a, we did a podcast on the topic of resentment. And, and basically it is, you know, and that's another article you might want to read in my article section is how to deal with the quarrel for the nagging wife. And it is really on the topic of resentment and how resentment builds over time. And I talk about three stages of resentment and women. And, you know, and problems, the writer of problems certainly had that experience 3000 years ago, you know, that we still have today where a woman becomes resentful. Better to live in a desert than to live with the quarrelsome and nagging wife. But she didn't get that way by chance, you know, he had a lot to do with it. Yeah, no, it's usually, yeah, there's a lot of things on that. And it's, I like the one that the proverb about the dripping faucet. So, you know, we could go on for a long time. I want to mention again, marriagebuilders.com, marriagebuilders.com. And I just want to, Dr. Harley, for you and your son and you said you had a daughter and a son. My daughter, yeah, she is in, she's in Manila. She has, she works with me too. She has her own website. It's called forgiftsoflove.org. A whole one word for forgiftsoflove.org. She has their own website that she's developed and she has a PhD in psychology too. Wow. And she, she leads seminars and does a lot of marriage work as well. So, both of my children are working in marriage. She has, she lives in Manila. Yeah. And, well, good for you. So, she's working with people in the Philippines. Yeah, you know, that's incredible. And what you've done is remarkable. And, and I kind of tracked it. You graduated UC Santa Barbara. And, and then you said you taught in Riverside. So, because I was wondering how you go from Santa Barbara to, are you from Minnesota originally? Originally from Born in Philadelphia moved to Santa Barbara when I was four. Wow. And I met Joyce, my wife Joyce in Santa Barbara. Wow. And, and then we moved after I got my PhD. We moved to Chicago and then to Minnesota from there because I sold a business that I started. Okay. And that got me to the Midwest. And once we got there, we just loved it here. We loved it. Well, and you wouldn't think that from coming from Santa Barbara. Well, that was my deal. I grew up in Santa Cruz. Just. Wow. And we used to surf all up and down the coast and we'd get down that direction. And, and, you know, so I thought, well, how does he go from Santa Barbara to Minnesota? But you hit, you hit a beauty spot and there are some beautiful places. You know, the only issue I ever. It's, you know what it is? It's culture. It's culture, of course. Yeah. And I wasn't happy with the culture in California. Yeah. And I was happier with the culture in Minnesota. I wanted to raise my kids to be thoughtful, caring. And the people of Minnesota. On average are more thoughtful and more caring, more neighborly than the people that I get. Got to know in California. Fastening. I grew up in Santa Cruz, but I raised my children here in the Fort Worth area. I was going to go off and we'll be out at the ocean and we'll be looking at the waves and my kids will look at me go, what were you thinking? And then, you know, and then I'm like, yeah, but, yeah, but you grew up in a such a wholesome environment. And, you know, we know all of our neighbors, even today, we had, in fact, we had a bunch of neighbors over for dinner last night, you know, different people and neighbors and my wife cooked up some soup and. We got over stuff. We all hung out and just talked in time as neighbors. Exactly. And we know each other's kids names and they grew up in that and then we went skiing and Colorado, which is, you know, part of the part of Texas that we own, but we let them keep the name. And, you know, so the only thing I have with Minnesota was the state bird is the mosquito. That's the only issue I ever had with Minnesota. Well, you got a lot of mosquitoes up here, but you do throughout actually all through Mississippi Valley, the whole area, you know, it's got mosquitoes. But the basic feeling that I have about Minnesota is that it was it is a very Christian state. Yeah, lot of Christians here in Minnesota. Well, it was so that that way wasn't it out of. Yeah, the German German and Swedish Germans and Swedish. Yep. And a lot of churches were developed here and the whole idea that you are a part of a community here. And you have a responsibility to a neighbor that you may never have met. You know, a family that is embedded in everybody here and I thought that's a wonderful, wonderful place to raise my kids. Yeah, that's fantastic. And it turned out they turned out great. You know, a father is, I believe, responsible not only for the atmosphere of his home, but the atmosphere in which his children is raised. So you made a quality decision regardless of how much do you like the ocean and the waves and all that you made a decision based on your children. And obviously it's turned out well. So I just want to celebrate Bill is the first time you and I have actually met and talked. I want to celebrate his needs, her needs, what you wrote. But more than that, I want to celebrate the the stick to itness. The the willingness to endure the painful moments that I'm sure you and your wife have experienced not just personally, but trying to do what you do. Being misunderstood, all the different if you will leadership pain that comes with these things. So I want to commend you for that. And I want to celebrate that. Because you know, you write these articles, but in all this stuff is incredible. But it doesn't just come out of, you know, happy days. It comes out of real life. People you couldn't help things that didn't go right from one of your grandkids. You know, they got food. What would there you go? Yeah. That's those are always wonderful. You know, it's like it's like two of my favorite people having to do with ministry and then I was in business for so many years to my favorite people. Because they kept me out of trouble was the guy who does my taxes. And your lawyer. Yeah, and the lawyers that I know and it's kind of like, you know, you don't need one, so you need one, but you need to know when you need one. So that's just the world in which we live. But, but nonetheless, you know, God bless you and everything, Bill and marriage. Thank you. A look forward to spending some more time with you and meeting your son and staying connected to the ministry you're doing and putting your podcast on my podcast list. What's the name of the podcast? Marriage builders radio and you can get it. You can get the app. Just look up. Look up marriage builders radio in the app store and it's free of charge. And you can listen every day to a new show. Okay, so you're on Spotify iTunes. I heard all those things. Yeah, right. Yep, fantastic. Well, God bless you, Bill. And it's great spending time with you and thank you for being on brave men. And this is brave men with Paul Lewis Cole. You can find us at C M N. And Christmas and our C M N dot men. And then my blog at Paul Lewis Cole L O U I S Paul Lewis Cole com. Thank you, Dr. Hurley. May the Lord bless you and may everything your hands touch prosper. And every place you put your feet made. Oh, thank you. God bless you for having me. Yeah, thank you. God bless. Well Paul, that was really amazing. And I'm glad you had that tease about the, what to say to your wife. That was really powerful. You know, I, I listened to that. And I heard things, you know, things that maybe you know, Brian, you sort of know what it gets brought up again. And you go, oh, yeah, you know, I need to take care of this or take care of that. It's sort of like this. And we didn't, you know, talk about this. But it's something I had, I had thought about reading some of his materials in years past is there's a thing. You know, if you own a house or a boat or a car or something, there's a thing called deferred maintenance. And that's usually when you have a problem is because you put off taking care of something. You should have taken care of deferred maintenance. So all of a sudden you've got a propeller on your boat that's, you know, messed up. And the boat goes half speed because, oh, yeah, I should have fixed that. And the same story of a marriage. And we're really good at that. And so I love his stuff. I love his style. You know, we talked about his son coming down to some of our events. So I told Dr. Harley off mic as well as on mic. I'm going to be one of his champions in the days ahead because this stuff's important. Brian, if we're going to change the world, it is. We change the world one man at a time and one marriage at a time. So Bill's URL is marriagebuilders.com. And so encourage you to go to marriagebuilders.com and learn more about Dr. Bill Harley. For more about Christian Men's Network and what Paul and the team do here. And even as they travel overseas now, cmn.man is your resource. So cmn.man is the destination for free and other types of materials and books and audio recordings and et cetera. H.R.A.K.T.T.T.S. You know, I'll tell you what I am looking forward to hearing some reports from your family and your wife about how awesome you are after the laughter listening to this interview. Oh, yeah. We'll go to the man on the screen. We go bring my wife. We'll get that. Well, thank you, Paul, for bringing that to us. And for Paul Cole, I am Brian Boyd. Please share and subscribe to this Brave Men podcast. And we do appreciate that very, very much. And for Paul, I'm Brian Boyd. Have a great, great day. You've just experienced Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Christian Men's Network. Connect with Paul at cmn.man or write to him at Paul at cmn.man.