Need some hope and insight for your marriage? Clinical psychologist Dr. Juli Slattery joins Julie Lyles Carr for a two-part episode that will challenge how you think about marriage and will equip you with new tools to strengthen your relationship.
Listen to “Marriage Part 1 with Dr. Juli Slattery” on Spreaker.
Interview Links:
- Find Dr. Juli Online: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
- Authentic Intimacy
- Shop Juli’s books!
Transcription:
Julie Lyles Carr: A quick production note. We do deal with some adult topics when it comes to the topic of marriage. And so you might just want to put on those earbuds if you’ve got little listening ears in the car. This is your opportunity to do that as we head into this episode with Dr. Juli Slattery.
You’re listening to the AllMomDoes podcast where you’ll find encouragement, information and inspiration for the life you’re living, the kids you’re raising, the romance you’re loving, and the faith you’re growing. I’m your host, Julie Lyles Carr. Let’s jump into this week’s episode.
My friend, Juli Slattery is going to be with me. Two episodes, part one is today, and then the next episode will come next week. We’re gonna be talking about marriage, about sex in marriage. We’re gonna be talking about a lot of different dynamics that happen within the marital relationship and one of the things that I love about having Juli on the show and so appreciate about her, is she’ll say, Hey, push back on this don’t you don’t necessarily have to agree with me think through this.
And here’s my thoughts on this. And it’s really a great way to get to communicate, to learn about different things, to go a little bit deeper. We just took our time and it ended up being a two-part episode. So I want you to stick around for this week and next, for this two-part conversation with Dr. Juli Slattery.
Dr. Juli, thanks so much for being with me today.
Dr. Juli Slattery: It’s always a pleasure to be with you. I always have so much fun talking.
Julie Lyles Carr: I have been so honored to be on your podcast a couple of times. I love that you’ve been on here a couple of times, so it’s just great to get, to have another conversation. Now, you went through a big life change a couple of years ago, you moved from Colorado Springs, which I love that city back to home turf of Ohio to be near your parents.
And you had kiddos who were getting ready to wrap up high school and all kinds of things. So how has all that transition gone?
Dr. Juli Slattery: Well, the move was, was a little difficult on our youngest son. He was in the middle of high school and it’s always difficult moving from a place like Colorado Springs to Northeastern Ohio. But as you mentioned, we moved to be near my parents and that really has been a blessing, especially as we weathered COVID and just being by family. So it’s been all good. And the empty nest thing is really as good as they say it is.
Julie Lyles Carr: And you’re liking it. Okay, good, good.
Dr. Juli Slattery: I was like really sad for about three or four days.
I didn’t think I’d ever feel better. And then it lifted and I’m like, This is great!
Julie Lyles Carr: Back to just your husband and you and I, I hear those are some great times, so I’ve still got three at home. We’re still working our way there, but but we’ve got, we’ve got it in our sites. It’s, it’s coming up around the curve.
You know, you have been serving and ministering to women for over 25 years, and you have an incredible experience. You helped co-found authentic intimacy. You have sexual discipleship.com which is really there to help leaders, Christian leaders navigate a lot of sexual issues in our culture and in our faith communities today.
And you’ve done something that I think is really fascinating. And I’m excited to hear more about what precipitated this decision. You had a book come out about 20 years ago called finding the hero in your husband, and then you decided to sit down in the last little bit and completely rewrite that book.
So I want to hear about that because I know people who have things that they’ve written and they’ve come back around several years later and they’ve gone, ooh, I don’t know if that’s the same book I would write today. But I don’t really know that they’ve gone back and rewritten it, maybe a revision here or there, if they can talk the publisher into it.
Talk to me about that decision and why you decided to go back and revisit this and why you decided to rewrite.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Well, it was my first book and I was so young when I wrote it. I, I look back on it and I just have to say, God gave me wisdom because I don’t know how I knew what I was doing, but it was really in the throws of those early years of trying to figure out marriage dynamics, both in my own marriage, and then also as a new therapist who was working with a lot of couples and women. And so the book just kept selling. And you know, 20 years into it, people were still asking about it and it was still selling, but I just felt like I love the concept in it, but there’s a lot, I would change because I’ve changed and because culture has changed, and the challenges, some of them are the same and some of them are a little different than they were 20 years ago.
And so I thought, okay, I’m just going to get the book and I’m going to do a major revision to it. I’ll rewrite this part, I’ll reread this part. And then once I got into it, it’s like, my voice has changed so much. And the way I think about things have, has just grown and matured over time that I just thought this is going to look like a patchwork quilt.
If I try to rewrite portions of it. So I just was like, I’m going to scrap the whole thing. Start from the beginning. Rewrite the things that I thought are still really relevant today, but rewrite them for today’s woman. And then some stuff is brand new, some stuff I took out. So it was it was an interesting project.
It’s kind of like wanting to remodel your house and then realizing, I think we just have to doze it and start from the foundation and build up.
Julie Lyles Carr: And start all over it. And the subtitle I find really compelling, which is embracing your power in marriage. And a lot of times when we see, at least in my experience, when I see something that talks about how we need to be seen our husbands, or ways that we can position ourselves in accordance with our husbands, or how to encourage her husbands, or how to pray for our husbands… it doesn’t always feel like to me sometimes that that’s happening from a position of power.
And I feel like as I think back to my early days of marriage to today, power dynamics and marriage, to me, even in Christian marriages, friends, power dynamics have real shifted more women than ever or outside the home working and more women than ever are beginning to raise their heads and go, wait a minute, then statistically, why am I still making less,
and why am I still to the tune of about 85% of household responsibilities, still being the person in primary charge of kids and household chores and all those kinds of things? I’m seeing a lot, well, let’s just call it what it is, really a lot of discontent, a lot around many women today who feel like they’re not on equal standing and yet they’re ready to see some changes happen.
So talk to me about this subtitle, embracing your power in marriage and how it relates to finding the hero in your husband and the things that you are now noticing 20 years later, that maybe weren’t so much you know, in the windshield when you were wrote the original version.
Dr. Juli Slattery: I think you’re absolutely right. Julie, there has been some major shifts in just women stepping into their power, and you used the word frustration or some irritation at that. And I think there’s also a lot of anger and it can be around these inequities with household chores or earning potential things like that. But I think even deeper as these revelations of sexual abuse are coming out with the me too movement,
as we’re looking at the Christian subculture, about how men in leadership have at times overlooked the exploitation of women… There is a growing sense of, we have to bind bond together as women and do something. And so there’s a good aspect to it. I think there’s also a potentially negative aspect, but that idea of power and marriage in a woman’s power,
yeah, I think that marriage has always had this tension of power. Of a power struggle. Even if it’s not spoken, it plays out in what, or if we disagree on what dishwasher to buy, who wins. Or if one of the kids get sick, who, who takes the day off work. Or, you know, if, if I powered along long enough, does my husband capitulate, or if he yells loud enough, do I give in. And this complicated by the biblical teaching on marriage and submission.
And so women are very confused about what to do with their power. And that was something that I wrote about 20 years ago, that really the secret to building intimacy in marriage is understanding your power and being intentional with it instead of just reacting to fear, and using your power based on fear.
Some women, because of fear, they don’t use their power and then their husband becomes egocentric or dominant or narcissistic. There’s no checks and balances. And other women just use their power to take over, out of fear, and they become controlling or manipulative or dominant and neither represents a healthy marriage.
And so the book then in the book now, even though there’s differences is still about understanding your God-given power and marriage, and being aware of it and intentional about how you use it.
Julie Lyles Carr: So how do you define a woman’s power in marriage? Because I have a feeling that this could be a wide open definition, depending on where you come from, what your experience is, the influence of your culture.
I know that I have women in my life who would say, oh, well, my power in being very demure and in helping, you know, gently guide or, you know, push this way or that way. I know women who would just say absolutely not. I’m just dropping it all on the floor and this is what I expect, and this is how it’s going to be done.
So how are you defining it? Because, wow. I think it really can be a wide open term.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Well, I think to take a couple of steps back, power comes from needs. So when we’re in an intimate relationship and you have a need, especially if I’m uniquely in a position to meet that need, that gives me power.
And so let’s say I find out I have some rare illness and you’re the only one that has the antidote. Well, you pretty much have the power to ask me to give you anything you would want, and I have to give it to you. And in many ways, marriage is naturally set up that way. Where in the intimacy of the relationship, the husband has needs that really the wife has positioned to meet, and the wife has needs that the husband has positioned to meet.
And so our power really comes in the needs, the things that our husbands depend on us for. And and so in the book, I break down three specific areas that give a woman power and marriage, because these are the things he’s really looking for from his wife. And then the question becomes, what am I doing with that power?
Am I using it, as you said, and to take over and drop it all. Or am I not using it? Am I just being weak? Even do I misunderstand biblical teaching to tell me I should be weak. And I think the scripture speaks a lot about a woman’s power in general, and specifically within the relationship of marriage.
Julie Lyles Carr: How do we make sure that we, once we begin to understand more of what our power is in how you define it, how do we walk that very fine line between doing the things that are meeting our partners need? Because we want to be a loving spouse. We want to honor them as we would want to be honored. We want to love them well between that and moving into a place of manipulation. It seems like it can be a really fine line that we have to stay quite self-aware in how we’re using our power in order to not veer into some of those territories.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. When we manipulate, we use our power with a desired end in mind. So if I want my husband to agree with me on this, then I know I need to convince him this way.
And so, for example, when, when we were just married, probably first few years in our marriage, I didn’t want to be like the bossy wife. I wanted to give my husband room to think things through and make decisions. And so when we would disagree on a decision, really instead of going head to head with them and saying, Hey, here’s what I feel is right,
you know, let’s talk it out, let’s pray it out… I would use manipulative means to get to them. Like, one of the things I would do is I’d talk to my dad who he really respects. And I’d tell my dad, when Mike asked you about this, can you tell him this and this and this? Well that’s manipulative and manipulation always has an aspect of deception, of I’m not going to be upfront with you about
what my desires are and what my thoughts are, because I’m afraid you’ll push that back. So I’m going to use creative means to get you to the place I want you to get. And it’s really using our power again, to take away the competence of our husband. It’s really saying, I don’t trust you enough to make this decision with you.
I feel like I have to use, do something underhanded to get you to where I want you to be. And so that would be when I have to check my spirit and say, am I really willing to trust God? Am I willing to trust our relationship? Am I willing to trust my husband to come to the right decision together without using kind of manipulative or deceptive mean?
Julie Lyles Carr: I’m sure. I have some listeners out there who feel like, Hey, I have needs that my husband refuses to meet and he’s using what in a sense is still very powerful, but the denial of the needs that I have in order to kind of control me. So why should I care about trying to meet his needs in a way that brings me an appropriate measure of power and influence in his life? Why should I care about that?
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. Well, first of all, I think husbands and wives are both guilty of this. So wives will withhold what their husband needs because we’re mad at him, or we just don’t feel like meeting those needs. You know, how many women withhold any form of encouragement or approval from their husbands because they’re not measuring up.
And so we roll our eyes, we make snarky comments, we just kind of discount him. And so we’re not meeting his need again because we’re not in a good place. And husbands do that same thing. And encourage their wives. They don’t appreciate their wives. They don’t step in and provide just strength when there has, when their wife needs it.
Like, you know, the husband that won’t get a job. That husband that just plays video games instead of helping out with the kids. And so we’re both guilty of doing this, but here’s the thing, we can only get her husband’s attention when we own our power. I have no power in what I need. That’s my husband’s area of influence.
That’s where he has power. I only have power in what my husband needs. And so if I want to affect the relationship, the only place I have a chance to affect the relationship is in the area where I can steward my power well. And that’s true of every relationship you will be frustrated to death. If your goal is to get your husband, husband, to meet your need, you’re not going to get anywhere.
And so God has given me influence and asked me to be a good steward of that influence where I have power. And I know it’s, it seems unfair. And I know there’s so many more books written to wives because we’re more generally interested in intimacy and God has wired us to be sort of the engine that’s prompting intimacy in the marriage, but it does us no good to say, well, I’m not moving until he moves and then we just stay stuck.
Julie Lyles Carr: So give me a high level view of the three areas. That you’ve identified as a husband’s needs, which therefore means three areas that we have a level of power and influence in the relationship.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. Well, the first one I love for you to push, push me on it a little bit cause it’s a very triggering one because I think it’s been so misused in the future or in the past, but but it’s the need of respect.
And I think wives here all the time, oh, you got to respect your husbands, husbands need respect. And I think for some women that in and of itself has become a very triggering word. So I think it’s really important to unpack that so that women really understand what’s at the core of. And the root of a husband’s need for respect is the fact that most men really have this battle of competence. Kind of a drama of competence going through their life.
Am I good enough? Am I going to fail? And then I let my family down. Will I be exposed as a fraud? And this is something that women can sometimes resonate with a little bit, but it’s, it’s a unique drama for men. And not every man experiences this, but almost every man I’ve ever talked to, when I start describing this, they’ll be like, yeah, that’s it.
Like, I don’t need my wife to tell me how much she loves me. I need her to tell me that she believes in me. And the issue is that you, as a wife have every reason, you have all the data to say, I’m not sure I do believe in you because you see as weaknesses, you see as fault you’ve been there when he’s failed.
And so that need for respect is really the choice to believe in him, even when you’re afraid to believe. And so that’s the first area of power. And again, I welcome you to dialogue or push back on that at all, because I know it’s a hard, it’s a hard conversation for today’s day and age.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right? Well, you know, I will say that one thing I’ve definitely noticed in a lot of women is if they have the guy who is
you know, lost the job, the corporate job is having a major crisis of identity within what that means and what that means in terms of his value. And he has defaulted to the video game playing, the, you know, almost boyish habits in a sense, instead of stepping back out, they would push back and say, well, I have to be honest.
I mean, are you asking me to lie when I’m dealing with someone who will not step into his adult manhood, self. I mean, what am I supposed to do there?
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah, it’s a real question. If you have, first of all, one of the reasons that guys get into that video game mindset or even pornography is because it allows them to accomplish something without taking a risk. And so video games you can level up and if you lose a life, you get a new one. You know, men were really meant to level up over and over again. They were meant to take risks. They were meant to step into the world and try things. And men are so often afraid of failure
that they’ll resort to something like video games or golf or something that doesn’t require the risk that it requires to love a woman well, or to navigate career challenges. So I think it begins with understanding that vulnerability and then realizing that respect isn’t a feeling. It’s a choice. And so just like love, isn’t a feeling it’s a choice.
You know, there are times where you choose to love, not because the person’s being lovable, but because you’ve made the decision to focus on what’s good. And I think the same is true with respect, where I’m going to make the choice to talk to my husband about what he’s doing well. It doesn’t mean that I don’t confront, and that’s really where we get into the second need.
And I think those needs really go together, but, but it’s a choice to not stay stuck in negative thinking and not just continue to tear him apart because of your own fear and frustration.
Julie Lyles Carr: So then connect for me, scaffold for me, you said that this need for having a wife’s respect, that place that when we provide that, where you’re operating in our power, how does that scaffold to the second need?
What is the second need and how does that connect?
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. Second need is men need help. And I hear a lot of women saying amen, but you know, we’d see this right, coming out of the Bible where God calls Eve, this powerful helper, this easer, which is the same word that is used to describe the kind of help the holy spirit gives us.
And so God said a plainly, it is not good for man to be alone. He is operating with half of what he needs to succeed. And so his wife has this help that he needs to succeed at work, to succeed in relationships. And it’s not just the uniqueness that you brings, that’s a piece of it, but it’s also the accountability.
And I love in Ecclesiastes where it says woe to the man who falls and doesn’t have somebody to pick them up. And within the intimacy of marriage, there’s this built in accountability, where I see my husband’s weaknesses, he sees mine and it’s really important that we speak the truth in love and that we confront issues and problems.
We help one another. And I think in the traditional teaching of marriage in the church, it’s been all emphasis on respect, but it hasn’t been balanced by this call to also help. And I think these, these two, like two wings of an airplane and they have to both be there. They have to be level. And if one of them gets out of balance, if you have a wife that’s just always encouraging and never providing that help, then it’s not good.
And if you have a wife that’s wanting to be her husband’s personal holy spirit, and always helping, but never building up, it’s not going to be healthy. And so it really takes time to understand, like, how do I use. Those two areas of power in a way that they balance one another.
Julie Lyles Carr: What would you say to a wife who says I’m really trying to help you know, doctor Dr.
John and Julie Gottman who are, you know, just pioneers in terms of marital research and they don’t come at it from a faith base, but it’s pretty fascinating some of the things that they discover that still seem to have a rhythm of things that get addressed within spiritual circles. So it’s a pretty fascinating look at some of their research.
One of the things that they found is that husbands often in marriages that are struggling are resisting their wife’s influence. Right? And so how can a wife who is saying, look, I’m trying to do the respectful things, the encouraging things I’m trying to come alongside, but as per this research, that’s out there in terms of marriage, sometimes that help piece is very difficult for men to accept.
What if my husband’s one of those? How do you step into that role without forcing it, because it seems like if you begin to force it now you’re just building up a resistance and it’s just going to create all kinds of havoc.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. It really two things. First of all, understanding that the respect paves the way for the help.
And so when my husband’s feeling secure in our relationship, when he knows I’ve got his back, I believe in him, I’m seeing the best, like I really have the best motives, he’s way more open to hearing my input and receiving even confrontation than he is. If we’ve been in a season where all I’ve done is pick at him.
And so that’s the first thing is really asking that question of, have I built the rapport with my husband that he doesn’t feel threatened when I bring stuff up? He’s ready to hear it because he trusts me and he knows that we have a safe relationship. But then there’s a second situation where a wife is doing all that, but the husband still is not responding.
And now that’s an unhealthy situation. And unfortunately, There are unhealthy marriages. And there are men that have issues that they brought into marriage, where they have a stubbornness. I know Dr. Gottman would talk about stonewalling and how that can be common for men where it’s just like, you just can’t break through to them.
And in that situation, I think what a woman really has to do is say, here’s what I’m doing from my part of this, setting boundaries, getting counseling, staying healthy, but I can’t, I can’t help you with what you’re doing. Like I’m offering this, but I can’t change you. And so in that situation is really important
outside counsel, because when you’re in that situation, you can’t see the forest for the tree. Nobody can, you could be the best psychologist in the world and you just know that you feel hurt and frustrated and angry. And so getting outside help to say, help me see this, help me set the appropriate boundaries.
I don’t want to enable my husband. I don’t want to nag him to death. I don’t want to try to change him. That’s not my job. My job is to be faithful with my sphere of this marriage. And some women are in that situation where. They really do need that outside help to know where the boundary is and to keep themselves healthy.
Julie Lyles Carr: You said something that I think is really important when I think about this idea of coming alongside to help, and that is the idea of in our helping are we actually trying to change our husbands? So how can we stay well clear of those borders? I know for myself, I’m one of those people that when I walk into a room in my house, I can immediately see that, you know, this, this candlestick is off four centimeters from where it should be to be equidistant to the other one.
And I don’t know that that’s exactly the right paint color, and, and I, all these things that I would not want to say I’m walking in, in a critical nature, but I notice things. And when I think about a lot of times, sometimes the help we want to bring our husbands, sometimes, if I’m being real honest, Dr. Juli, it has to do with wanting to change someone. How can you help us make sure that we’re keeping those two vessels of liquid clear, not intermingling those?
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah, I think. First of all, just praying about it. Asking God to reveal that in you. You might even ask a friend to just keep you accountable on that because the lines are very fuzzy and it’s hard again sometimes to see when we’re in the middle of it. But I’d also say,
like what’s the end goal? And if the end goal is I want my husband to be like this, then we probably don’t have the right perspective. If the end goal is, I want to, I want to give all that I am to help my husband grow and that’s between him and God how he grows, but I want to be a positive influence in his life.
That’s a very different mode. Because I’m not setting a timeline of, I expect him to change his behavior by this date, or he has to be more like this guy over here in the way he parents. When we have an outcome in mind, that’s when, when we’re in the danger zone, instead of just having or helped me to be faithful as a friend, to my husband, as a sister in Christ, as an influence with him.
You helped me to confront in love when I need to confront, but the result really isn’t up to you.
Julie Lyles Carr: At one wing of the plane, which is this place of coming in and respect. We’ve got this other wing of the plane, which is coming in, in help. What’s the third?
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. You know, the third is one of those that I totally rewrote it was a similar need, but I’m expressing it differently based on what I’ve learned in 20 years of ministry.
Originally, I would have said the need is sex. Because of just the general research that would show that sex is so important to the average man, but in particular, the last 10 years as my ministry has focused on sexuality, I’ve reframed that to say the primary need is actually for you to share your husband’s sexual journey.
And the reason that I’ve reframed it is because I realized sex is so much more than what you do with your bodies and that there are actually some men who don’t have a super high sex drive. Or there are some men that have really simplified their need to the physical, instead of growing in the, in the awareness that sex is about intimacy and sex is the opportunity to share something that represents real vulnerability for both men and women.
And so the need is more about having this area of my life that isn’t compartmentalized from my wife that I can share with her. I can share struggles with her. We’re growing together as a husband, I’m learning to please my wife sexually. It’s not just about my satisfaction. So that whole arena, I think, is a very powerful area in a man’s life. And it’s one that gives a woman a lot of influence in her marriage.
Julie Lyles Carr: I’m so glad you brought this up and I love the way that you have rephrased it because one of the things that kept coming to me over and over in my ministry of over 12 years in a local church on staff with women, I kept getting, Dr. Juli, I mean card after card, after email, after text of women who were saying my sex drive is much higher than my husband’s. You know, I don’t know what to do in this situation. And it was really fascinating because I have some great colleagues around me, but some of them really struggled with believing this was the case.
It was sort of this idea of no, no, no, that, that, that can’t be right. Or it’s got to be due to this or it’s gotta be due to that. And I kept saying, I’m just telling you, and I think it may have even been in pure research. I don’t want to misquote that, but we started seeing new research that was saying, oh yeah, we’ve got it.
Definitely lined up with what I was seeing that about 50% of the time it was women saying I’m the one with the higher need in this area, and I have nothing in my spiritual arena to equip me for this, because this is so opposite to how we teach about sexuality within our faith communities. What are you seeing now that maybe you didn’t see 20, 25 years ago, but what are you seeing in relation to that?
Dr. Juli Slattery: Well, I think 20 years ago or so the stats were that in around 20% of marriages, the women had the higher need than the man . That’s still a significant number. Even if you look at 20 to 25 years ago and it was totally ignored. The research is saying it’s more like 35% of marriages the woman has the higher desire for sex.
And so I think there’s a lot of things that play into that. Some of them are good things like women feeling less shame about their sexuality. I think pornography does play into it as we’re seeing men who grew up on pornography, really not be able to enjoy a normal sexual experience. So I think that’s part of it as well.
But it’s a reality. And I think a lot of, again, the teaching and faith communities has been this simplistic men need sex. You have to meet the need. If you don’t meet the need, you know, he might stray, which has really been a destructive teaching for men and particularly for women and for marriage in general.
So I think there’s a real need to reframe the importance of sexuality is still there, but how we think about it and how we go about meeting one another’s needs.
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