Married With Benefits by FamilyLife

Brian Goins: Every time we've talked about this episode, it's been like, "No, no, that's my favorite."

Guest (Female): The reason it's a favorite is because of the sheer number of people who had come from a deep, dark place in their marriage. When they were explaining, this is what would make them tear up. This is when the couple would start crying. This is what changed everything.

Brian Goins: Maybe you've heard the phrase that in any endeavor that you get involved with, you should always have a contingency plan. Have a backup, have a safety net, have a way that if things go south, you've got an exit strategy. Is that how we should approach marriage? Today we're going to find out that the pros, those that are highly happy in marriage, don't always see it that way.

What's been really cool about this season is you're kind of blowing some conventional wisdom categories. All these phrases that we've always had like, "Hey, you don't go to bed mad," well, we blew that one up. And then, "You don't keep score, you don't keep records or anything like that," well, actually happy couples do keep a record of rights. They just do it a little bit differently.

It's been so fun to see how many of those have worked out. I think about the last one we did, which was probably one of my favorites, just about how the tongue having the power of life and death. It's this idea that really matches biblically that couples that are highly happy aren't brutally honest with each other. They don't tell it like it is.

That's been so refreshing to me, and I hope couples are walking away from each one of these with some very practical things that can help them do that mind shift. Not just a perspective shift, but how can I start acting more kindly towards my spouse, more generously towards my spouse? I've had a lot of favorites, but every time we've talked about this episode, it's been like, "No, no, that's my favorite." Tell us a little bit about this secret.

Guest (Female): I like all of them, obviously. It's like your children. You can't pick your favorite one. But this is one where the reason it's a favorite is because of the sheer number of people who were in the highly happy marriages who had come from a deep, dark place in their marriage.

When they were explaining certain things, this is what would make them tear up. This is when the couple would start crying. This is what changed everything. I think that's the reason it's my favorite because I have seen both in person and in the statistics just how incredibly important it is, especially if you're in a bit of a shaky place.

Let me just explain this secret. One of the things that we heard a lot in all of our research over the years, not just on this topic, but we often would hear in marriage a husband or a wife, often by themselves, say something like, "Well, of course, we have a shared bank account, but I have a bank account on the side because my dad always told me..." This might be a woman saying this. "My dad always told me you've got to have the little bank account on the side in case he flakes out on you." It's a contingency plan and it's just wise. I heard that over and over and over.

Or a guy might say—and this is stereotypical, but it's true—"I always had my buddies say, 'Make sure that you don't let her take you over, man. Don't let her. You have the right. Keep going to the gym every night or keep hanging out with those friends,' even though maybe they don't treat her very well. But they're my buddies from high school, so we're going to get together and do this stuff whether she likes it or not because I'm doing me."

Brian Goins: You've got to maintain your identity.

Guest (Female): You've got to maintain you and protect you. That's it. That was what we realized: all of those things are things that we are doing in some way to protect ourselves. We all have versions of this. Maybe not that big, but we all have some version where there is a risk when you open yourself up to somebody.

There's a tendency to, whatever your thing is, do something to protect yourself just a little bit emotionally, whatever that looks like. But here's the other thing we learned. Those things that we do to protect ourselves—and just to be clear, some things could be having your own bank account, maintaining my own friends over here, changing the password on my phone and not telling my spouse—it's just this little bit of holding back.

Brian Goins: "I'm not going to give all of me to someone."

Guest (Female): I'm not going to give all of me because that's a risk. What happens if they ruin my heart? What happens if they empty my bank account and leave? What happens if they cheat on me? All those are real concerns and probably born out of some pain. You watched your dad leave your mom and that is going to leave a scar, and you may think it makes perfect sense to keep a bank account on the side.

But here's the issue. We're doing these things, whatever they are, to protect ourselves, but those things create a wall. They build a wall between us in some way. Using the bank account example, your spouse is looking at you going, "Why do you need a bank account on the side? Is there something I don't know?"

Then on their side, "Well, maybe they're thinking of leaving, so now I need a bank account on the side." Whatever those things are, they create that wall and that creates a lack of trust. That lack of trust causes the very thing that you were trying to protect yourself from. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What we saw with the highly happy couples, unlike everybody else who is much more inclined to have these either little or big ways of protecting ourselves, the highly happy couples didn't do that. The highly happy couples were all in. They opened everything up and they risked everything.

Brian Goins: That vulnerability creates a much more likely ecosystem for oneness, for true oneness, the way the Bible talks about marriage. That then helps create the happy marriage that you want as opposed to the thing you're doing to try to protect yourself that actually causes the problem.

Guest (Female): You think you're protecting yourself from pain and hurt, but what you end up doing is actually protecting yourself from happiness.

Brian Goins: Kind of. That is a great way of putting that. I like that little spin on that. That's something Bruce might say; he's that quick. But I could hear somebody right now—in fact, I heard a comedian say it the other day—talking about, "I don't understand why all my friends are wanting to get married. I wouldn't have gone skydiving if we got up in the air and the pilot was like, 'All right, we're about to jump out of this. Grab a parachute. And just so you know, about one in two of these parachutes won't work. But hey, just grab one, I'm sure you'll be fine. Let's jump out!'"

He's like, "I know that all these marriages end with a 50 percent divorce rate, why would I sign up for that?" There's a lot of people that are going, "It seems like most of the marriages I know aren't happy anyway, so why wouldn't I protect myself? Why wouldn't I go in with a little bit of a just-in-case plan or a go bag that spies would have? Once their cover gets blown, I've got to have something to get out of here."

Exactly. I hear that, and I even like how you phrase this secret: highly happy couples get in over their heads. There is a sense of, "I don't even know how this is going to work out, but I'm all in." But there's a part of the culture, especially now, that's going, "But that doesn't make sense. Statistically, logically, I need to protect myself."

Guest (Female): I get that feeling. Many people understand that slight skepticism or big skepticism, especially if your parents got divorced. There's an issue often that you're having to really work hard to be all in and to trust.

Let me just at least give you a little bit of encouragement. One of the projects that I have done that I love talking about was a number of years ago. I did an eight-year research study. Unlike these kinds of research studies where I'm interviewing people and surveying people, this was a secondary research study where I was essentially diving into the divorce statistics.

Brian Goins: Just to hear that: eight years. I don't even like to do eight-day research projects from back in high school where we had to do research papers. I would do maybe eight hours the night before. That's when I got my research papers done. Bruce pulled some all-nighters, I'm sure he did. You're doing an eight-year project.

Guest (Female): It was that complicated. The ability to understand what is going on, what the true truth is, all the data about marriage and divorce and happiness—it is really, really complicated. Anyone who says there's a simple answer or a simple number is a liar. That is not the case. I spent years interviewing and talking to different demographers and trying to understand what I was hearing.

Let me just give you the upshot of that study. The numbers have changed a little bit since the book came out, but in general, they're all better. The bottom line is that this conventional wisdom that we have that marriage is in trouble is not true. There's this feeling that somehow we've managed to break this institution that God created.

I used to hear pastors say all the time that one in two marriages in church end in divorce. It's not true. Come on, pastors, let's get some research. Read Shanti's book! I used to say that from the stage too. It just was such conventional wisdom. Here's the bottom line. This is a passion of mine, so somebody is probably grabbing a pen right now and I hope you do, because it's really important to actually get the right information out there.

The bottom line is that the conventional wisdom is based on a whole lot of misunderstandings and urban legends. The biggest misunderstanding is that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. That has never been true. We've never as a society ever gotten close to that number for society as a whole. Now, there are some high-risk groups that have hit that. If you get married as a teenager, I think it is actually a little bit higher than 50 percent. But for society as a whole, no.

Here's the reason that we think this: it turns out that most of the time when you hear that a professor is projecting a 47 percent divorce rate, mentally take a big red pen and circle the word "projects." It's an estimate saying where are we going to get? We've never hit it.

It came about in the 1970s with no-fault divorce where suddenly you could get divorced just because you wanted to. There was this massive spike in divorce, and it hit a peak in 1980 because everybody saw that it was kind of chaotic. But what happened at that time, that is now filtered through our understanding for the last 40 or 50 years, is that the demographers of the day were looking at that massive spike.

It was going up at this really steep rate and they went, "Oh my god, if this keeps up, we're going to hit 50 percent someday." But in 1980, the divorce rate started coming down, and it's come down more than a third—close to 35 or 40 percent at this point. Anytime you hear somebody say, "Well, with divorce rates rising," no, they've been falling since 1980. The divorce rate today is probably, depending on how you look at it, actually better than it was before then.

Brian Goins: You're saying primarily in America, or is this across the Western world?

Guest (Female): I've done the study now in great detail in the US. I've also looked at Canada, England, and a little bit at Australia—all English-speaking countries where I could get easy access to the statistics. It's a trend in most countries.

The key reason this is so important—and I can see some of you falling asleep as you're listening to the data—the reason this is important is that if you go into marriage believing that you have a flip-of-the-coin chance of it ending, you are starting your marriage subconsciously with a feeling of futility about the institution.

Instead, yes, divorce rates are still too high, but the best number that I can give you is from the Census Bureau: 71 percent of people were still married to their first spouse. The 29 percent who aren't still married includes everyone who was married for 50 years and their spouse died. That's not even the divorce rate. That's death and divorce.

If you look at the rate of widowhood, it's about a 14 percent rate. There's some other factors. You can kind of squint sideways and say maybe there's about a 25 percent divorce rate for first marriages. Still way too high, but it's a universe different than one out of two.

You can look at your situation on average and say, "Even when I'm having trouble, we're going to make it." Most people do. Most people's marriages last a lifetime. There's also the good news that the things that give you a much better number than average apply to most of the people listening to this. For example, if you're a churchgoer, the rate of divorce is dramatically better—somewhere between 30 and 50 percent better or more.

If anybody listened to the Brad Wilcox episode, they will have heard that. This is not just me; all demographers know this. If you are a churchgoer and you've been married more than four years, your divorce rate just plummeted. If you made it four years and you go to church, your divorce rate is tiny.

Brian Goins: The bottom line for all of that is just to be aware that so often we're going in protecting ourselves for what we think is statistical validity and it's wise, but it's not. It's all based on conventional wisdom that's not true.

You look back, and again I like how so many of your stats support scripture. Genesis 2, God lays out a plan for the first couple. He says you're to leave. You're to leave behind those things that you think are going to protect you: your parents, it could be the bank account, it could be your friends. I'm going to leave that behind for what purpose?

That word "leave" means to forsake dependence upon. That means I'm not going to depend upon—I am going to risk. I'm not going to depend upon my parents or my family of origin or my friends or my bank account. Those are all good things. It doesn't mean you leave and say, "See ya!"

In an agrarian society, that generally meant you went to the next tent beside your parents, so it didn't mean I am never going to talk to them or I'm moving to a different state. It meant, "No, I'm forsaking dependence upon them. This is my home." I'm going to join "cleave," which means bone clinging to flesh.

That idea is that bone was never meant to be separated from flesh. When that happens, it causes irrevocable damage. That's why in Malachi, Jesus says, "I hate divorce," not because he hates divorced people, but he hates divorce because he hates the ramifications. He knows what it does to fracture families, communities, and society. He's like, "No: leave behind, cleave, and develop this covenant." What I hear you say is, "Guys, it's worth the risk." Statistically, we can see that it's worth the risk.

Guest (Female): Even if I'm just being cold-hearted math, it's worth the risk. The good news that we really have to recognize is that when you're all in and you take that risk, it's much more likely that you are going to be happy in your marriage. Statistically, that's what this study found.

But we also have to acknowledge it is a risk. There are some people who will flake out on their spouse. One of my best friends has been a single mom now for many years because her husband, who was everything at church and totally involved in Christian community and we would have said was solid as a rock, leaves her with five children.

She had no bank account on the side. She had not protected herself. She had done all the right things, she was all in, and it was hard. It still is hard today, 15 years later. But that is an example where we have to go, "Okay, it is a risk," and yet say it's still how God designed it to work. This is still what God asks us to do: to open our heart and to be all in.

Brian Goins: To be married is opening yourself up to being vulnerable, and being vulnerable always carries this inherent risk.

Guest (Female): Of being hurt. It comes with loss. It comes with a sense of, "I could damage my heart significantly." Peter was talking about not being surprised at the fiery troubles that you could go through in this world. It's a broken world. It isn't a Genesis 2 garden world.

When you leave and cleave, it doesn't negate God's plan and design, but we recognize and accept reality. The reality is I could really be hurt and hurt deeply. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have this posture of, "I'm not going to give myself an out." I want this thing to work, and if I protect myself from pain, it's making it less likely to work.