Make Marriage Sacred | Jud Wilhite

Come on, guys, what an amazing time of worship. So good. I am just so glad that we get to gather and worship every single weekend. I wanna give a big shout out to all the men and women watching with our partnership with God Behind Bars. Can we clap it up for them? Come on. We love you guys and you are so, so important to us. Yeah, so Central Family, right now is a great time to take out your phone, open up your Central Church app, go to the dashboard and find the teaching notes so you can follow along in today's message. And right now, help me welcome up Pastor Judd as he continues in our series, Five Relationship Rules. All right, all right, all right. Good to see you guys today. Welcome, thank you for being here. Wanna welcome our Summerlin and Aliante, Sunrise Mountain and Kingman location as well. Hope you had a good week this week. I know one thing about life and that is that relationships, all kinds of relationships, but particularly romantic relationships, marriage relationships are complicated. It's complicated. I mean, my wife right now is in Peru. She's on a mission trip. About once a year, she goes on a mission trip. She's with some ladies from Central, some other ladies.

They're going to remote areas along the Amazon River in the jungle that are not accessible by anything except water. We're hoping to partner with our partner there, WorldHelp, and build a preschool and a kindergarten as well as a home for this amazing, faithful pastor who's served these impoverished communities for 30 years. So it's awesome, right? So many good things have come from Laurie's passion for missions every year. She's done one of these trips. But I remember early on when our kids were little, this became like a point of contention in our marriage because I married this sweet little girl from Amarillo, Texas that had never been anywhere and wasn't really interested in travel or anything like that. And then she became this force of nature and she has this call on her life to help people all over the world. But here's the deal. She would go away and these things cost money, y'all. Time, money, energy, right? And then there's the prep. Then you go for 10 or 14 days and then you come back. There's the recovery. So it's like, it's a month-long journey, okay? It's a month. I got little kids. I'm trying to manage the church.

Anybody feel me here? I'm like, look, man, people need Jesus right down the street. You don't gotta go to Peru, you know? Come on, man, other people can do this. I'm overwhelmed. I'm just keeping it real, right? I know it's terrible. How can a pastor, you know, I understand what you're thinking right now, but you've been around Central, it's not a new thought. So listen, I'm just keeping it real that this was, I was a point of frustration and contention and I finally just had to embrace the fact that this was a call God has put on my wife's life and I can support it and cheerlead it and get behind it or I can get frustrated and dig my heels in and, you know, lose, right? You know, that whole thing, you could be right or you could be happy, right? Like you gotta decide which one's it gonna be. Well, I felt like in this moment, I had a choice and I remember prayerfully just making the decision to embrace this calling in her life, to get behind it and to support her in it. And honestly, it's brought so many good things to our life and to our family. Now, my wife has gone to Thailand. She's worked with people being sex trafficked in some of the toughest areas of Thailand, Rwanda, Uganda, all over Latin America.

And so it's par for the course that she's on a boat right now going up the Amazon River with anacondas and pythons and all the things, man. She's fearless. In fact, she's with one of her best friends who is engaged right now and her fiance looked at like thermal imaging of the Amazon River and it really freaked him out. He's like, oh man, there's like, you're looking like, there's stuff and there's anacondas in the water. There's pythons in the water. So he keeps texting his fiance like, are you okay? Tell me where you are. Tell me when you're getting in the boat. Tell me when you're going on the water. So this is going on. So Lori finally, she calls me and she's like, Judd, you haven't checked on me once. And I just told her, she was laughing because she knows I adore and love her, but we're laughing together. I said, Lori, I surrendered you to God a long time ago. I'm not worried about what an anaconda will do to you. I am worried about what you will do to an anaconda. Just like I'm worried about what you could do to me, you know, so anyway, she sent me this pic thanks to chat GPT. I thought that was great. Classic, classic. Here's the thing that people don't talk about enough when it comes to marriage. The person you marry doesn't stay the same.

Come on, somebody, the person you marry 10 years from now, isn't the same person. You hope not because you hope they're growing and changing and developing and maturing. They're going to develop new interests, new habits, new things that they appreciate. And then you have to make a choice. Are you going to go along with them on that journey or are you going to fight them on that journey? But it's part of what makes relationships complicated. Another thing that makes relationships complicated is the thing that attracts you to somebody becomes the very thing that drives you crazy. Know what I mean? Like, like, like, like when you first started going out with him, you were just thrilled that you finally had somebody who would listen. He's a strong guy, tough guy, quiet guy. And you're like, this is so great. He listens to me. I can talk to him. He just listens. He takes it in. He cares. It's amazing. He's an incredible listener. This is so refreshing. And now, and now you say he's driving me crazy. He just listens. He doesn't say anything. He never expresses his emotions. I don't know what he's feeling inside. Right? You know, you fell in love with her because she was like fun loving and carefree and she brought the life to the party and it was so good for you and it was amazing. Yeah. Come on man. But now she's so unorganized. Things are so chaotic, you know, and it makes relationships hard. And I think one of the things we see in our culture right now is people are, there are some people that just are, I think are asking the question like, is marriage even worth it? Is it even worth it?

Here's the statistics today. The average age of a person getting married is around 30 years old for the first time, 30 years old. In 1950, the average age was 20 years old, right? So we're pushing the age back further. Today, 47% of households are led by someone who is married. That number used to be more than 70%. 40% of first time marriages, according to the most recent statistics will end in divorce. 40%. Experts now predict, check this out, that one out of every three people will probably never marry in their lifetime. And so I think there are, there is a group of people just wondering like, is marriage even worth it? You know, like this stuff's hard. I saw my parents go through it. I saw them get divorced. I saw other people go through it, go through the pain. Like it's challenging. Is it even worth it? And I want to look with you today as we continue on in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five, where Jesus talks about relationships, about marriage. He talks about divorce. And I think it really challenges us to have a high view of marriage as something that is sacred. It's not just a pledge, um, you know, a promise between two people. It's not just something you can get done at the courthouse and that's it. It's a covenant between two people and God. And it goes all the way back to the first book of the Bible to the second chapter when God creates Adam and Eve. And so I want to start there. Then a little later on, we're going to get to Matthew five and Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, but let's check this out. Our relationship rule today is simply this make marriage sacred. Doesn't mean everybody needs to get married.

Doesn't mean everybody should get married, but we should have a high view of marriage because it is a sacred thing between people and God. So Genesis chapter two, let me set it up. Adam is the first person created, planted in the garden of Eden and, um, God has, uh, created everything in creation. And again and again, he said these words, uh, after he, after he creates, he says, it's good. It's good. It's good. It's this refrain we see through the first section of Genesis. And then, um, he creates Adam. He's got everything he needs in the garden. I mean, he's got food, he's got resources. He's in this relationship with God that isn't like encumbered by sin and sinfulness. Amazing. But this is where the refrain changes. And God says, it is not good that man should be alone. And so he puts Adam into a deep sleep, um, takes a portion from his side rib and creates It's the woman, this is the Genesis story, the biblical account, right? Adam wakes up and there's the woman. Now, this is what we read in Genesis 2, 23, when he sees her. First words he says when Adam sees Eve, at last. Right, come on, man. Anybody hear it already? Like, at last, right? You know, like, he's like, hey. It says the man, what? Help me out here, exclaimed. You see that? And then this is what you have in Genesis 2.

In the Hebrew language, this is actually the first time you see poetry in the Bible. He says, this one, he's been naming all these animals, right, he's like, but this one, this is bone from my bone and flesh from my flesh and she will be called woman because she was taken from man. So he looks out, now, the Hebrew word for man is the word ish and the Hebrew word for woman is ishah. Okay, so it's kind of like he looked out and he went ishah, right, whoa, man. We'll call her woman. But you can tell from the very beginning, he's taken, right? He's drawn to her. And what you see in the biblical picture that's fascinating is marriage, relationships in this sense, are actually a picture, as the story unfolds, of our relationship with God. Like God, the church is called the bride of Jesus Christ. All through the Bible is imagery of God's love for his people and desire to be in a marriage relationship with them. So marriage isn't just two people loving one another, it's also becomes a picture of God's faithful love to us. It will make, it can make you happy, but for sure it will make you holy, hello, right? It can bring you joy, but for sure it will make you less selfish if you're gonna survive in a marriage. It will make you less self-oriented,

it will force you to think about the other person, will force you to serve the other person, to get out of yourself, it will, it could be the most humbling thing you ever experience in your life. But it can also make you more in the image of God in your character, it can form you and it can shape you. So how do we make, one person's clapping, I received that. How do we make marriage sacred? Here's a couple of thoughts. One is to just understand first and honor God's intention for marriage. You know, we all make a lot of mistakes in relationships. One of my favorite stories, just because of the shock value of it, was years ago my wife, Lori, was gonna speak on Mother's Day at Central. She comes walking in the room and she's got this maxi dress on. I did not know what it was at the time, but she tells me it was a maxi dress. It goes all the way down to like her ankles. It's like flowing and stuff. And it's black and white. And I just sort of see the colors, black and white, and I'm thinking about Sea World, and I don't know, I start thinking about Shamu. He's black and white. Come on, somebody, right?

And without even thinking, true story, these words come out of my mouth. I'm like, you look like a whale. I knew it was bad. As soon as it happened, I'm like, oh, idiot. What are you doing? You know, your afternoon was going just, your morning was going just fine. And I'm like, I mean, I don't mean like a whale. I mean, like, you know, I was just thinking about like Sea World, and I'm not saying you're big like a whale, because you're not, you're beautiful, and you're amazing. And I'm like, I don't know, I'm just thinking about like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. You're not, you're beautiful, and you're amazing, and I love you, and you know, it's just the black, and then there's white, and then, you know, like, and then I just looked at her and I said, I'm not making it better, am I? And she said, no, no. But here's the thing, like, she's heard this kind of stuff before, because I say dumb things, because I'm a man. I don't think always before I speak. But here's the thing. But here's the thing. She forgave me, and we moved on.

Because if you're gonna be in a relationship with somebody, it's gonna, you're gonna become a pro at forgiveness. You're gonna become a pro at choosing to let things go. You're gonna become a pro at like, moving on. And Genesis chapter two gives us some insight into sort of God's design for this whole thing called marriage. You see it in the next sentence, chapter two, verse 24. It says, this explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife. And the two are what? United into one. So there's a leaving aspect to marriage. They leave this, the parental relationship changes, right? They leave, and then they also cling to one another. There's a uniting aspect to marriage. and they become one. In fact, if you wanna kind of think about marriage this way, let me put it up on a slide. I think this can be helpful maybe, especially as we go on. Like the real goal of marriage is spiritual oneness as a representation even of God's spiritual commitment to us and so one pillar of marriage we might just call commitment where you say like for better or worse, till death do us part, for richer, for poorer, we make a commitment to one another and then the other pillar of marriage is faithfulness. You know that we're gonna be faithful to one another, we're gonna be committed to one another and all of this is built on the foundation of God

in our lives. God is the only one who can ultimately give us the strong enough foundation to face all of the things that come at us and to help us grow together in oneness and I think this is like God's design for marriage and the marriage commitment. Now, if you're here today and you're dating someone, you've been thinking about marriage, I don't know, you're exploring some questions, we have an amazing seminar that we offer here at Central a couple times a year called Edge of Commitment and I wanna encourage you to lean into it because you'll get some great biblical content on how to help your relationship grow and grow closer to God. So this is marriage but then what happens when it doesn't work out? What happens when divorce happens? What happens when unfaithfulness happens? This is questions that go back thousands of years and in Jesus' day, this was a very hot topic, in Jesus' day, there was a whole group of people that felt like, man, the only reason that you can divorce, in that time, women didn't really divorce their husbands, men divorced their wives because it was a male-dominated society, right? So they kinda had all the cards. So there was a group that said, hey, the only time a man can divorce his wife

is if she's unfaithful, that's it. Then there was a whole other group that were like, no, no, you can give a certificate of divorce and I mean, it was for almost anything. She burned the toast, she made you watch like two romantic comedies, we're out, this thing's over, whatever it is. It was like two extremes, right? And so Jesus comes along and he gives this teaching in Matthew chapter five. I just set the context for that. One thing I want you to understand too is women didn't have any recourse. A divorce could leave them financially and personally destitute. And so in some ways, what Jesus is going to do is he's going to raise the value of marriage as if you can't just get a certificate of divorce because somebody burned the toast, right? And he's actually protecting women when he's doing this. But here's what he says, Matthew chapter five, beginning in verse 31, we'll continue on in the Sermon on the Mount. He says, you have heard the law that says a man can divorce his wife by merely giving her a written notice of divorce. But what? I say, Jesus does this again and again, right? He's like, you've heard, here's the law, but now with authorities,

like now I'm gonna give you kind of my perspective and my teaching. But I say that a man who divorces his wife, unless she's been unfaithful, causes her to commit adultery. So here he kind of sides with the school that says adultery is the primary sort of justification for ending a marriage. It says anyone who marries a divorced woman also commits adultery. Now, this passage I feel like is hard to interpret. It's caused a lot of weird interpretations and issues in relationships over the centuries for what does Jesus mean? Does he literally mean like if you remarry somebody, you're like always committing adultery or like what's happening here? And my reading on this is that what Jesus is doing in this passage is he's using some metaphor because that's what he's been doing all along, challenging us to realize that he's using metaphor and hyperbole and exaggeration to sort of get our attention. And so I think part of what he's talking about here is that remarriage and divorce and adultery all have the same end result, which is the breakdown of the previous relationship. So if you think about like faithfulness, if somebody commits adultery, then the faithfulness pillar collapses, right?

And doesn't hold up. If somebody divorces, right? Then they're breaking the commitment pillar, then that pillar collapses, doesn't hold up. And if somebody gets remarried, well, then this whole structure is gone altogether and they start rebuilding a new one, which happens. And I believe God can bless that. But I think Jesus is reminding us, hey, this is serious, this is sacred. And so adultery is... So divorce, so remarriage is like adultery. I don't think Jesus is saying that if you get divorced and you remarry somebody, that you're always committing adultery. I don't... I think he's using it like remarriage is like adultery in that it breaks down the previous relationship and it reestablishes a new relationship. And he's raising the value overall of marriage that it's not okay to just walk out, right? Because somebody burned the toast. It's a commitment here you've made before God. Well, you don't, you just have to ask the question, well, what is, are there any biblical reasons for divorce? And I would say like Jesus gives one, you know, unfaithfulness, sexual immorality. I think the Apostle Paul gives another in the New Testament where he talks about an unbelieving spouse that abandons the family and kind of gives

that sort of biblical justification then for divorce. And beyond that, in my direct reading, we don't have a lot in the Bible, in the New Testament that tells us like, what are the reasons? Some theologians say, that's it, nothing else. A lot of guys like me that have been pastors for 30 years and have huge hearts of compassion and have walked with hundreds and thousands of families through the heartbreak of divorce, realize how complicated it is if you only limit divorce to those options. For instance, my personal opinion, based on the holistic teaching of the Bible, is if you're not safe and your kids are not safe and either a physically abusive marriage or an extremely emotionally abusive marriage, then you need to get out and get them safe, right? I think abandonment can be more than just he left or she left, it's addiction, drugs, can be devastating in a relationship and can break it down to a point that it is virtual abandonment, right? I think it's just complex. And so what I would say is I've seen people that have a spiritual biblical justification because of unfaithfulness or other things to get a divorce, who have chosen to forgive and work through it, and they've gone on to have meaningful marriages survive. And I've seen people on the other side

give it their best effort, whether they fit the categories or not, and it collapsed. And I would say through it all, life is complicated. This stuff is hard. And too often, we as Christians wanna show up and point our finger at other people, when maybe we should be trying to help people up and encourage them and give them hope as they try to follow God in their life and in their faith. Malachi 2.16 says this, the Bible does say this, God speaking, he says, I hate divorce. And I think we all honestly hate divorce. I think we all agree with God, right? We hate what divorce does. We hate the pain it causes in people's lives. We hate the tearing apart of a family. I think people that have been divorced, we agree. But you know what the Bible doesn't say? It doesn't say God hates divorced people, because that's very different, right? God loves people. And divorce, I mean, in Jesus' time, divorce was rampant. It's not new. This has been going on for thousands of years. And Moses, Jesus will say later in Matthew, in the Gospel of Matthew, he'll say later on, he'll say that it was the whole teaching of divorce and the willingness to issue written statements of divorce from Moses was because of the hardness of people's hearts, like just sin, hardness, difficulty,

what we see every day in our world. So divorce isn't new, but here's the thing. God loves divorced people. God loves second chances. He loves to restore what's been lost. He loves to forgive. He loves to help people laugh again and hope again and have a dream again for the future. Psalm 34, 18 says, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted. He rescues those whose spirits are crushed. And so listen, when you're hurting, when you're hurting today, God is right there close to you. All you have to do is reach up and take his hand. He can walk you through the dark night. And I just want to encourage you that no matter what you've been through, you're not abandoned, you're not worthless, you're not disposable, you're not your breakup or your divorce or your mistake. You're not finished, your life isn't over. Look, you can experience a new beginning through faith in Jesus. You can be forgiven and free in him. You are made in his image. You are worthy of love and commitment and faithfulness. You are precious in God's sight. And our bent as a church, we want it to be less. It's about judging people and more about helping people. We will pray for you, we will encourage you, we'll help any way that we can.

We'll walk you through this horrible situation that you're facing in your life. And you can walk through it, and you can get to the other side. And God may have other plans for you. And some of you have been through that, and you're like, yeah, my plans are be single till I die. Well, great. Paul was, right? And it was a beautiful thing, like God blesses that, and that's amazing. Or God may have other plans for you when you meet somebody and you fall in love. But just because marriage is hard, I think it doesn't mean that we throw it out. It's a beautiful picture, it's given by God, it's his idea, it's a sacred thing. And we should honor God's intent in that in our lives. And to that degree, whenever we can, if you're in a marriage, in a relationship right now, we should fight for the relationship. We should fight for the relationship. I don't know if any of you saw this TikTok thing that went around a few months ago. And it was like, people would do this TikTok, and they would be in the other room, and they would yell at their partner who's in another room, and they would say, oh, look, it's a bird. Come look at this bird. Some of you see this, right?

And they were supposed to come in the other room and like, look at the bird. And the whole thing was, if they didn't come in and look at the bird, it's like, oh, man, what's going on in the relationship? It's not good. If they came in and looked at the bird, it's like, oh, see that? He loves me. That was kind of lame. But it was actually like based on real research. It's based on like some stuff that John Gottman had researched years before. So Dr. John Gottman is like the guy who kind of pioneered scientific study of marriage and relationships. He would bring people into this house, and they would record them for 24 hours or longer, sometimes for weeks at a time, and look at their facial interactions, the way they interacted with one another, the things they said, the things they didn't say. And he got to a place after years and years of doing this that he actually said that he could predict with 90% accuracy who would get divorced and who wouldn't after 15 to 20 minutes of observing their conversation. What? Come on, man. I don't, some of you are like,

he ain't coming to my house. I don't wanna, I don't think I wanna know that. Crazy, right? But what he said he looked for is four different things. And if these four things were all showing themselves in the conversation, he could tell you almost immediately it is headed in the wrong direction. He was looking for disdain, or I think he used the word contempt, when contempt towards the other person was coming out. He was looking for criticism. When there's a lot of criticism flowing, for defensiveness, right? And, you know, like an unwillingness to be open or own their part of the problem and withdraw. And he said, if you watch a couple interact and it's filled with contempt and disdain, criticism, defensiveness, and withdraw, you gotta get help and you gotta get help fast because you're closer to a divorce than you realize. So I wanna talk about how we can fight for our relationships because here's what I'll tell you. 30 years as a pastor, by the time most couples show up needing help, and counselors will tell you this, therapists will tell you this, pastors will tell you this all day long, they're years late. Like they should have come years before, but they wait until things are so bad.

And then it can be really hard to put all of that back together. So if this is going on in your heart right now, zero judgment, but get some help, reach out to somebody, tell somebody in your group, ask somebody to pray for you, have an honest conversation over a meal or coffee with your spouse, like get real before it gets worse. Right, get real before it gets worse. So here they are. Instead of disdain, let's kind of break it down. We'll bring it up on lower thirds. Disdain was one of, and contempt was one of the first things that Dr. Gottman saw in a relationship that points to the fact that it's breaking down. But instead of that, we wanna honor one another. We wanna honor one another. Can I just ask you this week to make an effort again in a marriage or in a dating relationship, or even with your family and friends to think about what it looks like to honor them in your life. To just honor them. What are they into? Like I hired a coach this last fall to help me become a better leader. I'm trying to be just a better pastor, a better leader. So I wanted good outside coaching. And so I hired a guy that used to be a psychologist and a coach for special operators in the military.

And he was like, you know what? Why don't you take us? Why not? You know, like, don't get somebody that's gonna pamper you. Go get the Navy SEAL guy. And so that's what I did. Anyway, he's been kicking my backside all year long. It's been good for me. I kept wanting to get to like leadership principles and, you know, challenges that we're facing as a church and how can we lead through them? I kept wanting to get to this tactical stuff about leadership. And he's kind of driving me crazy because every time we'd meet first, you'd see like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to get to that. How's your marriage? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. Anyway, let's talk about this. He's like, how do you know that? That's great. How do you know that? Uh, and he would ask me questions like, when was the last time you did something special for your wife? Because we've been married almost 30 years. And let me tell you, the ruts get deep. Right. And I'm like, right. You know, your wife loves to travel. I'm not really, I've spent too much time on planes already in my life, you know, but she's like, he's like, when was the last time you, you took her somewhere? When was the last time you surprised her with a pack suitcase? I'm like, never. Just being real, right. You know? And so he's forced me to think about what does it mean to serve her? What does it mean to honor her? And he's right. It's what I know. Instinctively the best leadership gift that I can give our church is first a healthy marriage and a healthy family. Right.

Yeah. And I just want to encourage you in your life. Like, man, what are you doing to honor one another? When's the last time you, you really tried to go out of your way and, and show honor to even a family member or a kid or a friend, because it has incredible power. And I'm on that journey in my lone life. Here's the second area. And that's the area of criticism. And we can either encourage or we can criticize. And Dr. Gottman said, when you start seeing criticism everywhere, then you know, there is trouble in the relationship, but you know, encouragement is how we rarely do people rise to the level of your criticism in a marriage. Come on, somebody, they might rise to the level of your encouragement, but they, they rarely rise to the level of your criticism. And so rather than say like, why are you always late? Maybe this week you say, Hey, I want to thank you for working so hard. Hello. Uh, maybe, you know, instead of like, you know, stop obsessing about the kids, uh, maybe like, thank you so much for being great at caring for our kids. Um, maybe instead of like, why can't you make up your mind? You know, I love how flexible you are. Criticism will get us all for our encouragement. It will get us all further than criticism. And, um, I just want to challenge you this week, your marriage, your relationships, realize the power of that and be thinking about how can I be encouraging to the people around me? Another area was openness versus defensiveness. Let me just ask you, how many of you would admit that you struggle with being defensive? Where are my defensive people at? You just raise your hand. Okay. If you struggle with being defensive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the truth is you don't struggle with being defensive.

Everybody that didn't raise their hand, they struggle with being defensive because defensiveness is a willingness to admit, come on somebody that you're part of the problem. So he like, he set me up for that, man. I was just, it's easy to get into defensive mode and I do this. And, uh, sometimes Lori does this and that doesn't always help. Sometimes I say to Lori, like, ah, stop being a lawyer, but it doesn't always win me points. So I wouldn't suggest that just saying, we all know what it is to go into defensive mode. Right. And start like lawyering up in our excuses and in all our reasons. And man, maybe this week we just focus on listening and being open and, um, just, you know, trying to hear their perspective. You know, it doesn't really matter if their perspective is entirely faithful to reality or not, because perception is their reality, right? So you better learn what it is and then try to help shape that perception. Come on, somebody be open. Right. Here's another thought. And that is connection versus withdrawal. One of the things Dr. Gottman found that I thought was fascinating is he says, you can't tell whether a couple is doing well or not by how they fight. You know, like in other words, he's like, there are some couples that yell and scream and absolutely lose their mind. And it's like a tornado. And you would think if you saw them fight, oh man, they're going to get divorced. Right. You ever had a neighbor out in the front yard? You know what I'm talking about? Throwing down. I've had that and I'm like, I'm going to go in now. You guys aren't going to make it. I'm a pastor. Call me. You ever have that, you know, like, maybe that's your, like, you fight hard, but then

you like make up passionately and, you know, it's amazing on the other side of it. Right. So, and then there's people that they don't ever raise their voice. They're cool as ice, everything's calm. And then they ended up splitting up. And he said, the key is that the key learned in all of his research was it's not about how you fight. It's about whether there is withdrawal happening in the relationship. Withdrawal means you're not, you're not sharing anything about the future anymore. You're not sharing your heart, not sharing the things you care about. You're not sharing really anything at all. And you might fight passionately and make up passionately, or you might fight quietly and not, but if the withdrawal starts to happen, he says, that's the danger. And you know what I've found in, in Lori and I's relationship is it's the little things sometimes that can really enhance connection, going for a walk together and just talking, asking her like what, what her dreams are, what she's looking forward to holding her hand, sending her a text. Hope you didn't get eaten by an Anaconda. I love you. I did send her that text just in case you're wondering, but you know, like those little moments can enhance that sense of connectedness. And I would just say this, it's so simple, but if you're struggling right now, sometimes simple is powerful. If you lost your car keys, what's the first thing somebody would tell you? I would say, well, go back to wherever you last remember having them, hello, and try to find them. Right. Can I tell you right now, if you're wondering where your feelings have gone for somebody, or if you're wondering like why you don't feel connected to them, like sometimes the simplest thing you can do is just go back to doing some of those things that you used

to do at first, when you felt that sense of love, when you felt that sense of romance, when you felt like you were connected and just that, you know, you don't have to feel it to do it because sometimes the feelings will follow the actions, right? But you just step in and be willing to do it. So a few weeks ago on May 1st, I, um, I gave my, my little girl's hand in marriage and I was mostly good. It was mostly good. We absolutely love her husband and, uh, have known him for years. I love the family. We've known them for years. Like so, so much I'm thankful for and really kind of the answer to a lot of prayers. So in that sense, I'll just be as happy the whole time, not a lot of care in the world. Everything's good right up until like, we're at that moment in the ceremony where I'm walking my daughter down the aisle, everybody is left and it's just her and I, and I all of a sudden had a total flashback moment. And in my mind, I went back to the day she was born and we were bringing her home from the hospital because it was freezing outside in Amarillo, Texas. And I had to go out and put a car seat in that I didn't know how to put in. And the, the little light in our Mitsubishi Montero was real dim and couldn't, you know, I couldn't see anything and it's freezing and I'm shaking and you know, I had to get this car seat in and it's gotta be perfect because when you have your first kid, you're just afraid they'll break at any given moment. And you know, the car seat's gotta be just dialed in by your second or third kid. They fall on the ground. You're like, Oh, that'd be fine. Get them up. They're good. You know, like you realize like they're, they're a lot tougher than we think. Right. But your first one, man, you're just, and it was a girl, you know?

So I'm like, Oh my gosh, you know, I'm this brood of a guy. Like, like, man, I remember we finally, we got her in the car. I was scared to death. I was going to trip on the ice or something. And I'm driving like two miles an hour, taking back roads.