Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 169 | Your Relationship with your Wife is Essential to Your Family Team

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Ep. 169 | Your Relationship with your Wife is Essential to Your Family Team · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  I have studied that. I know exactly the tolerances. And I want her to love her life. Hey, guys. Welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned. Stay tuned.
• 0:32
  What's up, guys? Welcome to another 5-Minute Fatherhood. So we want you guys to build awesome family teams, and that means your relationship with your wife is so critical. And so my favorite marriage advice is straight from the Bible. There's this amazing verse in 1 Peter 3.7.
• 0:49
  And he simply says, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way. And what I have taken from that is that I think that every husband should go to school to get a PhD on his wife. You should understand her at an incredibly deep level. What Peter is saying here is...
• 1:08
  is you need to understand your wife. Live with your wife, but you're doing it, the way that you're designing your lifestyle, the way of life, is through the understanding of your wife. Another way to say this, Paul said in Ephesians 5, 28, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
• 1:25
  Now, what happens with your own body is you kind of like – you just – you have a PhD in your own body. If you like spend much time thinking about like, oh, like I know what I like. I know what I like to eat. I know how I like to sleep. I know what happens when I don't get exercise or I know what – I know all these things. I know my body really well. I inhabit it. I've got –
• 1:44
  you know, my 10,000 hours of experience of, in, in, you know, embodying myself. And Paul's like, that is the way in which you should love your wife. It's the same thing Peter's saying. You have to understand your wife. And so, so part of this, you guys, is a lot of times we will, as men, have sort of a, I would say, sort of a general template of wife, right? And then we compare our wife to that template. And if you want to figure out a way to destroy your marriage,
• 2:13
  Like constantly try to get your wife to live up to your template of what a wife is. Like that is not what Peter is saying here. That is not what Paul is saying here. What they're saying is understand your wife, the unique person that she is, and then design your life in such a way that she flourishes as you do for your own body or your own self. And so...
• 2:37
  You guys, what that means is that like I'm constantly wondering for April, like I can tell you all kinds of very specific things about how she thrives. I know that if I do not connect with April after about six hours of time, she starts to feel disconnected from me.
• 2:53
  I know that after 48 hours, if I do not have a deep conversation with her and talk to her about details that I'm involved with and that she's involved with, she will begin to feel disconnected from me. When she begins to feel disconnected from me, she begins to really go into a darker place. It's very subtle at first, and then it grows over time. I have studied that. I know exactly the tolerances.
• 3:16
  And I want her to love her life, and I want us to have an amazing relationship. And so I can go for—I don't need to have that connection every six hours to feel close. It could be, for me, much longer. But that's not the way I design our lifestyle. I design our lifestyle around her and understanding the way that she's wired, and then I begin to figure out, okay, how does this cause—how can I help her to flourish? And then I begin to design that lifestyle in that way. And so—
• 3:45
  Are you committed to sort of getting a PhD in your wife? Are you super curious about the way that she's wired? Super curious about why she gets into certain moods during certain times of the week or during certain events or when certain things are happening? Are you really...
• 4:00
  understanding the answers to those questions. And this is the journey of a lifetime. Like the things I just described to you guys, I did not figure out in even the first 10 years of our marriage. It's really, you know, we've been married 21 years. It's taken me a long time to really understand in detail all the different ways that my wife works, and I'm still learning. But, you know, that's part of what it means to get a PhD. You just never stop getting
• 4:24
  You understand it better than almost anyone else, this particular, very specific topic, and then you constantly are curious, constantly going deeper. That's what Peter and Paul are saying it means to be a good husband and to really craft a loving, lifelong, flourishing marriage. But yeah, Jeff, how have you thought about this one?
• 4:42
  Yeah, I think two things. I would say one, and I love that because I think it's very similar in ways we've tried to think about it. I think the first thing is don't kind of metaphorically turn your back running away from your wife, thinking that all of her preferences and needs and how she's wired is hindering you, but actually turn towards her and try to learn them, like I said, and actually realize that that'll better the team. So that's the first kind of picture I think is really helpful. I think some of us, we think that wherever we're going, sometimes they can be a hindrances, but it's like, no, no, no.
• 5:11
  any hindrance on the team is a hindrance on the team. And so you need to be unified. You need to be one. And then the other one is just asker, right? Like constantly the way you study someone is usually by asking a bunch of questions. And that's how like an, even an interviewer, right? We're the best journalists, the best interviewers who kind of get the most unique parts of someone to say something or the best interviews in history and article form or journalism form is usually because they're really good question askers.
• 5:35
  And so ask good questions and you'll get good answers. Ask bad questions, you're gonna get bad answers. And so I think, yeah, ask good questions, be curious. A lot of guys have that exact, like most guys have that trait. Most guys have a PhD in something, right? It's their work, it's a hobby, it's their car. It's something that they just tinker and go all the way down the rabbit hole trying to understand that.
• 5:57
  Now, why is that not the most important relationship in your life, right? The one that'll actually bless generations, right? The one that will not end up in a landfill like the car, right? But actually will bless 500 years from now as your wife, the blessing that God has given you in this covenantal marriage. And so I would just say, see it like that, understand it like that, and start on it today.
• 6:19
  Hey guys, one of our favorite places to hang out on is the family teams, Instagram. That is where you will find tips, quotes, tricks, and a bunch of other conversational things to help you build your family team on mission. If you're on Instagram and you want to get encouragement as you do this and build your family team, just head over to Instagram and follow us at family teams.