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How Successful Men Fail at Home (And How to Fix It) | Mike Richter · Profitable Christian Business

• 0:00
  Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Profitful Christian Business.
• 0:04
  I am so pleased to have my guest Mike Richter with me today.
• 0:08
  Today's conversation is the one that a lot of men feel but very few talk about honestly.
• 0:14
  What happens when a man is winning a business but struggling at home?
• 0:17
  Respect falls off, connections feels distant, something just isn't working the way it should.
• 0:22
  My guest today, founder of the Heroes Forge, Air Force veteran, husband over 20 years, father of four, an accessible business owner, now helps
• 0:30
  Christian men step back into leadership in their homes.
• 0:33
  works with high performing men who have figured out how to lead teams, build companies, and drive results.
• 0:38
  But when it comes to their marriage, they feel stuck.
• 0:40
  And what he's seeing is something bigger than just individual relationships.
• 0:44
  It's a pattern, a growing disconnect between modern culture and biblical design for marriage and leadership.
• 0:49
  In this conversation, we talk about why so successful, excuse me, why so many successful men struggle with respect and connection at home, what biblical leadership in marriage
• 0:57
  actually looks like in real life.
• 0:59
  the mistakes men make when trying to fix things, and how to begin rebuilding trust, attraction, and alignment.
• 1:05
  This episode is honest, direct, and might challenge some assumptions.
• 1:08
  But if you're a Christian man, husband, or leader, it's an important conversation.
• 1:13
  Mike, welcome to Powerful Christian Business Podcast.
• 1:16
  Thanks for having me, Doug.
• 1:16
  Appreciate it.
• 1:18
  Well, I want to dive right in.
• 1:20
  I kind of want to, I mentioned in the intro there that you were in the Air Force.
• 1:24
  So you've built success in business.
• 1:26
  You served in the Air Force and you've raised a family.
• 1:28
  What season of life stretched you the most as a man and a leader?
• 1:32
  Well, I would say that life and death tends to help build a man from the ground up.
• 1:37
  So I would say that my time serving overseas in Iraq in 2009 was definitely a trial by fire kind of situation.
• 1:45
  I had learned how to lead like mentally through the logos, but I had not actually been where my feet were to the fire and lives were on the line.
• 1:56
  And there was a lot of rapid growth throughout the seven months that I served overseas.
• 2:03
  Nice.
• 2:03
  So what all did you do in the Air Force?
• 2:06
  So I primarily served as a Chinese linguist where I would go ahead and listen to uh communications and provide intents and warnings to uh national security uh personnel so
• 2:20
  that we could go ahead and maintain our sovereignty and our defensive posture.
• 2:25
  I also served as an intelligence analyst overseas and I served as an instructor at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, where I went ahead and taught the next
• 2:35
  generation.
• 2:36
  of linguists and instructors how to do their job.
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  And I ended my career in the Air Force as a first sergeant and then the squadron superintendent for the squadron that I was serving in.
• 2:46
  Nice, nice.
• 2:47
  So you know Chinese.
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  That's a hard language.
• 2:52
  ah I don't know it, but I know it's a hard language to learn.
• 2:56
  One of the hardest languages.
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  So that's awesome.
• 3:02
  So I kind of want to just go, just for fun, go down that rabbit hole just a minute.
• 3:07
  Did you learn that in the military?
• 3:09
  Did you learn Chinese in the military or did you learn it prior to going into the military?
• 3:12
  No, I was definitely paid by the military to go to school to learn Chinese.
• 3:16
  So there's this school that the, the military has called the defense language Institute in Monterey, California.
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  And the Chinese course there was 63 weeks.
• 3:24
  So was about a year and a half worth of school.
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  Five days a week, six hours a day, just grinding out the Chinese.
• 3:32
  Wow.
• 3:33
  Wow.
• 3:33
  I thought my two semesters of French in high school was a lot.
• 3:38
  Yeah, it's definitely a grueling process, but it's the military has learned over time how to help people acquire skills, knowledge, knowledge, abilities and talents.
• 3:48
  Nice.
• 3:49
  So you work with high performing men.
• 3:52
  Tell us something about successful men behind closed doors that most people wouldn't expect.
• 3:58
  Yeah, for the most part, successful men can realize objectives, they can set priorities, they can align resources at work to meet collective goals of an organization, and then
• 4:12
  come home and be utterly disrespected by the people within their home.
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  And a lot of times it is a matter of there are two different rules that the game is played by and
• 4:26
  They're very attuned in one set of rules and not so attuned to the other set of rules.
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  Nice, nice.
• 4:32
  So I imagine we're going to dive into those rules here in a minute.
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  So how long have you been married?
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  I've been married for 21 years.
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  Very happily married.
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  Nice.
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  I hate to guess your age, so did you get married when you were in the military?
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  I got married prior to joining the military.
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  I was married at 20 and my wife was 20 at the same time and then a week and a half later she turned 21.
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  Nice, nice, so that's a long successful marriage.
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  I myself, think we're on 16 or 17 years.
• 5:01
  uh So yeah, it is, it is.
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  So what's the thing about marriage that most people underestimate early on?
• 5:12
  I would say that in my own life and in the lives of many men that I speak with, the ability to stay emotionally centered and controlled throughout the storms of life is a big
• 5:25
  challenge early on in marriage that men a lot of times don't develop proper coping mechanisms to stay grounded during the storms of various arguments and conflicts with
• 5:36
  their wife.
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  And a lot of times they just lay down their arms.
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  And as a result,
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  they lose the respect of their wife.
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  Nice, yeah, yeah, can definitely see that.
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  We do something called the Fill in the Blank Question on every Profile Christian Business Podcast.
• 5:52
  oh So your Fill in the Blank Question is, the biggest mistake married Christian men make today is blank.
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  I would say failing to establish and maintain healthy boundaries.
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  A lot of times this comes as a result of a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of servant leadership that is often preached in the church without a whole lot of context.
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  And I find that men misunderstand what that term means because they believe that they should just lead by continuing to serve and emptying themselves time and time again.
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  And I helped to...
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  to get men to reframe their thinking on that and to recognize that they are serving through their leadership.
• 6:36
  Yeah, think I heard I'm not sure exactly where I heard it before, but uh it's a big deal to lead and like a lot of like to lead correctly.
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  A lot of people like a lot.
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  It's held up at this posture, but it's a difficult thing to lead well.
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  Right.
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  And people say they want to lead, but they have to understand what that really looks like.
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  Right.
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  Sure, they have no idea what it looks like because a lot of people are growing up in single parent households where they don't get to see what a good marriage looks like.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  Where do you think the disconnect is when someone is strong in business but uh the leadership falls apart at home?
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  I think most of the time what ends up happening is the man falls for this modern common wisdom called happy wife, happy life.
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  And so they lose themselves and their preferences and their ability to lead because they subjugate all of their preferences to the preferences of their wife.
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  And so because they give up everything, they give up all their sovereignty, they have no room to stand up.
• 7:48
  and express preferences and to set boundaries and direction in life with their wife and with their children because they've given everything up into the altar of their wife.
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  And so I think in a lot of ways, it's a misguided form of like wife worship that causes problems for husbands, generally speaking.
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  Yeah, I know we're both men on this podcast, so we'll do our best to speak.
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  Can you talk from the other perspective, maybe in the conversations with your wife, is there a lot of, they want to be led, but they don't feel like they're being led from uh
• 8:26
  men that fail in that area?
• 8:28
  So think it's interesting because this reminds me of the phenomenon called henpecking.
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  You may be familiar with this idea where a lot of times women feel like the man is not doing something according to their vision of what right should look like.
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  And so rather than actively communicating clearly where the disconnect is in terms of her expectations versus what she sees, she ends up subtly ah nagging and picking at
• 8:57
  the various things that the man does or doesn't do.
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  And a lot of guys fall for this and they end up giving up their authority and they just want to please their wife at the exclusion of anything else.
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  So for example, one of the common complaints is something like chores around the house or cutting the lawn, right?
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  Will another day of the lawn being long really break the marriage?
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  It won't.
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  If we're being really honest,
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  That's generally not what marriages end over.
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  Now, something that a man could do is to say, babe, I've had a long day at work.
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  I've been tackling a bunch of challenges.
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  That's not on my priority list for today.
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  I'll get it done by this such and such time and date.
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  And many men are not doing that.
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  They're not clearly articulating a vision for how you can get to yes.
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  And so as a result, a lot of women are trying to lead their men by nagging them to do something, not realizing that when the man succumbs to that nagging, the man becomes less
• 10:02
  and less the man that she is in love with.
• 10:06
  Yeah.
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  Do you believe it's just a, when it gets uh to be a lot, do you feel like there's just conflict avoidance?
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  I think that that's a lot of what causes men to succumb to henpecking, generally speaking, is over time, they would rather just comply with their wife's demands rather than standing
• 10:29
  up for where they see the relationship going and where their direction is in terms of the marriage as a whole.
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  So let's talk about biblical leadership.
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  Let's tie this back into the Bible.
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  ah What does that look like practically, not just theory, but what should it look like on a day-to-day basis?
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  think that for the most part, it's important for husbands to recognize that most women would prioritize the context of a situation over the content of a situation.
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  And a lot of times, men will try to be very direct in their communication because we are problem solvers by our very nature.
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  We strive with the environment around us and we handle things directly.
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  However,
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  We often fail to recognize that when living with our wives and taking good care of them, we need to recognize that the context of the situation is often more important first.
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  So establishing connection with our wife is the most important thing from their perspective before we can open the door to correction or providing direction or guidance.
• 11:44
  Yeah, that's good.
• 11:46
  oh I'm sure there might be a lot of men listening to this right now that feel like they're like, ah like they're like, like it's too late, right?
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  Like.
• 11:59
  their marriage, like they've been in this cycle for so long and they just don't know what to do.
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  So if a man is, you know, like he's lost respect or connection in his marriage, do you have a next step for him?
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  What he should do, like the very next thing to kind of start turning that around.
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  Yeah, I would say that almost every time the first step is to look at himself first.
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  is a matter of if you intend to lead others, it's important that you lead yourself first.
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  And I would say that you want to look at how you're showing up in the relationship and how you show up to the world around you.
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  So whether it is getting your mind right, getting your spirit right, getting your body right.
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  These are things that I would recommend to men first, because if you make subtle changes in these categories, you don't have to announce any of it.
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  Your wife is keen to notice changes in the environment around her because she is a context-based creature primarily.
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  So when you're making these changes, she's going to notice.
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  You don't have to tell her.
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  Like the fact that you're going to the gym,
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  on a daily basis or a couple of times a week, you don't tell her it, you just go dressed properly to go to the gym.
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  You get up a little bit early and she will pay attention to those actions and she will notice the results of those actions.
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  That is the first place that I go ahead and take men through is an honest self assessment of where they are in the relationship and where they may or may not have taken on the full
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  breadth of responsibility in their relationship.
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  Yeah, what I hear you saying and I think what a lot of men get stuck in is how do I change her without looking at first at themselves?
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  How do I change myself in order to strengthen the relationship, right?
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  Yeah, it's interesting because I think that as humans, we often are selfish in our nature.
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  And one thing as Christian husbands that we need to do is recognize that Jesus is our example and selfishness is not something that I would use to characterize Jesus.
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  Now, at the same time, I think a lot of men are overly focused on Jesus being the lamb of God.
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  And they leave out the rest of the context of who Jesus is.
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  Jesus is also
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  the lion of Judah.
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  He is both the lion and the lamb, and far too often from the pulpit, Jesus as lamb of God is taught primarily and leaving everything aside.
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  Yeah, yeah, so good.
• 14:37
  So your message challenges a lot of the modern cultural narratives, kind of like what you just brought up.
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  How has your face shaped your convictions about marriage and leadership?
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  So as I developed in my faith, I started out in a uh moderate congregation in a lot of ways.
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  And it wasn't until I took a lot of time to really dig deep into scripture that I started seeing patterns that were different in scripture than they were in a modern culture.
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  I'll give you a good example.
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  Egalitarianism is something that runs pretty rampant in the modern church.
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  But if I go ahead and look at the household codes in Colossians 3,
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  1 Peter 3 and Ephesians 5, I see that there is a clear guideline and delineation for leadership in the family.
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  Husbands are to lead their wives, wives are to submit to their husbands, children are to submit to their parents, employees are to submit to their employers.
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  This is clear unit directional, uncontested directionality provided by God.
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  So the divine order is something that has gone
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  uh amiss in the modern church in so many ways.
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  So our leadership capacity is not a matter of, hey, who is the better leader?
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  It is a matter of divine ordinance.
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  God had appointed us as head of the household, subject to Christ.
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  And that's the important part is we are to be subject to Christ as our wives are to be subject to us.
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  Yeah, I'm glad you brought that last piece home because first of all, as men, we need to submit to the Lord, right?
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  Not just as our savior, but as our Lord.
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  And then it kind of goes from there.
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  become like, if you are submitting to the Lord and following what he says, then you are going to be a better leader at home.
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  you say that?
• 16:34
  Oh, absolutely.
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  And just to go ahead and take in all of what Christ provided to us is the thing, is to be a consolidated man that can lead in various circumstances.
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  Because Christ didn't treat every circumstance the same.
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  There are elements of time where he would go ahead and extend grace where the humble was there, and he would go ahead and chastise the proud.
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  And it's very important for us to recognize that even in the book of Revelation, Jesus does provide substantial correction to five of the churches.
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  in the book of Revelation.
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  Let's talk about grace for a minute because I think this might be especially good for any young men that are newly married listening to this, that you're not a great leader right
• 17:18
  away.
• 17:19
  There's a growth process, right?
• 17:21
  So uh I think there needs to be an understanding of both parties in that situation that that man is still growing as a leader.
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  Yet that hierarchy still exists even though that man is still growing as a leader.
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  Can you talk, kind of give some insights into that?
• 17:37
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 17:38
  So in 1 Peter 3, scripture says that even if the husband is an unbeliever, the wife is to submit to the husband.
• 17:48
  So that gives you like the scriptural basis for this concept that you just brought up is that a lot of men often take 10 or more years to develop the qualities and the traits and
• 18:01
  the leadership ability to truly be
• 18:04
  men that are worthy to be reckoned with and to lead in at the city gates and in the congregation and especially at home.
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  And these things do take time.
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  And the trick is for the wives, I think so many women are not understanding of how much power their submission provides to themselves and to their husbands.
• 18:30
  So I'll give you an example from my own marriage.
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  So
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  When my wife was first learning to submit, she would go ahead and have times where she would buck against my directions to her.
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  And then I would firmly hold to where I was at.
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  I would speak with her lovingly and embrace her, but I would still disagree with what her position was because it wasn't the right direction for the family.
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  And she found that over time, if she were to just surrender,
• 19:02
  after providing her input, because it's my responsibility to listen to her input and go ahead and bring it along with everything else I have to consider and still make the call.
• 19:12
  When she found that she would surrender her will in this circumstance, that I would treat her much better.
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  I would be compelled to lead her with more gentleness and care because she has submitted to me.
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  And this is like,
• 19:29
  a superpower that women have that they're not aware of.
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  That us as men, generally want to protect and provide and love our wives in a deep way.
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  And when they're on the same sheet of music as us, it is so much easier for us to love them all the deeper.
• 19:48
  I think that leads greatly into my next question.
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  So what causes a wife to lose respect for her husband?
• 19:57
  I find that often it has to do with whether or not the husband maintains proper boundaries and sets the direction for the family.
• 20:06
  So the way that I look at things is oftentimes women are like water and men are like the container that you put the water into.
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  So if your container, if you have an open top, the water could just spill out and go all over the place.
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  But as a man, if you go ahead and provide a
• 20:24
  a solid container for the water.
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  She is protected and she has an element of freedom all throughout where the container is.
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  And she should have a little bit of extra room so that she can explore the area that the husband provides to her.
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  And the thing is, doesn't, it shouldn't be porous.
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  Like you should actually be able to trust that the water will be held in by the container.
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  But at the same time, it shouldn't be so firm that it breaks at any
• 20:53
  testing of the material.
• 20:57
  Let me ask you this, and this might be the hot button moment.
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  What about the woman oh that says, that is limiting my freedom?
• 21:07
  That's interesting because as Christians, our freedom is inherently limited by Christ's Lordship to begin with.
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  So if a woman is a Christian woman and she is concerned about her freedom, my concern as a Christian man would be freedom to do what?
• 21:25
  Yeah, yeah, I guess that's a very good point.
• 21:28
  Yeah, yeah.
• 21:29
  If the husband is providing good spiritually sound and biblically sound boundaries to his wife,
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  The alternative is she's looking for an avenue to do something that is outside of the will of God, usually.
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  It is usually some form of rebellion and some form of disrespect.
• 21:53
  Yeah, that's good.
• 21:54
  That might be a rewind.
• 21:55
  We have rewind moments.
• 21:56
  uh I call them here on the Prophet Christian Business Podcast.
• 21:59
  And that might be one of those where I say go and rewind and listen to that because I think that's a very, very solid point.
• 22:07
  So.
• 22:08
  two elements to that, right?
• 22:09
  There's the proper boundaries that are biblically based and have rationale, and primarily these boundaries are to protect the relationship.
• 22:19
  And the other element is, well, if she's seeking freedom from that, she's seeking freedom for another purpose.
• 22:27
  So what is the biggest lie men believe about fixing their marriage?
• 22:32
  Oh, the biggest lie that is ubiquitous throughout our culture is if you just serve her more, things will get better.
• 22:39
  If you just do more chores, things will get better.
• 22:43
  No, chores are just the thing that she says because she doesn't know what will actually make things better for her.
• 22:50
  Yeah, there was a...
• 22:52
  Go ahead.
• 22:53
  in, in context rather with content, all they're doing is they feel something and they're trying to figure out what kind of things would cause that feeling rather than addressing
• 23:05
  the core problem as a whole.
• 23:08
  Whereas oftentimes it is not a matter of doing the thing, but oftentimes it's just a matter of men taking a look at the systems that are in place in their home.
• 23:19
  and see where their merry be something that's off.
• 23:22
  So a big thing that people bring up is getting ready for school and how stressful it is to get out the door.
• 23:32
  And oftentimes that's a result of poor systematic orchestration throughout the day.
• 23:40
  And I don't encourage the husband to step in and take over all of that.
• 23:47
  might want to do that for a little bit to go ahead and see what things are working, what things aren't working, and to find a systematic solution for the problems that are coming
• 23:58
  up time and time again.
• 23:59
  And then once you have a system in place and you have battle tested it through a few weeks of this process, then you can handle it or you can hand it back to the appropriate
• 24:11
  responsibility holder.
• 24:14
  Because let's be honest, as men, have other things that we need to concern ourselves with.
• 24:20
  Yeah, yeah, that's good.
• 24:24
  So what does masculine leadership look like in the whole?
• 24:30
  So masculine leadership is a matter of being willing to take risks and to stand firm on truth.
• 24:41
  there are, generally speaking, virtues and vices are universal between men and women in the Christian faith.
• 24:50
  But I find that there is one specific virtue that is more attuned to men and one specific virtue that is more attuned to women.
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  So in the man's case, the virtue that is most keenly associated with masculinity is valor.
• 25:09
  The opposite of valor is cowardice.
• 25:14
  And the reason why that's so important, it's masculine coded because if a society was established and all the men were cowards, the society would degenerate and be destroyed
• 25:27
  very quickly.
• 25:29
  Yeah, that brings me...
• 25:31
  No, go ahead.
• 25:32
  I'm sorry.
• 25:33
  I'm just coming up with other questions I want to follow up with.
• 25:35
  Go ahead.
• 25:36
  On the woman's side, the most keenly associated virtue associated with women is chastity, and the opposite of which is promiscuity.
• 25:46
  Now, don't get me wrong, chastity is important for both men and women, but if you look at a society-wide implementation of promiscuity on the part of women,
• 25:56
  Also, you would see the society degenerate and be destroyed.
• 26:02
  Yeah, so let's talk about, you brought up risk taking in there, that men are more prone to take risks and I believe that's counter to what women feel like they need is that safety
• 26:15
  and protection, right?
• 26:17
  Which risk sometimes puts risk to that.
• 26:22
  So can you kind of give your insights around that kind of conflict?
• 26:26
  Sure.
• 26:26
  I think that for the most part, women have an inherent need for safety and security.
• 26:32
  Back in times past, they lived in villages and they were incentivized to be a part of the whole because without the protection of the tribe, they would be out in the outer darkness
• 26:45
  and they would not be able to survive.
• 26:49
  So we see that take place in a number of facets.
• 26:53
  Generally speaking, the realm of physicality is outside of the realm of women's control.
• 26:58
  And the way that women tend to escalate conflict is not through physical means.
• 27:03
  It is through social means, through reputation destruction, guilt, insults, all of these kinds of things.
• 27:11
  Whereas with men, if we go ahead and talk to each other sideways, we might come to blows.
• 27:17
  And that's something that helps introduce civility and respect between men.
• 27:23
  Now, going back to the risk-taking thing, because the element of the physical is not available to women, generally speaking, men went out and did the hunting and brought back
• 27:33
  the game.
• 27:35
  And it was their individual efforts when added to the teammates that they went hunting with that led to their value to the society they were in.
• 27:46
  And men had to take risks in order for that to be accomplished.
• 27:51
  And men's
• 27:52
  ability to kill and eat and lead and do all of these things were independent of their social status, but led to their social status.
• 28:02
  So their ability to take risks and see success out in the world was key and instrumental in developing themselves as a man and setting themselves in the hierarchy.
• 28:15
  I'm sure a lot of men are going be interested in this next question.
• 28:20
  How can a man, if they feel like they've lost the attraction of their spouse and the connection of their spouse, how can they rebuild that?
• 28:29
  I think that oftentimes attraction comes with respect.
• 28:34
  And most of the time they have lost the respect of their wife first before the attractiveness has gone away.
• 28:43
  Now.
• 28:47
  In Ephesians 5, there is a passage that talks about how men are to love their wife and women are to respect their husband.
• 28:58
  That comes at the end of Ephesians 5.
• 28:59
  And in a lot of ways, that's a modern mistranslation of the word that's actually in the Greek there.
• 29:05
  The word that's actually in the Greek as far as a woman's command to her relationship to her husband, the word is phobos, which means reverent fear as unto the Lord.
• 29:16
  So wives are to revere their husbands as a matter of divine command, but men need to be worthy of that respect independently.
• 29:26
  They're both independently true at the same time.
• 29:30
  Yes, women have a divine command and they're still responsible for it, but from a practical standpoint, it's incredibly important for a man to be worthy of that respect.
• 29:41
  Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that's why uh a lot of marriages fall apart is because, again, I think we go back to what you said at the very beginning, we as men need to look in the
• 29:51
  mirror and do the things that make us more worthy of that respect.
• 29:56
  Yes, absolutely.
• 29:57
  And it's interesting.
• 29:58
  So something that will maybe go ahead and perk people's ears up a little bit and may seem a little bit counterintuitive, but it is often that women are attracted to men that have
• 30:10
  other women that are attracted to them.
• 30:12
  This is not right, wrong or indifferent.
• 30:14
  It just happens to be that as men climb different hierarchies, whether it's the business hierarchy, whether it is the social hierarchy, whether it is a hierarchy of competence, it
• 30:23
  serves as a filter
• 30:26
  for women to see attractive men because they typically find guys that are up in the hierarchy as targets to be looked at with respect.
• 30:38
  And it turns out that those same men are attractive to many women at the same time.
• 30:43
  And so I'm not saying that it is important for men to seek that out.
• 30:47
  Absolutely not.
• 30:48
  But what I'm saying is that if you do not attract any attention from other women, if women aren't looking at you,
• 30:56
  It's very obvious for your wife sometimes to go, well, if they're not looking at him, why am I looking at him like this?
• 31:01
  And they convince themselves out of attraction to their husband.
• 31:06
  Yeah, wow, that's good.
• 31:07
  So, um what are the early warning signs of marriage might be quietly drifting?
• 31:15
  would say this is the start of contempt.
• 31:19
  I think is the biggest thing is anytime you see contemptuous mannerisms or disrespectful language, those would be the early warning signs that I would look at.
• 31:31
  When a woman is starting to try to henpeck her husband, that's where I would say is the best time to reestablish boundaries and to show her that you love her.
• 31:44
  by leading her well, and let her know what you will and will not accept from her.
• 31:51
  Nice.
• 31:52
  So why do many men avoid stepping into leadership at home?
• 31:58
  think that many men are ill-equipped.
• 32:01
  They're not taught how to properly lead at home.
• 32:04
  We go ahead and often read these scripture verses that say, yeah, men, be men, men, go ahead and lead.
• 32:11
  In the context that St.
• 32:12
  Paul was writing these letters, they had a different conception of what it meant to be a man than we do in the modern age.
• 32:21
  And it's interesting that because of
• 32:27
  rampant absence of fathers in homes, we see this time and time again where men are not properly instructed how to be men by men.
• 32:37
  Because I am convinced that based on 60 years of history right now in terms of what tender years doctrine in divorce courts have yielded, that men are not well crafted in a single
• 32:53
  mother household.
• 32:55
  We see
• 32:56
  ridiculous levels of crime and criminality of various kinds coming from single parent households.
• 33:02
  And for the most part, it's single mother households.
• 33:04
  We don't see these kinds of criminality coming out of single father households.
• 33:09
  Right, wrong, or indifferent, it is just that's the result that we see from this de-partnering of husbands and fathers from their children.
• 33:21
  Yeah, I hear the term absentee father, but I believe it's not just the lack of the physical presence of a father there, but there are some fathers that are physically
• 33:30
  present, but not leadership present, right?
• 33:34
  And that can still cause the same thing.
• 33:39
  Yeah, and I think a lot of that has to do with a lack of proper examples and oh a lack of a fully consolidated vision of what it means to be a man, a husband, and a father.
• 33:53
  And I think that oftentimes we are just preached a surface level uh manhood and a surface level connection with our children and our wives from the pulpit.
• 34:02
  And it really requires substantial digging into the word to get those key principles.
• 34:07
  out of the word to be applied in our everyday life.
• 34:11
  Yeah, that's so good.
• 34:13
  So we talked about earlier on, like what a man should start to do right away to kind of build the marriage back up.
• 34:22
  What's one thing they should stop doing?
• 34:26
  I think one thing that they should stop doing right now is asking for intimacy directly.
• 34:31
  They should stop asking for it.
• 34:34
  If a man has not been getting intimacy from his wife on a basis that is good for him and good for her at the same time, actually being overt about asking for it and making a
• 34:45
  request will never get the results that men truly want out of that question.
• 34:53
  Wow.
• 34:53
  only causes a wife to retreat into her shell more because we know that in first Corinthians that both the husband and a wife have responsibilities to one another in terms
• 35:07
  of the marital debt and the marital duty to one another.
• 35:10
  And women don't want to be reminded of that if they aren't feeling it from within.
• 35:17
  And so oftentimes they will go ahead and retreat as a natural reaction.
• 35:22
  to that internal conflict that they should be feeling that they should do the thing, but they don't want to do the thing because the emotionality behind it isn't there.
• 35:31
  And so all asking the question directly does is cause her to retreat.
• 35:36
  And even if she does comply with the request, it will not be what we want as men.
• 35:42
  It will be a shadow of what we really desire.
• 35:45
  So practically speaking, what's the alternative?
• 35:48
  What's the thing can, as men, can do instead?
• 35:53
  The first and foremost is a matter of being respectable.
• 35:57
  Respect is the first thing that you can do as a man to restore all of this.
• 36:02
  Because unless you are respectable, unless there is things about you that she will truly love, honor, and respect and be able to have that reverence for, she will not feel the
• 36:17
  things that she needs to feel to give herself completely and to surrender herself to her husband.
• 36:23
  Yeah, that's good.
• 36:24
  think back to, I'm not even sure there's any commercials like this around anymore, but there used to be like cologne commercials and, and really men geared commercials that like
• 36:34
  really said, you know, dive into your masculinity and become the man that she longs for.
• 36:40
  Right.
• 36:41
  don't, I don't think, I know the TV shows aren't there out there anymore, but there used to be commercials that kind of portrayed that type of masculinity.
• 36:49
  So.
• 36:50
  Yeah, it's interesting because we see that women generally make about 80 % of consumer purchasing decisions in the household.
• 36:57
  So we see that commercials, generally speaking, are aimed toward women and not toward men.
• 37:02
  So back when men were making more of the decision making in terms of the spending, you would see men getting advertised to more often.
• 37:11
  But because that isn't the case any longer, we see that those coded messages going away.
• 37:16
  And in fact, if you look at TV,
• 37:19
  It is relatively rare to see a solid, strong husband and leader of his family.
• 37:25
  The most common archetypes are either he's abusive or he's incompetent.
• 37:32
  And both of those serve to reinforce cultural programming for women that men are not to be trusted.
• 37:40
  And if you can't trust a man, you can't submit yourself to him.
• 37:45
  Yeah, yeah, that's so true of today's media.
• 37:49
  We have, I feel like you may have answered this already, but we'll kind of revisit it if you did.
• 37:53
  Our secret question is, what is the secret to rekindling passion and rebuilding respect in the home?
• 37:59
  Alright, so here's the rewind version.
• 38:02
  It's not gonna be politically correct, but I'm gonna say it anyway because I think it bears really powerful and evocative language.
• 38:11
  It's important for a man to be the kind of man that other men want to be and other women want to bed.
• 38:21
  That's the hard truth of it.
• 38:23
  Yeah, so work on yourself as a man to be that man, right?
• 38:28
  And then, yeah.
• 38:33
  So you can't be passive, you have to be intentional.
• 38:36
  Absolutely.
• 38:37
  Every bit of leadership and direction starts from the man.
• 38:41
  And it should start from the man because otherwise you're running counter to the divine order.
• 38:49
  Nice.
• 38:49
  Well, I have one last, well, this is the second to last closing question for you.
• 38:54
  ah If a man is listening right now and feels things are off at home, but he doesn't know where to start, I think you mentioned this before, but can you give him the first step
• 39:04
  that he can take?
• 39:04
  What's the first step this week that he can be intentional about?
• 39:09
  I would say that the absolute first step that you can do is take a step back and observe the dynamics in play around you.
• 39:19
  See what's going on.
• 39:21
  Does your wife speak with you with a rude tone of voice?
• 39:25
  Does she address you with disrespect and contempt?
• 39:29
  Right?
• 39:30
  Take uh a minute to go ahead and look at or feel the temperature of the room around you.
• 39:37
  and then start coming up with a plan of action.
• 39:41
  Because a lot of times people will fail to correctly assess the world around them and then take actions that will eventually cause harm rather than good.
• 39:51
  That's kind where I was going to go uh from this is like, what is the proper reaction to stepping back and taking that overall big picture and seeing uh the chaos for lack of a
• 40:02
  better word, to see the issues?
• 40:04
  uh Because I feel like some men will hear that and take the wrong approach to the fix.
• 40:09
  Right.
• 40:10
  I think that the biggest thing that men can really do is to honestly assess themselves and assess how the world around them treats them.
• 40:21
  Because if you fail to assess not only your family, chances are you're failing to make assessments in other areas of life that you often may be blind to.
• 40:31
  And I find that this is probably one of the most valuable things that a brotherhood of men can do for one another.
• 40:38
  is to be willing to have iron sharpened iron and to adjust their crowns and let them know, hey, here's where you're off base and to be honest with them and provide them genuine
• 40:49
  feedback.
• 40:51
  And I think that genuine masculine friendships are such a huge missing piece of the culture today.
• 40:59
  Yeah, I love that you said that because we do, I have a Friday men's Bible study that I run.
• 41:06
  It's called Man Battles.
• 41:08
  The different things that we tend to deal with as men.
• 41:11
  oh And it is truly an iron sharpening, iron community.
• 41:15
  uh Great group of guys on that call.
• 41:18
  So I am 100 % in agreement with you.
• 41:20
  The more strongly, godly men that you can get in your circle, uh the better.
• 41:27
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 41:28
  And I mean, the modern church really needs strong men right now.
• 41:32
  In a lot of ways, the strong men of 10 and 20 years ago have been dragged out of the church in a lot of ways.
• 41:39
  And the seminaries have been teaching some things that haven't been great for families.
• 41:46
  One example that I don't know if you know of Dr.
• 41:48
  Edgington and his work.
• 41:50
  uh So his name is Dr.
• 41:52
  David Edgington.
• 41:53
  One of his most recent books is uh
• 41:56
  White Nights and Reviling Wives.
• 41:58
  And the book is about the different seminaries and how they teach the Duluth model of...
• 42:05
  uh
• 42:09
  of counseling.
• 42:11
  And so the Duluth model has as its primary focus that men are always the abusers of a relationship.
• 42:19
  And so when you go by default and you believe that the man is always in the wrong, you can come to conclusions that don't necessarily reflect truth.
• 42:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:30
  Yeah.
• 42:31
  and if we have all these seminaries across the United States that are teaching this model as the model for biblical counseling, we can see why the divorce rate in the church has
• 42:41
  been as high as it is.
• 42:44
  And you would think that it should not be that way.
• 42:47
  But when men are being driven out and told, instead of being true leaders there to go ahead and be subservient to their wives and put their wives on a pedestal, you end up with
• 42:57
  so many dynamics that intentionally cause
• 43:00
  the weakening of men and the disrespect of men across the culture.
• 43:06
  Yeah, not just on this aspect, but unfortunately you can see the cracks in the armor of a lot of churches where the worldly influences has come into play.
• 43:15
  oh And it's less scripture and more what the world says.
• 43:21
  Right, and it's about how we feel about what the scripture says, not what it actually says.
• 43:26
  Yeah, yeah, so good.
• 43:28
  So this has been great.
• 43:30
  I feel like any man that's been listening to this that is married or about to get married or considering marriage, this is going to be so, valuable of a podcast for them to listen
• 43:42
  to.
• 43:42
  I hate to leave anything left unsaid, so I do this at the end of every podcast.
• 43:48
  Do you have any parting words of wisdom for our audience?
• 43:52
  Yeah, I've got two.
• 43:53
  One, if you're a man and you don't have a strong brotherhood of men, I would encourage you today to step out in faith and find brothers to be shield to shield with and fight against
• 44:07
  the dangers that are going on in this world.
• 44:09
  Because a lot of the troubles that we see in this world are not things that can be accomplished by one man.
• 44:16
  Life is a team sport, much like Christianity is.
• 44:19
  And it is through teamwork.
• 44:21
  that we will accomplish the best things that need to happen today.
• 44:25
  Secondly, if you're having problems in your relationship, look to yourself first before anything else.
• 44:32
  Because when you are the kind of man that others will respect and other women are attracted to, your wife usually will get in line just by the external messaging that is
• 44:43
  shown to her.
• 44:44
  Oftentimes you don't have to directly address it until she's taken a step toward you first.
• 44:49
  So please, as men,
• 44:50
  Take on your cross, take on your responsibilities, and do what needs to be done.
• 44:56
  A lot of times, the best things in life are dressed up in overalls and are called work.
• 45:01
  Mm.
• 45:03
  So true, so true.
• 45:05
  uh I imagine you have a way that you can help men further.
• 45:11
  where can we direct any man that would like some help getting their marriage stronger?
• 45:18
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 45:18
  So I have a YouTube channel.
• 45:19
  I've got the heroes forge is the YouTube channel.
• 45:22
  And then as well, I have a program for, for men that are looking to improve their marriage.
• 45:27
  Primarily I coach people on other things, but really where I find that my heart is drawn to is to help men form stronger marriages, because I feel that stronger marriages lead to
• 45:39
  stronger societies.
• 45:40
  And we need that right now more than anything else.
• 45:43
  And you can find those things in the description below.
• 45:46
  Nice.
• 45:47
  uh I really appreciate your honesty and clarity.
• 45:49
  Today, Mike, I think one of the biggest takeaways here is leadership doesn't turn off when you leave work.
• 45:54
  And for a lot of men, the place where leadership matters most is the place they've been avoiding or unsure how to step into.
• 46:00
  If something feels off at home, it's not always about working harder or saying the right things.
• 46:03
  It's about stepping back into clarity, responsibility, and alignment with how God designed marriage to function.
• 46:10
  Starts with one decision.
• 46:11
  Don't overcomplicate it.
• 46:13
  Take one step this week.
• 46:14
  Have one honest conversation.
• 46:15
  Make one intentional shift.
• 46:17
  Start leading where it matters most.
• 46:19
  And if you want to go deeper into what Mike is doing with band of rebuild respect, connection, leadership in the home, you connect with him at MikeRichterCoach.com slash
• 46:28
  program.
• 46:28
  Again, that link will be below and check out his content, the heroes forge across social platforms.
• 46:33
  think he mentioned it was also on YouTube.
• 46:35
  Mike, thank you so much for being here and until next time everyone keep moving forward.
• 46:42
  Thanks for having me, Doug.
• 46:43
  Appreciate it.