Happy Wife, Happy Life Is A Lie

The lie, the happy wife, happy life can lead an unhealthy man into a place that's not going to be good for your marriage because he feels that he has the definition of success as a happy wife.

And that can't be his definition of success because he has no control over your happiness.

Happy wife, happy life.

You've heard it your whole life.

And so has every married man that you know.

Happy wife, happy life.

We've heard it.

We think it's true.

We joke about it.

Well, for my guest today, that wasn't wisdom for him.

It was actually a lie that kept him walking on eggshells in his own house for decades.

So welcome to The Real Jason Duncan Podcast.

I'm your host, Jason Duncan, and every guest on this show is here

For one reason, they used to believe something that turned out to be wrong.

Some figured it out on their own, some had to get knocked on the rear end first.

But either way, by the time they sit in this chair on the other side of the internet with me on this show, they know the difference between what's real and what isn't.

And the lies that do the most damage usually are the ones that look like wisdom, kind of like the ones we're talking about today, these are the ones that everybody repeats,

the ones that you're so sure about, you never even think to question those lies.

And the lie like that, lies like that build a cage around us.

And when we stay in it, the cage looks like gold.

It looks like the smart play.

It looks like the good life, the strong marriage, the right way to do things.

And nobody walks away from something that looks like treasure.

And that's what this show is about.

The gold,

is the lie.

And every conversation here is, is about finding that cage.

It's about seeing that the gold was never real.

And how do we walk out of that?

So the lie that my guest believed is the one that's handed to men like a wedding gift.

It's four words, happy wife, happy life.

And it sounds like love and it sounds like wisdom.

And it sounds like an exact, like what a good husband is exactly what he is supposed to do, right?

But that's what makes the lie golden.

It's what makes the cage golden, because nobody warns you that what that actually leads to, because everybody's repeating it, everybody's saying it.

So what he did, what he did with these words, he did what everybody does.

He just structured a life around how do I make this true?

How do I make sure that she's good?

And he kept the peace, he gave in, he made himself smaller and smaller and smaller so the house would stay calm.

And then when he went looking for help, the men around him was just handing the same thing in different words.

Hey, just love her more.

And then for decades, he believed all that.

He was walking on eggshells in his own home.

He was calling it faithfulness.

And then he found out what those four words had actually done to him.

And that's what we're gonna be talking about today.

My guest is Jim Lange.

He's a number one bestselling author, and one of his books is called The Happy Wife, Happy Life Deception, which is the exact lie we're taking apart today.

He spent more than 30 years in business and leadership, and he now coaches men who are trapped in the kind of marriage that he was in.

And he leads Christian business leaders who are trying to grow without losing themselves in the process.

So welcome to the show, Jim.

Thank you, Jason.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Really looking forward to our time together.

Yeah, me too.

This is a hot one.

This is one's gonna **** a lot of people off.

They're not gonna like this.

We probably have already had a few people say, I ain't listening to that.

So before we get rolling, I told everybody there in the opening that I know you were listening to, I told the people listening that you came on this show ready to expose a lie that you used to believe, and it's these four words, happy wife, happy life.

And you believed it for decades and you've written a whole book on it.

You took it apart and you've built a practice on helping other men get out from under that.

So I want to start right there.

Where did the belief come from for you?

Like, and how deep were you in it before you started to wonder whether it was even true?

Well, I was very deep in it.

Before I go there, I just want to state something really clearly here is I am 100% pro-marriage.

I'm 100% pro-woman.

I'm not here to bash anybody here, okay?

So that's the one thing that I want to share.

And I was so deep in this trap, and it actually, it took me, it was probably 27 years into my marriage for me to begin.

And I'm coming at this from a Christian perspective.

And so that even exacerbated the lie even more, right?

Just 'cause you said that the guys in my men's group said just love her more and do all that sort of stuff.

But what I discovered, I actually started a fast 'cause I was really seeking God to try to figure out what in the world, where did this come from in me?

And the strangest thing happened at the very beginning of the fast.

He took me back to this event that happened to me in high school with my very first girlfriend.

And it was she was absolutely utterly beautiful.

And the story in my head, and this tells you a little bit about my insecurity and my lack of worthiness at the time was like, what in the world is she doing with me?

We were making out on my parents couch down in the basement.

And I'm in the story in my head is what is she doing with me?

She could have any guy in the school.

And, and so it just kind of tells me tells you about where I was.

And so,

And I'm not proud of this, but this is my very first girlfriend, and I started to make a move to advance things a little bit further in the relationship, if you know what I mean.

And she stopped me.

And this is well before I knew Jesus or anything like that, but this is what happened.

And she stopped me and said, whoa, you're moving a little fast, aren't you?

And I said, oh, I'm so sorry.

And the next day, she called me up and broke up with me.

And so I'm reliving this in vivid color here probably 15 years ago.

And I'm watching and feeling that hurt in my heart and how I just felt this incredible rejection, this incredible, I felt like my life was over because I felt like all the cool guys had girlfriends.

I mean, so all this stuff and all my insecurity was coming out in all of us.

What was revealed to me is that's where I really hung onto this passivity and timidity.

And I had this timidity because I had this fear of rejection, particularly with women.

And so I never wanted to have that feeling again.

And so I did everything I could to avoid it.

And so I believed many more lies after that as a result of this, like you can't have conflict and love at the same time.

I mean, you can't, you certainly can't say, and by the way, by the way, another reason this happened is my childhood, my parents got divorced when I was 18 and I never once heard them argue, ever.

So I had this false narrative in my head that if there's an argument or a disagreement, then you're automatically done.

And so, and I was like, I believe that divorce shouldn't be mentioned just like you talk about in your amazing TED talk.

I was a believer in that, like nobody's business.

And however, that kept me in this paradigm that I needed to do the best I can to survive this.

And I thought I was practically breaking my arm, patting myself on the back because I thought I was the husband of the year because I was letting my wife do whatever she wanted to do.

And until God got a hold of me and showed me I was actually doing it for selfish reasons because I wanted to avoid pain.

and and didn't want to enter into any conflict.

And so I remained stuck in that place for decades before.

And once I kind of came to this realization and all of a sudden I started to to find healing and and I started to be able to confront in a loving manner to try to try to to recover God on remarriage.

Yeah.

So I don't think I don't think we consider

the small, what we think are insignificant things at the time, how much they're going to affect us later.

You're doing what a lot of teenage boys do, right or wrong, making out.

You say, okay, we're going to get a little bit more physical.

She breaks up with you probably as a result of that, because that's not what she was ready for.

And that had this effect on you that you didn't even realize until much later in life.

But when do you think that you finally realized that, that that was what was really causing this?

You know, it's really amazing how these little things in our life can have such a huge effect on us later.

And we don't even realize it.

So here you are as a teenage boy doing what a lot of teenage boys do.

You've got a girlfriend, you're making out.

You're wanting to get a little bit more physical.

She doesn't want to.

She breaks up with you probably because she feels, you know, that's not what I want to do, whatever the reason.

And then that one event.

causes a lot of turmoil for you, but you didn't even realize it.

So when did you realize that that event really had a lot to do with what you're dealing with in your marriage?

It was when I was on that fast and I was taken back, like literally feeling everything in that moment and the shame and the disappointment and all of that.

And then it was even a little bit later that I realized a lot of my upbringing as a child, um, that I, I, I was programmed to be a people pleaser because

My parents were great and they did the best they could, but the only time I really felt loved was when I performed.

So I became a good athlete.

I did well in school.

I did all these sort of things.

And so it was all about how other making other people feel good, which is just a trap, like nobody's business because I like the happy wife, happy life.

There's no possible way we can do anything to make them happy.

We don't have that sort of control.

Now we can be a jerk and I'm not

I'm not advocating for that.

But happiness is an inside job in the person.

It's like a friend of mine told me one time, Jim, if someone spits on you, does that make you mad?

I said, Yeah, it would.

He goes, No, it doesn't.

It just makes you wet.

It's your choice to become angry.

And the same thing is with this happiness, happy wife, happy life thing.

It's trying to control something that's not mine to control, which is a...

Leads you into all sorts of trouble.

Yeah, the mindset coach who's on our team in the Exiter Club, his name is Neo.

He's great.

Everybody should look him up.

Neo Felora.

But he talks about this idea of we have a need to be offended, a need to be offended, which is interesting because I would never have thought that.

But look at it from the political spectrum.

It's the easiest illustration.

All the Republicans have this need to be offended by the Democrats.

And the Democrats of us need to be offended by the Republicans.

It's a never ending cycle.

But that's a great example that illustrates it.

But we do that in our relationships, too.

I mean, think about when you're driving your car.

Somebody pulls out in front of you.

And you need to be offended.

You're mad at that person.

But how many times have you pulled out in front of somebody?

And you probably didn't even realize it.

There is no intent to cause harm.

So in a relationship like what you're talking about, Jim, with your wife, a lot of times, unfortunately, in an unhealthy relationship, the wife or the husband, but since we're husbands and we're talking about wives right now, we're going to use that illustration.

But a wife in an unhealthy relationship could have a need to be offended just like anybody else.

And everything they do just ****** them off.

They get mad.

They don't like it.

They don't think you're caring enough.

And a lot of that can cause a lot of turmoil in people like you and me because we believe happy wife, happy life.

So I'll do whatever the heck I got to do.

I'll step back and let them handle this.

I want them to be happy.

Do you remember the first time you heard happy wife, happy life?

And did it resonate with you?

Oh, it resonated with the, I probably heard it from when I was a kid.

And I just thought it was one of those natural laws that was like absolute truth, right?

And, but it took me, and even I felt like my church even like subscribed to that lie.

And

And they would, like even on Mother's Day, the Mother's Day services, as they should, we honored the mothers.

They talked about how wonderful they were and loving and all this sort of stuff.

And what do they do on Father's Day?

Fathers, you need to shape up.

You need to do this.

It's like the complete opposite.

And it's like this thing, like everything's the husband's fault and everything is, and I believe that.

And you know, and so much so,

This was so interesting.

One of the things that kind of really was a turning point for me was when God actually took me to the words of Jesus.

And someone said, what's the greatest commandment?

He said, the greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

And the second is just like it, love your neighbor as yourself.

And I really started thinking about that.

I'm saying, he's telling us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

To the extent we love ourselves, we can love others.

Well, I was not loving myself well at all because I was allowing very harmful things to happen.

And so by Jesus's definition, I couldn't even love her well, even though I was bending over backwards to try to do so.

So you're inside this thing for years.

You're telling yourself it's love, that you're your acquiescence to everything she wanted.

And if I'm overstating the case here, please correct me.

But my assumption is you're acquiescing for years.

You're letting her and you're kind of a doormat, you know, and you're telling yourself you're just you just need to try nice to be harder or try nice.

Can't talk.

Try harder and be nicer and give it one more time.

But there's

But there's always a point where the story you've been telling yourself breaks apart and it stops holding up.

So where the evidence gets too loud to keep explaining the way this cognitive dissonance we have between our experience and what we believe to be true.

So was there a moment in that marriage when everything you thought you knew turned out to be wrong?

And if so, what happened?

Well, it was right about that time that I had the revelation about where this all stemmed from.

And it was, the interesting thing is because I had an understanding of where this began.

So Jesus has a phrase, he says, The truth will set you free.

And if you look at the original language, it actually says that the reality will set you free.

And so it's like the reality, when I came to that reality, it's like, okay, now I can actually, I felt much more free to share what I need from her.

And so I did, and my heart was to restore our relationship and do all of that.

And so I did that.

And then fireworks just began like nobody's business for a good year.

And it was just brutal.

And so I was, I knew I was in the thick of it then.

And, and, and I had the truth revealed to me.

And so that was really, I had realized I was really believing this lie.

So when you realized that this was a lie,

It sounds to me like your first intent wasn't, well, I'm filing for divorces, I hate this woman.

Like that wasn't your response.

Like your response was, this is a lie, this isn't healthy, we need to make this better.

But how did you communicate that to her?

So I went to her as soon as I had this realization and I got on my knees before her and through tears, I asked for her forgiveness because I had not led her the way that God wanted me to lead.

And I had been passive and timid, and she forgave me.

And I said, Well, thank you.

And I plan to do better from this point forward.

However, we've been in counseling for a dozen years, and the counselor's been giving these words of input for you.

And I need to start seeing some progress here.

Just, it doesn't, I'm not asking for perfection.

I just want to see progress towards restoration here.

And so that we can rebuild this marriage the way that God wants it to be built.

And so that's the way that I approached it.

And that didn't go very well.

And so then that led us to where we actually had a mediator, got a mediator to get together to try to help us communicate.

And that went terrible.

And then we went to our pastor and his wife and sat with them and they gave some input to her.

And she just said, they don't know what they're talking about.

This is 100% your problem.

It's not mine.

And that was a year long process.

And it just pained me.

I didn't think divorce was an option for me, but God, and I don't know that we want to go down this path right now, but God took me down a path that opened my eyes to some things in the Bible that I had never seen before around this topic.

Well, and we might want to not today, but we might want to explore that on another show because, you know, I've got a website called don'tsaydivorce.com.

I did a TED talk on that particular comment because it's.

Amazing, by the way.

Well, thank you.

And I had 32 million people watch that clip, which blew up.

It was absolutely mind boggling to see that happen.

But I don't think that's that's the subject we want to get into today.

Maybe we could talk about it in another show.

But this lie

that happy wife, happy life led to a divorce.

In your case, probably not.

You're not the only guy.

And what's interesting about your case is that while I don't know you well, we've talked one other time we were introduced by mutual friend.

I get a sense that your heart, you're not a jerk.

You're not a guy that's a misogynist.

You're not the one that wants to go out there and be the iron fisted ruler of your home and a woman's got to be in her place.

That doesn't seem to me who you are.

It seems to me like

You believed it for a long time, became a doormat, which is the bad way to believe it.

You stepped up a little bit, said, hey, this is not true.

Let's work this out.

And it sounds to me like she rejected it.

Is that a fair clarification?

I mean, I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but yeah, that's a fair clarification.

Yeah.

And I want to be sensitive to that because I don't want to that's her issue.

And, you know, she needs to be able to speak for herself.

But it seems to me like that's what ended up happening.

Although I wasn't present, I don't know.

Well, look, we're going to take a quick break.

I want to come back.

We're going to dig into this a little bit more.

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Now, back to the show.

Okay, so Jim, so we get back in this.

I want to talk about the cost of this lie, you know, because this wasn't a year for you.

This was a decade, decades actually, decades of shrinking back, decades of keeping quiet, decades of being the nice guy who never rocked the boat.

You know, nobody pointed it out to you and nobody could see the cost because from the outside, the marriage looked fine and you look like the good guy.

So what do you now know that you wish somebody had told you 20 years ago?

And why do you think nobody did tell you that?

Well, one, because in our situation, and by the way, what happened to me, I see as an, I don't know if epidemic's the right word, but it is all over the place, especially in the church.

People come out of the woodwork.

Men come out of the woodwork to share.

I don't know why I'm sharing this with you, but they share about this very thing.

And I mean, it happens frequently.

And I forgot your question.

What's the question again?

Well, we're talking about.

Well, that's fair.

I mean, what do you now know that you wish somebody told you a long time ago and the cost of it?

And it's cost you a lot.

It has cost me a lot.

You know, when I went through my divorce, I was incredibly relieved for a couple of weeks and felt a little guilty about it.

And then all of a sudden I crashed hard.

And my doctor and my therapist who I was seeing said that I had adrenal fatigue because my adrenals were in the on position for 30 years of marriage, waiting for the next shoe to drop.

And so once they exit, that's why I felt so good for two weeks.

Well, my adrenals kind of got the drift that, wow, we don't have to be on anymore.

We're just gonna shut down.

And they did for two years.

And so I couldn't make it through a day without taking a couple naps.

I mean, I was probably depressed.

I was not in a good place at all, physically or emotionally.

Spiritually, I was in a great place.

And, um, but it was, it was a tough couple of years.

I just was not myself, um, was not in a good place.

I was really just struggling to make it through a day.

And, um, and so, and there's still ramifications of it today, um, in, in that I still have triggers from stuff from men.

And so, um, I didn't want anything to do with women.

And,

Another amazing story, if I'm not going to share it, is I met this woman from northern Minnesota, and we ended up getting married seven years ago.

So it was about three years after my divorce.

And she came out of a similar relationship as myself with the roles reversed.

And so early on, we both kind of triggered each other with stuff that happened to us.

in God's goodness that's been used to help bring healing to us.

And we look at each other now and say, we never could imagine that a relationship could be this amazing.

We never even knew it was possible.

But the cost was great, and I wish somebody would have told me what that cost would have been.

Yeah.

Why do you think they didn't tell you?

Well, I don't think many people know that or even know that this is even possible.

I think this is a surprise to many people.

I think they can't comprehend that there could be abuse in a marriage for a woman towards a man.

And matter of fact, I couldn't see it until I had a coach.

There was actually a couple who were my coach, who knew my wife also, and they were extremely helpful to me and my counselor.

In the same week, they both asked me, they said, you know, you're being abused, don't you?

And I'm going, no way.

I mean, I'm six feet eight.

Are you six eight.

I'm six eight, which, and actually the name of my business, my LLC, the umbrella is five feet 20, because that's how tall I tell people I am, five feet 20, which is six eight.

But I'm like, how in the world can a guy my size be abused by this woman that's this size?

It just didn't make any sense.

It didn't compute to me.

I felt,

felt like a sissy, you know, it just it just didn't feel manly at all.

Well, it's the irony of all this is that happy wife happy life turns you into a sissy.

You didn't want to feel like a sissy like but it was the irony is that's actually kind of what this is, isn't I mean, that's a word.

That's a word people don't tell us don't use sissy anymore.

But that's true.

That's what happened.

Well, that's that's the fear.

The fear of rejection was so strong that I want to do I was I

I was, I wanted to do anything I could to avoid rejection again.

And it so much so that it, you know, even it was kind of when I finally awoke in this, I finally said, well, you know what, I have a choice.

You know, I'm either going to die from a million paper cuts or I'm just going to get something lopped off.

I'm going to give it a shot to try to have a God honoring marriage here.

And that's, that's why I entered in and said, we need to do something different.

Yeah.

I have, I

I see from time to time on Instagram, I spent a fair amount of time on Instagram, probably more than I want to admit, just watching videos and consuming content.

That's really, if I know about anything popular going on news-wise, it's because somebody posted on Instagram.

Otherwise, I wouldn't know about it, 'cause I don't watch the news, I don't read the news.

But one of the things that I've been seeing

is a healthy, although tongue in cheek pushback against the happy wife, happy life concept.

Of course, your book is called The Happy Wife, Happy Life Deception, How to Stop Walking on Eggshells and Be the Man You Were Made to Be, published in 2019.

I think that I'm hearing people say, no, this is not true.

And it's happy spouse, happy house, you know, maybe is a better way to put it.

And that, of course, that's both directions.

Are you seeing a rise up against this happy wife, happy life deception, or what do you see in the public eye so far?

More so than before, certainly.

Not certainly, not to the standpoint that it's like mainstream, I don't think, but it's because this still catches people by surprise.

And many people still believe, many men that I know still talk about happy wife, happy life.

And I've even heard pastors mention it from the pulpit.

So it's really still pretty evident out there.

So when you hear somebody say that, what do you feel?

Like, honestly, what do you feel?

When somebody says that?

Well, if I'm able to speak into it, I will, because I can't not speak about it because I'm very, very passionate about it.

And I've had the privilege to help many men through this, you know, some who have had their marriages restored and some who've, you know, had their marriages fail.

And but at the end of the day, we can't control the outcomes of that.

We just need to do the best we can to be the best husbands we can.

And me being this passive, timid husband's not the best version of the husband that I could have been.

So you're sitting down with an engaged couple.

They're in their early twenties, mid twenties.

They're wanting to get married and you're counseling them.

What do you tell them about this concept?

Well, I think I'd probably ask a bunch of questions to just get a feel for where they both feel about this concept.

And because if you ask enough questions, I think it'd be pretty evident that, well, he's going to just capitulate to whatever she says and that sort of thing.

And so if so, I might say, would you be okay if I shared something that I learned the really hard way?

And then I'd go through and share, you know, I believe this lie and this is what it cost me.

Yeah.

And I appreciate your couching that in the appropriate perspective, but I'm asking you to go straight for the jugular.

What do you actually tell them?

What do you say?

Hey, don't believe this happy life, happy life, happy wife, happy life crap.

Do you couch it in a, hey, here's a better way to do this?

Or do you say, hey, this is a 50-50 relationship or this is a 100-00 relationship?

Like, what do you tell them?

Well, I think I would tell them that the lie, the happy wife, happy life can lead an unhealthy man into a place that's not going to be good for your marriage.

He's going to lead him into a place that he doesn't lead the way he's supposed to in his marriage because he feels that he has the definition of success as a happy wife.

And that can't be his definition of success because he has no control over your happiness.

You may think he does.

But, and I'm not telling you to be a jerk, husband, but I'm telling you that you need to be the man God called you to be and treat your wife the way that he tells you to treat her.

And then, and you, wife, do the same for your husband.

You know, respect your husband, the husband, love your wife, and, you know, et cetera.

And that's probably the way, I don't know if that answers the question better, but.

Yeah, well, I think especially in Christian circles, which you and I both spend a fair amount of time in, that is our area, right?

This happy wife, happy life thing gets pitched around a lot more than people give it credit for.

Maybe not in those four words, but the concept is there.

And it isn't, you know, you use the word eggshells in the subtitle of your book, but it's a concept

that we have to walk on eggshells around too, conceptually.

Because if you just step into the room at six foot eight, even, if you step into the room and say, all right, boys, this happy wife, happy wife, and you're in a church circle and you say, this is crap.

And let me explain why the women need to be listening to us.

Obviously, you wouldn't say it that way.

But if you communicate that, people are gonna be like, this dude is nuts.

He's like the old school wives submit to your husbands.

What is this guy talking about?

But the reality is in Scripture, and if we could go there just a little bit, especially for the listeners who are into this sort of thing, the Scripture says, wives submit to your husbands, and then husbands love your wives as Christ did the church.

And we could argue which one's harder to do.

I would say that loving as Christ loved the church is much harder than submission.

Submission is a decision.

Loving is a whole act of your will that you have to do.

There's a difference.

However, my point in bringing this up is

that not to either far before or after, I'd have to go look this up.

Paul actually says, submit to one another.

Like the submission is both for the man and the woman.

The submission is only for the woman.

As far as I know, there's no explicit instruction for the woman to love your husband in the way that we're as husbands told to love our wives.

And this happy wife, happy life speaks totally against all that.

Like that has nothing, there's no reality in those four words that can explain what it's like in scripture.

What do you think about that?

Well, I'm 100% in agreement.

That's all in Ephesians five.

And even the part about submitting to one another is right before he talks about wives submit to your husbands.

And then in there he also says, you know, husbands love your wives and wives respect your husbands.

And I think that is absolutely spot on.

But the whole thing about love your wives as Christ loved the church got twisted in my head, in my unhealthy head as being, well, Jesus died for his wife, so I need to let her do whatever she wants to me.

And so I believe Jesus came to save human beings.

He didn't come to save

the institution of marriage, but he cares deeply about the marriages.

But when there's abuse going on, I think his views, and again, I'm getting into where we don't want to get in right now, but I think he has different views about things in that regard.

And we can talk more about that.

I can dive into scripture about that too at some other time.

But yeah, but that was the trap that I fell into.

I felt that I was really

Loving her like Jesus loved the church at the time, but I wasn't.

And so to use the golden cage analogy that I use frequently in my writings and here in the podcast, you built a cage, the bars one by one that put you in it, locked you in it, that said, okay, I gotta do this for my wife, I gotta do this for my, and all these are separate bars that you've built.

And it was golden in the sense that it looked like it was working, it looked like you were doing the right thing.

But at some point you realize, I'm trapped.

This is not the way it's supposed to be.

And that's why I'm very glad that you're here on the show today to reveal that, to honestly and transparently discuss it.

I would be interested for those that are watching or listening to this, go to YouTube, leave a comment.

You agree with this.

You don't agree with this.

Where are you at?

And I think, Jim, it might be appropriate to schedule a follow up of this maybe in the next month or two, and we could dive into the divorce thing because

You know, there's a lot of people who would listen to this as a supposed Christian or whatever you call it.

And they would look at, you got divorced, you're like, okay, well, you have no legitimacy anymore.

I can't talk to you.

There's no way I can listen to you 'cause you did something unforgivable.

So, well, look, before we close.

By the way, let me just share something.

By the way, I would've been one of those guys prior to me going through this saying I can't listen to you anymore.

Just being honest with you.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, once you go through the thing you said you shunned, it kind of changes your perspective a little bit, doesn't it?

I mean, that applies to so many other things.

I mean, we could talk about all these, the pet sins that the church shuns.

And then once you realize, well, I'm doing it, or I don't mind doing it, and I could justify doing it, it's like, hmm.

It's not that bad, is it?

And for some of us, that's a negative place.

We go down the road the negative way, but there's a legitimate reason.

I don't think that we've got it all locked up.

I think there's so much more that we don't know.

Well, listen, before we close, I want to give you one minute, and I'm not going to interrupt you.

I want you to tell the whole world as directly and as passionately as you can this lie, the happy wife, happy life lie, and tell them about what it is.

why they've been believing it and what the truth actually is.

Go.

So happy wife, happy life is a lie.

And I discovered it was a lie because I realized that we do not have the power to make anyone happy.

That's their choice to be happy no matter what the circumstance.

If someone spits on you, it doesn't make you angry, it makes you wet.

It's your choice to become angry.

Same thing with happiness.

And I implore you, if you're in a marriage and you feel that it's your job to make your wife happy, I implore you to figure out where that is stemming from.

And I would bet just about everything I have that it has to do with the fear of rejection based on all the men that I've counseled and coached over the years.

And that fear of rejection can keep you stuck in a place which is not honoring to God, it's not honoring to your wife, and it's not loving toward your wife.

And it's a lie that you likely are believing.

And it's the most compassionate thing you can do for yourself and your wife is to come out of this and ask for forgiveness from her and tell her that you're going to start leading in the way that you know you're meant to lead, not with an iron fist, but in love, and do it with assertiveness and confidence in who God made you as a man.

And so I implore you to do that, and if you need help and you want to read about this,

actually arranged to for a time time period at jimlangebook.com.

J I M L A N G E book.com.

You can actually buy my book for a penny plus shipping the happy wife, happy life deception.

So I highly encourage you to do that.

And if you'd like to reach out, have any questions for me, you can do that at [email protected].

J I M L A N G E.net.

And I look forward to hearing from you.

Well, Jim, thank you.

And we're going to put that in the show notes.

So go to TheRealJasonDuncan.com/podcast and you can look at all the past shows that we've had.

You can read the show notes.

You can look at how to contact Jim and how to get a copy of that book.

How cool is that?

A penny plus shipping.

Not a bad deal.

So, Jim, thank you for being on the show.

Congratulations on making it through because...

You know, I've been married for 31 years to my best friend in the world.

And not that we've had roses the whole time.

There have been some sketchy moments, but I can't imagine that anguish that you have gone through with the divorce.

I know that was not an easy decision.

And I know, as you explained here on the show today, that it costs you a lot physically.

So congratulations on making through and congratulations on finding your

your new love.

And I wish you guys the best.

And let's get you booked back on.

Let's talk about divorce.

Let's get into the lie of that divorce is the unforgivable sin.

And talk a little bit about that, because I have some strong opinions about divorce, as you might imagine, you've listened to my TED talk.

But I think we'll probably agree more than we disagree on that.

So well, thank you.

Thank you for being here.

I guess I'll give you one final question here.

So if someone listening to this right now,

is really still inside that lie.

They're still believing it.

What's the one thing you want them to hear before this episode ends?

Not, I know you've said a lot, but like, is there one thing you want them to hear before we finish up?

One A and one B.

One A is stop engaging as you have been with your wife.

It's gonna seem totally counterintuitive, but if you pause before reacting and respond instead of react, that'll help you greatly.

And the other thing is don't be a lone ranger.

We as men think that lone rangers rock because they do figure it out all on their own, but that's another lie.

Gather some others around you who you can be open and honest with who are maybe further along with you and their journey and they're discerning and gives you an outlet to talk through some of this because without it, you're going to be in a world of hurt.

Thanks, Jim.

Thank you, Jason.

Well, that's a wrap on today's episode.

If today you saw a bar on your cage that you hadn't noticed before, take a second to send this episode to someone who needs to see theirs.

The gold is the lie.

As always, I'm your host, the real Jason Duncan, and Jesus is king.

We'll see you next time.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode.

Remember, we release new episodes every single Monday, so make sure you tune in.

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