Dr. Mike Frazier: 3 Principles to Build a Better Marriage
Mike Frazier was shocked when his wife told him she'd been a victim of sex trafficking. With God's help he found 3 tips to help his and others marriages.
Dr. Mike's Story
In this podcast Dr. Mike shares his story of coming to know God better when he felt so overwhelmed and broken. He shares:
How God helps us with mercy when times get too hard for us to proceed alone.
How God puts other people in our lives to help and support us.
How hard things can help us build our strength, faith and compassion.
How we take turns giving and receiving service, and that is okay.
Tips Shared For Building A Happy Marriage
Dr. Mike also talks about several things he has learned about marriage:
He busts the "happy wife, happy life" myth
He talks about the proper role of intimacy in marriage
How important it is for you to realize that you have value as a person, and that you are as valuable as your spouse and worth choosing as a partner.
What to do if you want to change but your spouse doesn't.
The 3 Principles Of A Strong Marriage
Get strong. This means to get strong spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and sexually.
Get attractive. This means developing interpersonal skills, learning to communicate, and turn conflict into connection.
Get an incredibly intimate marriage. This means learning to know each other at a deeper level.
One of my favorite quotes by Dr. Mike is this, "Marriage is a place where we practice the second great commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves."
Recommendations
You are Special by Max Lucado
Dr. Mike's podcast, "Strong Men, Strong Marriages"
You can find the transcript for this podcast episode here:
Mike 0:02
I remember sitting at our church and playing this hymn and just crying and realizing that God was with me. He wasn't going to forsake me. It was a powerful moment, I think, for me. I had to hit that much of a wall to finally realize, to understand that God was there for me.
Tamara Anderson 0:37
Welcome to Stories of Hope in Hard Times, the show that explores how people endure and even thrive in difficult times, all with God's help. I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson. Join me on a journey to find inspiring stories of hope and wisdom learned in life's hardest moments. My guest today graduated Magna Cum Laude in neuroscience from Brigham Young University, then attended UCLA Medical School and went through psychiatry residency training at UC Irvine. In 2016, he founded Strong Men Strong Marriages to help couples achieve the relationship they desire by working through issues such as infidelity, falling out of love, broken trust, poor communication, and many other conflicts. He has been married to his wife, Elizabeth, since 2005. Having experienced many of these issues firsthand, he spent years learning what it takes to build a great marriage. I'm pleased to present Dr. Mike Frazier. Mike, are you ready to share your story of hope?
Mike 1:48
I am ready. Thank you for the opportunity.
Tamara Anderson 1:53
Well, we always like to break the ice with something a little fun. So at Christmas time, your wife bought you guys matching shirts.
Mike 2:00
Yes.
Tamara Anderson 2:01
Why don't you tell me about that? Because that's really cute.
Mike 2:05
So this was a while back, but yeah. We got these two shirts that have Santa on them. They're blue. Yeah, that was fun. That was a fun thing to do. This Christmas, though, Elizabeth went all out. We were gonna be kind of alone on Christmas this year as a family, which is kind of sad, especially to her. So she decided we’d do a drive thru Christmas. So people came by our house, we made a meal, gathered some gift cards up, and it was busy but super cool. And it was a good opportunity for the kids to see and do something for some people who need it more than us. So it was nice.
Tamara Anderson 2:43
That is so fun. Oh my goodness, what a blessing to see that. You guys are at a point in your life and in your marriage where you can love and share and give to others around you. That's fantastic.
Mike 3:01
Yeah, it took a while to get there. But we're there now.
Tamara Anderson 3:05
Well, we're gonna dive into that, it took a while to get there. So why don't we go back into your marriage and why don't you walk us through the hard times and what it looked like and what it felt like for you and kind of that process of evolving to what it is today.
Mike 3:25
We got married pretty young. I was 21. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I had just come back from a mission for that church. So in the church, kind of your next step is to get married. So I was very much on the hunt, trying to find the right person to marry, the right girl to marry. We found each other. Our dating was intense. We saw each other every day after our first date, and just really hit it off, like really good chemistry. So it was fun. The dating was great, and early on in our marriage. Things were really good. We still had a lot of fun. As time went on, what I found out was her family who looked very normal, looked very prominent in even the church and community and those kinds of things, had actually been sex trafficking my wife for most of her life. I didn't know this going in. I didn't know that when I married her. I only found out right about when we were going to move out of Utah for medical school. So that was a big shock to me.
Tamara Anderson 5:01
I bet! Well, let me ask you, because I can't even imagine what was going through your mind. What were you thinking when she finally told you?
Mike 5:10
I had seen her struggling. I had seen her having bouts of depression or times when she felt like she didn't have any friends, like she was alone. I just kind of thought, “Well, what I did know going in?” And the story that she told me and her family told me was that she had been abused as a child, like that it had happened a long time ago. So I just kind of thought to myself, “Well, maybe that's just kind of catching up to her.” The other story I was told is that she had been sexually abused more recently, but by other people. I just kind of chalked it up to that and kept trying to support her, trying to be there. Didn't have any idea that it was her family that was involved in it. So yeah, I found out that right before we were about to move out. You asked me what I was thinking at the time. Part of me didn't want to believe it. Can this really be happening? But I trust her, I believed her. As I looked back, I started to see maybe things weren't quite as good as they seemed to be. Kind of more subtle things. It wasn’t like glaring things. So I think my response to stress, typically, is to go into a problem solving mode. I don't get super emotional right away.
Tamara Anderson 6:52
I think most guys do that.
Mike 6:58
Which is good. I think if we had both sort of fallen apart, it would not have been very good. I went more into problem solving mode, more kind of survival, just kind of shut down the emotional response. Like, what do we do? What's going to be our best next steps here? So we moved, which was great. We ended up writing a letter to them.
Tamara Anderson 7:25
To the sex trafficking group, right?
Mike 7:28
Yeah, to her family. It basically said that Elizabeth was having memories that some people in the family were unsafe, please don't contact us anymore. If you do, we'll reach out to authorities. That's the essence of what the letter said. From that point, they really didn't reach out much to us, which was good. We created that separation. Elizabeth was able to get into therapy and start going through a healing process. That took a while. It took a lot of years. It's still not all the way there. She has hard times, she has good times. Talking about like, the story of hope, or getting through hard things, the hard times, for me, were seeing her suffer and not feeling like I could really do much about it. It was also on my side. When she went into those bouts of depression, it was pretty much me that had the kids. We have five kids now. We had our first our first son like one year after we got married, and then next one a couple years after that. So we had, you know, 2, 3, 4 kids throughout all this. I'd say it'd be pretty much me that was taking care of them.
That was the other part. I did medical school residency on top of it. It was wild. Talking about trying to see God's hand in that, one of the big memories I have was Elizabeth was actually out of town to get specialized treatment for her trauma. So it was just me and our two boys. One of the big blessings through this was our church group really rallied around us. We moved to a place that really didn't make sense. We lived in Orange County, school was in Los Angeles so a long commute for me. But the people in our church group, it’s called a ward, were just so supportive and exactly what we needed. They really took us in like family, really watched out for Elizabeth while I was gone. When she left we had people that were watching our boys and it just such an incredible job. She was seeing that God put people in our lives that could support us in that and could help us through it.
But one specific memory that I had, that I know it was God's help to help me through it was, I was coming up on this anatomy exam, I had not studied as much as I would typically because of everything that was going on. I walked in and I was just like, “I’m just gonna do my best. I hope God helps me because I got I'm not ready for this.” This guy's expecting us to, like repeat the book, really. But I walked in, I reviewed everything that I had on that unit the hour before the test, freshen it up. But I went in and I scored like, like a 97 on the anatomy part and like 95 or something on the written part. I look back and I just say, “That wasn't me. 100% that wasn't me.” I know, God helped me through that or sent angels or something. He helped me pass that test and get through all of that. So on the academic side, and as I mentioned, just like having the people that were there and supporting us.
Tamara Anderson 11:49
How are you doing emotionally at this point? What you are going through, especially when you are doing medical school and taking care of the kids and your wife had to go to specialized treatment. Seriously, how are you doing emotionally? Because I can only imagine how I would be feeling, just like completely overwhelmed. I know you had people helping you.
Mike 12:12
It definitely was overwhelming. Definitely it was. I felt like a pretty capable person. I felt like I could accomplish most of the things that I wanted to in my life, up to that point, especially. But it was too much. I couldn't do it by myself, which was hard, but an important lesson. To me, it really drove me to get help from God, from the people around me, to accept help, to accept the idea that I needed help. I can remember during this time, too, there was a hymn from our church called “How Firm a Foundation.” It's based on a scripture in Isaiah that is just so powerful and was so helpful to me.
Tamara Anderson 13:12
Why don't you share some of that with us?
Mike 13:14
Yeah. So I think this one line was a good one: “In every condition - in sickness, in health, in poverty’s vale or abounding in wealth, at home or abroad, on the land or the sea - as thy days may demand so thy succor shall be.” I definitely felt that in that time, that my need was greater and what I received was, was greater because of that. This is probably one of the most powerful verses for me is, “Fear not, I am with thee; oh, be not dismayed, for I am thy God and will still give thee aid. I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.” Then the one after that: “When through the deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of sorrow shall not thee overflow For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless, and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.” Pretty much the whole thing. I mean, I can keep going.
Tamara Anderson 14:13
No, this is so beautiful. And I love that hymn so I find it so applicable that that is one of the things that just really resonated with you and reminded you that yes, you are going through deep waters, yes, it was so overwhelming, but God was there with you.
Mike 14:36
Absolutely. And even the last one where it says, “The soul that Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I cannot, desert to his foes; that soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no never, no never forsake!” I remember sitting at our church and playing this hymn and just crying and realizing that God was with me. He wasn't going to forsake me. It was a powerful moment. I see it, and I continue to see it as I do trust in God through it. He helps me through it either through strengthening me directly, or other means. You say, “How was I doing emotionally?” It was hard, I was sad, I felt overwhelmed. But I finished my school, I took care of the kids, I got all this stuff done. I had the strength that I needed to do it. Personally, I give credit to God for that. I think He's one that helped me get through it.
Tamara Anderson 15:45
Yeah. It's so good to know that on those days, or months, or years, perhaps, even when we're feeling completely overwhelmed that God is not going to forsake us. It does require a choice, it requires us choosing to turn to him in that time of despair and that time of trial.
Mike 16:10
I think, for me, I had to hit that much of a wall to finally realize, yeah, I need some help, and to understand that God was there for me. It’s been the hardest thing I've been through, but the best as far as building up my strength, my faith, and my compassion for people as they go through this. One thing that I have really discovered and believe strongly is we sort of take turns. We had many years where it was our turn to mainly be receiving service from people. We were struggling in every way, like, financially as a student, in Southern California, where it's expensive to live. Financially, we were definitely on the receiving end of people helping us, the church helping us, friends, family, and it's hard to be there in a way. But like I said, what I learned was, we just take turns, and it's fine. Sometimes you're gonna need to be on the receiving end of financial and emotional and spiritual support, then as you kind of get strengthened, it's going to be your turn to go out and provide financial or emotional or spiritual support. I feel like God does that for a reason, that sometimes we're up, and we can help, sometimes we're down and we receive help. And just being okay with that, knowing that that’s part of the process.
Tamara Anderson 18:09
I agree. And I've seen that same cycle. I call it the cycle of service. That's really what it is. It's a blessing to both receive the service and to be able to give it and I think those down times also help us, like you say, give it with more compassion.
Mike 18:29
Yes.
Tamara Anderson 18:30
So you know, having been at such a low point yourself, you're now able to help others in their own struggles. So let me ask you this, let's kind of segue into how you grew as a person and made the choice to start changing yourself. As I was kind of reading your story online, I noticed a pattern that you realize you kind of went from trying to just help her and change her that you had to make some changes as well.
Mike 19:05
So I think the way that I look at it, and the people that I follow in this would be like David Charge. Unfortunately, he passed away. There’s Jennifer Finlayson Fife, and other people that look at marriage as sort of a developmental process. So we start out kind of more independent, and then we become more independent and then more interdependent. Steven Covey kind of talks about that same progression. So early on, I think a lot of us, when we get married, we think that it's our job to meet our spouse's needs, it's their job to meet our needs. It's our job to make our spouse happy. It's their job to make us happy. It's sort of dependent situation. I think when we got married, I really had a big need to feel needed, which I was big time. And that fit. She sort of needed to be taken care of which was fine. So it was a fit, right. But eventually as she started healing, which is awesome, as you know, things started to improve as far as her ability to function and take care of herself and take care of the kids and even start a business later on. I started to realize that what I went into marriage believing was that idea, happy wife, happy life, like my main job as a husband is to make my wife happy. So it's an interesting thing happened with that.
So to me, there's a few different lies sort of tied up in that. The number one lie is that I'm actually responsible for her emotions. I remember listening to a podcast by Jodi Moore, who explained this idea that you're not responsible for your wife's emotions. I really felt like, at that moment, I was let out of jail. If she's happy, that's not always my fault. If she's sad, that’s not really my fault. It is amazing. When you're in that mindset, you're just like, “Whatever I do, it's just got to make my wife happy.” I remember even being in my closet, and I would try to choose clothes just based on what she was going to like. Which one is she gonna think is good? Which one is she gonna like about me? It's just not a very fun way to live, when you're so concerned all the time about what your wife's thinking and feeling about you. For a while, I went sort of the opposite direction. I was like, “Oh, I'm not responsible, fine. I don't care what she thinks. I'm gonna do whatever I want and not even pay attention to her.” This freaked her out, actually. She remembers this period, pretty well, where she just got this going the opposite direction. Before, I was like, “Oh, let me do everything that I can to take care of her.” Then I was like, “I'm not gonna do anything. Take care of yourself.”
But what I came to realize was those are two sides of the same coin. It's still being super dependent on her. I'm basically saying, “Well, forget you, I'll do what I want.” What I came to realize was, there's a higher way or a true way, which is really defining who I want to be as a husband, and a father and a man, and living according to that. Do I still do nice things for my wife? Yeah. But do I do them only to make her happy? No, I do them because I feel like that's what a good husband does. That's the kind of husband that I want to be. I’ll give the example of buying her flowers, so I would buy her flowers. Then I would just be like, “Is she gonna like them? Is she gonna put them in the vase? She hasn't put them in the vase, she probably doesn't care. I'm not gonna do this anymore.”
So I call that the termite call as being a mosquito. It's like, you do something nice but you're expecting something back like you're trying to suck it off like a mosquito. Suck off attention, appreciation, affection, sex. The classic example is doing the dishes, right? So a guy has come home, and we'll do the dishes, and then expect their wife to want to have sex with them that night as a kind of return of that. What I came to realize was, well, you can do it that way. Sometimes it might work. But eventually, your wife gets sick of it. She realizes there's that intention behind it, there's strings attached to the service. That's when it starts drying up. As the mosquito that's when you start getting upset. You're like, “Well, I'm doing all this. Now it's your turn to do something for me.” A lot of times they don't even say it, it's just kind of implied. What I really came to realize from that was it's really treating your wife like a prostitute in a way. Like you're kind of trying to purchase sex from her by doing these favors. I pay for the bills, you should do this to me, which, in my wife's situation, that's even going to be more heightened, her sense of, “I'm being used for sex.” I had to really clean that up in myself and realize, okay, do I want sex to be a part of our relationship? Yes. But do I want to have her feel like she owes it to me? Definitely not. Now, that's how I want that relationship to be. I kind of come back to the idea of “Happy wife, happy life.” The idea that I'm responsible for emotions, I'm not really, but I can still choose to serve her and then be a good husband, because I want to be that. Now, paradoxically, that is when she does appreciate me more, that's when she is more willing to be intimate, because she knows there are not those strings attached. It's when you don't need it, when you don't feel so needy for it, that's when you end up getting more of it, when you're not out looking for it, that's when you get it.
Tamara Anderson 26:16
So basically, what you're saying is that you need to be happy and comfortable with yourself where you are and not expect your spouse to be able to make you. You're almost saying it to yourself as well that she isn't going to make you happy, you choose to be happy by yourself and be confident. I'm confident myself, as a husband, as a man, she can be confident in herself as a woman. It almost boils down to you being able to be happy and confident in who you are. Then you're able to have a better relationship as a couple.
Mike 27:04
Absolutely. The steps I like to describe are, “Get strong, get attractive, get an incredibly intimate marriage.”
Tamara Anderson 27:16
I love, love, love that you've divided this into three awesome steps. We're going to take a quick break, but when we get back, we're gonna have Dr. Mike, tell us about these three steps: “Get strong, get attractive and get a strong, joyful and intimate marriage.”
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And we're back. I'm talking to Dr. Mike Frazier, the founder of the program, “Strong Men Strong Marriages.” And he and I have been talking a little bit about how his own personal experience in building this program because of the challenges his wife had from being sexually abused from the time she was very, very young. And you were just about to tell us about your three steps in this program. First, get strong, second, get attractive, and third, get a strong, joyful, and intimate marriage. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that Dr. Mike?
Mike 29:18
Getting strong, to me, there's elements of that. So spiritual strength is kind of what we're talking about here. To me, spiritual strength, at the core of it is self-worth, like your value as a person. Which people will tie that to different things. What a lot of us tie that to is relationships or accomplishments or how righteous we are or whatever. The problem with that is it's based on comparison. There's always going to be somebody with more. There's always gonna be somebody with less. You can say I'm better but you can also say I'm worse. So the book “You are Special” by Max Lucado, I think, does a really good job describing this principle, where if we're just always looking for a gold star or trying to avoid what he calls a gray dot, or a negative statement, we're just kind of trapped. If we can go to God and understand what God thinks about us, that we're special because He made us and He doesn't make mistakes, and really feeling that value within us. If there's a cup, and you're trying to fill that with worth, let’s say worth is water. You're trying to get that from other people. You're like, “Hey, can you dump some in. Hey, can you dump some in? I'll give you a little bit, but you need to give me more.” You're kind of stuck. Getting that from God's like putting it under the faucet, you just turn it on and it’s just coming and coming, it overflows, and then you can go give that to whoever. Even if it's not God. If you don't believe in God, but something that is infinite. As a human being you have worth as a perfectly evolved human, is a way I've heard it said. Like there's a Buddha within all of us, whatever it is, if you can tie it to something that's infinite, it's just gonna be so much better than trying to get it from other people. I know for me, it's in and out. Sometimes I feel that more and sometimes not as much, but I try to make it a daily practice, like I do make a daily practice to just sit and try to remember and feel that worth every morning. So I can go out and, and serve others and not feel like it's draining me.
Tamara Anderson 31:43
How do you do that? How do you tap into your source? What are some of the things you do?
Mike 31:51
Yeah, so my personal practice. So I get up, I take a cold shower, come down, and kneel down and say a prayer. It's sort of like a set prayer in a way. That is just kind of like a visualization of the type of person that I want to be. It starts off with just, “Help me feel your love. Help me feel valued and kind of bring my mind back to times when I have felt that.” I just kind of wait until I feel that. For me, it feels like a warm sensation. I'd call it like tingling, kind of fills my body, starts in my heart. I wait until I start feeling that I can least remember that. Then I kind of go on to the rest of what kind of husband I want to be and father and marriage coach and in church and all that.
Tamara Anderson 32:53
You use a lot of visualization in your…
Mike 32:57
Yes. Yeah. The way I teach my guys is to use as many senses as you can. So sight, touch, taste, smell, sound, try to picture all of that. Because that'll help you get there a little bit more. That's how I do it. Helps a lot to just kind of start your day there. The way I put it is like setting your destination. Then at the end of the day, you check in and you say, “Okay, how did I do? Did I live up to that? Where did I mess up?” I find myself, when I do that in the evenings, a lot of times going to apologize to somebody.
Either my wife or my kids. That's how you make those little corrections. Like Stephen Covey says something like, “Planes are actually off course most of the time when it's going from one place to the other. But it's just those little corrections each day.” So the morning visualization kind of sets the destination. The evening just kind of lets you make those little course corrections.
Tamara Anderson 34:06
Wow. I love that. And this is part of principle one that you teach, which is getting stronger. And spiritually, this is how you do it, is first connecting with God, being able to feel your internal worth.
Mike 34:20
Yes. So then you're not trying to get it from everybody else. What I call being a mosquito, trying to get your word from everybody else. Then you set a clear mission of what you want in your life. That's also what I consider spiritual strength. It doesn't have to be tied to God. But I think that's the best way.
Then there's mental strength, which is being able to really choose your thoughts. Emotional strength, being able to feel your emotions, deal with them appropriately, lose your temper.
Tamara Anderson 34:54
Now are these things you coach people through?
Mike 34:58
Yeah. Then sexual strength, which kind of ties into the other ones too. But really figuring out how do I want to use my sexuality in the world? That's part of my being, that's part of what God gave me. How am I going to use that? How do I want to use that? I've helped guys with pornography problems too. This helps a lot, right? Instead of saying, like, “Oh, don't look porn, don't do porn,” it's like, no, how do I want to use my sexuality? For me, what I say is I want to use my sexuality to connect deeply with and have fun with my wife. That's my destination. That's what I want. Is pornography going to bring me closer to that or not? I can choose it. I can close this and look at pornography right now if I want it, but is that going to help me get where I want? It's not. That just makes it more clear why you're choosing what you're choosing, or why you're not choosing what you're not choosing.
Tamara Anderson 35:58
Basically, you're teaching people to make choices based on the end result that they want.
Mike 36:04
Yeah, and being and trying to find that based on a place of integrity, and something that's more internal. If you're a spiritual person, that comes God, comes from the spirit. I think that's what we're trying to go for in our church right now is more of that personal revelation and living in integrity with what feels correct to us that’s still within the bounds. God's not going to tell you, “Oh, it's good to go have a bunch of affairs.” That's not going to be actually integrity. It's going to be what feels right. What feels true and feels in alignment with your conscience. That's what I call building strength or getting strong.
The next part is getting attractive, which is really building up your interpersonal skills. So that's about communication, being really good at being able to both understand and be understood. Being able to work through conflicts, turn conflicts into more connection, because they really can. In fact, it has to happen. If you're not having any conflict in your marriage, there's probably not a lot of passion. There's gonna be good times. Every time there's a conflict, that's an opportunity to increase your connection, to increase your intimacy. That's how I try to teach myself and the guys I work with to look at it.
Step three is getting an incredibly intimate marriage, which is when you find these points of really knowing each other, being known deeply. Even saying things to your spouse that they won't necessarily like, but that are true to you, and important to you that might stir up some conflict, but you kind of know how to deal with that now. Then the sexuality part, approaching that as a way to really know each other at a deep level, versus just having an orgasm or make you feel good about yourself, because your wife saw you in that way. But actually make it about I see you, I want you, I want to connect with you in this way, I want this to be a part of our relationship. That's attractive to your wife, that feels good, that creates connection. So that's kind of the big outline of what I what I do with guys and what I work on myself all the time too.
Tamara Anderson 38:43
That was really cool. As you were talking about it, I was kind of picturing like a bullseye, how the first principle is really you just working on that first thing, which is you’ve got to fix yourself first. That second step of get attractive is all about communication. So expanding that out to helping and relating and being able to talk to people in ways that are appropriate and correct. Then step three is almost a joint effort. I don't know. Is that a good way of describing it?
Mike 39:15
Oh, for sure. Yeah like dependent, independent, interdependent? Yeah. So like yourself, others and then working together with others, like cooperation.
Tamara Anderson 39:29
so cool. I've never thought about it like that before. But that's a really good pattern. Oh, my goodness. How did you come upon this? I know you got your degree in psychology and you're also a doctor. Are these just things that you that you figured out as you were studying? How did you develop this?
Mike 39:56
Some of both. A lot of books kind of shaped my thinking, my training, and throughout my psychiatry and psychology. I trained in psychiatry, but also a lot of did a lot of therapy within that. So I learned a lot of really good tools, and did some training and marriage counseling as a resident. Then coaching tools from Jody Moore and Brooke Castillo, and those folks. So it's been like a lot of things. The main thing was just looking at my own life and marriage and wondering what did I need to apply here? What really created the breakthroughs for me? Is there some pattern in it that I can pull out here that will be useful? That helped me a ton. Then I just went out shared it with with other guys. They had really good results, too. I work with men and and with couples that are going through this, anywhere from affairs where it's in big trouble versus more like ours where it was okay. It was good, but you wanted it to go to that next level. There's all that underlying stuff that you don't think about. The mosquito stuff, the self worth stuff, that's not as evident, you have to kind of dig a little bit. An affair, it's clear. That happened, it's time to do some stuff to deal with that. But the same principles apply. With infidelity, it's about rebuilding trust. The way you do that is by becoming a trustworthy person, which is really spiritual strength. Being a man of your word.
Tamara Anderson 41:55
So let me ask you this. I'm sure there are people out there listening right now who are thinking and hearing your story and relating to it, what would you say to them, as far as to give them hope, or to give them some tips that they can just start on today?
Mike 42:14
Let's just say you're in a marriage where you just don't feel like there's the connection that you would like there to be. I think what I'd look at very first is really digging into that idea of, how am I trying to get my sense of worth from my spouse in some way? The way you'll know is if you're saying stuff like, “Oh, my wife, doesn’t appreciate me, or my husband doesn't appreciate me.” Or, like, “If they would just have sex with me more often than I'd be happy.” Or, “If they would just notice, they just make dinner more,” or whatever, right? If you're like, “If this happened, then I would be happy,” you're off course. Because you're giving your spouse all of the power over your emotional life. Which is awful, in a lot of ways. It's awful, because now you have no control over your emotional life, because your spouse is in charge of it. It's awful, because they have a responsibility that they don't want and never sign up for. But the worst part is, there's nothing you can do about it, except try to change your spouse, which doesn't work. If you find yourself saying that, “Oh, if she would just this, and I'd be happier, if you adjust this, then I'd be happy,” think, wait a second. I don't want to give them that much power. Like I want to be able to find joy in my own life. This is the part of creating intimacy, as well as realizing that you are just as valuable as your spouse. That you can make requests, and say, “Hey, I'd like this, I'd like you to do this.” But then not being like, “If you don't, then you hate me. If you don't, then I'm gonna be feeling awful.” So it's a balance, but what it comes down to is understanding you have value, understanding your spouse has value, and then trying to find things that work for both of you. You want your marriage to feel like you're both winning, not like you're losing and your spouse is winning or you're winning and they're losing,
Tamara Anderson 44:38
That's really cool. Wow, this has been so this has been really fun to talk because I guess I've never really paused to think about things in quite the way you phrased them. It's been really, really fun. Let me ask you this, what about people who have a spouse who's unwilling to change, like they're willing to get into therapy and their spouse is not?
Mike 45:04
That's most of the guys I work with. I have some of those, too. That doesn't typically work very well.
Tamara Anderson 45:16
I'm sure it doesn't.
Mimke 45:20
Yeah. So what I'd say again, is this is the same thing popping up, right? Where you're saying, “Oh, if my spouse will just change then I'd be happy.” Or, “If my spouse would go to therapy with me, then we could kind of put things together.” So what I what I would say to that is this: You can be happy. You have that option. What you will end up needing to decide at some point, is, is this marriage going to be what I choose to be? Is this the person I'm going to choose to be with? Or is it not? And you need to build up your own strength and attractiveness. Same idea for women. You want to build up that strength and know you're a good choice, you're worth choosing. So what a lot of guys struggle with is really feeling like they're worth choosing and a good choice, and that it's worth it. They are worth making requests in their marriage, that they are worth saying, “Hey, I don't like this, I want this better.” And being willing, at some point to say, “Yeah, if things don't improve, I am willing to leave at this point.” Because if you're never willing to leave, and you're just gonna try to control your spouse all the time, you're stuck. Because you can't change your spouse. There's things you can do that will influence that. That's what we talk about, is you becoming more attractive, you making requests, you setting boundaries.
That's kind of the part of intimacy we didn't get to. So I'm glad you brought this up. Making requests, saying, “I'd like you to do this,” or, “I'd like you to stop doing this,” behind that is also a boundary. If you continue doing this, I will do this. If you refuse to do this, then I will do this boundary. People always think this is like telling your spouse what to do. It's not. What it is, is you being clear on what your action will be. If something happens or doesn't, and then following through with it. Yes. So that's it. That's what a lot of people have a hard time with. It takes a lot of thought and prayer. You’ve got to be super clear on what are those, what I call, deal breakers? What are the deal breakers in the marriage? It's super hard to come to your spouse and say, “Hey, this has been going on a long time. If it continues, I'm going to file for a divorce. I want to go to therapy to help prevent that, because I choose you, I want to be with you. But if you won't do this, I can't stay in this marriage.” That's incredibly difficult. But if it's to that point, that's what's in your control is what you will do. What's not in your control is what your spouse will do. You make the request, and then you set the boundary. Here's what I'd like. If that doesn't happen, here's what I will do.
Tamara Anderson 48:36
It's almost standing up for your own self worth.
Mike 48:38
Exactly. Yeah.
Tamara Anderson 48:40
It's protecting that first bullseye point, when we were talking about how I was defining it as concentric circles.
Mike 48:49
Yeah.
Tamara Anderson 48:50
It’s knowing I have worth. And if you're not gonna value me as a person, if you're gonna keep having affairs or whatever it is, then I value myself enough that I'm going to step away.
Mike 49:07
The only thing I would caution in that is sometimes people take that approach much too far. They're kind of like, “Oh, I value me. So if you don't tell me I'm great every day and have sex with me more than I'm leaving.” That's part of that same problem. It's subtle. But it's actually still trying to get your worth from your spouse.
Tamara Anderson 49:36
I can see that. I can totally see that. It's a fine line to walk, isn't it?
Mike 49:41
What I really believe strongly is that marriage is the place where you practice the second great commandment, which is, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love your spouse equally to yourself. So that's why I consider as your equal, no more than yourself, not less than yourself, equal to yourself. It's a balance, you got to find it. But that's really the tool there is being able to make a request. Because a lot of times, people will do this, and they will have never even made a clear request of their spouse. Fine, you don’t appreciate me. I’m leaving. But they've never said, “Hey, I'd really like it, if you would just say thank you on the days that I make meals, that would mean a lot to me.” And then their spouse, “Oh, yeah, cool,” probably is how they'd respond.
Tamara Anderson 50:33
You would hope.
Mike 50:36
And they may say no. That's where it gets a little more gray, is in these areas where there's just been kind of like a lot of neglect, or a lot of not responding to a person's requests for a long time. It's more gray than saying, “If you have another fair, I'll leave. That's pretty clear. If you keep screaming at me, you keep hitting me, I'm gonna leave. That's pretty clear. But if it's like, “Hey, I've asked you a lot of times to make sex an important part of our marriage, and you just haven’t,” or, “I've asked you a lot of times to…” I'm careful about the appreciation one, just because if you're so needy for someone to always say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” to me that says, you probably need to work on appreciating what you're doing yourself more. Because you may find someone that's gonna say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” all the time, but probably what will happen is you'll start to doubt it. You’ll want something else, because you haven't built up that appreciation of yourself in what you're doing enough. So coming back to Brooke Castillo, and things she says that I really like is you can leave your marriage, but you want to be happy first. I think that's a really good principle.
Tamara Anderson 51:58
That is deep. That's really good. I love how you phrased it, how marriage is applying that second great commandment, because “as yourself,” that means you have to love yourself in order to love another person. So you really have to have that foundation and that self-worth if you're going to show true love to someone else. Because if you can't truly love yourself, it's going to be hard for you to love somebody else. So you start with you, and you can control you.
Mike 52:29
It steps up over time. As you increase your love for yourself, you increase your love for others. As you start accepting more of the negative in yourself, you can accept that more than others. It's a great process. What Jennifer Finlayson Fife says is that marriage is a divine institution, because it does force us to grow. If you will take that opportunity, it makes you grow up, it makes you look at and find those areas where you have not developed yourself in those areas, you know, spiritual, mental, emotional, sexual. What David Church calls it is a people growing machine. It's helped people grow forever. So and I believe that very strongly. I think you're attracted to people that will help you grow in the right ways.
Tamara Anderson 53:25
That's true. So let me ask you this. I'm sure there's gonna be people out there who are listening to you. And they're like, “How do I connect to Dr. Mike?” Seriously? How do I connect, I want to talk to him, I want to see what he's got going on. Maybe I need some counseling for myself or my spouse. How do they find out more about you? How do they connect with you?
Mike 53:46
Thanks for asking. So I have a podcast as well. It's called “Strong Men, Strong Marriages.” So you can listen on that. If you do start listening, I would recommend starting from the very beginning, like the first about four episodes will give you sort of an intro. From there, you can kind of pick and choose. The first four are kind of designed to give you a sort of a jumping off point. My website is also strongmenstrongmarriages.com. That's where you can find out about my program, which is called “The Strong Man System.” So you come in there, you're gonna go through what we just talked about, building strength, becoming attractive, creating more intimacy. If you are looking for some one on one coaching, you can send me an email. My email is on there. I have some availability for that. And those are kind of the main places to find me.
Tamara Anderson 54:48
That is awesome. So final bit of hope that you can offer people, coming from a point in your life when your marriage was not doing so great to where you are now. What would you say to people to give them hope?
Mike 55:03
What I'd say is there is light at the end of this. If you will use this as an opportunity to build up that strength to come closer to God, if you believe in God, this can be, and it actually will be one of the best things that can happen to you. If you choose to say, “I'm going to use this time to really deepen my relationship with God, to look at how He can help me to rely on Him.” There's the scripture that says, “He's gonna be on your right hand and on your left as angels are around about you to bear you up.” If you look for that, you'll see it. That will really increase your faith and be one of the best experiences of your life.
Tamara Anderson 56:04
Wow. Thank you, Dr. Mike Frazier, this has been such an honor to have you come on and share not only your story, but the process that you've seen work not only in your life, but in the lives of others. That healing is possible. That connection, no matter the relationship, is possible when people apply principles, correct principles, to their life and to their marriage.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's show. I know that there are many of you out there that are going through a hard time and I hope you found things that have been useful today, as you listen to the podcast. If you would like to access the show notes from today's podcast, visit my website. That is storiesofhopepodcast.com. That is where you'll find favorite quotes from today's episode and shareable memes. Those are fun because you can share them with your friends on social media. You will also find the links mentioned throughout today's episode, so you don't have to remember what those were, along with all the tips that were shared. Sometimes tips are shared so much throughout an episode you forget and wonder, “What were those great things?” So go to the show notes, storiesofhopepodcast.com, to look up these fantastic resources. You know, if someone kept coming to mind during today's episode, perhaps that means that you should share this with them. Maybe there was a story shared or a tip that they really, really need to hear. So go ahead and share this episode with them. May God bless you, especially if you are struggling, with hope to carry on and with the strength to keep going when things get tough. Remember to walk with Christ and He will help bear that burden. Above all else, remember God loves you.