• Recommended resource:
  • thenewsisgood.com

Ryan: Everything is emotive, everything is feelings, but we need to learn how to be a little bit more emotional and intelligent sometimes.

Selena: I trust you to discern if I’m being too emotional about a situation. Even in our marriage, you know, when it’s heated and things are kind of going everywhere, I can tell when I’m being emotional, like, more than I should.

Ryan: Arguing well is always better than arguing less. Truth of facts and feelings, they’re both important. But there’s a third element in here, and that’s just trust. You’re gonna have a hard time advancing, right? So if you have logos and you have pathos, you have truth and you have the feelings that go with it, but you don’t have trust, it doesn’t matter how true you are, it doesn’t matter how kind you’re being to me, I don’t trust you.

Facts equal truth. And that’s why facts matter, because truth actually does matter, and we want to get to the truth. We don’t want to live as if truth’s not real. Feelings are indicators, not dictators. If they indicate something, though, they don’t dictate the truth, but they indicate something about the truth.

[00:00:55]

Ryan: It may feel like we talk about arguing a lot on the Fierce Marriage podcast, and I think for good reason, because arguments are a large part of building a relationship, building my marriage with somebody. And arguments aren’t necessarily bad, but bad arguments are bad. And so we spend a lot of time talking about the different angles around how to communicate effectively, how to understand the goal of arguments, how to understand various tactics, and how to break free of the ruts that we find ourselves in when it comes to our communication life and the habits that we contend to form as couples who maybe disagree at times.

Selena: Yeah. I think men and women have their different pitfalls, and we both can grow in these, but first, we have to identify what those are and how they might play out in our marriage. So we will talk about that on the other side.

[00:01:52]

Ryan: Hello, friends, and welcome to the Fierce Marriage Podcast. My name is Ryan. This is my lovely wife, Selena.

If you are new here, our warmest welcome to you. Thank you for joining us on the audio or if you’re watching on YouTube. You know, that audience is growing. The cool kids are finding their way over to the YouTube channel, the Fierce Family. So welcome to the podcast.

It’s our joy to do this week in and week out and just talk about marriage, point you to Christ in it, talk about some of our failures, some of our successes, all with the idea of helping you walk out the implications of Scripture in every aspect of your marriage. So welcome.

To that end, we wouldn’t be here in large part if it weren’t for our fellows. We have what’s called the Fierce Fellowship. We are sitting here, if you can see it. If you haven’t checked it out and you’re listening to the podcast, go to the YouTube channel. We’re called the Fierce Family on YouTube. Go ahead and hit that subscribe button. I’m trying to grow that channel. At 20,000 subscribers right now. I think we’d like to be at like 2 million by the end of it-

Selena: Okay.

Ryan: I’m kidding.

Selena: A small jump there.

Ryan: But you can see the background. It is kind of been the same for a while, but on this way to my right of wherever, I don’t know how that is on your screen, but we are building it out for other kind of ventures we’re doing. Maybe even change up the set a little bit on the in the forge.

So thank you to our Fierce Fellows. If you would like to become a Fierce Fellow, Selena, how can they do that? How can they become part of the elite internet squad of marriage…?

Selena: Elite. Yes. We just ask you to pray about it and find agreement with your spouse and what that means. And so you can go to fiercemarriage.com/fellow. I forget. I feel like you changed it. Fiercemarriage.com/partner. There it is.

Ryan: You know, I don’t know how to tell you this, but it has been that way for literally seven years.

Selena: Fiercemarriage.com/partner. You are the marketing person, okay?

Ryan: I’m glad you pay attention all these times when I mentioned the partnership.

Selena: I do. It used to be not that. Patreon, didn’t it?

Ryan: Nope.

Selena: Okay.

Ryan: Anyway, Fiercemarriage.com/partner. We would be honored. Okay, so for this podcast, as we peruse the internet, we’re always thinking about, okay, what can be helpful? And I found this video that I thought was pretty funny.

It’s by a comedian that I’ve started kind of… he started popping up into my feed. I don’t know his worldview. His name is Zoltan, of all things. And he’s just kind of a normal guy. I think he does swear sometimes, but this clip doesn’t have any of that. But I found this clip funny.

And Selena’s never seen this before. So we’re going to watch it with you or you can listen to it and we’ll kind of review it. And that’ll be a jump-off point for the rest of our conversation.

[00:04:42]

I think the thing I love about my marriage the most is, like, we argue really well. Right in the heat of it, we’ll be like… And I’m like, this is healthy. We’ve both been to therapy, so we know how to argue. Like, I’ve learned that I have to acknowledge their feelings, which that’s a big one, you know? I used to just argue about the facts like an idiot.

That’s not what it’s about, all right? It’s about facts and how she feels about them. And like an idiot, I was there like, “I never said that,” you know? And my therapist helped me out. My therapist was like, “Have you ever just tried acknowledging her feelings?” I was like, “Why would I do that?” Not saying, like, why would I acknowledge her feelings ever, but in an argument. That’s not feelings time. That’s how my brain works. There’s facts time, then there’s feelings time. And I didn’t know that those two intermingled, you know?

Like, for me, feelings time is on the couch where I’m like, I love you, I love her a lot. And then argument time is, “I never said that. That’s not what I said.” But I can be honest with you, it works, it works. Like, I acknowledge her feelings, so I know how to argue. Like, she was like, “What you said,” and then I was like, “I’m so sorry I made you feel that way. That must feel horrible to feel that way. And I feel awful that I had any part in making you feel that way.” And she’s like, “Thank you.” And I’m like, “Huh, yeah, it works.” And then I was like, “But for the record, I never said that.” All I’ve really done is I’ve moved the apology from the back to the front. And then we can have the regular argument after the fact. But I’ve noticed that really helps.

[00:06:25]

Selena: Nice. Nice.

Ryan: Yeah. What do you think? What’s your take on that?

Selena: I think it’s true, and I think it illustrates exactly how, generally speaking, the male brain works. It’s very compartmentalized, right? He’s like, “I didn’t know the two intermingle.” And women are like, How could they not intermingle, right?

Ryan: You’re like, “Yeah, there’s facts. The facts are my feelings.”

Selena: Right.

Ryan: You know, one thing that struck me, we’re going to talk through this, and there’s actually three things at play here, although he kind of mentioned facts and feelings. But one thing that struck me in this watch-through for me is that he said we know how to argue because we’ve learned it. Like, we’ve gone to therapy.

Whatever your feelings on therapy are, I tend to think therapy needs to be relocated back into the church. I think the church has kind of abdicated that role because a lot of therapy is really soul care. We’re not just mental creatures. We have souls that have to be rooted in true things, not just mental reactions and responses.

But the point is they’ve received some training in how to communicate, and he’s responding because of that. So here, in one sense, we’re trying to give you a little bit of that training, or at least maybe this stuff is not rocket science. Maybe it is, but either way, it’ll give you something to think about next time you’re either arguing right now if you’re in an argument.

Selena: Yeah, I just feel like it’s helpful. Because when you’re in the argument, you’re not thinking clearly. Sometimes you’re just trying to angle to win, or sometimes you’re just, you know, all the feelings are blinding you from the facts or whatever. So I’m grateful for something funny like this that is disarming and telling the truth.

Ryan: Yeah, and he illustrated this. I feel like a lot of times the whole conversation is skewed toward guys are just emotionally stunted. They just need to open their eyes and see the whole situation. I don’t think that’s healthy.

Selena: No.

Ryan: Facts are not the whole thing. We’ll give you some really tangible ways to think about this in a minute. But also feelings are not the whole thing. If we were talking about this today, feelings are not reality. Sometimes our feelings align with reality.

Selena: And sometimes they’re indicators of something going on. They’re real. I think God created them as an indication, like a warning light to let you know that there’s something going on out of the ordinary. Or good, or great, you know?

Ryan: But we live by and large in a society that very much over-

Selena: Idolizes feelings.

Ryan: Yes, idolizes our feelings. Meaning that your truth is whatever your truth is because you feel it strongly enough. That’s what that means. You feel it strongly enough. I get this picture in my head of someone getting ready to jump off a cliff because they think they’ve got wings to fly, or that the cliff is the place they want to be, and all the friends are just like, “Yep, you go live your truth, buddy. You go live your truth.” And down they go to their death. That’s the society we live in.

Well, that’s not the Christian way. We walk in light. We walk in light of a truth. And that truth is Jesus Christ. He’s the way, the truth, and the life. And no one comes to the Father except through Him. There’s no other way. Funny thing is, we’ll use the word “logos” here. And He is the Word of God, the logos, which is truth, it’s fact, it’s data. Those sorts of things.

So the thing we want to emphasize here today is that there’s a balance to be had. There’s a balance to be had. And if we understand the balance between these three aspects we’re going to propose here, you’ll get better at arguing.

And here’s the thing. Arguing well is always better than arguing less. Right? So if you have to choose between arguing poorly and less-

Selena: I was like, “Okay.”

Ryan: If you have a choice between arguing poorly and doing so less, that’s worse than arguing often well.

Selena: Wow, yeah.

Ryan: Because you’re actually going to have a productive dialogue that’s going to advance your relationship, that’s going to increase the exchange of truth, the exchange of connection, the exchange of trust in a relationship.

Selena: And some of this, I think, takes some maturity on each of our parts.

Ryan: Absolutely.

Selena: Early in our marriage, I don’t think we argued very well. And then those types of arguments have gotten fewer and far between. Types of arguments, what do I mean by that? Just really heated, yelling, you know, I don’t know.

Ryan: Not backing down.

Selena: Not backing down, you know?

Ryan: Persisting.

Selena: Persisting. Not actually trying to reconcile, but just trying to block and throw the next punch or whatever. Not literally, but just conversationally. And so, again, it’s something that you have to work at. It’s something that you have to recognize that you’re not perfect at and that there’s ways to grow and there’s very tangible ways.

And the scripture is awesome. It is the top authority in instructing us on how to govern our feelings, how to govern our personalities, and how we interact with one another in terms of the relationship of our marriage.

Ryan: I’ll mention the scripture we mentioned I think last week or the week before, just very briefly, is that a soft anger turns away wrath. I feel like that is wisdom. Foolishness would kind of invoke more wrath, but wisdom replies with a soft answer. And that’s kind of what we’re getting at here. And so there’s a way, and I just want to draw this out, and then we’ll get into the pyramid. It’s like the Dunder Mifflin infinity pyramid of power.

But in arguments, there’s a way, and you mentioned kind of playing offense and defense, like blocking the offensive and then going on your own offensive. So being defensive and being offensive. Well, I think the change in perspective is realizing that we are not offending and defending each other, but we’re defending our marriage from the enemy, from our flesh, from the world, and we’re being on the offensive for how we’re taking back-

Selena: Together.

Ryan: …what is rightfully ours as a married couple. Together, yes, we’re not fighting against each other, but we’re fighting with each other. And so to that end, how do we argue well? How do we argue well? And I’ll say this. We recognize the importance of both, as the video showed us, truth of facts and feelings. They’re both important.

But there’s a third element in here, and that’s just trust. You’re building trust together. So picture a pyramid, a pyramid of power. But at the top of the pyramid, we have the logos. My classical Greek pronunciation, I can’t get it out. But people will say logos. Either one. It doesn’t really matter. But I say logos or logos. That’s truth.

You’ve got the pathos, which is going to be kind of the emotive aspects of the exchange, how it makes us feel. And the ethos is going to be the trust that’s being built or destroyed or contributing to that conversation.

And so if you think about those three things, if you’re in an exchange and you lack any one of those, you’re going to have a hard time advancing. So if you have logos and you have pathos, you have truth and you have the feelings that go with it, but you don’t have trust, it doesn’t matter how true you are. It doesn’t matter how kind you’re being to me. I don’t trust you.

Selena: If you don’t have trust, you’re always going to be questioning. There’s always going to be an undermine. There’s always going to be a distrust of like, you have some sort of agenda. There’s never going to be a 100% buy-in in terms of logos, yeah.

Ryan: If you have pathos, you have the feelings and the trust, but you don’t have truth, you’re headed for codependence and destruction. If you’re not operating in the truth, you’re going to come against hard reality. Or if you have truth and you have trust, but you don’t have any of the pathos, any of the rapport with one another where you’re actually building and experiencing the emotive things together, it’s just going to be dry and it’s not going to advance the unity of your relationship.

We’re going to talk through each one of these even more here. For the first one, you said facts aren’t everything. In other words, this is focusing on the pathos. How do we get there? How do we embrace this reality?

Selena: I think that we have to look at facts from the husband’s perspective and then the wife’s perspective. The comedian joked about how he just thinks in facts. Like, “This is true, so why would you question it?”

Ryan: “I didn’t say that” or “you said it in other ways.”

Selena: Right. He said it perfectly. “It’s not about the facts. It’s about how she feels about the facts.” I think that’s perfectly. Because women and wives wants to… we are created to feel… We are created to nurture, to acknowledge the facts, and let the facts reign true.

But when they come again without trust, without the truth… they’ve got to come with love. If you’re telling me the truth but you’re just… You know, we talked about this. Like you’re telling a Christian brother or sister, not a Christian, a non-believer, So you’re talking to a non-believer and you’re like, “You’re going to hell. You’re going to hell.” Clearly, I don’t have any care for their soul. I mean, I care a little bit-

Ryan: You can care all the world for their soul but they’re not going to hear it because you’re just spouting facts in the most brute way possible as opposed to coming alongside them emotively and saying, I’m concerned, I care for you, and lay it out and say salvation is real.

Selena: I feel like a piece of that is humility. How dare I just pound the facts into someone without acknowledging my own sin or my own shortcoming. You’re coming from a place of self-righteousness if you’re not engaging at this level of, okay, husband, I’m asking you to read between the lines a little bit. I need you to care about me a little bit more than you do the facts in this argument.

Ryan: I’m happy to say that it’s possible to learn these types of things as a husband. There’s two ruts you can fall into. You can say, Okay, now it’s all about the feelings. The feelings are running the show. I’m always catering to the feelings. We’re going to get into not doing that next. The other rut is feelings are irrelevant. God didn’t make us without feelings. He made us with them. They serve a function. They serve a purpose. We can’t act as if they’re not in play.

We need to learn, men, in general, learn to meet your wife where she is. That’s part of being the head of your household. You are the one that’s closing the gap always. You’re taking responsibility, closing the gap always. You’re coming to your wife, you’re coming to your children, you’re leading them where they’re at and leading and loving along the way as opposed to just shouting across the chasm. “You’re wrong. I didn’t say that. You’re wrong. Your facts are off.”

Selena: I’m learning this right now with our children.

Ryan: So you can learn to do that. One of the ways you do that is by reading between the lines. There’s a thing such as subtext. There’s a way to say things that says other things. That’s what the comedian was talking about. He says, “I never said that.” Maybe you didn’t utter those words-

Selena: Exactly.

Ryan: …but what’s being communicated is not strictly-

Selena: Those words.

Ryan: …your words. It has to do with your body language, your tone. It has to do with the timing. It has to do with the sense of the relationship and the situation that you’re in. Again, we’re not saying everything is emotive, everything is feelings, but we need to learn how to be a little bit more emotionally intelligent sometimes and not just…

Selena: I trust you to discern if I’m being too emotional about a situation. Even in our marriage, when it’s heated and things are going everywhere, I can tell when I’m being emotional more than I should.

Ryan: We’ll move on to the next one after this. Last night we had a conversation. I came home at a late night. It was a board meeting. It was a really stressful meeting. I got home about 9 o’clock. It was almost 10 actually.

Selena: Yeah, it was 10.

Ryan: You were still up and I was surprised. The kids had just gone to bed, which I was also surprised by that. You guys had a party apparently. You were wrapped around the axle. You were worried about something.

Selena: It doesn’t happen often.

Ryan: No. It was unusual. I was like, “What’s going on?” It’s not a trivial thing that you’re concerned about, but it’s also not like someone’s dying. I could have been like, “It’s fine, just get over it. It’ll be fine, you’re just overthinking it.”

Selena: “You’re tired, go to bed.” Which you did tell me, but in a much nicer way after.

Ryan: I remembered, sometimes she just wants me to give her a hug and say it’s going to be okay. I did do that and it seemed to really deescalate the thing.

Selena: Works wonders, husbands.

Ryan: Selena, you said this and I think it’s awesome. You said, feelings are not indicators. No, excuse me, you said, feelings are indicators, not dictators. They indicate something, though they don’t dictate the truth. But they indicate something about the truth. They’re an interpretational lens.

Okay, so the next main category. That’s pathos and then the logos. That’s the truth aspect, the facts aspect of an argument. And that’s just simply this. Feelings aren’t everything. So facts aren’t everything, but also feelings aren’t everything. In other words, facts do matter.

I don’t know many husbands who haven’t had some scenario similar to this where Selena had a dream at one point where it’s like I was, I don’t know, getting friendly with some other lady.

Selena: Some other lady in my dream.

Ryan: Some [luchi?].

Selena: Are you allowed to say that?

Ryan: Say what I want, it’s my podcast.

Selena: Okay.

Ryan: I never met her. Not in real life. Anyway, you woke up and you were frustrated with me. Now you knew in your head that that was not me. But your feelings were still there.

Selena: It was so real.

Ryan: And so what is that if not anything other than illustrating facts or feelings don’t make up the truth. Facts do matter. That didn’t actually happen. That was all in the dream, in your mind at night, in your subconscious. And let me reassure you that’s never going to happen. So another one would be like you mentioned the example of a mother-in-law or a relative or somebody where there’s drama.

Selena: Right. Maybe the woman, the mother did not sleep all night because there was a sick kid and they’re going to the in-laws or something the next day and all of a sudden, I’m like, “Husband, your mom is in sin. She is just coming after me and this is what’s happening.” It’s very real to you. Being tired can augment all the wrong things.

Ryan: And the reality is maybe she’s not irritating. Maybe you’re just hungry and tired.

Selena: Maybe she’s not sinning at all. She probably isn’t. It’s usually me or whatever that’s hungry and tired.

Ryan: So facts equal truth. And that’s why facts matter because truth actually does matter. And we want to get to the truth. We don’t want to live as if truth is not real. So in order to be heard truth must be encoded in a way that can aid interpretation.

So here’s what I mean by that. I mentioned shouting across the chasm. “I never said that!” As opposed to communicating in a way that’s actually going to be heard. So there’s some examples that might be helpful here.

Example number one. So you picture a wife who’s upset because her husband forgets their anniversary every year. The plain truth is you don’t care enough to remember important dates. So a wife could go to her husband and say, “You don’t love me enough to remember this important date.” Or “you don’t care enough.” Yeah, that’s pretty harsh. Or you could encode that true thing in a way that’s actually going to be heard. Say, “I feel really special when we celebrate our anniversary. Could we set a reminder together so it doesn’t happen like this again or it doesn’t slip by.” So as a husband I’d be like, “Oh no. I just forgot this really important thing. She feels special. Oops, I’m sorry. Let’s work through this.”

Now, sometimes you don’t have the wherewithal to tiptoe around it. We’re not advocating for walking on eggshells.

Selena: No. But there’s a way to say something where you can cover it in love and compassion and kindness and still speak the truth. The Bible directs us to speak the truth in love and to not just speak the truth.

Ryan: Scripture is so instructive.

Selena: It’s so instructive.

Ryan: Or if you keep going over budget. The plain truth as a husband, you go to your wife and say, “We’re running out of money because you spend too much.”

Selena: It’s really going to go over well.

Ryan: That’s true. Here’s an example I read. You could say, “I’ve noticed we’re both stretched thin lately. Maybe we could plan our spending together so we feel more in control.” Well, there comes a point where it’s like she just needs to know, stop spending money.

Selena: I get this: “Stop getting Amazon packages.”

Ryan: Oh man, the convenience is real. I’ll tell you what. The point is truth exists so they can be shared. Sometimes it needs to be encoded in a way that’s going to be interpreted correctly on the other side. Again, we’re not advocating for always pandering to volatile emotions or people who lack the ability to deal with truth. That’s a different issue. But in marriage, this can help sometimes avoid and de-escalate arguments.

Selena: Absolutely.

Ryan: The final one. What’s that?

Selena: Ethos. You could say ethos.

Ryan: Ethos.

Selena: Trust is irreplaceable. I 100% agree. I think you and I take for granted sometimes the trust that is between us. Trust allows you, I think, to fight faster. We’ve said this at the beginning, to fight better. More constructively, I guess, would be a better term. But it does take time. It takes practice. It takes patience.

Again, it’s practicing these conversations of, “Okay, here’s the truth I need to say. If I say it this way, he’s going to get upset. I know I’m going to hit a nerve. Is there another way, Lord, that I can say this that he will hear the truth, he will feel loved and respected and we can move forward in this argument or this conflict?”

Ryan: It just takes time. Trust is built over time. It’s built over shared interaction, shared experience, where you learn that each of you is trustworthy. Of course, your covenant is something to trust in as well. We both said I do and we both meant it. Ideally, you both knew what you were doing. You meant it when you did it. You intend to abide by the covenantal vows that you took. That’s all the basis for trust. That’s all the basis for trust.

Here’s the thing to remember. In arguments, even if you have truth, even if you focus on truth and feelings, facts and feelings, you need to also have trust in this exchange. You know that you’re both in it together. You know that you’re going for the same thing. It takes time. It takes practice. Trust takes patience. It takes tons of grace, tons of grace over long stretches of time.

You must persist. Even in the argument when you’re frustrated, when you feel like you’re not getting through, the Frederick said this stuff on the podcast, none of it works, you must persist. The worst thing you can do is to stop trying to rebuild trust.

Selena: Well, and that’s where feelings can’t reign. They don’t get to dictate.

Ryan: Because the Frederick do say things that work.

Selena: No.

Ryan: Facts.

Selena: Facts. That’s not what I’m saying. But I’m saying that you feel like you want to give up. You feel like nothing’s working. Well, your feelings are not valid. There are answers. There are ways to get through this. You may need to obviously look outside yourself. When we’re looking inside ourselves, that’s the first red flag and issue for not being able to resolve some of these conflicts or arguments that you may be having.

Ryan: Go back to the beginning. Remember the pyramid of conflict, of communication, of dealing with arguments. You have the logos or the truth, the pathos, which is going to be the connection, the emotive force of what you’re saying. Are you saying it in a way that’s loving and going to be heard?

Logos, pathos, and then the ethos, which is the trust that you built between you, the bond that you can lean back against in the middle of that argument. It’s almost like I’m thinking of an easel. You’ve got that one leg that swings out and the easel leans up against that. That can be the thing that you lean on as you figure out the other two things. It’s the trust that you built together.

Remember that next time you’re in an argument. Remember that sometimes just saying nothing goes a long way. Sometimes not bringing it up goes a long way. Sometimes just showing a little bit of grace without having to get credit for the grace goes a long, long way.

Selena: Being a little bit charitable, a little bit compassionate. Being kind. Is that part of the fruit of the Spirit?

Ryan: Yes.

Selena: Love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, gentleness. And love is patient.

Ryan: Faithfulness, self-control.

Selena: Right. These are all the fruits of the Spirit that we constantly… I know that I’m asking, Lord, grant me these fruits. May they grow on the tree of our marriage fervently. Because we need it.

Ryan: Amen. Speaking of grace, we do not have a worldview or a religion that is a religion of works. At least not our works. We do have our faith, our salvation is won by works, but not ours. We were bought and paid for by the works of Jesus Christ, who is in His grace chosen to impute or give to us His very righteousness instead of our sin. He’s taken our sin, paid the price, gave us His righteousness. Now He sees us as His own when we place our faith in Him.

If you don’t know who Jesus is, we want you to know Jesus because, as we said early on, He said this Himself. People will say, Hey, Jesus was a great prophet. He was a great teacher. He was one of many. One of the many ways to know God. And you know what? Jesus never said that. He actually said, “I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life.” Definite article. There’s no other way. He went even a step further and said, “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” In other words, you have no hope for salvation aside from Jesus Christ Himself.

If you don’t know Jesus, it’s of vital importance that you do. And I pray, we pray, that you place your faith in Him. So to that end, we say find a friend of yours. If you have one who’s a Christian, go talk to him. Find a church that preaches out of the Bible. If you don’t know where to find one, we have a website that gives you some more information about becoming a Christian and also gives you a church finder. It’s thenewsisgood.com because the Gospel is good news. It’s done. It’s not good advice. It’s good news. It’s reported. It’s done. All you need to do is read it, believe it, live accordingly. So we pray that you would do that. Alright. Good?

Selena: Mm-hmm.

Ryan: Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, thank You for the gift of communication in marriage. I pray that You would help us to communicate well, help the couples listening to this to argue well, to understand the value of both facts and feelings, but also to rest in the trust that they’re building and they have built in their marriage.

Lord, I pray for the couples that are struggling. They might be mourning or lamenting as they listen to this, that they might think, “We’re beyond hope.” But I pray that right now you would give them hope. You would infuse them with fresh life, and I pray that you would begin to work a miracle in their heart and the heart of their spouse. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: Amen. Very good. So I hope this podcast was helpful for you. Remember that pyramid, the pyramid of power. Behold the power of the pyramid. Maybe put an Office clip in there. I don’t know. Probably not. Copyright and whatnot.

Anyway, if you want to join the Fierce Forge or the Fierce Fellowship… again, I did it.

Selena: You did it.

Ryan: If you want to become a fellow, go to FierceMarriage.com slash?

Selena: Partner.

Ryan: Slash partner.

Selena: Hesitated.

Ryan: Yeah. I kind of did hesitate a little bit.

Selena: I did. I know. I know.

Ryan: We’re going to talk about that later.

Selena: I’m very aware of it. Fact.

Ryan: You’re going to get a grade. You’re going to get a grade on your performance today.

Selena: Fact.

Ryan: A+. Extra credit.

Selena: You’re lacking some feeling.

Ryan: Fiercemarriage.com/partner. We would be honored. Either way, it’s our joy to show up here and to help you in any way we can. So thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. This episode of the Fierce Marriage podcast is—

Selena: In they can.

Ryan: See you again in about seven days, Lord willing. So until next time.

Selena: See you. Stay fierce. I’m just off my game today. I’m off it.

Ryan: F.

Selena: Rude. Stay fierce, everyone.