*DISCLAIMER* This episode contains adult themes and is not intended for little ears.
96. Understanding and Delighting in Our Differences with Bill & Pam Farrel
**Transcription Below**
Ephesians 5:21 (NIV) “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ."
Bill and Pam Farrel are relationship experts, international speakers, and Directors of Love-Wise. They have been married and in ministry for 39 years. Bill has experience as Youth Pastor, followed by 15 years as a Lead Pastor; then was Pastor of Small Groups for Dr David Jeremiah at Shadow Mountain church. Pam served alongside Bill in youth work then served as Director of Women’s Ministry during Bill’s years as a Pastor; They have written 50+books including best-selling Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti , Red Hot Monogamy and their 10 Best Decisions series (for couples, singles, parents, grads, leaders, men and women). Their books have been translated into 15+ languages. They have spoken for a wide variety of groups: overseas for missions, the military and government sponsored events (including keynoting at National Marriage convention sponsored by government of Singapore); In the USA and Canada for churches, conference centers, community groups as well as the military and businesses. Their wit and wisdom make them popular speakers and podcast, radio and TV guests (Moody network, Family Life Today, Focus on the Family, Dr. Dobson’s Family Talk radio, A Better Us TV and most TV networks). The Farrel's also enjoy helping people with their most vital relationships online in the Living Love-Wise Community. Recently, the Farrel's moved near Bill’s 90 year-old parents to help with their care. The Farrel's enjoy time with their grown children, their spouses and young grandchildren, and when they are not working in ministry, or with family, you may find them walking the beach, biking, or kayaking from their down-sized home on a live aboard boat docked in Southern California. www.Love-Wise.com
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Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
**Transcription**
Laura Dugger: Hey everyone! I want to interrupt our normal rhythm to acknowledge what's going on in our world right now. I'm actually recording this on Thursday, so the circumstances with the coronavirus will likely be different by the time this episode reaches you on Monday.
Regardless, there are some timeless truths I want to both say and pray over you right now. Some people may be wondering why. During a time that seems justifiable to produce high levels of fear, why are some people able to experience inner peace? Even when this situation looks bleak and scary and unknown, how do some people still have a sincere inner joy? There are many sentences from the Bible that God uses to address this. I want to read just a few of them to you now.
First, in Isaiah 26:3, it says, "You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you." [00:01:01] And then in 1 Peter 1:8, Peter gives us a word of encouragement about Jesus when he says, "Though you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy."
If you desire this perfect peace and this inexpressible joy now and forever, cry out to God. Wherever you're listening to this right now, just call on His name, He will answer you. The Bible says in Jeremiah 29:13, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."
We'll get to our episode soon, and we plan to continue releasing content as a form of normalcy for you to enjoy no matter what your situation looks like today. But before we hear this episode, will you just join me in prayer? God, we call on Your name right now. [00:02:00] I don't know where this is landing today and what all of the situations are. Some of us are listening and are gripped with fear. Some of us are ill, and still others of us may be frustrated with this entire situation. Wherever we are, Lord, will You meet each one of us right there?
Right now, God, I pray you provide Your perfect peace that transcends all understanding. We know You offer peace that's different from the peace the world offers, and we just want to declare that we are placing our hope and faith and trust in You. Please guide us with our next right step and be our comfort. We need You every moment. Thank you for allowing us to approach You wherever we are. You are such a good God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
[00:02:52] <music>
Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:03:10] <music>
Laura Dugger: Today's message is not intended for little ears. We'll be discussing some adult themes, and I want you to be aware before you listen to this message.
I am thrilled to introduce you to our sponsor, Winshape Marriage. Their weekend retreats will strengthen your marriage, and you will enjoy this gorgeous setting, delicious food, and quality time with your spouse. To find out more, visit them online at winshapemarriage.org. That's winshapemarriage.org. Thanks for your sponsorship.
Bill and Pam Farrell are ministry leaders and authors of numerous books. Together we're going to discuss so many topics related to marriage, including communication, intimacy, conflict, and how we recharge in different ways. This is incredibly helpful for anyone who wants to understand their spouse or significant other better. [00:04:14]
Here's our chat.
Welcome to the Savvy Sauce, Bill and Pam.
Pam Farrel: Hey, so great to be here. I love listening to you.
Bill Farrel: I have never been on a show called Savvy Sauce before, so looking forward to it.
Laura Dugger: That's awesome. Well, you just start us off by taking us back all the way to your childhood and share how both of you discovered Jesus to be your Savior and writing to be one of your passions.
Pam Farrel: I'll go first. So if you look at my life, I was born into a very chaotic, kind of crazy home. I'm the firstborn daughter of an alcoholic dad that had severe rage issues. Like, I always thought that our family would make the headlines, but not for a good reason. More like, Man shoots family, then shoots himself. A lot of domestic violence in our home.
My mom had a best friend named Kathy. [00:05:14] And that best friend lived Jesus in front of my mom and loved my mom with Jesus' power. So my mom got curious. She's like, "What do you have, Kathy, in your life that makes you so happy and you and your husband have a strong marriage? I love your kids and you're just so loving and giving. What is it?"
Kathy was... she was kind of shy. So she just kind of said, "Hey, Afton, why don't you and the kids just come to church with me and you'll see." And so in a little teeny tiny town in Oregon, in a little teeny tiny church, my mom walked us in. I was the oldest. I was about six or seven at that point. And I was holding hands with my little siblings. We walked in and met such loving people that welcomed us and taught us about Jesus. I saw love. [00:06:14] I saw what love looked like for the first time. And I just knew I want to know the author of love, Jesus.
So the pastor came into our class and he's like, well, we're going to have this quiz team. In a town of like 100 people, quiz team kind of like American Idol. You know, you want to be on the show. And he's like, but you have to memorize Matthew 5, 6, and 7 to be on quiz team. So little firstborn Pam, overachiever, hey, I'm going to memorize Matthew 5, 6, and 7. I want to be on quiz team.
We were doing the Sermon on the Mount and came across that little verse: If you ask, you shall receive; if you seek, you will find; if you knock, the door will be opened unto you. I remember thinking in my little heart, wow, Jesus, does that mean if I ask you to come into my life, that you would be my best friend, my Savior, my Lord?
Also during that time, if you memorize verses, there was this little treasure box, and you could pull a prize out when you said your memory verse. [00:07:17] So I memorized Psalms 23, and I pulled out this little cross, and it glowed in the dark. And I'm like, So cool. And so I pinned it onto my bulletin board.
Well, that day while I was sitting on my bed, trying to memorize all of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, about halfway through, my dad had been drinking all day and all night. He was in a rage. My sweet Mom trying to talk him down. It got very scary.
So little firstborn Pam, worried about her little brother and sister, I run into my brother's room, and I gather my sister, my brother, and I bring them back into my room. I shut the door. I pushed a chest of drawers, a dresser in front of the door so Dad couldn't get in and hurt us. I tucked my brother and sister into bed. Then I shut off the light, and I climbed into bed. And there glowing in the dark was that little cross, and on it, it read, Jesus lives. [00:08:15]
And I remember thinking, "Wow, the pastor's been telling me that you're stronger, Jesus, than anything, that you're more powerful than anyone, that you're more powerful than death itself." And if you're all those things, and I believe that you are, please come into my life to be my best friend, my Savior, and my Lord. And P.S. God, if you could work it out, I'd love to marry a pastor one day." And God answered all those cries of that little girl's heart.
Started on a new life, went from pouty Pam to perky Pam. The joy of the Lord became my strength. Even though my parents' marriage got worse and worse, and it got more and more crazy and chaotic and volatile at my house, God was there with me., Emmanuel. And I am so grateful that a precious, shy friend of my mom invited us to come to church.
Laura Dugger: Oh my goodness, Pam, that is such a captivating journey. [00:09:17] Thank you for sharing all of that. Bill, will you share your side as well?
Bill Farrel: Sure. I grew up in a home where my mom, I would describe her as a wounded natural leader. And because she's a natural leader, she was the dominant personality in my home. And because she's wounded, she was afraid of almost anything you can imagine.
I became really aware of it when I was in fifth grade. I was told I couldn't know Jewish people, Black people, anybody whose dad was a doctor, or anybody whose parents were divorced. Because I was told those four groups of people were out to get us. It was a real problem for me because my best friend at the time was a Jewish young guy whose dad was a doctor and his parents were getting divorced. So I started asking the question, is my home normal? And I began to realize my home's very different.
One of the things my mom did out of her fear is she isolated us down. [00:10:15] So the only people I spent time with growing up was my family of five. So my mom, dad, my brother, sister, and myself. We didn't have any extended family, no family friends, and we weren't allowed to go anywhere where there were groups of people, which means I was never going to meet Jesus in a typical way because church was out of the picture.
But then my sophomore year in high school, I went to see an evangelistic film called The Exorcist. That movie got me reading the Bible. And the thought that got me was, about halfway through the movie, I said in my heart, "I don't see any difference between me and the girl on the screen. So if anything like that could happen, and I knew Hollywood had overdone it, but if anything like that could happen, what would keep it from happening to me?" I left with no answers.
And because our family was so isolated, I didn't know anybody to talk to. But we had a Bible in our house. So I started reading the Bible. I started sleeping with the Bible because I'd seen vampire movies, and you know, if you hold a cross, they can't get you. [00:11:22] So I thought, well, if I have the Bible with me, they can't get me.
After a month of doing all that, I read 1 John 4:4. It says, "Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world." And the light went on for me. That night I asked Jesus to come into my life and be my Savior and forgive me for my sins.
The first thing that happened that made me knew that something was different is I slept all night that night. That's the first time I'd done that since I'd seen the movie. And because we weren't allowed to go to church, my brother and I started a Bible study at our high school that grew to 60 high school students who simply shared, what did God teach you this week?
The first night that we got together, there were five of us, and we all shared what we had learned that week. And then, okay, well, what do we do now? And somebody in the group said, "Well, let's pray." Oh, that's good. Let's pray.
So we prayed, and in the prayer we prayed it would double. And the next week 10 students showed up. [00:12:23] So we went, We know how this works. So we went through, we shared what we had learned. We prayed for each other. We prayed it would double again. It went to 20. Then it went to 40. And we didn't think we'd have enough room to keep it doubling. So we just told God at that point, you just make it whatever size you want.
And for the rest of that year, 60 of us got together, sharing what God was teaching us that week. And for me, it was electrifying. Because the first time in my life, I had real friends. The people that were there were genuine in their faith in Christ. And we were sharing what God was doing in our life right now.
So Jesus became very real to me. And things woke up inside of me that had been numb. Because my response to my home was I just went numb. I was tired of being hurt and I was tired of being disillusioned. So I went numb, which means you couldn't hurt me, but I didn't feel the good side of life either.
And when I started walking with Jesus, things started coming alive inside of me that I didn't even know existed. [00:13:23] And so ministry became very exciting to me. I knew by the time I was halfway through college, I knew that a life of ministry was what I wanted to do with my days here on earth. So it's been awesome being married to somebody who's as committed to ministry as I am. It's been a real privilege to be able to minister to people around the world, teaching them how family works, which is still fascinating to me. Because when you grow up in a chaotic home and you end up having a healthy marriage, it's a pretty amazing thing that happens.
Pam Farrel: People always tell us, wow, you defied all odds, you two. We celebrated 40 years together. We just did celebrate 40 years together. Our family wrote us a book that’s like, the 40 reasons why we admire your marriage, from our kids and grandkids and daughter-in-laws. And it was so precious. We sat there and just cried because we are a walking miracle of God. Our marriage probably shouldn't even have lasted a month because we came in with so much baggage, but God began to unpack that baggage. [00:14:27] And yes, God can do that for everybody.
Laura Dugger: Amen to that. That is so incredible to hear all of that backstory. I think that's a great topic to cover today. So, for our chat, I'd love to focus specifically on one of your bestselling books related to marriage. And that's the one called Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti: Understanding and Delighting in Your Differences. So will you two just tell us more about those differences?
Pam Farrel: We got to tell you the story about the title because it makes it another God miracle.
Bill Farrel: Well, one of the things that's very true about us is we realized early on we couldn't trust our instincts about relationships because the homes we grew up in didn't develop our instincts very well.
Pam Farrel: We had to be very proactive and hunt down mentors. Bill would take us to church. We went into ministry early. We got married at 20 and we were youth pastors. [00:15:31] We would go and we stand at the back of the church and holding hands and Bill would survey the crowd. And he would look for couples that looked like they still liked each other that had some gray hair, couples that were maybe hugging or holding hands or arm around his or her back. And he'd go plant us behind them.
Bill Farrel: We had a greeting time at our church, so they had to meet us. And when they met us, I would look at the husband and say, "Hey, you look like you're in love with this woman. Is this real?" And if he said yes, I would say, "Well, how did you do it?" You don't have time at church to have that conversation. So that usually led to an invite to lunch. And over lunch, we would ask them questions like, what do you do every day that keeps you in love? And what are the things you've done you wouldn't repeat because they weren't smart the first time?
Pam Farrel: What's the hardest time and season you've ever been through and how did you survive it as a couple?
Bill Farrel: What kind of habits have you developed as a couple that keep you connected? [00:16:30] And we started to discover real wisdom from those couples.
Pam Farrel: So because of that, we really saw the value of mentors and mentoring, and our hearts really kind of turned to like, we really want to be those people that people can come to as mentors to them. So we had this open heart to want to share anything that God was teaching us that helped us with everybody else.
So fast forward, we have a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. We moved to a new community. Bill's 28. He takes over as lead pastor of a church. And we're thinking, how do we best reach this community? We're both athletes, and so why don't we volunteer in youth sports? So Bill ended up as the president of the basketball league. One day in the gym, a man came to Bill.
Bill Farrel: He said, "Hey, you're a pastor, right?" I said, "Yes." He said, "You work with couples?" I said, "Well, yeah, we do actually. We do a lot of training in our church." He said, "Can I bring my wife in to see you? Because I think she's broken."
Pam Farrel: Him and Bill, [00:17:33] "You guys have a great marriage. I really want what you have, but I don't have it right now."
Bill Farrel: I was really intrigued by what he meant by she's broken. So I said, "Yeah, why don't you come into my office, and let's just see what happens." Well, they came to my office. This woman is probably the most verbal woman I've met in my lifetime. I know studies say that women have more words every day than the average man does. She's definitely in the top 2% or 3%.
So they came to my office, they sat down, he looked at her and said, "Go ahead." And she started talking right on cue.
Pam Farrel: And she was jumping from subject to subject to subject. The husband looked at Bill with this panicked look.
Bill Farrel: So I said to him, "Why don't you think about her conversation like a plate of spaghetti? There's a bunch of noodles on the plate. Every noodle touches every other noodle. And she's going to have to go through and just touch every noodle. She may jump from one noodle to another very, very quickly because they're all connected to one another. [00:18:33] So just let her go through and connect all the noodles in her thinking.
Pam Farrel: She's actually trying to connect her life to you. It's a compliment. So the guy's like, well, how do I do that? Bill taught him some listening skills. So the woman talked straight, 55 straight minutes. And she finally breathed, and she sat back and she's like, Oh, that was so great. Probably the first time she wasn't interrupted. And that's why she valued it so much. She's like, "That was so great. Okay, if I'm like spaghetti, then what's my husband like?
Bill Farrel: And I said, "Well, we're out of time for this week. But let's get together a couple of weeks and I'll share that with you." Like we've been doing research, but I had just come up with the picture on the spot.
Pam Farrel: Like we knew that there are differences in our DNA, XX, XY, estrogen, testosterone. There are so many differences underneath the skin of each male and female. And God made us that way. In Genesis 1:27, it says God created us male and female. [00:19:33] This was before the fall of mankind. So it's actually God's plan that we are unique in our difference. So the question is, how do we make those differences work for us? So we've been doing all this research, we have the science, we had the Bible, and so Bill just started praying.
Bill Farrel: I have two weeks. I need a food analogy that shows how men process information. And my boys were making toaster waffles one day, and I said, "Oh, I think that might work." Went back to this couple and I explained to them, Well, the way men process information, it looks like the top of a waffle. There's a bunch of boxes. All those boxes are separated from one another by walls. The way we as men operate is the first issue in life goes in the first box. Second issue goes in the second box. Third issue goes in the third box and so on. And we as men, we spend time in one box at a time in one box only." So when a man is at work, he is at work. And when a man's in the yard doing yard work, he is in the yard doing yard work. When he's watching TV, he is watching TV. [00:20:36]
And as we mature, we jump boxes faster, but we still only handle one box at a time. So I explained this to this couple and I said, "Well, sir, it's your turn to talk this week. Is there something you'd like to bring up?" And he said, "Yeah, there really is." I told the wife, "Okay, you have to stay on the subject he's going to bring up. You're going to immediately see other subjects that are related and you cannot bring them up this time." And I'll take notes on it so that we know what subjects you want to bring up later, but you can't bring them up now." I had to be kind of the relationship police that day because six times she tried to change the subject.
Pam Farrel: Back to box number one.
Bill Farrel: And they solved the issue in my office that day.
Pam Farrel: And they were on the brink of divorce.
Bill Farrel: I went home to Pam, I said, "Pam, I think I've got something and we should try it out at a seminar."
Pam Farrel: So Bill explained what he had shared about men compartmentalize. And so their brains are like how a waffle looks and women integrate. So their brains look like one noodle laying on a plate of spaghetti that touches every other noodle. [00:21:37] I remember my response was, "How? That is really clever."
Bill Farrel: She said it's corny.
Pam Farrel: "Corny and cheesy. But God gave it to you. And I trust God and I trust you, Bill. And if it helps somebody, yeah, let's use it. Let's try it. Let's see how it flies." That weekend we had a small conference in our community because we had another book that had come out, Pure Pleasure: Making Your Marriage a Great Affair.
So we had this little marriage conference of 25 to 30 people. It was small. And we decided to add in that men are like waffles, women are like spaghetti segment. Well, it was the hit of the night. Everybody was talking about it. One of the main reasons why is because we shared that every guy on his waffle has a blank box. There are no thoughts. There are no words. There's nothing going on. And guys park in that blank box. [00:22:37] We women get radar. And so we ask, so what you thinking?
Bill Farrel: Which is a really hard question for us, because in that blank box, there are no thoughts, there are no words. As men, we are literally thinking nothing.
Pam Farrel: Nothing.
Bill Farrel: And our wives have a hard time accepting that. So as husbands, we try telling the truth. We say, nothing. And the response we get is, "Well, you can't be thinking nothing. You have to be thinking something. So what is it?"
Part of our ministry is helping people realize every male has the ability to think absolutely nothing.
Pam Farrel: Not a blank. Nothing.
Bill Farrel: But because the truth didn't work real well, the next time you ask the question, there's a delay that takes place. Our eyes start darting back and forth because we're looking for a box somewhere nearby that has words in it so that we can answer the question. And then our wives misinterpret the delay. [00:23:35] And they start to think, oh, you don't want to share what you're really thinking. So now you're making something up. And in reality, we were just thinking nothing.
Pam Farrel: Nothing. It was a big hit. We are different in the way we communicate, in the way we manage stress, in the way we romance, in the way we parent. So we just kept building, building, building on the differences. It was so positive that night.
There was a young couple that was a newlywed couple. They saw the article about us in the newspaper and so they came to this little seminar. What we didn't know is he was the weekend program director for the largest talk radio station in San Diego where we're living at the time. And he's like, "Hey, have you guys ever thought about radio? You are so great."
So we came in on Valentine's Day that year. We prayed on the way down. "Okay, Lord, we know that the only super glue that can hold a couple together is You, God. And so let us even on this general market station, let us be brave enough to share the truth about You being the answer. God is love." [00:24:45]
The general manager walked in, he shook Bill's hand, and he's like, "So nice to meet you. I understand that you're a pastor. I would just assume that you would share the spiritual dynamics and how God can improve relationships." So we ended up on radio doing a radio talk show. Men Are Like Waffles, Women Like Spaghetti ended up becoming a book, and then a DVD series that churches can use for small groups or couples can just go through together. Then there's a singles version of Men Are Like Waffles, Women Like Spaghetti, a teenage version. And now it's also translated into more than 15 languages around the world.
Bill Farrel: So often when we talk about differences, it gets viewed in a judgmental way, or somebody's trying to establish superiority. And it's not that way. It's a great benefit to the family. It's a great benefit to marriages. And it's a great benefit to our communities that we bring different gifts to the table.
Laura Dugger: Let's take a quick break to hear a message from our sponsor. [00:25:46]
Sponsor: I'm so excited to share today's sponsor, Winshape Marriage, with you. Winshape Marriage is a fantastic ministry that helps couples prepare, strengthen, and if needed, even save their marriage. Winshape Marriage is grounded on the belief that the strongest marriages are the ones that are nurtured, even if it seems like things are going smoothly. That way, they'll be stronger if they do hit a bump along their marital journey.
Through their weekend retreats, Winshape Marriage invites couples to enjoy time away to simply focus on each other. These weekend retreats are hosted within the beautiful refuge of Winshape Retreat, perched in the mountains of Rome, Georgia, which is just a short drive from Atlanta, Birmingham, and Chattanooga.
While you and your spouse are there, you'll be well-fed, well-nurtured, and well-cared for. During your time away in this beautiful place, you and your spouse will learn from expert speakers and explore topics related to intimacy, overcoming challenges, improving communication, and so much more. I've stayed on-site at Winshape before, and I can attest to their generosity, food, and content. You will be so grateful you went. [00:26:49]
To find an experience that's right for you and your spouse, head to their website, winshapemarriage.org. That's winshapemarriage.org. Thanks for your sponsorship.
Laura Dugger: It sounds like you two celebrate those differences. Maybe the first three differences that come to mind, could you elaborate on those and share what it could look like for a marriage that celebrates rather than resists those differences?
Pam Farrel: Bill likes to quote his favorite philosopher.
Bill Farrel: That's Rocky Balboa. In the Rocky movie, Rocky was dating Adrian, and Adrian's brother, Polly, was concerned about the relationship. So, he approached Rocky one day, and he said, "Hey, what do you do with my sister?" And Rocky's response was, "I got gaps, she got gaps, together we fill gaps," which is really good relationship advice because we all have gaps.
Pam is way better at multitasking than I am. [00:27:50] When we were raising kids and we would put together the family schedule, if I was in charge of the family schedule, I would be hacking stuff out of the kids' lives because I couldn't keep up with it. Where Pam would look at it and say, Oh no, we can do this, we can do that, we can make this happen, they can do this. And she would put it all together in a system that worked without stress.
Pam Farrel: It's the benefit of being a spaghetti. We integrate everything. I like to say, if you look at the way a woman's mind works, it's like one noodle laying on a plate of spaghetti. If you follow that noodle around that plate, it touches every other noodle on the plate. So, we're fabulous at multitasking or toggle tasking, as it's sometimes called today.
So, we can be on the phone with a friend, her life's falling apart. We're like, "Hey, have you listened to Laura on The Savvy Sauce? I think that her show could really help you. Start listening to that podcast." And we're cooking dinner, we're talking to our kids in sign language, telling them to quit fighting. [00:28:52] Can't you see I'm on the phone? We have a load in the washer, load in the dryer, and we can open and shut the oven door with our foot. It's amazing how great women can be at multitasking.
Bill Farrel: Right. And it's amazing when Pam shares that, women applaud her and the men say, "I'm tired just listening to you say that."
Pam Farrel: That brings to the first area of our differences. That's communication. The way we communicate is very different. Bill likes to school guys up on the way women communicate.
Bill Farrel: Right. Because when a wife approaches a husband and says, "Honey, we need to talk," the first thing men tend to do is they go into problem-solving mode. They're going to size up the problem, they're going to provide their male insight into the problem, they're going to solve it right in front of her and be a big hero.
So, we tell men, guys, when it's your wife's turn to talk, first thing you want to do is turn off that fix-it mechanism you were born with, pack up your bags, and go on a listening journey with your wife and let her take the conversation anywhere she wants it to go. [00:29:54] Because what your wife is doing is she's connecting her life to you because it's one of the primary ways that women develop trust. That if a woman thinks you are important, she's gonna connect her life to you because when she gets enough of her life connected to you, trust turns on like a light bulb. And when men see it that way, they're like, well I want my wife to trust me. So now I'm willing to listen without having to solve everything.
Pam Farrel: They get motivated to listen. And then for women, I tell women we can basically out-talk guys. And so what is a gift to the guys, they're packing up their bags and going on a listening journey, what we're gonna do is we're gonna stay in the box. When a guy brings up his subject to talk about, it's actually that subject that he wants to talk about.
We women see the five or six other boxes surrounding that first box and we just start opening up boxes. The problem with that is men are problem solvers by nature. So when they have one box open, that's one problem to solve; when they have two boxes open, that's two problems to solve; three boxes open, that's three problems to solve; and so on. [00:30:59]
Every male has a limit on how many boxes or how many issues he can have presenting at the same time. If we get too many boxes open, we'll know it because one of two things is probably gonna happen. He'll either fire up and become angry and we're like, "What? I was just talking." Or he'll just shut the conversation down and want to escape to one of his favorite easy boxes like maybe the garage and then you're chasing him out the door with your words and nobody's needs are getting met there. One of the gifts that we can give is the gift of staying in the box.
One of the questions I get asked most by women is how do I get my husband, my son, my dad, you know my brother to open up. I encourage them with the story of a girl who came to me. We were youth pastors at the time and so Bill was doing a lot of premarital and wedding with college kids.
So she came to me, she's like, "I'm so excited to get married to my fiancé and he's handsome, he's godly, he's a good provider, he's patient, he's kind, but I think something's wrong with him. [00:32:05] I think he is broken. I think what they call it in university is emotionally shallow. And I just started to smile. And the reason why I was holding back a laugh is she just haven't found the key to opening up her guy's heart. And that is men like to live in, dwell in, camp out in boxes they feel super successful in, and avoid boxes they don't feel successful in.
So I asked her, "Hey, tell me about your fiancé" because I'm looking for the box he feels comfortable or successful in. She's like, "He's a racecar driver." I said, "There you go. Baby girl, you just get yourself into that garage and repeat key phrases. Just repeat back what he's talking about about that car." And she's like, "All right. I'll try that."
So she goes out to the car and of course, he's working on the car. So he starts to talk about parts and flywheels and pistons. So she is just repeating back, you know, all these car parts. She doesn't really have a clue what he's talking about but she is interested. [00:33:06]
And he comes out from underneath the car and puts his hand on the hood and he's like, "Wow, nobody's ever taken the time to care about my world like this. Nobody's ever loved me the way you love me. I'm so excited to get married to you. I want to build us a big three-bedroom two-bath house with a balcony out back and a front porch. I'll build a swing set for the kids that will have one day and I'll hang up a front porch swing. And every night when I come home from work, I'll bring you a skinny vanilla latte and I'll just like slide in next to you and hold you in my arms as we watch the sunset. I'll listen to your heart." My friend said, "I never want to leave the garage again."
Laura Dugger: That really paints such a clear picture. I love that because so many people have asked specifically about communication so I think you're laying out how we can both do our part. On a bit of a different topic I'm just curious from your years of study and research, what have you found to be the most common differences for the way that each of the genders prefer to relax at home? [00:34:13]
Pam Farrel: Women we talk our way through stress. Like if I'm stressed out, my mom knows it, my best friend knows it, my prayer partner knows it, the clerk at the grocery store will know it. We talk our way through stress. How guys manage stress is they like to go their favorite easy boxes to rest and recharge.
It's kind of like a battery in a battery recharger. When you look at a battery sitting in a recharger, what does it look like it's doing?
Bill Farrel: Nothing.
Pam Farrel: Yeah but it's doing something. It's recharging. So sometimes we look at our husband like, there's so much stress here and you're what watching TV or playing Xbox, you're on your phone, you're doing nothing. But they're doing something. They're recharging.
God kind of helped us girls out in that most of men's favorite easy boxes are actually shaped like boxes when you think about it. The TV screen is shaped like a box, a phone is shaped like a box, a computer screen is shaped like a box, basketball court, baseball diamond, football field, hockey goal, pool table, the refrigerator is shaped like a box and the bed is shaped like a box. [00:35:19] That bed box, that red-hot monogamy box as we call it, that's the favorite box for husbands to go to when they're stressed out. It's kind of like the free square and a little bingo card and they can get there from every other square on their waffle.
Bill Farrel: I have discovered that with Pam relaxing is all about connections. So she wants to connect with the people that are important to her and the activities that lower stress for her. For instance, just recently she took all of our daughter-in-laws to a spa as a Christmas present. The whole idea is we're gonna take a day where we get to relax. Pam loves the pool. I wouldn't say that all women like to relax by the pool but Pam loves the pool. So she's very connected to the water.
When women get to do what they're connected to emotionally, it just lowers stress. And then she got to do that with the people she cares about in this world. [00:36:21] Like we have prayed for our daughter-in-laws for decades. That our boys would meet women who love them and appreciate them and are great partners in life with them.
Pam Farrel: Love God.
Bill Farrel: So being able to spend time with them and celebrate what God is doing is really what helps Pam do her best. There's always a sense of it needs to be significant, it needs to be important, it needs to add value to my life which is different than what guys do.
Like I just recently spent some time with our sons. We went to a 3D archery range where we walked around out in the desert shooting arrows at targets. So people would ask, well, what do you guys talk about?
Pam Farrel: Archery.
Bill Farrel: We are just about shooting arrows. Because for us we're just disappearing into an easy box where when Pam went to the spa with the girls, they talked about their whole lives.
Pam Farrel: Everything.
Bill Farrel: And so for Pam, it's all about being connected to the people she cares about and to activities that lower stress. [00:37:24] And it's very personal. So what works for Pam may or may not work for somebody else's wife because it's a personal thing of what causes stress to come down. So for some women, they like to be very active, for some women, it's arts and crafty type things, for some people it's travel, some people, it's shopping, but the key is that for her it helps lower stress when she doesn't.
Laura Dugger: I'm hearing a common theme from both of you. So first step is to learn about your spouse and what recharges them. And the second piece of ownership, I think that next step sounds like it works best when each of you are gracious with the other person. When you recognize this may be opposite of how I recharge but I want to gift you with that.
Pam Farrel: Very much so. The Bible tells us in Philippians 2 to consider others as more important than yourself and have this attitude that was also in Christ Jesus. [00:38:25] So we're most like Jesus when we take our eyes off self and look at our spouse and say, what will lower their stress? In Red-Hot Romance Tips for Women, it's a little book and I do a 26-day Red-Hot Wife Challenge. I talk about the plimsoll line on a boat.
Bill and I live on a boat right now and that plimsoll line is very important. And what that is it's a line that goes around the boat and it shows how much cargo or how much weight a boat can carry before it capsizes. Every person, every man, every woman has that proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. They have a plimsoll line, how much they can carry before they get so stressed out they can't function.
It's very much like Jesus too try to lower the stress of your partner. Do things that will ease their burden. The Bible also tells us to bear one another's burdens. [00:39:25] So when we carry it together, it divides the stress and both of us will come out better.
Bill Farrel: Laura, I would even strengthen what you said by adding we marry what we don't have. Like part of our attraction to the person we're married to is they have something in life we do not possess. At times it's really rewarding and really fulfilling and really fascinating because you get to experience what you couldn't experience on your own. But at other times it's confusing and frustrating because your spouse approaches things differently than you do.
And learning to accept that that's a good addition to your life, learning to be gracious with things you don't understand rather than feeling like you need to correct it all, and learning to applaud the differences and say to one another, well, I could never accomplish what you just did and I would never have come up with that on my own, but I'm gonna learn to see the value in it, it's one of the secrets that makes marriage last for a long time. [00:40:30]
Laura Dugger: That is so well said. If this is your first time hearing The Savvy Sauce, welcome! Our team loves what we get to do and we hope that you'll go back and hear all of our previous episodes. For those of you who have been around for a long time, maybe even from the beginning, would you consider joining Patreon?
If you don't know what it is, all the details are on our website at thesavvysauce.com under the tab "Patreon". You can always email us with further questions at info@thesavvysauce.com.
As we go back just a little bit, you did mention the box that's shaped like a bed. Let's talk about sexual intimacy in marriage because you two have written an entire book on that topic. But I would love to know as it relates to the different genders, what would you like to teach us about sexual intimacy in marriage?
Pam Farrel: We have written Red-Hot Monogamy. [00:41:30] It's like an eight-week guide to turn up the temperature behind bedroom doors, you know, fan the flame on love and romance. But the seed of that book actually came out of Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti. We have two chapters there, one on romance and the other on sexual intimacy. So we'll start with romance.
Bill Farrel: The way you romance your wife is you build connections into her life that remind her she's important to you. Sometimes it's really simple things like calling her in the middle of the day and saying, "I didn't call for any reason. I just called to say I love you."
A friend of mine just recently had his wife ask him, what do you know about me that other people may not know?" And he said a really simple thing, "You like crunchy food." And she went, "You're right, most people don't know that." It reached a connection in her heart that just drew her to him.
As men, we tend to oversimplify everything. We want to be able to say things like, "Hey look, I married you because I love you. Done deal. It's settled. [00:42:32] Instead of staying on the journey of trying to continually connect with our wives.
So I tell men all the time, keep looking for connections. If your wife loves flowers, get her flowers. If she loves notes, leave notes for her. If she loves a certain activities, like if she loves a certain sport or she loves a certain craft, invest in it and buy her things that help her be able to do those things in the midst of her life.
The key is not what you're doing, it's that you're making a connection into her heart. Instead of just saying, hey, are you available Friday, instead send her an invitation. Say, "Hey I would love to spend this Friday with you because it would make it the best day of my week." And on Tuesday, check in with her and see if it's possible. Is the schedule going to work? Are we able to do this? On Tuesday or Wednesday, you should give her some guidelines on how to dress. Don't get too controlling, say you have to wear this, but give her guidelines on how to dress. On Friday, go out and just enjoy the evening together. It can be a very simple date. [00:43:31] But on Saturday, find a way to send her a thank-you note. Send it through email, send it through the mail, post it on social media, but thank her for the time that you got to spend together.
Pam Farrel: And you get bonus points if you go to the restaurant ahead of time and leave a little gift because that means you thought of her while you're doing something else. That's like a double bonus. And if you, the guy, arranges child care, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, you win.
Bill Farrel: The key for us men is it needs to be our goal to reach our wife's heart as often as we can. Like, we're already interested in our wife's body and we are very easily aroused physically. But if we make it our goal, I'm gonna reach her heart as often as I can, it opens up the entire intimate relationship.
As men, we're always trying to shortcut the process. And if we will accept that God gave me somebody very different than me, and if I'm willing to make enough connections into her life that our hearts stay connected, you will be very satisfied with your sexual life. [00:44:39]
Pam Farrel: Right. We tell newlyweds all the time, ladies, if you give a man your body, he'll give you his heart. And guys-
Bill Farrel: If you give your wife your heart, she'll be willing to give you her body.
Pam Farrel: That works really well with that other-centered attitude there. And how to romance a guy is clear, simple expectation. Say, you want to go to dinner and a movie, a husband thinks it's dinner and a movie and the bingo box that's gonna happen. Tie together his favorite boxes and one of them is the bingo box. I mean, that is an important box to a guy.
Sometimes though, it's super simple to romance a guy. It might be curling up next to him and watching the football game and bring something wrapped in bacon and only during the commercials. Yeah, simple. [00:45:37]
Laura Dugger: Going back to what you were talking about, Bill, it sounds like you're saying these are ways for men to get their wife in each of their boxes, and that helps romance and pursue her. Is that right?
Bill Farrel: When you ladies say that, it's a little frightening to us guys. We're not sure we want you in every box that we have because we like to reserve some for just guy stuff. But in principle, what you're saying is true. That as men, one of the reasons why God calls us to get married is He wants us to expand our horizons. He wants us to learn that life is more complex than we would normally make it.
As men, we're always trying to simplify things and it's not realistic. When we get married, we start to realize, Oh, life is a little more complex than I realized. For us men, it's a learned skill to learn how to appreciate the complexity that you ladies naturally bring to the emotional side of life and the relational side of life, and the activity side of life. [00:46:40] And when we accept it and say, I'm going to learn from you, our lives get richer and fuller and the whole relationship tends to thrive. But the tendency that men fall into is they try to shut their wives down and keep it simple so we don't get overwhelmed.
In Romans chapter 15:7, it says, "Accept one another then just as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God." And when you have that attitude of acceptance that I'm not going to try to change you to be like me, I'm going to accept you as God made you, a couple things happen. One is your relationships start to work better because you're cooperating with the way God created us. Because Genesis 1:27 says that God made us in His image and that included making us male and female.
So all your relationships work better because you're cooperating with the way God made things. But also the praise of God settles in on your relationship. And you start to develop a love for one another that is literally stronger than you could come up with on your own because you're in partnership with God who is the author of love. [00:47:48]
Pam Farrel: When we're other-centered, you know, God adds His parts, kind of like the loaves and fishes. If we bring our little lunch, God adds Himself and everybody's needs get met. But it is a learning curve.
Bill Farrel: Well, I created an app for men because men don't tend to be readers. So I created a phone app called Her Best Friend, which is one idea a day for men on how to connect with their wives at a better level and help the relationship keep growing.
Pam Farrel: So really what we're seeing is everybody get tools in your toolbox to appreciate and value your mate the way God made them.
Laura Dugger: Well, let's also talk about conflict. How does that play out with our different design as either spaghetti or waffles?
Bill Farrel: It's pretty much guaranteed as a married couple that you're going to have conflict because, again, when you marry what you don't have. So there's times that you just don't see things eye to eye. And unless you're being really passive in the relationship, you're going to have conflict. The key to working through conflict is to decide ahead of time how you're going to face it. Because the one thing I wish people had told us sooner in life is that our emotions always follow our decisions.
Conflict is almost always an emotional event in your life. [00:49:15] I've still yet to meet couples who sat down and said, you know, it would be really good for our relationship if we had a conflict. So I'm just going to create one so we can add value to our relationship. It just doesn't happen that way. You get in conflict because something emotionally hits you. And what happens so often in relationships is you get emotionally upset. You haven't decided ahead of time how you're going to approach it. And so you just start to react to one another.
Pam Farrel: We do have default mechanisms as genders. Studies say that we women, we're the first ones to reach out to a third party when a marriage is on the rocks. It's like we have this intuition that something's wrong and somebody needs to help us here. Where husbands, they don't know what to do with all those emotions. So they just shove it down, shove it down. And they end up having heart attacks and strokes. That's not good.
Bill Farrel: The way that God designed it to work is it's very clear that studies show that the alarm system for relationships is in the female side of the race. [00:50:18] As Pam said, when something's wrong in a relationship, you ladies, you sense it. The natural reaction is when you sense that something is wrong, you start bringing it up, you start talking. You're just like an alarm makes noise when something is wrong.
You ladies will start talking and bringing up the subject because you know something needs to be done. As men, what we tend to do is we get defensive because it sounds like, "Wow, you've already thought about it. You already know what I'm supposed to do. You know what you're supposed to do. You know what the whole world is supposed to do." And we feel like we're way behind in the conversation, so we get defensive, which makes you sense that, Oh, something really is wrong because look, he's getting defensive. So then you bring up more, which causes men to become more defensive. And then you get these crazy cycles as couples where nothing gets done.
Pam Farrel: All emotions are escalated and nothing is resolved.
Bill Farrel: The way it's supposed to work is that God put the alarm system in the female side. He made us men good problem solvers. [00:51:19] And those two are supposed to work together. If as men, we can start to say, Okay, the alarm's going off. I need to start asking questions about what's really going on here. Because for couples who discover what the real issue is, couples are really good at solving real issues. The problem is that they don't get to the real issue because they just get in a flurry with one another.
In our relationship, I would tell you almost every time there's a conflict and it's there because of me, it's because I'm feeling left out. And I can trace it back to two things. One, I'm the youngest in my family. And if you're the youngest in your family, you felt dismissed on a regular basis because everybody else talks for you and everybody else decides for you. So you get this attitude of, Hey, I know what's right, but nobody's going to listen to me. So I'm going to have to manipulate instead.
The second thing is I married a very decisive woman and I grew up with a woman who made all those decisions in our family. [00:52:20] Out of fear, my mom wouldn't let other people participate in the decision-making. So she would just decide for you and tell you what to do. And I married a decisive woman, so she can easily trigger that off in me. If I say to Pam, you are being controlling, that does not go well.
Pam Farrel: No, no, that is not a good statement.
Bill Farrel: If I say to Pam, "Pam, I'm being left out of this decision. Can we revisit this together?"
Pam Farrel: So much better. Calms the situation down. In the same way, if it's escalating due to my bad attitude, it's going to be because I'm fearing failure, because first born daughter growing up in a crazy house, I always thought that I had to be the one to carry the burden, to fix the problem, to fix my parents' marriage. So any time when I feel like I'm going to fail, it's going to show up as anger. If I can push pause, "Lord, heal my heart. Let's unpack this baggage. I know that I'm not really angry. I know that I'm hurt. I know that I'm afraid there's some kind of fear here." If I can unpack that before God and then revisit the discussion with Bill, things are going to go better. [00:53:33] That's why we encourage couples to have a conflict covenant.
Bill Farrel: A written conflict covenant.
Pam Farrel: Right. Rules of engagement. How you will manage when you disagree. For example, in Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti, we share several examples of conflict covenants and what should be in them. But some of are: we're going to hold hands every time we argue because I'm just less likely to throw stuff if I'm holding Bill's hand.
Bill Farrel: And my mom was a thrower. So I needed to know when I got married to Pam that she wasn't going to throw plates or food or coffee cups.
Pam Farrel: And, you know, because of the crazy home I grew up in, I mean, things in the conflict covenant are pretty basic. Like I'm not going to swear at you. I'm not going to belittle you. I'm not going to run over you with the truck.
Bill Farrel: Part of our conflict covenant, too, is that we are going to finish every argument. And what we mean by that is almost every argument that a couple gets in is because something you love about your spouse is driving you crazy. [00:54:36] So, like, I love the fact that Pam's creative, but sometimes it feels like she's not using logic. I love the fact that Pam is a decisive woman because she can stand on her own. It's just strong convictions. But when she shares those convictions about me, I'm not so excited about them.
Pam Farrel: Yeah. I love the fact that, Bill, there's a right and there's a wrong. And I love that about him. Man of integrity, right up until the time he's editing my manuscripts with a red pen. Then I'm like, Ah.
Bill Farrel: In marriage, a conflict has been resolved when you have rediscovered what you love about your spouse that was the source of this conflict.
Pam Farrel: People always ask, like, what was your biggest conflict? It's a yearlong argument. It was when our kids were young, I had a 2-year-old and the other boys were in school. I was finishing my education, and Bill had just started as the lead pastor of this church. [00:55:34] So it felt very overwhelming to Bill that I wanted to go back to school and that I did go back to school.
Bill Farrel: It wasn't the activities that Pam was involved in. It was the passion with which she spoke about them. And I had decided in my heart that all those passions could turn on when our youngest son got in school. And she wasn't cooperating with that. The passion is what scared me. I thought if she keeps running with this passion, things are going to get out of balance and we're not going to be able to manage our family and we're not going to be able to run this church ministry and do all this other stuff that's coming out of her heart.
Pam Farrel: It was this fear-based process because he thought he was being left out again. Our conflict covenant says that we're going to finish every argument. So we would get together, we would have a conversation, we would hit the same stone wall. We always start these conversations with prayer and we end them with prayer. So then if we don't solve it, we reschedule. [00:56:35]
And so week after week, we're like holding hands, praying for each other, having a conversation, not getting anywhere, pray for each other, reschedule like week after week after week after week for a year. And we're still dating each other. We're still going out on romantic dates as well. So like we always make sure that the happy side stays in, especially when you have something that is a conflict you're trying to resolve. So Bill called up a mentor of his and they had lunch.
Bill Farrel: I basically asked him, "How do I get Pam to be more cooperative?" And his response to me was, "Bill, why do you need to control your wife?" I was really offended by the statement because I thought, "I don't need to control my wife. I'm just trying to become partners with her and figure out how to do this together."
And after I got done arguing with God about that, I realized, "Yeah, I actually was trying to control Him. [00:57:34] I was trying to get her to tone down the passions that were guiding her heart until our kids got a little bit older.
Pam Farrel: So he thought he was just arguing with me.
Bill Farrel: Right. And I realized the reason why Pam couldn't shut all this off is that God had put this dream on her heart. And I had made an agreement early on that any dream that God put on Pam's heart, I would be fully supportive of. It didn't include supporting all of Pam's ideas because Pam can come up with lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of ideas. But if God put it on her heart, I would be all in.
At this point, I realized I had a problem because Pam had captured a dream that God had put on her heart and I had argued with it for a year. So I knew I couldn't just go to her and say, "Oh, Pam, I get it now. I'm sorry for arguing so much. I'm good now." Because it wouldn't be believable after a year of arguing.
Pam Farrel: Right. The bigger the offense, the bigger the apology has to be. There's a principle there. So I was up on campus, I was in a class and every day in that class, I always had to stand up for my faith. [00:58:37] I happen to mention, "Bill, hey, I know you're going to be up filming on campus. When you walk by this classroom, I'm going to be inside and I'm sure I'll be standing up for my faith, standing up for Jesus. Can you just shoot a prayer up when you walk by my classroom?"
So I was sitting in this class and the professor is talking about romance literature and that romance is dead. It's always been dead. Romance is just an illusion. No two people can stay in love for a lifetime. It's impossible. And all the women are like, "Yeah, because men are scum," and all the guys are like, "When does this class get over?" And the door pops open.
Bill Farrel: And I walked in with a dozen roses, set them on Pam's desk, gave her a kiss, and said, "I love you, Pam," and walked out the door.
Pam Farrel: So the professor's like, "What? Is it your birthday?" And I'm like, "No." He's like, "Is it your anniversary?" "No." He's like, "Well, why did he interrupt the class then?" And I said, "I believe that Bill wanted to tell me that I see the dream that God has placed on your heart to be a writer, to write a book this year, to finish your degree, and I just want to tell you, I believe in your dream." [00:59:44]
Bill Farrel: See, what I know about Pam is she loves public attention. So I figured if I went into her world and made a statement, it would get the message across that your argument is now over and I'm on board. And that's part of getting to know your spouse. If your wife does not love public attention, this is not a great idea. But if your wife loves it like Pam does, then it's a strong statement. And obviously, the statement got across.
Laura Dugger: To see years later that God really has been faithful to all of those desires He put in your heart. And the two of you have done so much of this together. Is there anything else that you two would recommend for both husbands and wives to do so that they can meet the specific needs of their spouse?
Pam Farrel: You know, it's really wonderful to just keep a running list. In the back of Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti, we have date nights. So we really encourage the couples to read the book together and then go out on a date and discuss it. [01:00:43]
One of those date nights is to make a list of dream dates that you each would like to go on and then trade lists. The reason why that's important is because if you want to surprise your spouse or if you take transplanting dates like Bill and I do, there's like a running list. You know exactly what is going to please encourage, you know, a delight, bring bliss to your mate because they've given you a list. Now, it's not a list of expectations. It's just a list of ideas.
And by doing proactive things like that, you cultivate a desire to get to know your mate at a deeper level. That's probably what's most important is just that desire of curiosity. I'm going to keep learning about you year after year after year because God made you for me. God created your spouse to be a good fit into your life. But we have to value our spouse and get to know our spouse and encourage and affirm our spouse to really keep seeing the upside of those differences. [01:01:46]
Bill Farrel: Two things that I would encourage every couple to do, Laura, is, first of all, is to keep dating. The enemy of intimacy is responsibility. Every decade, the average adult in North America doubles his or her responsibility level. So at 30, you have twice the responsibility you had at 20, and at 40, you have four times the responsibility you had at 20.
So many couples, they just drift apart because the responsibility of life takes over. And the only way to fight it is to deliberately interrupt each other's lives on a regular basis to remind yourselves that you're a couple. The person who's more social can plan more of the dates. But take turns planning dates for one another so you interrupt the responsibility schedule and remind yourself that it's good to be you.
The other thing I would encourage is just keep praying together as a couple and keep it simple. Because you'll never fully understand one another, but when you pray, you get to see into each other's hearts. [01:02:49]
Pam Farrel: Prayer is like a window into the soul of your spouse.
Bill Farrel: We encourage couples, make a commitment to pray together on a daily basis for two to three minutes. Keep it short so that you're always able to succeed and restart every day so there's no guilt. And when you commit to a couple of minutes a day, every once in a while you're going to have a longer time of prayer because you just naturally fall into it. And when you see into the heart of your spouse, it renews your appreciation for one another even though you'll never fully understand each other.
Pam Farrel: That cultivating, that spiritual atmosphere and those spiritual skills is like super glue. There's studies out that say that couples that pray together daily and pray for each other daily rate their red-hot monogamy as the highest possible rating.
Couples that attend church together rate their relationship highest satisfactory red-hot monogamy. Couples that are in a small group Bible study and Bill was a small groups pastor for Dr. David Jeremiah for a while and he loved that stat, that if you're in a small group, you're surrounded by people who believe in long-lasting love. So it helps you have a long-lasting love. [01:04:00] As a result, you have a more satisfying relationship, more red-hot monogamy.
So there seems to be this correlation that the more passion each of us have towards God, then God boomerangs that passion back into our marriage relationship and we have more passion for each other, resulting in better intimacy, more red-hot monogamy. It's a win-win.
Bill Farrel: So the things that make marriage work are actually pretty simple if you do the things that work. If your car needs oil and you spend lots of time washing and waxing it, the effort is incredible, but it's not solving the issue of your car needs oil.
Marriage is the same way. When you communicate appreciating your differences, and you resolve conflict appreciating the differences, and you are intimate with one another appreciating the differences, and you work smart in your marriage, it is one of the greatest journeys on earth. [01:04:58]
But if you try to fix one another and change one another and put lots and lots of expectations on one another, then it starts to be very difficult to stay in love with each other. It's like putting spaghetti sauce on waffles and putting maple syrup on spaghetti. But if you appreciate the differences, you get to feast on your love for one another.
Laura Dugger: Oh, that is so good. You two have laid such an incredible foundation for married couples. What does this look like when the husband and wife become parents?
Pam Farrel: You know, that's when you have to be super proactive. In one of our chapters, we talk about waffles and spaghetti at home. It will go better with you if you sit down and have some conversations about who will do what and when. We have a worksheet in there that lists all the things that typical couples have to manage. You can check off which ones each one of you think is most important. And then the key is to delegate the things that let's say the wife is most passionate about, she gets a set of cards, and things that the husband is most passionate about, he gets a set of cards. [01:06:09]
Bill and I, we actually sit down about every couple years, whenever our life changes, with a set of three by five cards, we write down everything that we need to manage with our kids, with our social life, with our ministry, with when we were pastoring, with our church, with the volunteer things in our community that we were in charge of. And we do an evaluation of priorities.
We write down everything on those cards, then we take those cards and we give them a ranking. A, B, C. C are like, yeah, we're not going to worry about that this year. Another day, another season, another time. Put an elastic band around it. Put those C cards away to revisit next year. The B's are like, yeah, these are pretty important, but... Could anybody else manage them? Can we delegate any of this to our kids, like teach them how to do the dishes or mow the lawn, delegate them to any volunteer that's a part of, you know, our ministry? [01:07:10]
Then with the rest of the Bs and all of the As, we then play a game that's much like the stock market or the card game pits, where you negotiate. Like, I'll take the science fair and bringing treats to the classroom if you take doing the taxes. And so you negotiate.
The key to making all this work, the person who has the card has the authority to do it their way, their timing and the other person just "thank you, thank you, applaud you, I'm so appreciative that you took that card instead of me". So having that attitude of thanking your spouse for picking up half of life, that's going to make it go easier in your whole home.
And your kids will pick up on that too because you're delegating to them and they'll grow into leaders. Like we have a book, The 10 Best Decisions Every Parent Can Make, and we talk about the learner leader who loves God method of parenting. [01:08:16] And you know what? It works. Our kids all ended up becoming learners and leaders who love God by just every year celebrating their uniquenesses and delegating more responsibility to them and appreciating being on their team. That's really all we're saying in marriage, too, is just be on your spouse's team.
Laura Dugger: I love that idea. For any other ideas, or if people are just intrigued and they want to learn more from the two of you, where can they find you both online?
Pam Farrel: Love-wise.com is our website. Then also we encourage you to hop over to Facebook and like Pam and Bill Farrell. This year we're doing Marriage Mondays at 6:06 Pacific Time and we give you a date idea for that week. Then if wives want to join part of my Red-Hot Wife Challenge group and go through Did you [inaudible 01:09:21] your husband, then shoot us an email. I'll make sure you get in that group. There's a banner that's on our website and you can just click on the banner. We'll make sure the wives get connected and we'll be iron sharpening iron to each other. And then for the guys.
Bill Farrel: Love-wise.com, we're connecting God's love and God's wisdom. If you forget all that, just do an internet search on waffles and spaghetti. I guarantee we will own the front page. Again, you can go to the Apple Store or the Google Play Store and Her Best Friend is the app that will help you gain more ideas on how to stay connected to your wife.[01:09:59]
Laura Dugger: Awesome. We will link to all of those on our website and show notes. Bill and Pam, you already know that we're called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge or insight. And as my final question for the two of you today, what is your savvy sauce?
Pam Farrel: I love the verse that is the theme verse for our Love-Wise ministry, and that's Proverbs 19:8. The one who gets wisdom loves life. And we all want more wisdom. Another place in the Bible, it says, walk with the wise and you'll become wise. So, hey, hop on to Love-Wise, become a member of our Living Love-Wise community, look around in your local church, ask to go to coffee with a couple that you admire, and see if they'll be a mentor in your life. Hang out with people who are positive about their marriage and you'll get more positive about your marriage. [01:10:59]
Bill Farrel: And my savvy sauce is hang in there until the next breakthrough happens. Because the way relationships work, and specifically the way marriage works, it goes from breakthrough to breakthrough. Just like the Gospel of Jesus Christ, when you meet Jesus as your personal Savior, there is a breakthrough in life that changes everything. And marriage is a reflection of the Gospel.
So if your relationship is not all that you would like it to be right now, hang in there and pray for the breakthrough. Because when the breakthrough happens, it will change everything, and it will ignite your hearts for one another.
Laura Dugger: That's so encouraging. I have been following the two of you for years and I remember reading your books beginning back in high school. So this was such a treat to connect today. Thank you for being my guests.
Pam Farrel: Oh, I love that. It's really fun. I met one woman who said, I read Guys Are Like Waffles, Girls Are Like Spaghetti. And then I was single and in college I read Single Men Are Like Waffles, Single Women Are Like Spaghetti. And then we just started premarital counseling because we're getting married this fall and the pastor is taking us through Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti." [01:12:10] I said, you can teach the next workshop. So that's your job now. You get to teach the next workshop and you do such a great job week after week on your podcast.
Bill Farrel: Laura, thanks for helping people be more savvy in their lives.
Laura Dugger: Thank you again so much. I want to give a quick shout-out to our lovable daughter, [Aila?] Shalom, who is turning three today. Happy birthday, Aila. I love you so much.
One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners and God is perfect and holy, so He cannot be in the presence of sin. Therefore, we're separated from Him.
This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. [01:13:11] We need a savior. But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute.
This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus.
We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us. Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
So would you pray with me now? Heavenly, Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. [01:14:14] Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change their lives now for eternity. In Jesus name, we pray, amen.
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him, you get the opportunity to live your life for Him.
At this podcast, we are called Savvy for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you're ready to get started?
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision my parents took me to Barnes and Noble to get the Quest NIV Bible and I love it. Start by reading the book of John.
Get connected locally, which basically means just tell someone who is part of the church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you. [01:15:16]
We want to celebrate with you too. So feel free to leave a comment for us if you made a decision for Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.
Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.
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