Listener Q&A: Are Your Goals Interfering With Your Marriage?

How do you create a future together in a marriage when your goals may be different? What are healthy ways to deal with conflict? In this week’s episode, Chris and Tim answer your questions, and share valuable tips on strong communication climates, working in synchrony, and building Christ-centered relationships. 

---

Speaker 1:

Welcome to another Art of Relationships podcast. We are grateful for listeners like you. Let's get right into it.

Chris Grace:

Tim, we're going to start the podcast today with some really fun things. And that is we get to interact here all the time with not just listener questions, but students, I mean, we have thousands of students on this campus, maybe only 100 or so maybe take our class, but they come to our events and they ask us questions. And I think, Tim, what do you think? Should we just answer some of the questions we get?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah. This is one of my favorite segments is getting listener responses and great questions that I can defer to you.

Chris Grace:

Yeah, there you go, man. I'll take them. So we asked some students recently, in fact, hey, what's something that you would want to learn? If you had an entire semester to study a relationship, what is it that you would want to know and learn? So, Tim, here's here's one person said, I want to know what makes a relationship strong. And that is strong in a healthy way and dealing also with conflict. So Tim, I'll give you that question. What makes a relationship strong? They use that term and then for them, another question they had is, what's the healthy way to deal with conflict?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Well, let me just say one thing, Chris. No. Kidding. So what makes a strong relationship? Volumes have been written on this. A bunch of different perspectives. Let me take one. I wrote about in a book called Marriage Forecasting is a strong communication climate is you are meeting each other's expectations. Second, there is a strong sense of mutual commitment to the relationship, it's not just one person's committed, the other one's not. You trust each other and then would be that you acknowledge each other in ways that you both appreciate. See, and that's the compatibility part is, do I feel acknowledged? Not that that person agrees with me about everything, but I feel you acknowledge the weight of my perspective, the seriousness of my perspective. We both are equally committed. We're investing equally. Again, that's all subjective. And by the way, you go through seasons in a friendship, you go through seasons in a relationship, a marriage where you do feel like I'm doing 70, you're doing 30 and sometimes that's just life.

Tim Muehlhoff:

With Noreen, so here I am, Chris, in grad school, we've got three small kids. Oh my gosh, Noreen's doing 80. I'm doing 20, right. I'm working a job. I'm doing grad school and Noreen's down on the home front. So I do think there are seasons where the variables can shift a little bit, but overall you have to feel like, so imagine this. Imagine Noreen thinks, "Well, this is all about Tim. This is just him pursuing his dream. That's it. He doesn't, I'm holding down the home front, he's off doing Dead Poet's Society." You know what I mean? But if Noreen takes the perspective, he's doing this for the longterm betterment of himself and the family, then Noreen's okay with that seasonal time of, "I feel like this is skewed a little bit on the home front, but Tim is working a job. He's going to grad school and long-term the family's going to benefit." So that's what a strong relationship is both people are perceiving it in the same way and they feel like it's equitable. I think that's incredibly important for a strong relationship.

Chris Grace:

I think that's good. I'll take a stab at it too. There was a guy that did some research recently, well it was a while back, and they talked about what are the qualities that separate out relationships. He looked at all relationships and marriages that are high functioning or strong. And Tim, the five good signs they said, you can look at a marriage and a relationship and if you see these qualities, then they are what we would say, healthy or strong. And one interesting, they frequently laugh together. Couples that laugh together have always been something that shows there's a great beginning or a strong relationship. You calmly discuss things and issues. There's a calmness and some of this you've covered, but there's a way in which you deal with conflict, but you hold down the emotions that are strong. So you calmly discuss things.

Chris Grace:

And by the way, we list these in some blogs out there. So I'm not going to go through all of them because I know you want to hear some more, but number three, you confide, there's a confidant type of relationship. You confide in each other. So a strong relationship, you share your heart and who you are and where you're at. Another one that could be a really important is that sense, Tim, that you work in synchrony, you work well on projects together. So you parent the kids well, you do that together. And that's a strong relationship. And then finally this idea that longevity and expectation that there's going to be a future. You and I have a future and I'm going to be committed to that future regardless. And I think, Tim, you've always said that there's going to be a long 50 years if we don't work this out because I'm committed to you.

Tim Muehlhoff:

And I love your list, but this brings up an interesting thing, within com circles and psych circles, in a way the student has asked the question, what's a good diet. Now you walk into it, you go to Barnes and Noble, you go to Amazon and you type in good diet?

Chris Grace:

Good luck.

Tim Muehlhoff:

You're going to get different perspectives. So I love your list. I think Gottman, John Gottman, we've often talked about him, would disagree with the calmness one per se, not ... obviously a calm conversation is fine, but Gottman, I think would advocate even if you raise your voices and you yell, but you feel like that's okay, now, obviously we're not talking about verbal abuse, you're demeaning each other. But if you're like a passionate ... I would hate that Chris, if Noreen and I did that, I'd hate that. And think, "Boy, we got to work on this," but it does allow for certain couples to have some oomph and passion as we are treating each other fairly. But we're getting pretty emotional talking about this, I think Gottman says, "Hey, I think that's fine if you both feel like you're okay with how to ... That that's okay."

Chris Grace:

Yeah. And if the subtext there is, I still love you and I care for you. And I think, Tim, your diet analogy is perfect, diet books. Because this was a guy named Scott Stanley working on the University of Virginia National Marriage Project said, so these are the five qualities that separate out, and it comes down to really forgotten one word, friendship. So if even if number three, you calmly discuss issues, it' different on Gottman's list. Gottman would still say, "Yeah," but all along the subtitle or the subtext is I still like that. You're still my friend. Even if we have strong emotions, right. And others, like you said, just like, no, no, no. Let's just calmly discuss this and both can work. And that's like the diet idea [crosstalk 00:06:57]

Tim Muehlhoff:

So, and we have to understand the interpretive process of this as well. So I grew up in a home where my parents argued all the time. So for me, raising your voice is a negative, where in another family, they might've grown up it was like, "Hey, that's my family. That's how we talk. That's our love language, is passionate raising of the voices shows that we care about each other." I think Gottman is saying you're both right. Because mine's super subjective, growing up in the home that I grew up in.

Chris Grace:

Yeah. All right. You got one, or you want me to give you another one?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Give me another one.

Chris Grace:

All right. So are there any specific challenges that Christians face in marriage than maybe let's say non-Christians? So in other words, what makes a strong Christian couple versus a non-Christian couple?

Tim Muehlhoff:

That's a good one.

Chris Grace:

That's a good one, man, because what makes that difference? What is that? And then does it come with some extra difficulties. Tim in a previous podcast, you brought up one that it brings and that is the faith of your children is highly dependent upon the dad and that dad going to church, modeling, not just piety, but a warmth. And so for a Christian couple there might be added things like I want my child to also walk in faith and then that's maybe an extra burden that couples can have. But what do you think?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Well, yeah, for sure. We have different goals, right? The American dream is I want happiness, is I want ... That always bothers me. I get why parents say that. I just want my kids to be happy. I think the New Testament is going to disagree with that. Okay, but happiness doing what or at what cost. So I think a Christian marriage is not perpetuated by the American dream. It's not bigger and better. It's not upward mobility. And if anything, being a Christian couple may mean great sacrifice for Jesus's kingdom, right, financially. Maybe saying some hard things at a parent teacher association meeting where it's like, I know we're the only ones who feel this way, but I feel like this is a Christian virtue that I need to stick up for. So I think it's pretty clear that Jesus says to all Christians, "You need to first seek my kingdom."

Tim Muehlhoff:

So a Christian couple is going to have different priorities, by the way, let me just say parenthetically, this is why Paul says, obviously a Christian can't marry a non-Christian. You are working off two different sets of priorities. It just isn't going to functionally work. So we really feel compatibility's sake, a Christian couple needs to come together and don't get lulled by a person saying, "Oh, I am a Christian. I go to church." We'd be like, "Okay. Yeah. But how serious are you about this? And that seriousness better match up to my view of what it means to be a follower of Jesus."

Chris Grace:

Tim, do you think there's a difference between what the ... Well, I know what the answer is, but this is rhetorical, what the world says is happiness, you want that for your kids versus you want joy for them. Jesus says, "Make my joy complete." He talks about that idea of it's different, isn't it? I mean, there's this sense of take up your cross daily, follow me and he talks about my joy is there to be given to you, so if you want for your kids that ... What's the difference do you see then when, when God says, "My joy I give to you," that is that idea of following him and walking with him results in something even deeper than the world's view of what we call just happiness or financial success.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Now what does James say? "Consider it all joy," not happiness-

Chris Grace:

... when you encounter various trials.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Not happiness. That'd be sick on God's part, right? Be happy that we're in a pandemic. Be happy when you've just lost your business. No, joy is this Greek word of ... it's almost like a sense of maturity, that you are being refined by the fire. Not that God is saying, "Oh, be happy that you just got a cancer diagnosis." No, not at all, but, but James is saying, but you do know this is going to build your maturity. And I think all of us know that we do look at the hard times in our lives and we go, "Man, I'd never want to repeat that. But we came out stronger out of that." So I think Christians are working off a different set of priorities.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Let me add another one is we understand that non-Christian couples don't, we're in a spiritual battlefield. We are not in a romantic balcony. That Satan, we have an adversary and I know that's not popular. I mean, can you imagine us being on a national radio show, we're talking about a literal devil. But man, can't believe in Jesus without the devil. You just can't. And so Christians can't be naive to think we don't have opposition tugging at this marriage a lot. So that's why I wrote the book called Defending Your Marriage, The Reality Of Spiritual Battle, because 20% of everything Jesus said had to do with spiritual battle, we've got to embrace that.

Chris Grace:

So, Tim, in a nutshell, a marriage, a Christian marriage, is designed to model or portray God's unity. I mean they come together, there's just not the two there's the three. So I would imagine this irritates Satan more than anything, to have a marriage that models love and kindness, servanthood to each other. And so his number one goal is to break up that marriage. And that's what you're saying the non-Christian couple doesn't even realize they're in this battle to break up a marriage, because it has such negative reverberations throughout, you know, their family, their kids, their neighbors, when a marriage dissolves. And instead he calls us to something that says, you hold on to this as a way that shows my love and in that relationship, it models who Christ is, in many respects, as the bride of the church.

Tim Muehlhoff:

I love that, Chris. And I think that what you're saying is absolutely spot on, but don't assume Satan's goal is always to break up the marriage. Another thing he could do is, this is a couple who says, they're a Christian marriage and it's better that they stay together because this is not a Christian marriage. So it's sending, again, what's the number one criticism we get is that we're hypocrites. I think Satan loves that stereotype because it's like, man, nothing's better than having a couple of say, "Hey, we are committed believers," but they're doing what everybody else is doing. That sends such bad messages to kids and community members. So Satan's not always just interested in divorce, he's interested in, I want you to live wildly inconsistently with what you tell people. That would be an awesome thing to happen.

Tim Muehlhoff:

So we did a whole conference on spiritual battle. We did it two years in a row in the good old days when we used to be able to have people on campus and we're coming back, we'll be coming back. This is going to end. I do think spiritual battle, let me just say this, Chris, is catastrophic thinking. So if you find yourself in this place and listen, we get it. This has been going on so much longer than we all thought it was, the pandemic of saying, we're never going to recover. This is never going to get back to normal. I think that could be the devil. That's catastrophic thinking and it's lasted longer, but we've got three vaccines that have gone through very quick, which is an amazing testimony to God's common grace. Things are going to get back to normal. If you're despairing, it's totally understandable, but it might be demonically influenced if you're a follower of Jesus, he might want to really get you to despair.

Chris Grace:

Yeah. And by the way, for any listener out there, if you want more on this, what we've done is we've put together a course on this, on spiritual battle, Tim, and you can just simply go onto our website, find a whole course. And that whole conference we did is we filmed it and recorded it and you can go watch this. If you want the whole entire thing, there might be a slight charge. There's very little charges. In fact, everything on our website is free, but there are some, a small little course on spiritual battle that you and I did and others.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Based on a groundbreaking book, wasn't it?

Chris Grace:

It was an amazing ... In fact, we need to cover that book [crosstalk 00:15:35]

Tim Muehlhoff:

You know have to forgive me. You know you eventually-

Chris Grace:

Go back and listen to a previous podcast, you'll get that.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh gosh.

Chris Grace:

All right, Tim, some students have another question and they want to know with even ... I guess it's kind of similar in this one, but they want to know how do you create a future together in marriage when your goals may be different. Okay, let me just start with the thought, how do you create a future together in marriage? How do you create a marriage when your goals may be different? To me, it all comes down to what what's a goal. What are you calling a goal?

Chris Grace:

And look, if your goal is to be a missionary and live wherever God moves you and you're not caring that much about the stability of a home because you're ready to go to any place in the world, but that goal is different than your spouses, man you've got problems because that's one of your higher goals and you're going to create, already, a future together that's pretty bleak just from experience.

Chris Grace:

So I think it all depends ... If your goal is to, I don't know, let's say become a millionaire by the time you're 40, then one of the things you could do, Tim, if you want to do that is ... Well, suppose that other person's goal is, yeah. Okay. Well, I don't mind money. And if that's our goal, it may not be that big of a deal. But if you have higher priority goals that don't match up, I guess I would say you better sit down and talk to somebody about the importance of those goals.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Premarital counseling, we beat this drum non-stop but it really makes a difference. And I get it. You're 23, 24, 25. I don't know what my long-term goals are. Yeah, but there's other goals of man, I just want to have a certain lifestyle and that's really important to me. And I want to send the kids to private elite school and things like that. So here's one thing I did that was just a stroke of genius is I'm about to ask Noreen to marry me. I really am. I'm going to pull the trigger. And I really had been thinking about grad school for a long, long, long time. I didn't know when I would go. I didn't know that specifically, but I sat down with her and I said, "Hey, I just want to lay something out to you. I'm really serious about doing a PhD. It's a lifelong goal, a lifelong dream. And what would you think about that?"

Tim Muehlhoff:

And Noreen later said to me when she was in the midst of it, the MA, the PhD, "That was really nice to you to say that before we got married, because it was hard, it was tough. And that was nice." So I think things like that, I think it's important to sit down and say, "This is what I think." Long-term goals. I'm kind of thinking ... Get that out in the open beforehand. It could help.

Chris Grace:

And the person's reaction to that, Tim, sheds a lot of light on who they are. So if Noreen's reaction was, "Tim, I love you that much. Let's do this," versus, you know, someone saying, "Gosh, that's dumb. Or why would you do that? That isn't going to put money on the ... food on the table." And so another person's reactions to your goals, do they belittle them? Do they just say, "Gosh, that's so cool. I want to come alongside you and do that." But if you're already maybe having conflict over a goal, it may shed light on are you really this compatible?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah. Now let me say a very practical one. We both do premarital counseling with couples. I'm not a marriage family therapist, but we do premarital counseling. So we had this one, couple Chris, and it wasn't goals, but let me use a different word. It was roles. So we were talking to this couple and they love each other. They've been dating forever. She is what we would probably call an egalitarian. She doesn't believe he's the spiritual head of the marriage. He is in that camp of, yeah, I'm the spiritual head of the marriage. I'm a complementarian, I'm not better than you are, but I think that's what God has articulated. Well, it came up in premarital counseling. It came up and we just said, "Hey guys, you've asked our opinion. I think this could really come back and bite you because I think you need to kind of settle this right now."

Tim Muehlhoff:

Well, they just didn't think it was a huge deal because it wasn't a huge deal then. Okay. Here's what I get five years later. I get a frantic email. Here's the frantic email, Chris. He, "I've been offered my dream job in another state." She does not want to leave her family, her whole family, which is really cool, right? Her whole family is right there. She's not leaving. What am I supposed to do? Oh, Chris, I so wanted to go, "Na-na-nana boo boo. We knew better than you did." Here's what I said to him, Chris. So let's take that question, and let's say after marriage, okay, what if we have different goals? And that's understandable. If you get married in your early 20s, my gosh, you don't even know what you want to do and the opportunities that are going to come, okay.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Here's what I said to the guy. You cannot go without her. You cannot go without her. That is not an option anymore. You are the spiritual head of that marriage. You need to be with her. He said, "I'm supposed to give up my dream job?" And I said, "Well, one have faith that God can resurface things, but yeah. You're not going without your wife. You're not going to drive that wedge in." So let's say you develop incompatible ... Let's say, well, so Chris, give me your advice here. We get married. And then I say to Noreen, "Hey, I really want to do a PhD. It's going to cost a bunch of money. It's probably going to take like roughly seven years. I really want to do it." Noreen's like, "Honey, I cannot emotionally do this. We've got two small kids. I can't do this." What's your advice to that couple?

Chris Grace:

Yeah. Well, are you already having, you already have the children together. You're already married.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah. We're married. We're married. We have two small kids and I suddenly realize I want to go do a PhD.

Chris Grace:

Oh, I see. Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff:

See what I mean?

Chris Grace:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Tim Muehlhoff:

What do you say?

Chris Grace:

I think this is exactly where for a believer, learning something, Tim, and how hard this is the difficulty of giving up ourselves for another person, what it means to commit to another person in good times and in bad, but also to commit to another person that says you are deeply valued by me. I want the best for you and to do that, man, it takes ... I mean, it's easy to say, "I'll give up me for you in this situation." Everybody would love to say, "Oh, of course I would do that. I love this person." But by this time, you use this, you're in that deep world of pain and that is, you're already distant from each other, maybe because the kids and what do you call it? What kind of world do you live in? I forget.

Tim Muehlhoff:

The funk.

Chris Grace:

Yeah. You're in this funk.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah, the funk.

Chris Grace:

But to take up your cross daily to model what it means to love another person, the way God did, sometimes you just got to give up who you are or at least not who you are, but maybe some of your own goals. Tim, it's so hard. That's what I would say. But man.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Well, you better believe Satan's swooping in with bitterness, you better believe one way or the other bitterness is coming. And second, perspective. This is what I remember when Business Guru said, most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in five. So just because now is not the time to do that PhD, doesn't mean it's off the table. God can open ... and I did my PhD late, but let me give you a real life situation. I have a good friend of mine, his name's Stan. We were on staff with Campus Crusade together. He gets married to Lori, and he picks up a book on medieval theology, Chris, medieval theology, and it blows his mind. He loves it and now says to her, "Honey, I want to go do a PhD in medieval philosophy." And she's like, "What? Why?" "Oh, it's God's truth." "Do you want to teach with it?" "No, I just want to dive deeper into God's truth. But God has called me to this."

Tim Muehlhoff:

And you know what Laurie did? She said, "All right, we'll take it year by year." And they did, they did it year by year. He finished it. He's not teaching, but he is leading a huge Christian ministry. And I think that was so good of her to say, "Okay, can we do this year by year? And can I take a break if I need it?" That's kind of a nice way of, but she didn't marry a guy who loved medieval theology. He didn't know about it until after they got married. You got to allow for those kind of moments.

Chris Grace:

Yeah. That's good stuff, Tim. I think with knowing what it means to love another person is volumes and books have been written. It's just, it comes down to these nitty-gritty and it's really hard.

Tim Muehlhoff:

But that's the commitment part, right? [Crosstalk 00:25:09].

Chris Grace:

Yeah, that's when we decide we're going to ... and what [inaudible 00:25:11] say I'm committed to you for life.

Tim Muehlhoff:

We're going to figure this out. I don't know how we're going to figure it out, but guess what? We're going to figure it out. Timing, seasons. I didn't know I'd be good at modeling. Chris, I didn't know until I got married and I was in demand and traveling and being objectified in Cancun. I didn't know. But Noreen was gracious. She just let me have that season. And now I'm not doing it anymore.

Chris Grace:

No. Those flights of fancy that you take are something she just accepts. Here is what I would also recommend. Tim, the situations like this, it's almost, when you find yourself at a stalemate, it's almost impossible to get through. You really need to reach out to another person or two.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That's [crosstalk 00:26:01].

Chris Grace:

And so you find somebody, another couple like Stan and Lori might, my guess is they probably talked to friends and couples, maybe even a marriage therapist and a counselor. And you just say, "Hey, can you give us some insight?" Boy, you could really get some good help when you just both can, you're both up against the wall and nobody's budging or it doesn't feel like you're making any progress. You really do need to call in somebody from the outside.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah. Take a deep breath, read Keeper of the Bee, just get some honey.

Chris Grace:

Crime and Punishment.

Tim Muehlhoff:

And say we ... But it is that commitment thing. We are in this thing and we're not ... We are going to figure this out together. We're not figuring this out apart from each other.

Chris Grace:

No, that's really good.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That is really a huge, that's the communication part.

Chris Grace:

It is. And it says I'm committed to you and we're going to do this together. All right, Tim, let's try another question. How do you maintain individualism while growing with your partner, especially so you don't grow apart. And I think this is from another person, but it ties right in and it says this, or at least maybe this is the way I interpret this question. To maintain who you are as a person, while growing together with your partner ... This is what's so phenomenal. God's calling two distinct individuals that have different personalities maybe and certainly they have a different life experiences. And he calls these two people together into a relationship. And the question is, Tim, how do you maintain that? Your own identity, your own individualism, the things you like, your quirks, while also growing together?

Chris Grace:

I'll tell you what my wife used to do. She would say, "Chris, you need to go ... I need you to go call your buddy and just go. Go for a weekend." Or, I would go in and say, "Alisa, what do you think? There's this baseball league I want to play in," and she'd say, "Chris, go play." I said, "But it's up in Burbank in California. I have to drive up there. And it's sometimes on weekends." And she goes, "Chris, you love baseball. Go play, go keep doing it until your body doesn't give you anymore. Just go play." And so she would just encourage me to maintain that part of me she knew fed me and gave me life and I loved it. I'd come back. And I'm like, "Alisa, that was awesome, man. I love doing this." I love reaching out. I use it as a ministry opportunity to reach non-Christians and she just said, "Keep that." And of course, then it's comes upon me to also encourage that in her. She wanted to go out and do, fly out and see friends and family and do a weekends away. And I would always refer back to the way she responded to me in those times.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah. And that we had the same experience. I just got my black belt, Chris Grace.

Chris Grace:

Congratulations.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Kung fu, baby. But listen, that was seven years. And that was probably three, four times a week. Now Noreen was cool at that ... By the way, she could live a life of peace. Never knowing about Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee or mixed martial arts or the Ultimate Fighting Championship. But here's where you can get selfish. Right. So if I'm doing kung fu I've used that chip. Now I come back and say, "Oh honey, you won't believe it, but they're starting to church softball team. I really want it. They asked me to play." Noreen's like, "No, no, no, no. You're doing kung fu." "Yeah, but, oh, come on. It's just every other week." That's when you get in trouble. So you need to know I'm using my individual chip and I can't be getting greedy with it. Now we're gone every weekend and now we're doing everything.

Tim Muehlhoff:

And so that's where you have to be careful to say, every decision I make is a decision for my wife. That's a great parenting lesson, by the way, when the kids were young, I'm off doing something. Somebody is home with the kids. And so I like that. Is you had to be reciprocal with Alisa to say, this just can't be me, always cashing in my go off do thing card. But so that's where, so long as both people are okay with it, then I think you're okay, but individuality is fine, but you always need to know you're part of an ecosystem called marriage.

Chris Grace:

Yeah, and I think there's the other part of this question is how do you grow together in something like this? It really took some effort on both of our behalfs to follow the another person, the other person's passion and interest sometimes. And so, here's what Alisa did, man. Once I stopped playing a lot of this, it was still of interest. And so she got to know the Dodgers and she got to know all the players and what they did. She'd sit and she wouldn't watch every game, but she would sit down at different times if I was watching and watch with me and she just decided, that's how I'm going to join him in this and we can grow together. And it became almost a passion of hers. She almost say, "Hey, did you see the Dodger game?" I'm like, "Oh man, I missed it." And it's the same with me is joining her in that, even though it's uncomfortable at first. But just to find the things that the other person is interested in and then that's how you grow together in this.

Tim Muehlhoff:

So Noreen speaks at Family Life marriage conferences with me. And there's a great talk she gives to the wives where she stands up and she takes her hands. She goes, "Okay. One, the Detroit Redwings have won 11 Stanley Cups. Two, Steve Eiserman is the icon, the greatest captain in the history of the Detroit red wings, hockey team. Three, he's their brand new general manager. Four, Dominic Hasek is ..." and she does all 10. She then looks at the audience, Chris, and she goes, "That is self-sacrificial love. I could have gone my entire life and not know one of those facts. And I would have been totally content but my husband is a crazy Detroit Redwings hockey fan."

Tim Muehlhoff:

Okay. So when Detroit, when Patrick Roy, the hated goalie of a Colorado Avalanche ... when he retired, I went out and bought a cake and had them ice it Roy Retires. And I bring it home and Noreen goes, "I beg you to get help." But Chris, right. So getting into each other's worlds and that can be one sided. I mean, I'll be honest with you, Noreen does a better job than I do. Noreen loves those dang home improvement shows, Chris like, oh, look a special on grout. It's like, "Oh, just shoot me." But Noreen does a better job. That has to be reciprocal.

Chris Grace:

No, that's good. So that's great advice. Well, Tim, that's awesome. Just to have, be able to answer some of the questions from students and others. Thanks for doing that. And let me just remind listeners, hey, go in and review our podcast. That would be awesome. And we also have the ability for you to join up on an email newsletter, go to cmr.biola.edu, and do that as well. And remember, you can email us, tell your friends about this podcast. That would be awesome, Tim. It's always good talking with you.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Great being with you.

Chris Grace:

All right. Y'all take care. Bye.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to the Art of Relationships. This podcast is only made possible through generous donations from listeners just like you. If you like it and want to help keep the podcast going, visit our website at cmr.biola.edu and make a donation today.