This message of “heirarchy” in marriage has been taught in the Christian church since the early sixties.. and the results are in. A 50% divorce rate in the church. Misery or “yes, we made it” is the norm in most of our Christian marriages that do make it until “death do us part.”

There is a much better way – one that we have written two books about and teach worldwide through the books, Weekend Marriage Intensives, Church seminars, Nationwide phone marriage mentoring and a 24/7 online marriage forum.

We live and teach an “Outrageously Happy Marriage!” It is a marriage paradigm that WORKS! and is 100% biblical.

Our story in a nutshell: One good year of marriage. Nine bad years of verbal, mental and emotional abuse and to top that off, if that is not bad enough, I (Joel speaking) got into adultery in our seventh year of marriage while we were Pastors of a church. The adultery was in 1991.

In 1994, after the nine years of misery, God caused us to discover this new way to live marriage and our life began to dramatically change. After living this new way for ten years, we wrote “The Man of Her Dreams/The Woman of His!”

That was in 2004 – we were immediately thrust into full time marriage ministry. The rest is history. Hundreds of couples lives have been transformed. Probably thousands as the first book has sold over 10,000 copies mainly via word of mouth – but we don’t hear from everyone.

The second book was written in 2006′

The problem with marriages in the church? – For the last 50-60 years, the church has conducted what we refer to as “the great social experiment that failed.” This “experiment” was the following approach to marriage:

1. Wife only submit. She submits to her husband. Husbands submits to Christ, not to wife.

2. Husband is the leader. Wife is follower, second in command. She is his trusted confidant whom the husband looks to for input but he is responsible before God for final decisions after carefully considering his wife’s views.

3. Husband is the authority over the wife. If she does not submit to him, she is in rebellion to God, or in rebellion to her calling as a wife.

4. Husband deserves respect, simply because he is “the man” in the marriage. He does not have to do anything to earn respect, rather his wife is taught to respect him, regardless of his actions.

5. A wife is not to confront her husband when he is doing wrong – rather she is to voice her concern carefully (like Esther approached the king) and then just pray and trust that God will speak to her husband. She was instructed “don’t play the Holy Spirit” and “you can’t change your husband.” She was told to quit nagging.

6. A woman cannot look to her husband to fulfill her emotional needs, rather she should look to God for her emotional needs to get met. She was told that her husband is “just a man” and that she was having unrealistic expectations for him to meet her needs – that she needed to look to God for that.

7. A wife is burdened with the success or failure of her marriage: if she just submits enough, prays enough and loves her husband with agape love enough, the marriage will be good eventually and if it fails, it is because she did not do these things enough.

We were taught this in Bible school, marriage books and seminars, at church and on radio and TV every time that marriage was discussed.

Now the results are in. After teaching this message for 50-60 years, the church has a 50% divorce rate, tons of adultery, lots of porn use and more.

In 1994, God began to teach us a new paradigm of marriage. This paradigm took us from misery to an outrageously happy marriage – and it works 100% of the time when a couple puts it into practice in their marriage. We deal with the worst of the worst marriages on a daily basis – but when couples find us who just have troubled marriages or decent marriages, the principles cause these marriages to skyrocket quickly into a happy place.

The things that we teach are:

1. Mutual submission.

2. Mutual respect.

3. Mutual honor

4. Team leadership

5. A husband initiates the good and accepts responsibility for the bad in a marriage.

6. A husband is to agape love his wife and she is to only “philandros” love him in return. This is a “responsive” love. I love you because you first love me. I love you because you treat me great.

7. A husband must lay his life down in meeting his wife’s emotional needs and he must listen to her heart so that he can become the husband that she is yearning for. She has a “marriage manual” in her heart that he needs to listen to when it concerns relationship issues and let her heart cry lead them into a happy place.

The church is going around the mountain again. In the 70’s, it was “Total Woman” and “Fascinating Womanhood.” Later it was “His needs, her needs.” In recent years it is “Love and Respect” and “Under Cover”. All of these approaches to marriage are simply regurgitating the failed paradigm of the past. The church continues to promote the same failed ideas with the same results. Insanity is attempting to do things the same way and expecting different results, this time! Sadly, we, the church, seem to be quite adept at walking the insane route!

We invite every couple who would like to learn a scriptural approach to marriage that creates JOY instead of misery, please visit us at our site. http://www.BestMarriage.com

However, I was disappointed to read you blame our nation’s horrible divorce rate on the lack of submission by wives within marriage.

My parents, who are among the happiest couples I know, just celebrated their 26th year together – they love each other deeply, and neither of them is religious, nor Christian. I learned quite a bit from watching them make decisions as a team in my childhood and adulthood. They honor one another’s feelings, and tend to decide things together – neither’s word is more final or decisive than the other, and they respect one another.

Meanwhile, my boyfriend’s parents (both born again, and very religious people who try their best to follow God) divorced after 28 years (many of them unhappy). His mother, a kind and wonderful woman, did (and does) believe that her husband ought to make decisions in the relationship, and his father embraced his role as head of household, but it ultimately did not lead to mutual respect in that case.

I congratulate you on a happy, loving and reverant marriage, and I hope that my story (or my family’s, I suppose!) can help show that embracing Biblical roles in and of itself simply isn’t enough to make a marriage work, and that it isn’t required for a happy and loving marriage.