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0:02
Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. You’re joining me belah rose as I dive deep into the beauty, power and truth about intimacy, learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. delight your marriage. Oh, right, welcome. This is Bella, thank you for joining. I’m so excited because today I actually have a former student on then, and he’s been married 45 years. So he knows a thing or two about how to have a very long marriage and how to actually have health sexually in the length of time for a marriage. So this is broken into two parts. The first part, we’re focusing on his journey in marriage, as well as some really key changes that he made to impact his health, sexually speaking. And then the second half is also the trajectory of how things changed in his marriage. And He even talks about some things that changed as a result of he and I working together. And it’s just a fantastic conversation, I think he’s just a very special soul that you’ll learn a lot just through the different stories that he shares. And he’s well well researched. And I think you’re going to pick up a lot, even scientific and medical things you can do, even right now to impact and enhance your sex life. So really excited about what this means for you and your marriage. Let’s go ahead and dive in.
1:51
I would love to Thanks for having me on. I just learned so much from you. And I appreciate you so much. And I’m honored that you gave me this opportunity to talk and I hope that whoever listens to this will something good will come out of it. Every time I attend a course I always come away with at least one thing that that’ll be the same for the people that listen to us. Sometimes I learned what I don’t want to do. But hopefully they’ll find something that will happen in their lives. Yeah, so I grew up in a little small town, the atmosphere at our house when I was growing up as tents. And just discord, a lot of lot of fighting between the kids. So I escaped as much as I could sustain when I was older when I would stay with friends on the weekends and just kind of stay away as much as possible. So that was it was tough. So when I was done, probably about 12 I went to a Baptist encampment and became a Christian. And I started praying that God would send me a wonderful wife. And we could have a great family, but it wouldn’t be like the family that I grew up with. And so God has has been really good to answer that prayer. And, you know, we we have, we have an amazing family. I was president of my high school, and I’ve been President of about every organization that I’ve ever been.
3:33
I do not doubt that.
3:37
And my wife, you know, she’s an amazing girl. And we are from the same town. She’s a year older than I am. But I’ve known her for a long time. And you know, God did blessed me with an absolutely fabulous person. And so we got married, we got married really early. So I was 2621 We’ve been married 45 years.
4:06
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s so great.
4:09
One of the things that I encourage my kids to do is look for a potential spouse, you know, in a church setting. And so they did that they were involved in church, singles groups, and they got out of college and that’s how they met their spouses. So we’re just really, really blessed. Blessed.
4:31
That’s amazing. Wonderful. Okay, so you started out, you know, praying that God would give you a marriage that didn’t really resemble the family that you started in that you saw modeled for you. So can you tell me when you got married, you know, your first years what was if you don’t mind sharing kind of what was the nature of intimacy like between the two of you
5:00
I would describe our early years of marriage if ignorance is bliss, or as I would describe as delayed gratification. Because when I got into dental school, I wanted to go to I want to go to graduate school. And in order to go to graduate school, you really had to make all lay eggs. So my wife was a teacher, she just graduated from school. So we both roll in about six in the evening, her from work and me from school and, and she’d make dinner. And then I just, we had a, we had a little two bedroom, a terrible apartment, but the second bedroom, we converted it into a study, and I was probably sitting down and studying by set and then about nine o’clock, she’d come in and give me a little peck on the cheek and say, I love you. And then she’d got a bad notice that I would be up to midnight. On some weeks, where there was testing, I’d be up to two, three in the morning, studying and so we pretty much didn’t see each other, you know, during the week other than have dinner together. And then, you know, on the weekends, but by the time that week is rolled around, you know, we were just, we were just, you know, Brian did. And so I was in a fraternity, again with, you know, party guys. And so we would usually go to like, they call them relaxers. So it five o’clock on Friday afternoons, we go to a bar, just hanging out with dental students and the wives and nursing students and hygiene. Just drink beer and talk about how hard the week was. My wife also had another job because we were pro, he would work retail on the weekends. We’re really in survival mode. So you know, we really didn’t have you wouldn’t call it a very intimate lifestyle. I think my wife’s father died when she was nine. Her mother remarried, but he was an alcoholic, the second husband was an alcoholic. And so really, my wife really didn’t have a relationship with a man. And they didn’t really model, you know, what you teach? And so, I mean, I hate to say that, but that might have worked in our favor, sadly, because I don’t think she I didn’t know what to give, and she didn’t know what she was missing. Because I think if you asked her about our early on years, she’d say, well, everything was fine. And it was it was it was all we knew. But in our defense, you know, we didn’t know anybody that had the kind of lifestyle, the intimacy lifestyle you teach, and 45 years ago, there were really no resources that I know of. No, they were out there. So I think, unfortunately, most of the world, I guess they operated like we did. So I’m not sure you you’re the expert in that area, but I didn’t see it around, you know?
8:30
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So if you would be able to go back to some of those seasons. So if I were to break up some of the seasons that you mentioned, you’ve got that time that you were in dental school, the time that maybe you were building your business, the time that you were raising young kids, the times that you were raising teenagers now the time you’re entering empty nesters, that time you’re, you know enjoying grandkids if we were to break it up, I’m sure there’s other seasons you could probably define in there. But if we were to think about maybe even going back to some of those seasons, now what you know about intimacy and that kind of thing, what would you suggest would have been a better way of living? Do you think?
9:18
Well, what, there’s one thing I did want to share with you. She we started going to church. So while we were dating, you know, I told her I said, Well, if we’re going to date, you know, I want us to go to church. And so we started going to church, and then we found a church when we were in dental school, and the second year that we were married, she accepted Christ and baptized. So, you know, that was awesome. Yeah. And then another thing that was I think a really significant occurrence is that our last year that I was in graduate school I got into graduate school. And so she decided to go back to school and she went to graduate school. So I got a part time job after school, and would work till midnight, but she had to drive a car to go to college. So both would wrote that about, you know, minutes, not nothing had really, you know, changed. But we saw in that this has to be a God thing, we saw that there was going to be a Bible Conference in our, in the city where my school was, and for some reason, we decided to go and the man is passed away. But the man that held the Bible conference was major Ian Thomas, and he was an amazing man. And what he taught was that Christianity was really about turning your life over to the holy the leadership of the Holy Spirit. And up until that point, we never had heard that concept. And so, you know, Christianity for us was more like, go to church those Sunday and ask God to forgive you for what you did, you know, during the week. So we had a lot, we had a lot to probably offer. But, you know, that really, that blew our minds, I’ll never forget the last night of the conference, I was in tears, because I really don’t think I understood what it meant. So be fully turned over to God. And so that was a, a huge change for us and an eye opening experience. And, you know, one of the best things that ever happened to us. And one of the things I wanted to share with you, because I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this before. And the group, some of the some of the people are listening this, they’ll say, well, but some others may not know, one of the things that major Thomas taught was that animals birds and and insects in the animal world are he gives them an instinct. And that instinct protects them. And a couple of examples of use was that if you, if you put a bottle of alcohol in front of the dog, of course, they wouldn’t drink that. Because their instinct would say, hey, no, that’s, that’s not good for you. But man will drink, too. They, you know, they can’t walk. And another example used were birds as they migrate from north to south, you know, how do they know to go 1000s and 1000s of miles and but they end up back to the same home or destination every time or salmon and they, you know, when they migrate. And so he said that we are born with an instinct. And, and so if you had the Holy Spirit, and you’ve got an instinct, it’ll teach you right from wrong. You see, you know, if you’re going down the wrong path, and that really has to be able to say, you know, when I look around the world, and don’t tell him television in some of the wickedness. And I want to shake my head and say, you know, I can’t believe this is this is what’s going on, or a marriage. It’s the, and it’s just we don’t, you know, we don’t have that Holy Spirit within us. And we don’t have God, you know, showing us the way. So that was probably one of the most significant things that ever happened to me. In that first, the first five years of our marriage was was meeting him and reading some of his books, and I actually became friends with him. So it was Oh, wow. Yeah, he was he was an amazing, amazing person. Wow. Back to your question. You know, what would I do with, you know, our marriage is I would change the priorities.
14:12
Because my wife is very ambitious. And I am too. And so pretty much until maybe 10 years ago, marriage intimacies, then not that high of a priority. So I’ve changed your priorities, I would have hired you and I would have just cherished or more like you t helped her out more. We had a consultant early on there was Christian and you know, one of his favorite mottos was, only do things that you enjoy to do. And the rest farm it out. We had hired a lady that had a degree in early childhood growth and development that came into our house. And she helped out with the kids. And then, you know, we had a maid and so we we farmed out, things that we didn’t enjoy doing. But I wouldn’t do that if I had to do over again, I would have more time at home, I would have been out to help with the dishes and, you know, help with the homework and not focus so much on my career. So, yeah, I’m not we accomplished a lot, but I’m not particularly proud. You know, what, how we did it, or what we did. We, you know, we spent a lot of time teaching Sunday school. And we taught Bible Study Fellowship. So we were really involved in church, you know, teaching, and tithing and taking the kids to school, we picked out a church that had a really strong youth group, and got our kids plugged in there. And we got that idea from listening to Billy Graham, he had a book on answers, the last most difficult questions, and one of them was working to save your kids to school. I mean, he, he felt like he says, sit in the public school. And then help them you know, finding a church that they could make friends with, and then find those friends and hang out those friends in school. And then when they were challenged growing up, then they’d have their parents, you know, to help them understand what was going on into the world. And drop them off into college. And they said, Oh, my God, no, where’s this world? existed? You know, and if you look at the statistics, 70% of the kids that are Christians, when I get into college, they turn away from the Lord. So, you know, I don’t know, things have changed a lot since our kids were young. And you look at what’s going on in the public school and think, Wow, no, would I? You know, especially what the curriculum, the curriculums are in school. No, I don’t know what I would do. We used to just say we’re going to take school one year at a time. Now, what are the things I thought was interesting, in this public school in the high school is they had a program that’s called peer assistantship leading, and they call it pals, and student body. And the teachers would vote on kids that they thought were exemplary, and they were good leaders. They were good kids. And they could talk to other kids that were having problems, you know, in the school. And it was interesting that I would say 95%, at least the kids that were in that peer group, the leadership group, were they went to church. I mean, they were. Yeah, you can see, you can see a difference. No, in those kids.
18:10
Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah, so it’s interesting, I think, what I’d love to ask you about is, because a lot of the people that are going to watch this are very goal oriented, ambitious, you know, achievement oriented people like yourself. And it’s interesting to hear you, which are pretty close to retirement age, I think, right? You’re, you’re thinking about doing that in a couple months? Probably not? Unofficially, because officially, you’re going to be doing a ton of different things. But in that zone, and you know, you’ve gotten from a place if you don’t mind me saying you came from a place where you call your use that you guys were broke, right, but now you guys are absolutely, you know, wonderfully able to give to others and in those financial ways. And I think that a lot of times, people at where they are now let’s say they’ve got children at home, let’s say they’re about, you know, between their 40s and 50s, or something. And what I often see is this, like pressurized sense of they need to achieve and achieve and achieve and achieve at the expense of loving their spouse while loving their kids. Well, these kinds of things. And I don’t know, how would you maybe talk to somebody in that spot?
19:33
Well, there’s a really famous dentist, he’s passed away. His name is Dr. panky. He’s from Florida, and he used to teach the cross of life. And I think to do things well, you can’t do a lot of things. Amen. Think you have to sit down with your spouse and say, Hey, okay, and I think you should do that before you get married. Honestly. If you’re thinking about marrying, inside, hey, what, you know what’s important to you, in your life where you, you know, because time goes by so fast, at the end of four years, like we are, what do you want to have accomplished, you know, 40 years. And one of the things that I told my kids early on is that the most important thing that you can do is, you know, find Christ in a relationship with Christ. The second most important thing is who you choose to marry. And that can be a blessing, or it can be a curse. And so accidentally, I would prioritize, with my spouse. So, you know, we, we decided that we wanted to be physically fit. So we’ve always carved out, you know, an hour a day, our seasons of life have changed over the time. But we want to work out in our day if we can, and the right. And then to, you know, pray every day and study the Bible and try to find out what God wants us to do serve others in church. And then we want to read some every day and you know, grow. But, you know, by the time you spend time with your family, and you exercise, and you do some Bible study, and you do work, there’s a lot, a lot of time left. And so I think I tried a bit off too much. I was out of balance as far as my career. So I built one of the most successful practices in the country. So I had other specialists that worked for me, and employees. And so I was all just hung around with some very successful. Other specialists, we had a study club, and it was, it was my invitation only, and we were just, we were super high achievers. So I think I got that cross out of balance. So I think you have to decide, hey, how much is enough? And, you know, you can overdo anything. You can overdo your exercise, or you can overdo, you know, monks spend all their time, right. So it’s just, you know, keeping things, it’s keeping things healthy, you know, a healthy balance. And like my dad told me a long time ago, my father in law was very successful. Why? All he did was work. So I was bragging to my dad one day about this deal that he had done, where he made millions of dollars on this deal. And my dad, he’s very wise, you know, you can only wear one Rolex at a time, or drive one Cadillac at a time and eat one steak at a time. So he said, you know, how much do you really need? And, you know, I he just sent me on my heels. Because I had a Rolex I didn’t like it, and I sold it. You know, I’m a vegan now. So I don’t eat steak anymore. And you can’t you know, how many horses do you see? You know, behind, you know, a funerals? You know, you don’t you’re not going to take anything to heaven with you. So, how much really, you know, is enough?
23:43
Uh huh. Yeah, that’s beautiful. So I want to ask about some things around intimacy. And as you all grew older, how did menopause affect you are all well in
23:57
menopause was a tough time for us. Yeah. Because, you know, my, my wife lost most of her desire really to be intimate and know she lost third royalty to become moist. Sex and see, it’s really kind of interesting. She’s gonna kill me when she hears this recording. But her complexion is really seem to change. And she would just it was almost like she was in constant PMS. I mean, she just was angry. A lot. She of course, she had the hot flashes. He didn’t sleep well. No, and not at all. So seems, you know, she’s pretty miserable. And you want to know there’s so many things that I’ve learned working with you and you know, one of the things that we discovered with one of the tests that we took, was that I’m a learner. I think this was number one. For me. Yes. I’ve always been a good student, I’ve always loved to read. And so I thought, Okay, I need to read about menopause. So most of my resources when it comes to intimacy, and lifestyle, I try to find Christian resources. And so I read a Christian book about what happens to women’s brains, their menopause. And so gave me some grace, when I realized that she was just losing some hormones affecting the wife, you know, she was thinking, and then I started reading some other books or books just on relationship and intimacy. So one of the groups that gave a credit to Paul bar. And so I started following him, and he gave credit to you. I mentioned you in one of his blogs. And so I thought, well, this lady I found, you know, found Bella, which is another one of the greatest things, you know, that ever happened. And then I was at my physician, who’s a, he’s a close friend of mine. He’s an internal medicine doctor, he scored number one in the national on the national boards in internal medicine, and he’s very conservative. And so I trust him. He’s brilliant. And so I was in for a checkup. And he started asking me some questions about my more fatigued, no, Ms. asleep, how am I sleeping at night? And what’s my mood, my energy level? So when I answered him, he said, You know, I think we should test your hormone level. Because he said, he says, It sounds like you’re low testosterone. And so sure enough, I was completely out of gas. Wow. Yeah. So testosterone level was about as low as you can, can get. And so he said, I think, you know, you need to start taking testosterone. And so I started taking these tests, testosterone pellets, in their bio identical testosterone pellets, they’re not synthetic. And I could not believe the difference that it made as far as sleeping at night, and I started putting on more muscle mass when working out, started getting stronger and better erections. It so you know, I said, you know, to the internal medicine doctor, I said, I think, maybe at a gas too, and he said, well bring her in. So he tested her shirt. She was low on estrogen and testosterone. And so he started giving her the pellets. And it was like 25 Again, really, wow, it was amazing. sleep all night, or sex drive, probably higher than it’s ever been. Wow. And
28:28
it was like, we were alive again. And it’s been pretty amazing. The benefits that we’ve received from this academy is called bow TT. I would encourage anybody that is starting to have some of those symptoms, know that they look into it, you can go to the bowtie website, and you can do a doctor locator in your area. Okay. That might be a really good resource for somebody that wants to be, you know, check, I would try to find a doctor that specializes in long liberty and does Bau T with prevention, you know, as well as my wife had to have a stent. And that really scared us because we thought we had been eating properly. And turns out, she had a 95% blockage in her main career. So I went to work again, it started reading and I found a book called prevent and reverse heart disease by Paulo. And then I found a couple other books one is called How Not to Die. Dr. Greger while your last?
29:50
How Not to Die. Sounds great.
29:52
So Dr. Greger is reviewed he is he’s got tin physicians that work for him. It’s a nonprofit network. Over a million articles in the last 10 years, and they’re called out the biased articles, or they’re all unbiased articles, and he’s boiled down the results into these into chapters. And the chapters are on different the different diseases that kill people that live and they live off in the West states in Europe. And so it’s basically 15 chapters, and each chapter relatively short. But it involves, you know, heart disease, or breast cancer or prostate cancer addresses each one of them. And now what he’s found is a plant based diet will pretty well protect you from the top 15 killers. Wow. And cardiovascular disease is the number one killer. And the number one symptom, you know what the number one symptom of cardiovascular diseases
31:00
is that your clogged
31:02
arteries? Sudden Death? Oh, which is pretty scary, because that would have that’s what happened to my wife. So she developed chest pain. And I remember from my dental studies that we need to do give her some adult aspirin. So I gave her one and she continued to have pain. And then, you know, an hour later I gave her another ended up giving her five. But we got her to the emergency room. And the doctor said that probably saved her life. Whoa, yeah. So she had to have an emergency stent placed. And so we went to work, and started trying to figure out, you know, what our problem was in both our cholesterol score, within with the American cardiology Association says is normal, which is under 200. But it turns out the research shows it needs to be below 150. Really. My wife’s taking her cholesterol down from I think it was around 207. And the last time she got it measured, it was 114. Wow. Yeah. And her LD Gail, the bad cholesterol. She has it down around 50. I think you don’t want it to be over 70 If you’ve had a cardiovascular event. So if you haven’t had a cardiovascular event, you don’t want your LDL to be over 100 is around 70. Now, wow. You know, they’re finding that erectile dysfunction is also a symptom of cardiovascular disease. Because those penal arteries are, they’re really tiny, they’re about 1/5 the diameter of a coronary artery. And so those arteries start filling up with little plaques. And so you can’t get as much blood to your penis. And that’s why the penis is unable to become fully erect or erect. Is because of their, again, the plaques in
33:11
wow, I didn’t know that. That’s right. Why fit the size? Wow. Um, so and Dr. Esselstyn I’m familiar with, and I’ve I’ve read some of his stuff as well, the China Study, did he do it? Or was it another?
33:25
Colin Campbell, wrote The China Study. And that was the third book I read in that book a blow your mind. It’s a little scientific. But it’s an amazing read. And there’s a direct correlation to prostate cancer and lung cancer and breast cancer to diet. And I would really encourage people to grab those books and read because they’re, there’s a lot of rumors out there. There’s a lot of people that are selling diets. And a lot of those diets are going to give you heart problems. And erectile dysfunction. Yeah, and keto is one of them. So I would really urge people to do your homework and go do it. You know, when your buddies tell us.
34:27
Okay, so Ben, and I just kind of started talking about the health, things that impact intimacy, but I will tell you on our next show coming out next week, we talked so much more in depth, and he is so well researched, but he’s also lived in he’s, he’s in a you know, in his 46 year of marriage, so he really understands, and there’s some medical interventions as well as health practices that he and his wife do that really impact things in their age. Now where most couples are really challenged in this way. So I want to encourage you and give you those tools. So I’m very much looking forward to having him again next week. And in the meantime, I’d love to offer you a free resource. It’s my framework that actually gives you the insights on how to love your spouse the way that they receive love. So if you’re a husband, how does your wife actually want to be loved what is most important to her, so that when you love her and fill her up in those ways, she will naturally respond to fill you up in the ways that you receive love. So this framework is for husbands and for wives, and it’s to really understand your spouse. So go to delight your marriage.com/framework delight your marriage.com/framework and you can get that download. Alright, God bless you and I look forward to next week. Take care