122: Revisiting His Needs, Her Needs with Melissa J. Hogan

Amy Fritz:
Welcome to episode 122 of the Untangled Faith Podcast. Over the course of several weeks, I'm doing a series of episodes on influential Christian books from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. I've asked some friends to join me for conversations about these books after reading them again or for the first time. In today's episode, my good friend and longtime friend of the podcast, Melissa Hogan, joins me to talk about the marriage book, his needs, her needs. And just a note, before we get going, some of this conversation may not be appropriate for young ears and there is some discussion about abuse. I wanted to let you know that before we get going so you can decide how to best listen to this episode. I'm so glad you're here. I'm Amy Fritz and you're listening to the Untangled Faith Podcast, a podcast for anyone who has found themselves confused or disillusioned in their faith journey.

Amy Fritz:
If you want to hold onto your faith while untangling it from all that is not good or true, this is the place for you. Welcome back to the podcast, Melissa. It has been a long time since I've had you on the podcast. A lot of things have happened, but I wanted to have you back on for this new series I'm doing kind of talking about do these books hold up? And did they ever hold up?

Melissa Hogan:
I don't know about that.

Amy Fritz:
Yes, influential books of like the 80s, 90s, 2000s. And so this is a book that came to my mind very quickly. His needs, her needs, building in a Fair Proof marriage that came out in 1986. So I did a little bit of research. I'm going to talk a little bit about the background of the book and then I'm going to have you share your experience with the book. If you read it previously before you refreshed your mind on this, and if it was what you remembered as you revisited it, the highs and lows and wherever this leads us and sort of how it influenced how it, you know, you. It came into your life. You were thinking it would help you.

Amy Fritz:
So I'm not going to spoil anything, but that's sort of how our conversation will go. So I looked this up. The author is Willard F. Harley Jr. He's from Minnesota. I knew of him because I'm a Minnesota girl. They were in Minnesota. I think he had a counseling practice there.

Amy Fritz:
His wife, Joyce is on the radio often. And so I had their names were pretty well heard of in the Minnesota Twin Cities area, so I didn't recognize.

Melissa Hogan:
The name at all. I was surprised that, you know, he wasn't. You know, the book is so common, but I didn't recognize his name at all.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah, I think he got. I think it's possible that since his wife was on the radio so much, I, I could. I need to double check this, but I think she was connected to the local Christian radio station. One thing that's interesting, it was published in 1986, and like I said, the subtitle of this book is Building in a Fair Proof Marriage, but it was revised and updated and republished in 2022 with a new subtitle. No longer is it Building an Affair Proof Marriage. It is Making Romantic Love Last, which is interesting.

Melissa Hogan:
Well, what I saw was it. The subtitle changed over the years and it was.

Amy Fritz:
Was it more than one time that it changed?

Melissa Hogan:
Yes, it changed like six times.

Amy Fritz:
Holy moly.

Melissa Hogan:
And what I saw was that the latest version went back to the Affair proof Marriage. So.

Amy Fritz:
Really?

Melissa Hogan:
And so who knows? What I saw was that the latest version. Yeah. Went back to something related to an affair proof marriage. So I, I don't know for sure. Like that. Yeah. The Marriage that Lasts or Love that Lasts was in there somewhere.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
But mostly 90% of them were. Something about affair proofing.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. And one thing, though, I did notice was that it was republished and 2022, which was not that long ago. And So I asked ChatGPT what's the difference between the 1986 version and the most recent updated version. Now, I don't know if ChatGPT is right or how well this AI has been trained, but it did say basically it kind of leaned away from the more very stereotypical gender role situation, which I guess I can kind of see that. But I would argue, and here's a spoiler, that may not be the biggest issue with this book, but it was a big. It was very, very trad. Gender roles all over this book. So that's sort of an interesting, you know, history of the book.

Amy Fritz:
So this guy who wrote this as a clinical psychologist, marriage counselor, it does look like he's written several books. He also did a video curriculum for churches and small groups. This seems to be a thing that people do. They make video curriculums for churches. And then also he has a mer. Has a website. Did you see that? He has a ministry called marriage builders.com and his family's a part of it too, which initially I was like, is this the same thing as the. The guy in middle Tennessee that lives here that has a marriage ministry, that actually his daughter works with him now? Joe Beam Is he the sex guy? Yes.

Amy Fritz:
And I thought, is he like the same? Is this he working for him? No, this is a whole different business that family. And once again, it's a family.

Melissa Hogan:
Marriage is a money maker.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. Yes. So. So inside the COVID of the book says, this book was written to educate you in the care of your spouse. Once you have learned its lessons, your spouse will find you irresistible, a condition that's essential to a happy and successful marriage. So that's from the preface, and then it said, is your marriage affair proof? Recent studies have shown that most couples will experience the agonizing pain of infidelity. However, there are measures you can take to ensure faithfulness in your marriage. In his needs for needs, Dr.

Amy Fritz:
Willard F. Harley, Jr. Shows you how to affair proof your marriage. You'll learn to build a relationship that sustains romance, increases intimacy, and deepens awareness. Year after year, it goes on a little more. Yeah, so that is the introduction to the book. That's a very, very strong promise. Very interesting premise.

Amy Fritz:
And so the idea of this book is it's based on, I guess, surveys that he has done of clients where he decided what he discovered were the number one needs of men and women. And so the five basic needs, he says of the man is sexual fulfillment, recreational companionship, an attractive spouse. Sorry. Domestic support, admiration. Okay, those are those. And then a woman needs affection, conversation, honesty and openness, financial support and family commitment. And he said, once a spouse lacks. Lacks fulfillment of any of the five needs, it creates a thirst that must be quenched.

Amy Fritz:
If change does not take place within the marriage to care for that, the individual will face the powerful temptation to fill it outside of marriage. Melissa, say something.

Melissa Hogan:
That whole premise is unbiblical. It's toxic. It is supportive of unhealthy patterns in a marriage.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
You know, I went back and read portions of the book, and there's. There's some good nuggets, like there is some truth. But sometimes the problem is when you have some truth combined with really unhealthy things, it's hard to pass through. And, you know, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater with this book, but. Or as I like to say, the chicken and the bones.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. I'm wondering if this is poop and brownies.

Melissa Hogan:
Yeah, it's more poop and brownies. I don't think it's. I don't think it's easy to say, I'm going to eat the chicken and throw out the bones of this, because it's. It kind of seeps in. It's kind of like a virus.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
And the idea that one person in a relationship can do things that then affair proof the marriage and a fair proof the other person, that's a misassignment of responsibility.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
And if you follow some marriage, health and relationship, you know, therapists, one of the foundational premises of abuse, for example, is the misassignment of responsibility and saying that. So, for example, if you have the phrase, you know, you made me do that, like, look what you made me do. There's actually a book about abuse called look what you made me do. You know, I hit you, you made me do that. This is the same flavor of that. I had an affair because you didn't meet my needs.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
And that's really what we're talking about here, that you can do the things that satiate someone else's needs to keep them from having an affair.

Amy Fritz:
Right. The thing that makes me really sad is I know how these books are marketed. I know how. I know who buys them. I know that. Okay. I don't know. I'm going to suggest that this is the likely outcome.

Amy Fritz:
A woman is in a marriage and she's like, this is terrible. I need to fix it and I need to figure out a way to save my marriage. She goes and looks for something, any resource that will help her, and she finds this book. This is the book that's going to help her and she's going to bring this home and she's going to read it.

Melissa Hogan:
Yeah.

Amy Fritz:
And that. Tell me about that from your perspective as somebody who's had a hard. Who had a hard marriage.

Melissa Hogan:
Can I tell you how many marriage books I had on my shelf?

Amy Fritz:
Yes, lots.

Melissa Hogan:
Lots of marriage books. I had this book on my shelf. Actually got it from my mom, who was also in a hard marriage and had this book. And then I, you know, we repeat the patterns that we know. Right. So I had this book. I had, you know, what are some of the other.

Amy Fritz:
In 86. Were your parents still together in 1986?

Melissa Hogan:
My mom was married to my stepdad at that time and they got married maybe not long after or before that book came out. And so then she had that book and then I had that book. I had some of the other books, the five love languages, A lot of these same vein of books. Because you're trying, you're going, well, what can I do? And that's the lie. The lie is that one person can do something to affair proof or save a marriage. Affairs or bad behavior are the deficiency of the Person committing those things. Now, of course there are, there are things we can do and should do that are the responsibilities of us in our, in our marriage and to, to keep things alive. But our actions are our own choices.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
And to set this up as. That's just a terrible way to do this. To set this up as your affair. Proofing of marriage.

Amy Fritz:
Now, he did have this sentence in there that I took note of, but I feel like it could have been a whole. He should have spent an entire chapter on it. He said, this is for married people who want to be happily married.

Melissa Hogan:
But here's the thing. If you're, if you're trying to have a good marriage and you're buying this book. Yeah. You usually don't know that that other person is not on the same page with you. So one of the things that I would say about this book is it assumes that you have two people that are acting in good faith and are acting honestly that are somewhat emotionally healthy and emotionally aware or self reflective. And often what I have seen is if there is a partner who is deceitful, unhealthy, abusive, they're going to act like that they're at that same place with the other person and that other person then cannot figure out you're like a, you know, running on a treadmill or on a wheel.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
And you can't figure out what you're doing wrong.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. It is interesting because somebody that's an unhealthy person, they oftentimes don't want to go far enough to say, I really don't want to be in a happy marriage.

Melissa Hogan:
Because there, you know, if, if we talk about needs here, right. If both people have needs, that person is getting some of their needs met and they're like, whether that need is, I need to project an image that I'm happily married or I'm getting domestic, free domestic labor from this partner. I'm, they gave me, you know, allowed me to have children. They're keeping the house, taking care of the kids while I can go do these things over here. So they're getting some of these needs met, but they've decided they're going to get other needs met in other places. And, and back to that, like assuming that one, that both parties are healthy, it also assumes that people have needs that can be met and that those needs are healthy needs. So I'm just here to tell you there are people in the world that are unhealthy to the extent that their needs are a black hole. Another person cannot, you know, do Enough to ever meet those needs.

Melissa Hogan:
And that's that spinning wheel thing.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. Even the word needs is really interesting to me because it, it's so loaded. It's. It's sort of a get out of jail free card, I think, for women or men who read this and say, look, this is my need. And throughout this entire book, there is this theme that if somebody isn't getting that need met, that it is basically an excuse to have an affair. And like, like I. That is wild to me. And I think it's wild to me probably because my parents are happily married and I'm in a happy marriage that, I mean, I.

Amy Fritz:
I kept reading this and hollering upstairs to my husband. Cause I was sitting down, I was like, honey, is this a need you have for me to be more attractive? I'm so sorry. Because, like, there's this. I mean, it feels so. I don't know, I don't love the word need in this because it has like this value judgment on it. Like, how can you have a need that involves somebody else doing something with their body like that their ne. You have a need for your wife to lose the baby weight or you're gonna cheat on her.

Melissa Hogan:
Well, and I'll give two. Two angles of this one. We also often have a double standard that women have to be thin and well kept and all of these things. And, you know, men are running around looking however the heck they want.

Amy Fritz:
Well, that's because it's not in the top five basic needs, according to Dr. Willard F. Harley Jr. For Women. Women don't care because we need affection, conversation, honesty, financial support, and family commitment.

Melissa Hogan:
Well, and I'm like, you know, if we're saying that attraction is a lot of different things and companionship and blah, blah, you know, a person who is kind and nice and you do things with, you know, maybe, maybe part of the need is to be. Not a need, a desire for them to be in shape so you can do things together. That's very different than I want them to look good so I can look good to my friends that I have an attractive spouse. So that's one issue. Another issue is, say, for example, my own experience weight going up and down. That can happen for lots of reasons, including medical issues, including medications, including, you're now changing jobs and you don't have as much time to work out a kind, thoughtful, understanding spouse. You. You realize those things and you communicate about them.

Melissa Hogan:
So, you know, I was in an experience where I had a spouse who I find out much later was very derogatory about my body, but also when I was thin, that also wasn't good. And so what I'm talking about is like insatiable needs. Somebody who needs their spouse to be thin or a certain weight, frankly, that's a bottomless pit, at least in my experience and what I've experienced with other people because that's a superficial need for themselves and we shouldn't have that. And so, you know, that person could, they're never going to look good enough or never going to be right enough for that other person's supposed need.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. As you read through the chapter, so there's a chapter for each need. So it alternated between a woman's need and a man's needs. So we start with affection for the woman and then we go to sexual fulfillment for the man and then conversation.

Melissa Hogan:
What do you get from that? We get that in some of the other books that somehow it's actually not normal or expected for women to desire sexual fulfillment. I mean, you know, we've, we've seen that in a number of the other Christian marriage books that that's, you know, it's never even thought of that women would desire that. And that perpetuates that whole scenario that he says he's trying to avoid.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. And I think, I mean, I, I'm curious, like what sort of research he did, how he surveyed people. And I mean, it could be some people are coming to him because their marriage is in trouble. And then he asked them this and then you have sort of a self fulfilling, self selecting group of people that are in trouble. And you know, he did very much lean into stereotypes. And so I would say probably men or women could have any one of these 10 needs to varying degrees. And to give the benefit of the doubt, to be in a healthy marriage relationship or any healthy relationship, you need to be willing to think about needs that someone else has that you aren't necessarily. That aren't your top thing and that just feels like being a good person, you know.

Melissa Hogan:
Right.

Amy Fritz:
And I would argue it's not being a great spouse or a great partner to somebody to just pick up a book like that and lay all of those on your spouse. Well.

Melissa Hogan:
And you know, I would challenge to the fact that if, if we are falling in love or entering a relationship with someone whose needs are so different from our own.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
Wouldn't it be better to highlight the fact that actually identifying someone that, whose needs are somewhat similar to ours.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
And not being swung into this emotional infatuation relationship and actually being healthy enough to say, hey, do we at least have somewhat similar needs in some of these areas? Like, that's a better use of our.

Amy Fritz:
Really interesting thing to say, Melissa, because I wonder if a lot of people end up in marriage trouble because they have chosen a partner with very different needs. So very. So the people whose needs more align aren't showing up in his office.

Melissa Hogan:
Yeah. I mean, I can say that now being in a healthy relationship with someone who's. Who has a lot of similar interests and similar needs and similar, frankly, emotional health.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
And experiences is very, very different. And also someone who has integrity and honesty.

Amy Fritz:
That's. That's pretty much better. Baseline, Baseline, baseline.

Melissa Hogan:
Level of honesty.

Amy Fritz:
If you are in a healthy relationship, you take that for granted. Like, of course I have that. It wouldn't, we wouldn't even got to this point if we didn't have that. But depending on your background, you don't recognize it right away if somebody has it or not. Or like, you know, you get into patterns of things that are comfortable to you because you're. You've seen that in your life. You saw that. I had the benefit of a mom who even was aware of this book in 1990 and was like this.

Amy Fritz:
I know from Working with Women, this is the most returned book at our local Christian bookstore. Wow.

Melissa Hogan:
I mean, that says something for you, that you were primed to realize that certain Christian texts or certain marriage texts may not actually be healthy. Whereas we've talked about this before, one of the premises that I know is that if you grew up with certain patterns in your family of origin, with your parents, certain red flags, those are normal to you, so they don't become red flags when you start dating or looking for a partner. So if you grew up in a. In a family where someone you know regularly lied or cheated or gaslit other people or guilt tripped, you're not going to think that's weird in your relationship.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm really very thankful for that. I think my mom even helped talk a local church out of hosting an event with this guy. Maybe it was our church. I don't know.

Melissa Hogan:
You were, you were born for this podcast, Amy.

Amy Fritz:
I was born for this. But as you were saying about. I was talking about, you know, relationships being really hard in a lot of work and how that can sort of be a red flag. I mean, not that you should, if you're married, that if you're like, this is hard, we're done. I'm out. No, I'm not arguing that, but I'm saying that if you're early on in a relationship. I learned this from my reading specialist friends. When you are teaching reading to somebody, when you're teaching your kid to read and they are like struggling over every word, it's really hard for them.

Amy Fritz:
What you need to do is you need to back up a little bit to the, you know, those CVC consonant, vowel consonant words that are like cat and bat, where 95% of the words they're reading are just so easy. Don't have to think about it. And that's kind of how it should be. As they're learning and going along, you're only introducing some new things so that when they're reading, they are not struggling over every syllable. You're going too fast, you're in the wrong book, you're in the wrong curriculum. If everything they're doing is a fight, is a struggle. And it's the sort of thing, I think that applies to marriage relationships too. Like if you are in a dating relationship and every last thing is a struggle, maybe it's.

Amy Fritz:
Maybe they're not the one.

Melissa Hogan:
If you're dating or in the early parts of the relationship, that's when things should be super easy.

Amy Fritz:
Yes.

Melissa Hogan:
Like they should feel amazing. And if you're encountering problems at that point or like serious disagreements, invalidations. I, of course, can think back now to, you know, serious red flags in my, in my. The dating portion of my marriage relationship. And if I knew then what I knew now, I would. Or if I had somebody, you know, that knew about those things, I, of course, wasn't telling anyone. I would never marry this person. But, yeah, you only know what you know.

Melissa Hogan:
But I think the thing about this book is it ignores talking anything about red flags. It doesn't talk about boundaries or communication. There's several anecdotes that talk about, oh my gosh, there's so many crazy anecdotes. And it's talking about like one, oh, gosh, a woman wanted to go back to school and get her degree. And so she's back in school. She's has lost time to, you know, do as much for her husband or do as many activities together, play tennis together. And she's tired because she's both keeping the house, keeping the child, and she's going to classes and she's doing homework. So she's often too tired to have sex.

Melissa Hogan:
And so it talks about how he starts becoming friendly with this woman at work and, you know, she listens to him and she has more time for him. And then all of a sudden they're having sex in the office, like, boom.

Amy Fritz:
It's so wild. It's so.

Melissa Hogan:
And you just sit here and go, wait a second. That guy did not have boundaries in his relationship with. With work or with other people, with women who were not his wife. And I'm not. I'm not even supportive of the Billy Graham role like that. You can't.

Amy Fritz:
But you.

Melissa Hogan:
We all should have boundaries emotionally, you know, with. With anyone outside of our primary relationship, whether it's, you know, same, same sex, opposite sex, you know, friends, you know, friends, husbands, you know, whatever. But it doesn't at all talk about the fact that this. This guy did not have appropriate boundaries. He also didn't communicate these needs to his wife or how he was feeling about any of this. And then when she finds out, it talks about that, you know, she finds out about this affair that he has had, and she realizes that her drive for a degree was what caused this, and she's so sorry. And it equates these two things that, you know, her love bank was still filled because he was supporting her in this. In this effort to get a degree, but his had depleted because she wasn't meeting these needs that he wasn't communicating about and that he didn't have boundaries with the person, you know, at his office.

Melissa Hogan:
And, I mean, that does a number on women to read things like that.

Amy Fritz:
And, you know, and every one of these chapters was, here's the need and here's when it failed, and it always led to an affair. Every last one of these. And no, it's.

Melissa Hogan:
Let me give you another example.

Amy Fritz:
Let's.

Melissa Hogan:
Let's say one of the spouse becomes physically disabled.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
Let's say one of the spouses has Alzheimer's. How. How do we deal with that? Because you know what? That other spouse is not getting those needs met. They're probably not having sex. They're. Or, you know, I mean, there's a wide spectrum.

Amy Fritz:
Things are different. Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
Especially, you know, as a parent to a child with a progressive debilitative disease, which can be likened in some ways to, like, Alzheimer's in a child. You know, if you become a caregiver to your spouse, guess what? A lot of your needs may go unmet. And according to this book, I guess you can have an affair, and I guess that's completely fine. It's understandable.

Amy Fritz:
It's wild. Now for a quick break. Now back to the show. I mean, it feels like infantilizing people and like saying you don't have any agency, you know, like, you have no choice. Because they did not hold up their end of the bargain. That's just so very sad. I had. I had marked a couple of pages.

Amy Fritz:
John and Mary's fifth anniversary in the Love bank chapter where he's here. I'm gonna read part of it here. Critical changes start taking place in that sixth year. Mary is still the joy of John's life, but he notices an increase in his down times. While Tiffany is a little doll and John loves her dearly, their baby, she still creates new demands and negative experiences. Taking his turn to change baby's diaper in the middle of the night is not John's idea of a pleasant time. Also, Mary's decision not to nurse Tiffany leaves John with his share of responsibilities to walk her and hold the bottle. In addition, Mary has a tough time losing the weight she gained while she was pregnant as a net result of all these common visitors.

Melissa Hogan:
Little annoyances.

Amy Fritz:
Mary's little annoyance is what it calls it. Mary's balance in John's Love bank drops by a hundred points over the year. John, get yourself together.

Melissa Hogan:
Goodness gracious.

Amy Fritz:
I mean, her decision not to nurse was a problem, was a burden for him. I mean, what in the world. The idea to get himself together.

Melissa Hogan:
The idea that caring for your child, which actually should. Something that Be something that is joyful.

Amy Fritz:
For both a mother and a father. Family commitment. Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
And of course, of course, there are changes in your life when you have kids for both people and, you know, communicating, you know, what is expected in that. Yeah, I remember that section because it called them common little annoyances. Her weight gain, you know, the fact that he changed diaper and used, you know, did the bottle.

Amy Fritz:
Well, in my version, it said vicissitudes. Nobody must have known what that meant. They changed it. Two annoyances. Okay, Here, here, though, here is the next part of that chapter. Maybe you're asking yourself, should I be concerned about my spouse having an affair if I don't meet her needs? Should my spouse fear that I might have an affair if my needs are not being met? In reference to the needs described in this book, answer yes.

Melissa Hogan:
Can I tell you how many stories I've heard from women whose husbands demanded sex in the recovery period from a vaginal birth or a C section, and they were then blamed for these needs that he had in an area that was extremely painful? And we're validating that. This book validates that. Instead of saying, hey, you know what?

Amy Fritz:
That's.

Melissa Hogan:
That's a lot. Like a truly caring partner wants their partner to be comfortable, wants them to not have pain. Wants them to recover from a serious procedure.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. Like, like birth or a C section. Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
Not, not have a justified reason for then, you know, viewing porn or going out and having an affair. And here's the thing. Yeah. It's just a spectrum. So, so maybe it wasn't two weeks after. It's the mentality. It's the mentality that this justifies.

Amy Fritz:
The other thing this book says and Harley suggests is that basically at least 50% of people are having an affair. And I don't know if that is actually accurate. It very much normalizes it as of course it's going to happen. I mean, what else would happen if you aren't happy?

Melissa Hogan:
Well, and it also, what, it also normalizes. It talks about falling into an affair. Yeah, falling into an affair. When what, What I personally experienced and other women I know who have been in really difficult marriages is that this is a pattern. It's a pattern of behavior. Because what it doesn't deal with also is the deception that's involved in, in an affair. And from my personal experience, actually the, the most painful parts was not actually the affair, it was the long standing patterns of deception. Because you know, when someone is willing to have an affair, there's.

Melissa Hogan:
You have to deceive first. I always say the first lies to yourself, first lies to yourself and then you start lying to other people. And the thing is your conscience becomes dulled to that lying and you know, then you know, if that affair ends, you know, your conscience is dulled, you got away with it, you have another one. And for, for some people, and from my experience this can just be long standing decades of affairs that are then forgiven. And then you buy marriage books like his needs, Her Needs and then forgiven. Then you buy love languages and you know, it doesn't contemplate that. And it also does not deal with that. The damage to this, the spouse who didn't have the affair and the damage to the spouse who's having affairs.

Melissa Hogan:
And that dulled conscience and that dulled conscience to deception, it bleeds. It never just stays in. I'm having an affair and I've watched this, I've talked to many, many women in these types of situations. My own personal experience that that ability to lie generally existed before even having that first affair. Right. Because your conscience is dulled, you're lying to yourself and then it bleeds out into other areas of their life. And so you know, there's other things they're likely lying about by the time, you know, the affair comes to light.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. One of the Quotes from the. The chapter on the man needing to have an attractive spouse. It was on page 117 of my book. A wife's attractiveness is often a vital ingredient to the success of her marriage. And any wife who ignores this notion for whatever reason risks disaster. I read and then, like, the end of that book, you know, the end of the chapter, there was, like, these questions to talk about with your spouse. And one of the things it suggested was get out of.

Amy Fritz:
Get out pictures from, like, your wedding or whatever and, like, I don't know, talk about how you looked then. And it basically was. The questions were leading in such a way even the guys to, like, you need to admit that you. You're not happy with your wife's body. Really? Are you really? Are you ready to, like, own that? What is wrong with this guy?

Melissa Hogan:
What if the woman has a medical condition? I'm so sorry. But this also has incorrect assumptions about body and about weight.

Amy Fritz:
Genetics.

Melissa Hogan:
Yeah, Genetics is a huge component in weight. This basically says you can love your spouse less and be more justified in having an affair if they develop some medical condition where, you know, they can't move as easily. They can't, you know, go do, you know, go run and go do calisthenics and, you know, all the different things. And it's just. It's a completely warped sense of how a loving, healthy relationship would work.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. You know, one of the quotes from the book, I think that encapsulates the most. The worst, most insidious thing about this. The theme throughout this whole book is I try to point out that the straying spouse is not the only guilty party.

Melissa Hogan:
Yeah.

Amy Fritz:
No, no, no, no, no. Dr. Harley, I have some thoughts about that. Everyone's responsible for their own actions. I mean.

Melissa Hogan:
Yeah.

Amy Fritz:
In the world of us all being sinners. Absolutely. We're all sinners. But it is not the husband's fault if the wife chooses to have an affair. It's not the wife's fault the husband chooses to have an affair. I mean, these are grown adult people. Yeah. That are not being forced at gunpoint to cheat on their spouse.

Amy Fritz:
I have even heard women saying, you know, that. Whose husbands were terrible, cheated on them. Be like, well, you know, I wasn't perfect. And I'd be like, can you just. I hate that you have to say that. I hate that you have to feel like, well, I need to own my part in this.

Melissa Hogan:
Well, and here's. Here's the thing. Like, in any dysfunctional relationship, which, I mean, I would say, like an abusive relationship, is a dysfunctional relationship. You have the abuser and you have the victim and the victim stays often because what's been normalized for them or because their self esteem has been so beaten down by the abuser, it's still dysfunctional. And you can explain that behavior. You can explain why the victim got into that relationship by what was normalized in their family of origin, why they've stayed. You can explain it without excusing the abuser's behavior. Same thing with an affair, which those things often go together.

Amy Fritz:
You know, you can causation, correlation, situation. Some things can happen in the same place, but they didn't cause.

Melissa Hogan:
Yeah, yeah, you, there can be dysfunction that is unhealthy. You staying with someone and keep keeping, trying to keep them from having an affair without it being in any way your fault. And to equate the two, like everybody, I will say I experienced that in early on, someone in leadership saying, well, there's two. Everybody has a role to play and there's two people in a relationship. And this was, you know, 10, 15 years back, but by the end, you know, when I said, hey, that was really harmful that you said this 10, 15 years ago, they apologized because they then knew that that's not how this works. Yeah. So that was very. I wish everybody could get that apology from their church leaders, Christian leaders, for at any point saying, well, you know, it takes two to tango.

Melissa Hogan:
If this person's having an affair, they're abusive, you know, you've got some responsibility there too. It's not, that's not how it works.

Amy Fritz:
If you were the editor on this book or someone came to you and pitched, I want to write a book called His Needs, Her Needs, or like a marriage book on how to keep your marriage strong, what would your, what would your response be and what would you say would make this book palatable or a better way of approaching it?

Melissa Hogan:
First, it would have a lot more nuance. I mean, I did find, you know, one paragraph at the beginning that says, well, you know, really in counseling, people are individuals and relationships are individual. And then it goes on. The rest of the book to not treat it that way does the same.

Amy Fritz:
Thing at the end of the book where like you could maybe these needs aren't yours, kind of a throwaway sentence. Take this survey.

Melissa Hogan:
Yeah, right. Yeah. So I mean, it would be much more nuanced. It needs to talk about this issue that, hey, if you're reading this book and these other things are happening or this isn't your first rodeo with this kind of thing, there's probably some other things going on. And, you know, I think almost any marriage book that doesn't contemplate that the person picking up the book might be the healthier one, might be the more honest one, might be the one acting in good faith, and the other person might not be. Is doing a disservice to your reader. Because if. If you look at that, you know the statistics of people who have experienced abuse or sexual assault or different things, I'd say you have a good number of people that are likely to pick up that book that are in those situations.

Melissa Hogan:
And if you don't contemplate that audience, you. You're actually actively harming people.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I think that's really helpful. I think there's probably two audiences for the book. The one is the person's marriage in trouble. The other is the person getting ready to get married and is giving. And somebody's giving a stack of books.

Amy Fritz:
Like, these are your. These are your books you need to read to have a good marriage. And I. It just makes me sad that somebody would start their marriage with the foundation of this, really, this book that might give you a lot of bad ideas about what marriage is all about and what you can expect. I would be really sad coming into marriage, reading something like that, thinking, oh, no, at any moment I could fail and be in an affair myself. Or at any moment I could fail and my husband would be having. Yeah, it's like this scare tactic like this. You need to do this.

Amy Fritz:
And so. I don't love that. I don't love that. Would you recommend this book, Melissa?

Melissa Hogan:
I would not. I would not recommend it.

Amy Fritz:
Not in your friend's library. What would you do? Would you hide it? Would you take it?

Melissa Hogan:
No, I would initiate a conversation about it and say, hey, what's. What's going on?

Amy Fritz:
If.

Melissa Hogan:
If they're close enough to me. What's going on that. That made you buy this book? Um. Because I know for me, the. The hard things.

Amy Fritz:
This is a crack.

Melissa Hogan:
We're not things. I. Yeah, I didn't talk about them.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
I didn't even talk about them to my family until the end.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah.

Melissa Hogan:
And so, you know, we didn't talk about them till after the.

Amy Fritz:
No, we did not.

Melissa Hogan:
So, yeah, I would initiate a conversation because I think we're scared sometimes to know what's going on. And, you know, if you. If someone is in a marriage where it feels like a betrayal of their spouse to have, you know, confidences with people, to talk about some things that. That's a. A warning sign. That's a red flag, too, because it's, you know, a healthy spouse wants their partner to have good sounding boards and to have people that they can process things with or wants them to go to therapy. And so it's not a betrayal to talk about those things in an effort to actually improve and have a better relationship.

Amy Fritz:
So, star rating from 1 star to 10, how many stars did you give this?

Melissa Hogan:
I would give it two.

Amy Fritz:
Okay.

Melissa Hogan:
And I would give it two because I think there are good nuggets in here. I think there are good things.

Amy Fritz:
That's the problem with these books.

Melissa Hogan:
Yeah. But I think the assumptions, the very. The equating of responsibility. Like I said, this actually actively perpetuates the misassignment of responsibility, which is the base basis for abuse and justification for abuse. I think there's just actively harmful things in the book.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. I think I would be with you. I would be either a 2 or a 1. And also I. I agree with that. That there are. The idea that we need to be sensitive to the needs of our spouse is a good thing. Yeah.

Amy Fritz:
That it isn't going to always be. The things that we would think are the things that are most important to us that make us feel loved isn't necessarily the thing that our spouse most. Makes them most feel loved. Um, so I think that those are the good, Good things in it. Right. It's a very small amount. A very small amount of good things. So.

Melissa Hogan:
And it's just the recognition that there's no formula.

Amy Fritz:
Like, we cannot love formulas. We love them.

Melissa Hogan:
We do. And you had a podcast episode about this at one point that we look for. It's easier to almost turn over our. Our thinking brain, our discernment in favor of some formula, and we can go, ha. You know.

Amy Fritz:
Right.

Melissa Hogan:
Okay, now I know exactly.

Amy Fritz:
I probably got that from you, Melissa. I probably got that from you and all the conversations that we've had, you know, and I talked to Nathan in a recent podcast, you know, about politics, you know, and there's just so many shortcuts we want to take. Like, oh, I don't have to think about this. If I think this team is the right one, I must. I'm always going to do what they say. I don't even have to think about it. Or this denomination is the one I'm a part of. I don't have to think about anything beyond that.

Amy Fritz:
They've figured that out. You know, I think we've talked about sort of like, outsourcing our.

Melissa Hogan:
That's it.

Amy Fritz:
Doing our wrestling is hard. Due diligence.

Melissa Hogan:
Wrestling with and wrestling with so many things in our life like that is. It is hard. And of course, we all want, like, the easy way. But encouraging people to, hey, wrestle in your own faith, wrestle in your relationship for what it means to serve and love well, and don't turn it over to a book.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. Now, I don't know what he's saying these days. I don't know, like, if he has said. I wish I had said this differently. I have not read the most recent versions, but all these. There's a lot of them out there. When this book was published that I have in my hands, it said more than 500,000 copies in print. So there are a lot of that have this message out in the world.

Amy Fritz:
But I do want to say, to Dr. Harley's credit, I was looking at his website, Marriage Builders, and there was like an FAQ or maybe articles, like a list of articles he'd written. And one was about abuse. And he said, with no equivocation, if there's any violence, you call the police. You get out of that situation. It is dangerous. And I thought, thank you for saying. I'm glad he said that.

Amy Fritz:
I would not have expected it from some of these outdated.

Melissa Hogan:
Right.

Amy Fritz:
Ideas in this book. And I don't know if something changed from the time in 1986 until now, but, like, he was very clear.

Melissa Hogan:
Although I would say it's a very low bar. That's a very low bar. If there's physical violence. Yeah. If you're. If you're in that, it can be very hard to see that that's even abuse or problematic. And what I wish he would have incorporated into the book is this understanding that, you know, emotional abuse and blame, the blame shifting that he's actually engaging in in the book is actually. It's combating that very thing.

Melissa Hogan:
Because abuse is not physical violence. I mean, well, physical. All physical violence in that way would be abuse, but, like, abuse is much broader and it's supported by the mindsets. It's a mindset of misassignment, of responsibility, of power and control. And so when his book actually engages in that very behav, It's. It's hard for somebody then to see their way out of that and go, oh, man, by the time they hit me, it's okay to leave. When you believe all these other things, the hardest part about emotional abuse before they hit you is even recognizing that it's there because you say, they haven't hit me. And you're like, well, you know, but then is that really.

Melissa Hogan:
And so engaging in some type of nuanced conversation about, well, when are these needs not appropriate? Like I said, a bottomless pit of need where you can never fill. And you keep trying, keep trying. Like that's a sign that something is wrong. And I wish he had more. He had talked about that like, or if your partner has an excessive need for admiration, that's not a healthy need. You can't, as a wife or a spouse, like, you're never going to feel that. And that's a sign that something's actively problematic.

Amy Fritz:
Yeah. Well, I'm so glad we were able to talk. I also wanted to give you a chance to kind of tell the world what you're, what you've been doing lately. Like you have restarted a law practice. Say whatever you want to say about what you're up to and what's coming.

Melissa Hogan:
Yeah, yeah. Well, yes, I've always been a lawyer. I've been a lawyer for 25 years. But I always say I've been lots of different lawyers and God has, you know, taking me on this different journey. You know, I'd founded a nonprofit and had run that for a number of years and. But then after my divorce, I was approached to do work in the area of abuse and trauma. And I'd written a book about trauma, about medical trauma specifically. But, you know, it's an area that I was really passionate about.

Melissa Hogan:
So I've been working in the field of abuse and trauma, doing investigations into allegations of abuse in faith communities. And I also do work in my law practice related to that and different cases. And I'm also launching a substack on January 3rd on the intersection of the law and abuse and faith. So I'm going to be talking about different cases, talking about, you know, areas where abuse and the law intersect, things that might come into play in institutional abuse like non disclosure and non disparagement agreements. Another area that relates to abuse and laws like no fault divorce. You know, how do we look at that as a community of faith, but also to care and protect for. Yeah, for, for women in those kinds of marriages. Um, and you know, another thing that.

Melissa Hogan:
One of my beefs with this book was that it. In one page, in one page of the introduction, it called divorce a failure. Four times. Four times in one page. That divorce is a failure, which is, that is another layer of shame to put on people who, many of whom for which divorce is a rescue. You know, if we, and if we look in the Bible, you know, God actually, you know rescues some of these women and tells men to give them a certificate of divorce because they aren't caring for them or providing for them. And for me, divorce was a rescue from God. And so for this book to create and perpetuate this notion that divorce is a failure heaps shame on people who, many of whom never wanted to get divorced to begin with, never intended to get divorced and actually struggled in many ways to even get out of a very difficult or harmful marriage.

Melissa Hogan:
So, so that's I'll be on my soapbox about no fault divorce and the role that that plays in Christian faith and in abuse and things like that. So people can find me, like, find me on all my socials at Melissa J. Hogan and on substack on that as well. The new substack is called Res Ipsa, which is the thing itself.

Amy Fritz:
That's so cool. I will link to it in the show notes. But I just want to say I'm so proud of you, Melissa. And I'm really excited as your friend and as somebody who's seen you. I mean, I remember in conversations from four years ago where you're like, I am afraid that I'm gonna have to do anything in this field and that you. And you were like, I this is the last thing I ever wanna do. And somehow you're doing something that overlaps, but it isn't the last thing.

Melissa Hogan:
Yeah, I mean, God has done, you know, I didn't walk into this field actually wanting to. And this is often the case in my life. God just keeps nudging. I'm like, no. No. Really? No. And I say no a bunch of times. And then God's like, this is a problem.

Melissa Hogan:
You need to say yes. And so I've gotten better at being willing to say yes, you know, before God, you know, blows the door.

Amy Fritz:
Yes.

Melissa Hogan:
And so, yeah, so now I'm in this field, I'm passionate about it and I'm just waiting to see what God's going to do.

Amy Fritz:
It's going to be good. Thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Melissa Hogan:
Thanks, Amy.

Amy Fritz:
Thanks, Melissa. It was great to have Melissa on the podcast again. I hope you'll check out her new substack, Res Ipsa. I'll link that in the show notes and you can find those show notes in your favorite podcast app. Or you can go to untangledfaithpodcast.com and click on Episodes and find all the show notes there. If you want to connect with me, you can find me on threads as Amy Heming Fritz or Amy Fritz on blue sky and I'm untangled faith on Instagram. If you'd prefer email, send me A note to amymtangledfaithpodcast.com thanks, everybody. I'll see you next week.