Connecting Through Vulnerability

Intimacy is to "be fully known and fully accepted." God wants us to be intimate with Him, and He gives us the recipe on how to do it. 

The same way we connect with God we can connect with our spouse. And when we do, we'll experience a deep level of intimacy. 

But to be fully known you have to be willing to be vulnerable.  To open yourself up so your spouse can "see it all." 

However, vulnerability must be met with safety in order for a spirit of full disclosure to take place.

That's what we talk about in this episode. We share three keys for creating a "safe space" for vulnerability that will help you strengthen your intimacy in marriage and deepen your connection.  

Enjoy!

Transcript

So today we're talking about connecting through vulnerability. Yes. It's kind of a crazy title, but it really does make sense as we talk through it because we're, we're gonna dive deep into, um, talking about intimacy in marriage. Right? And if you remember, intimacy is to be fully known and fully accepted, and you can't be fully known unless you're vulnerable.

Right. But you won't be vulnerable unless you feel. Exactly . So we're gonna talk about, it's very tied together. Yeah. We wanna talk about how both of those tied together and then, and then leave you with three keys that I think's really gonna help your relationship. It's helped Tori and I, and she's re reading this really awesome book.

She'll get into that in a second. But let's start by doing our song. Yes. Tory picked out this song, by the way. It's, um, we're in December now, and so Christmas is underway, , and we're all about, we're all about the Christmas music in our house, so we're going to play one of our favorite Love Christmas songs.

Yeah. Favorite love song. Now there's so many renditions of this. Yeah, that's true. Mariah Carey does one and I cannot listen to it. I love it. No, it's just not good . And I think, and you guys probably remember, uh, what, what it was, uh, new Year's E. Ball drop thing. Oh boy. Mc Mariah Carey sang that like five years ago and she didn't know the worst of her own song and then they realized she was lip singing.

Yeah. It was Rockle and I She was high or something. I don't know exactly what it was. There was a lot happening that day. Yeah. Poor or that evening. Poor girl. Anyway, um, I don't like her version of this and there's so many other people that do versions of this, but I grew up in Texas. Which is where people wore belt buckles and boots and wranglers, you know, to Christmas parties.

And, uh, resist all Stetson hats, cowboy hats, , you know, like the straw kind. Yep. And I grew up in Texas where the main version of this song is the one that I wanna play for you right now. All I want for Christmas bite Vince Vance and the Valance. Okay, let's do it. I'm not gonna play the whole song. Just a little piece, a little tease, teaser.

Ready?

My Christmas easier. All right. That's it. That's all I can take. I love it. Do you know what's so funny about the, the Mariah Carey one, which you said you don't love? I think it's got a great beat, but it starts out by. I don't want a lot for Christmas. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. , right? I don't want a lot for Christmas.

And then, but all I want is you. It's like, yeah, it's, it's like kind of funny. I saw a meme on it the other day, like, please don't play this one for me. It says, I don't want a lot for Christmas, but I want you. Yeah. Which means you're not a lot. Exactly. Okay, I get it. Yeah, so I actually didn't get that until you just brought that up.

Yeah. So maybe subconsciously, , you were really, you were really, um, harboring those thoughts. . Yeah. You just feel wanted when he played it for you. Yeah. And since, since this is a marriage, the whole, all I want for Christmas is you kind of thing, you know? I don't know a husband out there that hasn't said that to his wife, like, oh, oh, come on.

All I really want is you just, you know, go buy yourself something and come back and we'll be fine. Okay. I'm not gonna go any deeper than that. . Moving on. Okay, so now let's go back into, Because all throughout the scripture we see intimacy is a key topic, that God is like, I wanna be intimate with you. Yeah, I'm willing to be intimate with you, but you have to open up Revelation three 20, that classic verse.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. He who opens up the door, I will come in and dine with him and he with me. So God is knocking on the door of our heart and he's saying, open up. Mm-hmm. , but we don't want to open up. Because there's too much mess. We feel like we gotta clean up before we open up. Yep.

And God's like, I, I don't want you to clean up. What you gotta understand is I accept you just like you are. I just need you to be willing to open up mm-hmm. and be vulnerable to me. Right. And so, and I, and I did this in, in our, um, living Among Lines livestream last Thursday. Uh, if, by the way, if you don't ever listen to that, go on at Benham Brothers on Thursday mornings at eight o'clock Eastern.

Mm-hmm. and my brother and I do living among lines how to thrive like Daniel in today's battle line. So we talk a lot about a lot of good stuff. I did talk about, um, intimacy and how God wants us to be intimate, and how in that verse, revelation three 20, when God is knocking on the door of our heart and we hear that knock, can you imagine if you're like a, a college student and you're, you're in your, uh, you're in your, um, not dorm, Let's say you, you got your own town home and all of a sudden you hear a knock at the door and you look out the hole and there's Jesus.

Mm-hmm. , you know, and there's something playing on the TV that should not be, you've got like a grinder on the coffee table. You've got like vape stuff everywhere. I don't even know how to talk the language magazines that shouldn't be there and people doing stuff that. Is is not good. Instantly, you don't want to open the door because, you know, if you open the door, he's gonna see all that stuff, right?

And you don't open it. And then Jesus keeps knocking and he's like, Hey, I, I know you're, you're wanting to clean up whatever's in there, but here's what I want you to just open. That's all you gotta do. Just be vulnerable and open up and let me in. And the rest of that verse says, and then when I come in, I'm gonna dine with you and you with me.

Dining is an experience of intimacy that the way that we grow in our relationships, Um, and all of us can see this is through having a meal together. Yeah. Like if Tori and I go to date night, right. What are we gonna do? We're gonna go to dinner. Mm-hmm. , you know, that's what we're gonna do. It's when you're eating together.

Jesus. The last supper right before he. , uh, went to the cross. That's a picture of intimacy and Jesus says that if you open up and you be vulnerable, you and I are actually going to be intimate, which means I will fully know you. I'll see everything. Yeah, of course, God already sees everything, but he wants us to be willing to let him see everything.

I see everything, but I'm not gonna look at that stuff. I'm gonna look right at you as we eat on your table. Mm-hmm. , like, do you have any Raymond noodles laying around? Like, what do you got? Let's, let's eat together. That is a picture of what we're supposed to do relationally with our spouse. Right. It's.

your wife is knocking on the door of your heart. Husband. Mm-hmm. , open up and let her in. Okay. Wife, your husband is knocking on the door of your heart. Open up and let him in. Do not hide anything. Yeah. It's so good. And you know, it requires a level of risk. Yes. And that's the scary part. That's the scary part.

And just like you're telling the story, Jesus comes, he knocks on the door. If I let him in, what will happen? What will be his response? , right? Yeah. Like it, it requires a level of risk. Yeah. And when, but when you let Christ in and you experience true forgiveness, you experience true mercy, true grace, and you experience Jesus.

Mm-hmm. . Then you now have an experience that nobody can take from me. From you. Yeah. To where you're like, okay, that worked. I'm letting him back in. Yeah. And I think it's this because there's safety in Christ. Mm-hmm. . And you only learn that through experience. Yeah. And in relationships, it's the same way.

We are gonna have, we're gonna have experiences in our lives that. Are not safe, and then they make us feel unsafe. The next time another experience shows up or another situation shows up. And it requires risk. Yeah. And in our relationships, we failed each other so many times. And so now it requires risk because I failed you before.

Will I fail you again? I don't know. You're gonna have to let me in to know. And so it's, it, there is a level of risk that you take, um, when you're vulnerable to be fully known. You have to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable, you have to feel safe. Yes. So that's why we have to find, you know, safety, that's security.

That's our number one core human need. Yes. So if you, if you've read our book, you know, the five core human needs that we got from Dr. Kathy Cook, psychologist, just world renowned, child psychologist and relationship psychologist, five core. Security, identity, belonging, purpose, and competence. Yeah. Security answers the question, who can I trust?

Identity answers the question. Who am I? Um, belonging answers the question. Who, who wants me, right? Purpose answers the question, why am I alive? Competence answers the question, what am I good at? It all hinges on security. If you don't feel safe, then everything else falls down. Like for instance, right now, Tory and I are doing this podcast.

We're doing it in our studio that's off of our detached garage. That's also a guest suite where we do have people, uh, couples come for our little marriage mentorship or marriage, uh, intensive that we. Two day intensives. If you're ever interested in doing one of those, go to beauty and battle.com. But if Tori and I felt unsafe right now, like somebody was hunting us, or we were in a socialistic country with a communist dictator and we knew that talking about God or the Bible or anything would cause somebody to bust through this door and take us off to prison, we wouldn't feel safe.

Right. Therefore, everything else filters down from that. Exactly. We wouldn't be free to do what we do, so that's why. This whole concept of vulnerability, allowing yourself to be fully known to your spouse, but doing that on the foundation of feeling safe is so incredibly important. So what Tori and I wanna talk about today is creating that environment for safety so that your spouse can open up.

Mm. So good. And, um, I'm, I'm reading a book right now, it's called The Connection Codes by Dr. Glenn in Phyllis Hill. It's so good. It's so good. And, um, the chapter that relates to what we're talking about today is all about, so it's connection codes. It's, um, just digging into the way that we are wired, the way God wired us.

So we're, we're, we're designed for connection and we're, and, and we're kind of, um, We have these, these innate codes is kind of the way that he, he, uh, words, actually, it's written by actually a husband, wife, and then their, um, daughter, their oldest daughter who No, that's cool. Is a psychologist and, and the, um, Dr.

Glenn is also a psychologist. Um, and you know, we have all these, these ways that. Made us, and if we can understand how we were, are made, we can thrive in relationships. Yeah. And so one of the things that he talks about is how vulnerability is tied to safety. Mm-hmm. . And he says, you're that we're coded. for vulnerability.

That's how, cuz vulnerability brings connection. Yeah. We want, we want to be vulnerable, but we don't want to . Yes. Yeah, exactly. He says there's, and in this book it says there is a pressing internal urge to help the hurting and innate desire to assist someone in a position of vulnerability. We're wired that way, right?

Yeah. So you think you need to help. Then he goes on to tell a story about, you know, if there, um, was somebody who fell on the stairs and you see this person at the bottom of the stairs bleeding. and in distress. In calling for help, there's something encoded in you, something called empathy that would move you towards that person to help them.

And if you don't feel that, then you are actually, you have moved the wrong direction. Something is wrong. Okay. Right. , but we live in a fallen world and we cannot always trust people. Yeah. And we have experiences with people that teach us that we we're not safe. Yeah. You can't trust. And so he, he goes on to say that, well, what if you showed up to help that individual and they had staged the entire scene and then they jumped you with a gun.

Yeah, yeah. And took you host. Yeah. The next time you saw someone at the bottom of stairs, , would you do what is encoded in you to do? Would you run to them with empathy because that's the way God made you? Yeah. You, you would not, you would not because of experience, of your experience, and so this is why we now have to take risks.

Yeah. Because we, we live in a fallen world and, and our security is shaken on a daily basis, like our security is shaken and so we have. Understand that sometimes we don't operate, uh, in, in the way that we were encoded to, in the way that God intended for us to, because sometimes we have experiences that change our, our coding.

Yeah. So to speak. , that's why filtering your experience through the Holy Spirit, through the grid of the Bible Yes. Through, you know, godly counsel is, is so incredibly important because they can give you, you'll get a perspective that's outside of where you are. Yes. You know, like if you're, if you're the person on the operating table, you're like, why are you cutting me?

This is the worst thing. You're hurting me. . Yeah. But in reality, the doctor's like, no, no, no. I'm helping you. I'm cutting that tumor out. Yes. Yeah, exactly. And this is also why our experience with Christ is so important. Like we have to have real live experiences. Yeah. Where our faith intercepts with his faithfulness, right to where we are safe.

We know that we are safe because we put our trust, we took the risk, and we let him in. . We knocked and we waited to see if he'd opened the door, and he did. He opened the door and he let you know. You have to have those experiences with Christ that would trump your experiences with man. Yeah. Otherwise you live like paralyzed in fear because of an unsafe.

World that we live in. Yeah. And that's what happens so much in marriage is that, you know, people bring so much emotional baggage from their past experiences into their relationship. It's like, well, my dad always yelled at my mom. Right? And so naturally like you, you avoid conflict like the plague. Yes. You know, because you don't want your husband to yell at you or whatever.

Yep. It's like, but you have to redefine that experience. And I think the connection code. Does help do that. And that's why this vulnerability and safety, both of these go hand in hand. If you wanna connect through vulnerability, through being vulnerable and through receiving vulnerability, then the, the environment for safety is paramount.

Yep. I wanna read one thing that, that they wrote, um, says, I don't wanna be vulnerable until I know you're sick. You're safe, but I won't know you're safe until I'm vulnerable. Also, I don't offer safety until you're vulnerable, but you won't want to be vulnerable until you know I'm safe. So somebody has to take a risk.

Yeah. Yeah. Therefore, somebody has to take a risk call faith. Mm-hmm. , it's called Faith. And, and I, I just love that. And, and you know, the, the two core questions that that book, the connection code says, that are the core questions that everybody's asking subconsciously is, will you be there for me and am I good enough for you?

Yes. Yep. Right there. That whole will you be there for me? That's security. That's safety. Mm-hmm. , am I good enough for you? There's identity, you know, and, and, but people, there's like, if, if I'm so scared that if I open. And tell Tori something about me that she doesn't know. It's like, am I gonna be good enough?

Is that gonna break her heart to a point where she'll leave me and all this kind of stuff. But that's Satan's game. Yeah. He plays in that game. Yeah. He wants us to hide. Yeah. He hates vulnerability. Right. and they, when they talk about, you know, these two, these two questions, and really they come from attachment theory, which is the theory that, um, as a child we attach a certain way and we bring that into adulthood.

Right. Right. And it all stems from those two questions. Will you be there for me and am I good enough for you? Mm-hmm. and if, if the caregiver, the person that you, that you would naturally attach to in your life did those things for you, then you'll be securely attached. But if, you know, we live in a fallen world, people are not perfect.

Yeah. And so that's not the case. We don't attach perfectly. And so that we can bring those. Into our relationships to where we unnecessarily believe that, that our spouse will not be there for them or that we're not good enough for them solely based on past experience and not on present truth. Yes. And I love that because that brings us into the three keys I wanna share with you, um, to create safety.

So what, it's so incredibly important that as you're listening to this, that you create a safe place for your spouse to be vulnerable with you. Hmm. Now we need to do a whole nother podcast on overcoming your, your in your inability and your lack of desire to be vulnerable. That that's a, another topic.

But what we're gonna talk about is you being the spouse that creates the environment for your spouse to be able to open up and be vulnerable. So you creating a, a safe space for your, for your spouse. And I wanna talk about the three keys. Emotional safety, physical safety, and relational safety. Emotional safety is this, it's you're creating a space where your spouse can tell you exactly how they feel and they don't feel stupid for it.

They don't feel demeaned for it. Yep. And you've probably heard us talk about emotional safety on this podcast before. One of the main things about emotional safety is that your spouse needs to know that you're feeling it with them. Hmm. That, that you are, you're going there in. You know, sympathy is seeing somebody drowning and throwing them a life fest.

Empathy is jumping in the water with them, right? The definition of love is compassion. With standards, compassion is to suffer together, which means if your spouse is feeling something, Even if it's not based on truth. Right. Even if it's not based on logic, they're still feeling something. Yeah. We'll get down there and and feel it with them.

Hmm. You feel what they feel. But the key is in that moment, emotional safety looks like you not responding in logic, but you responding with emotion. Right. Like, okay. You know, if Tori said, Jason, when you wear black sweatshirt, it, it makes me feel anxious, like I'm feel so anxious, like I'm gonna have a panic attack.

Now I can go in and logically tell her why black sweatshirts don't cause anxiety, but that's not gonna help her if I respond with logic. Yeah. When she's communicating to me with emotion, we're gonna miss each other. That is not emotional safety. I have to then respond with emotional. Like, wow, if I felt like I was gonna have a panic attack, I would hate it.

Yeah. Like, and I don't want you to feel that way. Yeah. 

One thing that the book talks about, and I think it's important to know and to understand, is that, um, emotions come from the limbic system, but thoughts. Come from the cortex or from your brain. Yeah. So your your thoughts, the and the you feel before you think. Yeah. And so we don't have control over our emotions.

You just feel them. Yeah. You feel 'em. But you do have control over your actions. You do have control over your thoughts. Yeah. But when, when you feel something, you just feel it. Mm-hmm. , it's just a feeling. And for to diminish a feeling. is is very exasperating in relationship. Right? Right. Because it's like, don't feel that way.

You shouldn't feel that way. Why would you feel that way? Right. Yeah. Like that, that's so disconnecting. It's so disconnecting. You say, oh, okay. I wonder why you feel, I wonder, uh, why you're feeling that way. Can you talk to me more about. Where this is coming from. When did you start feeling it? Right? Like it's asking because if I felt that it would be terrible.

Yes. I hate that. Yeah, exactly. So it's just so important that when, when you're thinking about emotions to understand that they are just, they're just feelings. They're not always true. Mm-hmm. , but they feel. Very true. Yeah. And so even though they're So, you, you don't wanna just jump into a logic and say, oh, that's, that's ridiculous.

Yeah. And just de dismiss the emotion. Yeah. You don't wanna do that. It's important that you understand, okay, you're feeling that way, let's talk about it. Yeah. And that, that's emotional safety. That's the first key. The second key is physical safety. Now obviously, I'm not talking just about physical safety in terms of you wanna make sure that , you know, if your spouse is opening up to you, they need to know you're not gonna beat the crap out of them.

So , I mean, obviously physical safety that way, but what I'm talking about is body language. Yep. So important. Researcher, Albert Moravian. He first broke the components of face-to-face conversation and this was way back. Mm. And he's the one that came up with the 55 38 7 rule. Okay. 55. of what we communicate is done through body language.

38% is done through vocal, which is like the tone of our voice. Hmm. And only 7% is the words we use. Wow. So when your spouse is talking to you and they're vulnerable and then you're communicating back with them, it's your body language, it's your vocal tone. It's not like, You feel that, right? It's not like your, your blank stare.

Yep. Doesn't it say, talks a lot about in the book? Yep. What? It happens with babies. Yeah. There was a study that was done with a bunch of babies and they, um, had a bunch of moms come in and, and sit with their babies with a blank stare. They were studying just how, how our bodies respond. to, um, be feeling disconnected emotionally through body language.

Mm-hmm. . And so these ba they told the moms, you just go in there and you do not respond. You do not respond with your face. You just do a blank stare. So tough. And it was incredible, um, how these babies reacted. They started behaving like crying. Misbehaving because they're trying to change what's happening inside of that room.

They're trying to get a reaction. There's something inside of them that knows something's very, very wrong cuz there's no response. And then, um, so these, so these babies were just com it was complete chaos for them. And then what they, then they did, you know, a study where they just simply took the moms out of the.

and the babies completely stopped crying. Yeah. They were, they'd rather be alone. They would rather be isolated. Which is completely against hu our human nature Yeah. Is isolation. They, you know, they also talk about how out of all the, you know, out of all living things, humans do not deal with being isolated.

Yeah. at all. Like they're the, the way that, um, different animals, animals can cope with it much, much better than humans. Yeah. We, we just do not deal well with isolation. And they're saying that they were, the, the babies were better off isolated than to be met with the blank stare. That's just crazy. And, and that goes hand in hand with the opposite of love is not hate.

Mm. The opposite of love is indifference. So when you're listening to your spouse, you're empathizing, you're feeling it, you're getting into it. Yeah. You're full locked eye contact. Yeah. You know, you're smiling, you're laughing, you're crying, you're hugging, you're, you're doing all this stuff, and only 7% of the words.

The rest of it is just you being there. So that's physical safety. So, yeah. I just wanted to add too this as I was reading this, so, um, you know, you know, with your kids, I mean, every mom out there knows the feeling of mom, watch me, watch me, watch me. Just the constant, when, when kids are small, watch me, right?

Because there, there, there's a cry for identity. Do you see me? Do I exist? Do am I good? Like there's all these, all those core human needs that, um, Kathy Cox talks about is you see it with your kids firsthand when they're little and it's just a constant, are you watching me Come see me, approve of me.

Right. That's those two questions, you know, do, do, am I safe with you? And do you approve of who I am? Yeah, exactly. Like, will you be there for me? And do you approve of who I am? Yeah. Yeah. And that you just see it with kids constantly, and it's so hard as a mom. You know, to constantly react and to respond.

Right. Cuz we have so much else going on. Yeah. Um, but yet it, you know, there, there's a real core need for connection that you see. so it's so apparent in kids and you know, we're just, we're all, you know, we're all kids. Yeah. We're just, some of us are more mature than others, but we're all, we've got that in us where we're like, you know, where we have that cry for attention and that cry for connection.

And, um, I, I, I saw it the other day. One of my kids, I won't mention who it is, but. . I had one of my kids, they were, I was upstairs, I was doing laundry and I didn't even notice this. This is so sad. And it just, it honestly broke my heart because then I re, I was reading this literally the next day, and um, actually I was reading it that day.

I called myself. Yeah. And, um, and the child was, was dancing, trying to get my attention, just dancing right in front of me. But I was totally zoned out thinking about all the hundred things I have to do, , and finally they. , I have been dancing in front of you for the last five minutes and you haven't said anything

What kind of dancing are we talking about here? , they're just going, you know, just trying to get a little, get mom's attention and I thought, oh my goodness. Like the, it's so easy. to just get so caught up in all the things that need to get done. And our phones and our phones put it away because they're ever so easily accessible to people.

And there's just, there's a constant, there's so much demand from the phone. Yeah. And there's so like, you know what you have to do? There's just, oh, it's so much and. They're, you know, that this child was trying to just get a little bit of a reaction from mom. Yeah. But I was unavailable to them. Yeah. Well, and that was really nice of Tori to cover for me that way.

It was actually me that was dancing. I was doing my Barney dance, you know, Chris Farley and. And, and Patrick Swayze. Yeah. Chippendales. No, it was that kid. Not really , but still. So, so that's, so we've got the three keys to creating safety. You've got emotional safety, you've got physical safety, and lastly you have relational safety.

Mm-hmm. , that's where you seek to understand everything that your spouse is, is, is feeling in that moment, and that they know that they are the. Yeah, that is key that there's no competing affections. Hmm. 

If your spouse knows that they are 100% the top priority, there's no competing affections. It's not like, you know, if, if you're talking to your husband and you, you think he'd rather be, um, , he'd rather be watching a, a game Yeah. Or whatever, than he's not creating an an environment of, of relational safety for you.

And vice versa. If he feels as though that, that, you know, he, he's taken too long to explain his thing, you know, or maybe he's a little too overexcited and you've got some things to do with the kids. Yeah. And so all of that stuff really plays into it. But creating that place of relational safety, which is you are my priority.

Mm-hmm. , you're my number one priority. I'm not pulling my. . I'm not sitting here trying to, you know, do a, do a blog post or a Instagram post or any type of thing right now. Yeah. I'm just listening to you. Yep. We're just hanging out. Yeah. That's relational safety. Yep. So if you're gonna be intimate with your spouse, which is fully known and fully accepted, you've gotta be vulnerable.

But you have to create an environment of safety if your spouse is gonna be vulnerable. And to do that, you need emotional safety, you need physical safety, you need relational safety. Those three things will help more than anything. In the world. I love it. So good. Um, okay, so I'm gonna share a quick, uh, recipe.

Yeah. Um, we went to a, a Christmas party that we go to every year at David and Lori's house. They, I think it was like year, was it 15? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it was a lot. Yeah. There's been a lot of years that we've all joined, um, together at David Lori's house. They do a white elephant party, super fun, and, um, they always do, uh, like a through F brings appetizers.

Yeah, I'm always, I'm always in the appetizer category. Never once have I won, um, the best appetizer award. This year she did it. I did it and I'm gonna share the recipe with you. It's super easy and it's so good. All it is. It was great there ate way too many of them. They're bacon wrapped dates. Yeah. And the dates are stuffed with cream cheese.

Okay? Super simple. All you do is you take a date, you cut it in half, you remove the pit. Stuff it with goat cheese, you can get the kind that looks kinda like cream cheese where it's like in a log, not the crumbled goat cheese. You stuff a little bit that of that stuff it into the half of a date, so you're just doing half a date and then you wrap it with a half a slice of bacon not cooked, not a full slice.

The regular thin bacon wrap that thing around the. , which is stuffed with a cream cheese. Stick it with a, um, toothpick. Bake it. I, I'll, I'll give you guys, I'll, I'll write it out for you guys on, um, Jason Torry Instagram. I think it's like 4 25 for like 15 minutes. That's it. Boom. Done. Oh, it's incredible.

It's so good. Everyone loved it. And it was a winner. It was a winner, winner. Bacon, bacon, dinner, appetizer, , because everything is better with bacon. All right. Hey, thanks for hanging out with us. Look, have yourself a great Christmas, Tory, and I'll be back. I'm not sure exactly when we'll be back, but it'll be in a few weeks.

It may or may not be before or after Christmas. We'll, we'll figure out when. And we've got, uh, something really cool coming out for Valentine's Day that we're planning early. We're gonna be releasing a five day marriage challenge. And, uh, and so we're really pumped. We're also recording. Um, marriage course right now that goes, it's a companion to our book, so we got a lot of stuff going on, but we'll be back with you in the meantime.

Don't forget, rate, review, subscribe, and I don't really have anything else to say. I just wanna, and I don't either. I love you. Let's just be done up yourself. A married little Christmas. There you go. You, you didn't even say Happy Holidays. I know. There you go. I'm so brave. Merry Dad. Come Christmas, . Alright, we'll see you.

See you guys.