One Way to Get Your Husband's Attention, No Body Improvement Required [Podcast Transcript]

Title: One Way to Get Your Husband's Attention, No Body Improvement Required

Podcast Date: February 11, 2025

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Description

Have you believed the lie that if you looked better, your marriage would be better? Have you fallen prey to the marketers who tell you that you'll capture your husband's attention if you just lose some weight or get some surgery? Author and Christian body image coach Heather Creekmore discusses what to do if you really want to get a man's attention in a relationship or marriage. The good news is that her suggestions have nothing to do with changing one's physical appearance. Instead, we have to look at root issues like control and pride and the subtle, insidious ways they hide in the ways we treat our husbands. Even if you don't think you're controlling and have never wrestled pride, you may find Heather's examples helpful. If you feel stuck in your marriage and are wondering how you can change things, Heather's practical suggestions at the end of the episode may help you get your man's attention and get on the path to a healthier marriage. **If you feel afraid in your marriage or are suffering from abuse of any kind, please seek help from a Christian counselor, pastor, or someone who can support and advise you in real life.

Looking for more help and support for your body image and marriage issues? Visit: https://www.improvebodyimage.com

Our next 40 Day Journey starts soon! Learn more here: https://www.improvebodyimage.com/40-day-challenge

Not sure how to feel God's love? If this is a challenge for you, listen to Heather share more about her struggle here:

https://omny.fm/shows/compared-to-who/how-to-feel-loved-for-anyone-who-struggles-to-feel

Listen to Heather's interview with Shannon Popkin mentioned in today's episode:

https://omny.fm/shows/compared-to-who/how-to-stop-being-a-controlling-woman

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

[00:00:00]:

Life audio. Hey there. Heather Creekmore here. Thanks for listening to the Compare to Who podcast today. What do you really want from a man? What do you want in a relationship, in a marriage? You want him to be head over heels in love with you. You want him to think you're beautiful. You want it to kinda be like a pop song where he recognizes how beautiful you are even without makeup on and your hair messed up. Oh, there are so many ways we glamorize marriage and our relationships.

[00:00:39]:

And in that glamorization, include way too much emphasis on our physical appearance. And we believe that if we could just change our physical appearance, maybe lose some weight, get more beautiful, like, maybe that would change things in our marriage, then maybe he would see us that way. And then it doesn't always work that way. Or does it ever work that way, I guess, is a question I would pose. Today, I want us to look at what I think really is the challenge in our homes. I believe that a lot of this body image, lust we live in a hypersexualized culture. I believe a lot of this stuff is distracting us from the real issue that's going on in our marriages that if we could just tackle and address it, our relationships would be better. We would feel that love that we long to feel.

[00:01:35]:

And the good news is it doesn't really have anything to do with you changing your body. Instead, it has to do with you seeing something else. Oh, I'm gonna tease you with that. I'm glad you're here. Hey. If you're new to the show, go to improvebodyimage.com. You can find out all about our community, how we encourage women, Christian women, who struggle with body image and appearance and comparison, and all those things relate to marriage, don't they? We also do something called the forty day journey. It's six weeks of Zoom calls.

[00:02:09]:

It's super affordable, and it is a great way for you to get started on a path to feeling better about and in your body. Our next journey is coming up in March. Go to improvebodyimage.com. Look for the forty day journey tab, and I hope you'll join us on that.

[00:03:19]:

Hey, friend. Well, I'm glad you're listening today. Hey. You know, marriage is an interesting and difficult topic for those of us who struggle with body image issues. And a lot of the women I work with, marriage and things that have happened between them and their husbands are kind of part of the whole equation of what's going on in their body image, but they're not really sure how to connect the dots. And so that's one thing we do in coaching, individual and group coaching is we try to help connect those dots. But today, I want to kinda just show you something that maybe you've never seen before. Maybe you have.

[00:03:54]:

Maybe you know. But I feel like I said in the intro, we are so hypersexualized in this culture. We are so uber focused on looking a certain way in order to, I don't know, make life better is probably the way to say it. And a lot of us, you know, are super focused on that before marriage. Maybe like me, you believed that you needed to look a certain way if you were ever going to get married. And I should just kind of add an aside that I don't think that that's true because people who look all different ways get married every single day. But I really believe that I needed to be a certain size and look a certain way, and that was the only chance I ever had of finding a husband. And then I found the husband, and that was supposed to be everything I'd ever wanted or dreamed of.

[00:04:53]:

And, I mean, y'all, in some ways, like, I married a marine fighter pilot. Okay? So think Top Gun. Like, I thought, wow. Like, I did really well here. And on top of that, he had become a Christian just, I I think, maybe three years before we, we met and married. And so he was a new believer, but he was on fire for the Lord and really kinda knew that he was being called into ministry. And so I thought I had hit the jackpot. Right? Like, yes.

[00:05:24]:

Finally, I found a guy, and I will feel good enough about my body now that I have found a guy. And not just any guy, like, I found an awesome guy. So, you know, those jackpot alarm bells, like, in the casinos are ringing everywhere because I have hit the jackpot. And then what happened was I got married, and it wasn't like a Hallmark movie or a pop song. It was just two sinners in a marriage, and that's where the problems begin. Now problem that I didn't see in all of that was that even though there were two sinners in our marriage, I kinda believe there was only one, and it wasn't me. I was secretly disappointed that my husband turn out to be a combination of prince charming and Jesus, and he wasn't blind to the fact that there were other beautiful women out there. And he didn't always do the things in the way I wanted them to be done, and he couldn't read my mind, and he couldn't intuit my thoughts and my needs.

[00:06:36]:

And I had to, like, tell him what I wanted and all all of these things. And I'm I'm speaking about it in a bit of a sarcastic way because it's so far away from me now. But that was all very real to me then. Like, I was just kinda hurt. I was disappointed and hurt that marriage wasn't how I expected it to be. And I think because we were older, I didn't even have that honeymoon period of, like, oh, I'm so dazed and in love. I don't see anything but good. And, like, we just didn't have that.

[00:07:12]:

I would have told you that I considered myself a realist, not an idealist, that I was very pragmatic and real and, you know, didn't wanna live in a fantasy land. And maybe that's why we didn't have that honeymoon period because I was just such a realist. But I think I was a realist in my head, but in my heart, oh, I was a romantic. And I think that was more just about these longings, these sincere longings that I had just to be truly loved and seen and accepted and desired just for, like, who I was and how I was. And so it hurts because I didn't feel the love, if you will, lack of a better word, coming at me in a way that kind of answered and cured all of those things. I didn't feel that he was loving me in the way that I needed to be loved. And so what did I do? Well, I started reading. Right? I got all of the books.

[00:08:22]:

Okay. We've been married almost twenty years now. I got all the books. Right? So, I figured out our love languages. I read love and respect. I I like, you name it. I read it. All the books on sex, all the Christian books on sex, I mean, everything.

[00:08:39]:

And it still didn't work. I mean, I figured out my love language was quality time. We'd spend quality time together, and I'd be like, it's not enough. I yeah. Okay. I must have taken the test wrong. Let's try another one. Maybe you need to buy me a gift.

[00:08:51]:

Maybe I need words of affirmation. Maybe you just need to write me a letter. And, I mean, I wasn't demanding necessarily, but in some ways, I kinda set up this, I don't know, maybe equation with my husband where I was like, you're not doing it right. You're not loving me right. And so I can't love you right until we fix this. And so we were trying to fix how he was, quote, unquote, loving me so that I could love him in return, and we just never got anywhere. It was a dead end. A lot of my problem was I had a hard time feeling God's love.

[00:09:29]:

I could intellectually tell you God loved me. I knew John three sixteen. I didn't really have a problem believing that in my head. But in my heart, I really did not feel secure that God loved me. I really still held on more to, like, a legalistic, pharisaical, like, I need to do good, and then God will be good to me kind of belief system. And I wasn't super conscious of that. That was that was pretty subconscious. That, like, works based earn God's love thing, I I wasn't aware until many years later.

[00:10:04]:

But that same view of God, I kinda had with my husband too. It was like, even though I wanted him to love me just for me, I really didn't believe that was possible. I really believed I kinda had to earn his love. And so if I was a good wife in good wife ways and if I looked good, like, that I could keep earning his love by making sure that I kept looking good. And I also believed I could keep his attention and his focus and his eyes only on me as long as I looked good. And we talked about that in last week's episode with, doctor Julie Slattery where I answered your questions about marriage and sex. Actually, it wasn't me answering your questions. It was Julie Slattery.

[00:10:49]:

But, that's a great episode if you didn't listen to that one. That's the one right before this episode. But as I process these things now and as I process these challenges with body image coaching clients every single week, there are some themes that I see now that are very real in my life and that are real in the lives of my clients that I think we just need to bring some attention to. We need to shed some light on these issues that are really harming our intimacy, that are really hurting us in marriage. And, you know, the issues aren't the weight you've gained in perimenopause or the weight you gained after the baby or the way your body has changed as you've aged. These aren't the issues. These are the issues that culture wants to sell us are the issues. These aren't really the issues.

[00:11:39]:

The issues, oh, they're a little messier than that. But let me just name them for you, and then we're gonna take a quick break, and we'll come back and dig into them. The issues are control and humility. I'll be right back after this quick break. So hopefully you stuck with me even after I said the c word, control. Yikes. No one wants to talk about control. I mean, I really didn't think I was a control freak because control looks so different for everyone.

[00:12:08]:

And I was raised in a pretty controlling home, which just fits perfectly with all the other things because moms who are controlling do tend to have daughters that have food and body issues, but that's another episode. But because I didn't care about the way the towels were folded necessarily or the way the dishwasher was loaded or the way the counters were cleaned or like, I didn't care about any of that stuff, so I thought I'm not controlling. My friend Shannon Popkin and I did an episode on control. I'll try to remember to put in the show notes where she talked about, for her, it was controlling even, like, what her husband was wearing, how her husband dressed. And at first, I thought, oh, that's not me. And then I remembered this time when my husband wanted to go to this event, an event that I had spent months planning my outfit for. And he wanted to go in his old, like, fraternity t shirt. It was ridiculous.

[00:12:58]:

So we had a conversation about how he dressed then. But control can look a variety of different ways. Right? It may be as innocuous as things around the house or, like, the way you do the baby's diaper or the way you fold the clothes. It could be those kind of things or the way you clean the floor, or it could be more elaborate than that. Like, maybe you're talking into, like, how he acts at work or what he says to others, on the phone or how he emails people or, you know, how he handles his boss. Or maybe you're giving him very specific instructions as to what to do when you've put him in charge of dinner or the kids or anything. And hear me. Okay.

[00:13:42]:

Like, there are times when instructions are helpful. Right? Especially if you're the one who's running things in the house, like, informing your husband if he's taking over for the night or for the weekend. Like, of course, that makes sense. But here's my question for you. Do you have to be in control at home? Is it your way or the highway? Does everyone in your household know that mom has specific opinions about how things have to be done? And if they're not done that way, they're in trouble. And if they do, what's that about? Why? Why is that so important to you? And we're gonna we're gonna go there in a second. I just want you to kinda think about it for a minute here. Why? And now to a certain degree, right, as we're raising our children, there is a level of control that's appropriate.

[00:14:37]:

Right? We have to increasingly give up that control as they grow and become teens and adults. Right? But we're in those early days, of course. Right? But now let's talk about your husband and your marriage because that's what we're here for. Do you treat your husband as a peer? Do you respect him? Do you respect his opinions? Do you respect his way of doing or thinking about things? Or do you secretly believe that you know more than he does, that you do more than he does, that you're better at all those things than he is? And here's the truth, friend. Like, I hear you arguing whether I am better at those things. Like, okay. Fine. Like, I totally I hear you.

[00:15:31]:

But what's your attitude with your husband in these situations? What's your attitude with your husband at home? Are you respectful and honoring in the ways you interact? Or does that tendency to control come across as condescending? Are you acting like his mom instead of his wife? So this is a huge stereotype here, but sometimes stereotypes are helpful in helping us, like, understand things. So men have affairs most often with women that they work with. Why? Like, the data shows that it's not that these women are more attractive than their wives. Like, that's that's never been proven that the guy who has an affair with a woman from work is finding someone who's more beautiful than his wife. In fact, often, I've read it's not the case. His wife is prettier, more attractive, better looking than the woman that he, has an affair with at work. It's not that sitcom scenario where the 50 year old guy is hooking up with a hot 20 secretary. Like, it's not that.

[00:16:40]:

Instead, it's pure relationships. So think about why. Why would he be tempted in a pure relationship he's treated like an equal. At work, he's treated like an equal. At work, she doesn't talk down to him. She respects him. And so what's most attractive to a man is a woman that finds him smart and capable and competent. It's a woman that doesn't wanna control him, but that treats him as an equal, as a peer.

[00:17:32]:

And if he comes home, my friend, and even if you're the hottest woman in your whole town and you talk down to him and you treat him like he's dumb and incompetent, you're just inviting challenges, stress, and strain because you're missing what he really wants and needs. He honestly just wants you to think he's great. And, honestly, isn't that what we want too? We just want our husbands to think we're great. It's mutual respect, really. It's you see me for me, and I see you for you, and I still like you. Right? Take love out of it. I like you. And, again, I think body image stuff, lost issues, all of these things, they keep us focused on trying to fix the wrong things in our marriage, trying to make our marriages, quote, unquote, hotter by getting a better look, by getting better bodies, by getting fit together.

[00:18:28]:

Right? But a hotter body is not going to ultimately make him love you more. Because friend, like we talked about in the last episode, right, life is not a competition. And even if it were, you're never gonna win. There's always gonna be someone out there that's more beautiful than you are. I'm so sorry to say that, but there just will be. Right? Because aging is real. And so even if you can win at 25, 40 five is gonna be a different deal. And what's happening is that we are objectifying ourselves.

[00:19:01]:

We're seeing ourselves just as bodies, and we're believing the lie that a good body, that a beautiful body is the best gift I can give my husband. And that if I give him that gift, in return, he will love me, and he will never look anywhere else. He won't even be distracted by other women that are beautiful because I'm so beautiful, and it's just not the truth. The truth is respecting him, admiring him, honoring him, being grateful for him, encouraging him. If he's not the man you want him to be right now, encourage him into being the man you want him to be. Don't try to shame and whip him into shape. That never works. And what I see happen too often is I see women that are on a body change journey because they believe it will fix their marriage.

[00:20:00]:

And they get so focused on the body change journey that they're kind of ignoring their marriage in the meantime. Right? Because, like, let's be honest. Anyone who's ever been on an intense diet or fitness program, it takes a lot of focus. And when you're hungry, you're not really happy. Like, I actually think when I stopped dieting, that helped my marriage tremendously because I was just a happier person. I wasn't so hangry all the time. But when you're on a body change journey, and if you believe that that body change will make your marriage better, and you go on this journey, this completely okay. Let me just say it.

[00:20:34]:

It's self focused. Right? Because there's no other choice. Like, you have to focus on me and my food and my exercise, and I'm just trying to become a better me. And this thought process is very worldly thought processes. If I just become a better me, then he will love me more and we will have a better marriage. But that's not the root to a better marriage. The route to a better marriage is not a better me, but a better we. And by better, I don't mean better looking.

[00:21:00]:

Like, he could be a cross between Matthew McConaughey and Tom Cruise. And still you could be discontent in your marriage. Like, just think about that reality. Still he could say all the wrong things and do all the wrong things and not make you feel loved. Right? Looks matter very little in the intimacy equation. Right? So then what I see happen is this woman goes through this body change journey, and maybe she gets the body that she thought she wanted. And then what happens is it doesn't actually change the marriage. Her husband maybe at this point is is frustrated because maybe his wife's been ignoring him for a couple months or however long the journey was, Or maybe he feels like she's too self focused and hasn't focused enough on him.

[00:21:50]:

But during that time of body improvement, there wasn't actually any focus on improving the connection, the relationship, increasing the intimacy. And by intimacy, I don't mean sex. I mean, like, a genuine understanding, acknowledgement, like, connection with each other. And then what happens? Well, now she's got a better body, and maybe she's spending more time at the gym. And maybe other men start to notice. And just like that workplace scenario that we explored a couple minutes ago, other men are noticing, and that feels good to her. She's like, oh, finally, someone doing what my husband doesn't do. Someone noticing how much I've worked so hard to get this body.

[00:22:39]:

Someone seeing me for my body. Someone loving me for my body. Someone being attracted to me. I don't get this at home. And then just like he's susceptible to an affair because a woman at work respects him, because a woman at work treats him as a peer, she's susceptible to an affair because she's noticed for the way she looks. And maybe too she's frustrated because she thought changing the way she looked would get her husband's attention, and it didn't work. It didn't work. So what do you do if you want your husband to be more attracted to you? How do you get his attention? How do you get him to wake up and see you? Friend, let me encourage you.

[00:23:26]:

You you don't have to change your body. You just have to change the way you relate to him. And that way is by seeing any ways that you may be controlling and seeing your own pride. So let me start with the controlling one. That's the hardest one. Right? Because we control for two reasons. We control because we're afraid. We're afraid that things won't go our way.

[00:23:54]:

We're afraid we won't be safe, and safety is relative. Right? Safety could be something as simple as, I'm afraid if you don't do things exactly like I want, then I won't be happy. Right? Or it could be much deeper than that. Maybe you've got a trauma, stress, background, trauma of any kind. There's a good chance you have a smaller window of tolerance. There's less ability you have right now inside that window of tolerance to handle things that don't go your way. It's gonna feel safest for you in life when things are going the way you expect or want them to go. So, friend, get help.

[00:24:31]:

Like, it's okay. No one's mad at you for that. There's no shame or blame. It's all perfectly reasonable. But just see it and don't stay there. See it and get some help and support to increase your window of tolerance so you don't have to be so controlling, so others don't stress you out so much. Like, it's not reasonable to believe that you can just stop controlling. Okay? Like, your reason for controlling things is deep and entrenched.

[00:25:01]:

And like I like to say, neurology is real. Right? So So it's not gonna be that you're gonna listen to this podcast and be like, oh, Heather's right. I'm not gonna control anymore. In fact, there could be a good chance that you actually don't think you are controlling. And maybe after listening to this, you'll be like, oh, that's what that is. So maybe ask your husband, hey. Am I controlling? And see what he says. Maybe you don't want the answer.

[00:25:27]:

Maybe ask your kids. Hey. Do you think mom's kinda controlling? Get the answer. And then take that information. And don't get discouraged and down on yourself and go inward spiraling on me. Just just take the answer and give it to the lord and say, okay, god, I see this now. I didn't see this before. This hurts.

[00:25:47]:

What do I do? Help me. Help me. Help me. How do I learn to trust you more so we don't have to feel so afraid? How do I learn to surrender these things to you? Because, like, honestly, friends, like, the things you're controlling, you're controlling them because they are so important to you. You believe that your life depends on it. And I know that was kind of a severe way to state that, but let me go back to the example of my husband wearing the fraternity shirt. For my husband to show up at that event in a ratty T shirt, I would have felt like that made me look bad. I would have felt like that made us look bad as a couple, Like, I had married someone who didn't know how to dress correctly.

[00:26:31]:

And, honestly, at that time in my life, image was so important that it kinda felt like my life depended on him wearing the right shirt. I know that can sound so ridiculous, but I think some of you know what I mean. These things that you are controlling are very important to you for a reason, and you have to dig into what that reason is. Why is it so important that my children look a certain way or behave a certain way? Why is it so important that my home look a certain way? Why is it so important that my body look a certain way? Right? Because friends, like, let's be honest. Like, control is at the heart of every eating disorder. So for many of us that have had eating disorders or disordered eating, we already know we got an issue with control. Now it's just an opportunity to see how is this spilling over into my marriage. What is this doing to my marriage? I'm chasing one thing in my marriage, and maybe instead of chasing that, I need to ask myself why is control so important to me? Okay.

[00:27:34]:

Then the other aspect of control, we're gonna touch on real quickly. Right? Control is about fear. Yes. But control is also about pride. Now challenge for those of us with body image issues is we don't think we have a pride problem. Okay? Straight up. Like, I don't like myself. I don't like the way I look.

[00:27:54]:

I don't have a pride problem. Check. That's not necessarily true. Right? We cannot confuse our shame for humility. Let me say that again. We cannot confuse our shame for humility. It's not just a matter of not thinking that you're better than everyone else. Right? Like, that's not what true humility is.

[00:28:26]:

Humility instead is the willingness to believe that others are better than you while maintaining that God made you pretty good. Right? That God made you on purpose for a purpose. It's not this woe is me, your, I'm worse than everyone else. I'm the worst. It's not that. Right? Gospel humility is a freedom from self centeredness and from self preoccupation, but it does not necessitate that you think you're awful. Right? So don't confuse your shame for humility. But whenever we have control, we have pride for one main reason.

[00:29:13]:

We believe our way is the way. We believe our way is better than the way of others. And even in our relationship with God, we believe that we know best. Oh goodness, y'all. I've heard this a couple times recently in real life situations that it may be almost I don't know. I wasn't sure if I should give a lecture or cry, and so I didn't either. I froze. Right? Fight fight, flight, or freeze, I froze.

[00:29:45]:

But I was in a conversation recently at a coffee shop, and a woman said to me how much she loves, like, the Bible, and she loves studying the word, and she loves everything God says. And then, like, five minutes later, she was talking to me about a scenario of one of her children in a relationship where they're living together and, of course, you know, sexually active and all the things. And she says to me, like, that's the one thing, like, you know, I know, like, God says, like, that's not what you're supposed to do. But I actually think that it's okay in this situation. And I think that because they have such a great relationship, God is blessing it. And and so it's okay. And I panicked. Like I said, I froze.

[00:30:28]:

I didn't say anything at all. But let me just tell you listening today. Right? Like, if you believe the Bible is something that you can read and then take from it, like, what you wanna take from it and, like, leave the rest. Like, God is not God. You are God. Right? Like, following Jesus requires humility, repentance, and submission to not my will, but your will be done. Okay, God. I don't understand why you made that rule.

[00:31:03]:

Right? And, like, for the woman I was talking to, like, didn't seem to make sense in that scenario. Like, I don't know. The rule doesn't apply to me. It's just not true. Right? And that's pride. Pride is thinking I'm better than the rule. The rule doesn't apply to me. I'm special.

[00:31:17]:

I'm different. I don't have to do that one thing. Right? And so whether it's forgiveness. Right? Like, I don't have to forgive that person because you don't know what they did to me. Like like, everyone else has to forgive. I see that's in scripture, but I don't have to forgive. Right? Or being in community with other believers. Yeah.

[00:31:36]:

I see that's in the bible. But you don't know how bad those Christians were to me. You don't know the church hurt that I've suffered. Like, I just can't be in I can't go to church anymore. I can't be in community with other believers anymore. It's just too dangerous, too risky. It just always feels bad. Like, we take these things from scripture, and we put our own experiences on top of it.

[00:31:55]:

And, again, friend, like, that's not God being God. That's you being God. And in our control issues, there's always pride. And in our control issues in our marriage, it's normally a pride that deceives us into believing that we kinda have a right to run things. We know better than he does. We're smarter than he is. We're more competent than he is. We've been a Christian longer than he has.

[00:32:23]:

We're more spiritual than he is. Like, I could go on and on and on. And, friend, it's not gonna make you more attractive to your husband. It's just not. And so if you really want to increase your intimacy, if you want to turn your marriage around, if you want to feel like he loves you and sees you more, start trying to appreciate and respect him. And I understand, like, sometimes it's hard. Maybe marriage has been really hard, and I'm not talking about abuse. If you think that's what's going on in your marriage, you should get help.

[00:33:01]:

I'm just talking about the regular kind of hard. Maybe you've just been really distant for a while, and you just don't feel connected at all, and you just don't feel anything coming from him. And it's hard to find something you respect or appreciate because you're just kind of upset. Start wherever you can. Maybe start with, like, I just am glad you come home and sleep in our bed every evening. I am thankful that you have a job that you go to. Like, start wherever you need to start. But I'm telling you, if you want him to love you and notice you and respond to you more, try this.

[00:33:42]:

What gets a man's attention the most is you thinking that they're pretty great, just like what honestly would get our attention as if a man thought we were pretty great. Try acknowledging and respecting him. I encourage women that I coach to write a list of things that they're grateful for about their husband every single day. Like, add three things every single day, and they have to be new things. And by the end of a week, then you've got 21 things you appreciate and respect about your husband. And then the next challenge is just to share a couple of them and just sprinkle them in the conversation and watch how his attention turns. Watch how his interest is peaked. Watch how he may turn away from the television and say, wow.

[00:34:33]:

Thanks for sharing that. Maybe he won't say that. Maybe he'll just internalize it. But watch what it does to him. But, oh, girl, the pride, the amount of humility it takes to encourage, lift up, give those words of affirmation to a man whom you don't feel like is giving it to you, Oh, it takes so much humility. It takes so much effort to lay down that pride, and we've gotta ask Jesus to help us with that, especially if you're in the scenario where you've lost respect for him. Pray and ask, god, help me. Help me to respect him again.

[00:35:13]:

Help me to see how you created him, what you made him for. Help me to see the good and not only the bad, not only the flaws. Show me how you see my husband. Listen, friend. I know you want him to notice you. I know you want him to love you in the way that you want to be loved. And I hear that desire, but friend, take the focus off your body, lay down your pride, Surrender your control to the one you can trust. It's not your husband.

[00:35:46]:

The one you can trust is god. Right? Like, hopefully, you trust your husband too. But, ultimately, it's in god's hands. Can you trust him? And, ultimately, that's what changed my marriage more than anything. I stopped trying to control my husband and all the things. I stopped being so afraid that things weren't gonna work out the way I wanted them to work out, like, that things weren't gonna go according to my life plan. I stopped believing that I was better than my husband, or knew better, or did things better, or was smarter, or more of a Christian than he was. I stopped believing all those lies of pride.

[00:36:22]:

And I to to do something that he wasn't capable of doing and instead just start appreciating him and seeing him as my partner in this journey of life, really in this journey of sanctification. I don't know your story. I don't know what you've been through. I don't know how hard it's been. I don't know your disappointments, but God does. So let me just encourage you. Invite him into this today. Ask him to show you what he wants you to surrender.

[00:37:09]:

Ask him to show you if there's any pride or fear or anything else. He knows much better than I do. Hey. I'm glad you were here today. I hope you are too. Thanks for listening. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and start living. Alright.

[00:37:21]:

Bye. Compare To Podcast is proudly part of the Life Audio podcast ever. From our great Christian podcast, go to LifeAudio.com.