by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 22, 2026 | Circumstances
Podcast: https://bit.ly/46EaVXV
Much of what I advocate for is not always possible due to circumstances. And I’m probably not as good at mentioning that as I would like.
As one example, I’m big on date nights. I think couples should get out together most weeks. Get away from the house, and from the kids if you have any at home.
However, going out is more and more expensive. Restaurants are more expensive, entertainment is more expensive, and the fuel needed to get from here to there is more expensive. And if you need childcare, that’s become a significant expense. Busyness can be another issue. If you’re always too busy for a date night, your life is too busy, and it’s hurting you and your marriage. But there are seasons of busyness that can’t be avoided.
When circumstances make regular date nights impossible, don’t just dump the idea. Do a picnic, or find a free concert in the park. Lori gathered a long list of inexpensive date ideas. Exchange child sitting with another couple, get takeout, and do some Netflix and chill.
Save up and try for one date night a month to keep it something you do. And when life changes to allow for more normal date nights, be quick to do that.
I also talk about taking a yearly vacation. As in somewhere else, and without the kids. I’m all about family vacations, but your marriage needs a couple version. At the very least, you should get a long weekend away together once a year. A full week, or several weekends, is better.
But all the things I said about date nights can make vacations difficult or impossible. Maybe you can swap kids with another couple, get a low-cost hotel an hour and a half away and pack food. But even that might be difficult at times.
Please do what you can to keep the idea of vacations together alive when circumstances make them impossible. A 36-hour staycation, for example. Or talk and plan for a future vacation. Start a fund to pay for it, and sacrifice something each week to put money in the fund. St. Arbucks can survive without you!
You may have noticed the issue of keeping the idea alive in each of these examples. This is about acknowledging the circumstance that prevents something but not accepting necessary adjustments as a permanent change.
~ This is Paul, reminding you that Doing Marriage Well looks different for every couple.
The turkeys really love their peas.
Cull peas are peas that don’t make human-grade. We buy them dry inexpensively, soak them 24 hours, and it’s a high-protein addition to their diet.
Image Credits: First image © Paul H Byerly created with Nano Banana 2 Second image © Paul H Byerly
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by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 21, 2026 | Circumstances
Podcast: https://bit.ly/47fi553
Our doctor recently prescribed a milkshake for my wife. Really!
Her ongoing medical issues have caused an unhealthy level of weight loss. He prescribed a drug to help her be better able to eat, and said to go get the most calorie bang for her buck she could. I said, “A milkshake?” and he said, “Exactly.”
Clearly this is not normal medical advice. It was what was best under the circumstances. We are working to get her the calories she needs in a better way. But for the moment the doctor was more concerned with calories than nutrition.
Sometimes what is normally best practice is not the way to go under the circumstances. This is true for all aspects of life, including our marriages.
If Lori decided to live on milkshakes, that would be a problem. When the medical issue is resolved, she needs to return to getting good nutrition. What we are doing now is unusual and only a good choice because of the circumstances.
There will be times in your marriage where you can’t do what would normally be best. There will be times when what is normally expected would be harmful. The trick to dealing with this is twofold. First, you have to see the unusual circumstances, what they mean, and how to adapt. Second, you have to see when the circumstances have passed so you can return to something more appropriate for most of the time. Some open discussions will help you do this well.
My wife has not done any housework for several weeks. That is right, and I’d stop her if she tried. But when this is all over, it would be wrong for her to leave me doing everything. That’s not who she is, but new habits form, and she will need to be intentional to return to her old habits.
Think about your marriage. Is there an unusual circumstance in your marriage that would benefit from doing something that would normally not be a good idea? Did this happen in the past, but you didn’t get back to or all the way back to normal when the circumstance passed? I’ll give some examples the rest of the week, but I wanted y’all to think about your marriage first.
~ This is Paul, and accommodating is Doing Marriage Well.
You might be a homesteader if…
Rendering some fat from last year’s pig. Got three quarts!
Image Credits: First image © Paul H Byerly created with Nano Banana 2 Second image © Paul H Byerly
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by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 19, 2026 | Porn
Podcast: https://bit.ly/46tfC6X
A couple of weeks ago, I said, “I shy away from calling porn use an addiction, but if it’s making a mess of your marriage, hurting your job performance, or destroying your life, it needs to be treated.”
I got some pushback on that, including someone saying, “That’s insulting to the other spouse. It ruins marriages.“
I agree it ruins and sometimes ends marriages. I am extremely opposed to porn. I’ve ranted about it often, but when I looked, I found I’d not done that on this blog. So let me fix that.
To my statement, I see ‘addiction’ as a clinical term with a specific meaning. And porn use does not hit that in my experience. One issue with calling it an addiction is I’ve heard men use that term as an excuse for not getting free. It bothers me that many see it as okay for a man to ‘struggle’ with porn for years. Would we tell a wife to put up with a husband who ‘struggled’ with having affairs for years? My other issue is some folks who call it this use pseudoscience and worse to make it that. Lies and panic won’t help anyone get free of porn.
All that said, if you want to call it an addiction, go for it. Regardless of what we call it, it’s sin, it’s infidelity, and it should be treated as both. Yes, I said it’s infidelity. Seeking sexual arousal from someone or something other than your spouse is infidelity. Many Christians are not willing to go that far, but based on what Jesus said, this is how God sees it.
The other issue is the growing number of Christian couples who use porn as foreplay. One of them may feel guilty and may be doing it for their spouse, but many of them think it’s okay as long as they do it together. When Jesus spoke about lusting after other women, He didn’t say it was okay if your wife was there with you, also lusting.
I feel like this is a losing battle. More and more Christians view porn regularly, including forty percent of women. And while some see it as a sin and would like to stop, a growing number are okay with it, at least in their own mind. I see it as one of the greatest crises being faced not just by marriages, but also by the church.
All of you suffering because of porn have my prayers. There is help, but a lot of those involved in porn don’t really want to stop. Sometimes it takes an ultimatum. And sometimes even that doesn’t do it.
For those who do want help, I highly recommend Be Broken.
~ This is Paul, and porn is not Doing Marriage Well.
Image Credits: First image © Paul H Byerly created with Nano Banana 2 Second image © Paul H Byerly
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by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 18, 2026 | Imperfect
Podcast: https://bit.ly/4y4vzg7
Perfectionism is a real sex killer.
Even if you got decent sex education, when you first had sex, there was a lot of unknown that could only be resolved with trial and error. I’ve heard a few folks say first sex was good for both of them, but it’s the exception. Most couples are not warned about the things that likely won’t go right at first, and high expectations can make what would be okay sex seem like a failure.
Where we get our expectations is also a major factor. If either spouse thinks porn is at all realistic, they are in for disappointment. Likewise, if the woman has fed on a diet of romance novels. Expecting your spouse to be like the people in media creates something they will never live up to.
Perfectionism can hurt a couple’s sex life well past the early days. Some women who don’t orgasm early on assume they are broken and accept that rather than talking about it and finding a fix. This is especially likely for women who have wrongly been told all women can and should orgasm from intercourse. Other women feel like a failure because they only have one orgasm at a time (like most women) or don’t squirt (most women don’t).
For men it’s about erections. Men get worried when they get past thirty and are no longer fully erect and ready to go at the drop of a panty. They fear a normal change means there is something wrong with them. The wife who notices this change may assume her husband is no longer attracted to her. Full-on ED is even worse. Some men are so ashamed they stop having sex with their wife, resorting to masturbation instead. They would like to have sex with their wife but can’t deal with not being able to do it “right”.
Both men and women get caught up in the lie that women orgasm quickly and easily. Most do that on occasion, and a few do so most of the time, but the majority of women need far more time than media portrays. This leads to disappointment, bad sex, and possibly trying to fix something that isn’t broken.
Sex should be a journey, not a destination. It will be ever-changing, and there are always new things to explore if you’re both willing. Relax your expectations, get rid of that list of shoulds, and enjoy real sex with your wonderful spouse. A good starting place is working to be able to discuss sex openly as a couple.
~ This is Paul, reminding you that Doing Sex Well looks different for every couple, and for every season of life.
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by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 17, 2026 | Imperfect
Podcast: https://bit.ly/4isKKuu
Have you ever left something broken because it’s slated for replacement? Or it’s not right but sort of works, and it will be gone in six months, so you let it be. You put up with something annoying because you don’t want to put in the time or money to fix it when your efforts will be wiped out later.
Lori and I are years into a very slow building process, and we’ve faced a lot of these issues. One of them, I don’t recall what it was, got so annoying that I did a halfway fix. It took a fraction of the time and money I would later spend to do it right, but it made our lives so much easier until I got to the real fix. I told Lori it was two-year temporary, and the term stuck.
Two-year temporary acknowledges that there will be a major rework down the road. It’s better than duct tape and bungees, but not too involved or expensive. Most importantly, it reduces an ongoing frustration a great deal. For us, two-year temporary has to be safe, functional, and not ugly. And at least once, it was just about covering up something ugly that would later be removed. The ugly was still there, but we didn’t have to look at it.
How could you apply the idea of two-year temporary to your marriage? An easy example would be if one of you was finishing school while the other was working a job they didn’t like. It’s not the life or marriage you will have. But that doesn’t mean you have to just put up with everything. Pick a couple things that really bother you and figure out how to easily and inexpensively make them somewhat better for now.
Having a baby creates a similar situation. A difficult teen is another one. Other examples are a long-term illness or having to care for an ageing parent. All of these things can derail your life for a season.
You have to do what needs to be done in difficult times, but don’t surrender completely to circumstances. You may not be able to do what you want the way you want, but you can find a way to have something along the same lines.
If your spouse needed the bedroom and bathroom to be wheelchair friendly for a year, you would get that done for them. How do you do the same for your relationship? How do you meet the emotional needs you both have? How do you remain emotionally intimate? What changes do you need to make?
Ironically, we are more likely to do these things if our situation has changed permanently than if the change is for a season. Fight that tendency. Short-term fixes can be very good things, and half of what you want can be more than enough.
~ This is Paul, and sometimes Doing Marriage Well means doing what you can.
Starting to feed sunflowers to birds and bunnies.
The turkeys were unaware it was food.
Image Credits: First image © Paul H Byerly created with Nano Banana 2 Second image © Paul H Byerly
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by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 16, 2026 | Imperfect
Podcast: https://bit.ly/4di0Ljm
As I’ve suggested that perfectionism is not a good thing, some of you may have thought, “Wait, didn’t Jesus tell us to be perfect?” Yes, but no.
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. ~ Matthew 5:48 ESV
The word “perfect” comes from the Greek word teleios. It means complete, mature, or fully grown. But we don’t have to dig into the Greek to know we can’t be perfect. In Mark 10:18 Jesus said, “No one is good except God alone.” If we can’t even be called good, we certainly are not called to be perfect.
Most modern versions of the Bible render Mt 5:48 better. Unfortunately some of us were hit with a lot of inaccurate theology that taught us we were supposed to reach a level of perfection God never called us to. Some who know they are saved by faith in Jesus still feel they have to earn God’s love or do enough good to deserve heaven. Even some who know this is false still react to it internally. The gospel of perfectionism remains strong among some Christians.
The corollary to this is that we must be perfect, or very close to it, to deserve love from our spouse. Do you feel that way? Does that drive you? Does it make you frustrated? Does it make you feel you can never be good enough for your spouse? Has it caused you to give up?
What your spouse feels here is not the issue. If you believe you must earn their love, that is about you, and what they think can’t change that. And if you don’t think you have to earn their love, then what they think doesn’t have power over you.
On the other side of it, do you expect your spouse to earn your love? Do you hold back when you don’t think they are doing enough? Might this be happening subconsciously?
Yes, we should push ourselves to be better and to treat our spouse better. But a quid-pro quo marriage is an abomination God never envisioned. Love does not keep score, and it’s happy to take the short end of the stick on occasion. This has to run both ways over time, but there will be seasons where it’s mostly one way.
~ This is Paul, and I’m glad neither God nor my bride limits me to what I deserve!
Lori and I see a lot of “Jeep Ducking” around here.
This little guy is our favourite, so far
Image Credits: First image © Paul H Byerly created with Nano Banana 2 Second image © Paul H Byerly
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