by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 12, 2025 | Boundaries
We’ve been helping with some relationship crises this week that have sucked up much of our time and all of our emotional energy.
While I have today’s post in my head, I don’t think I have what it would take to do it justice. So I will run it on Saturday.
~ This is Paul, and knowing your limits is doing LIFE well!
An old picture, because it makes me happy!
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by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 5, 2025 | Boundaries
Podcast: https://bit.ly/3VDubiA
Today we take our discussion of boundaries into the bedroom.
Obviously, it’s wrong to try to get sex by force or manipulation. But it’s just as wrong to say yes out of guilt or fear. All of those things violate boundaries, and that hurts the marriage and puts the future of your sex life at risk.
Doing things you don’t want to do is the same. Doing something that does nothing for you because your spouse enjoys it, and you want them to have it, is fine. But doing something that offends you, hurts you, or turns you off, is boundary violating.
Those things, said, let’s apply the idea of positive boundaries to sex.
Setting a minimum amount of sex would be a positive boundary. If your spouse tends to want sex more often, setting a minimum that would bless them would be an incredible gift of love and generosity. Another reason to set a minimum is you are both busy, and you sometimes go too long without making love. Sex is important to the health of your relationship, and agreeing that is so and taking steps to ensure it happens is wise.
Another positive boundary would be for a husband to decide sex will be all about her every third time. The focus will be on what she wants. Her pleasure will be the goal, with his following. He will “do all the work”, and make it as easy as possible for her.
Another possibility is deciding to occasionally engage in an act or position that does nothing for you. It could be a just for them time of sex, or you could do it before or after they take care of you in whatever way you want. Regularly doing sex just for your spouse is a bad habit to develop, but doing it occasionally can be a loving gift.
~ This is Paul, reminding you that Doing Marriage Sex looks different for every couple.
Tilly (AKA defective dog) and Widget (AKA ugly cat) still don’t get along great. But they have agreed to a truce when they are on the bed.
It’s a start!
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 4, 2025 | Boundaries
Podcast: https://bit.ly/4nfLHp9
One of the areas in need of boundaries in most marriage is time use. In a world that praises doing all the things, it’s easy to become too busy with other things to have time for a good marriage.
Here’s the hard truth: If you don’t sacrifice for your marriage, your marriage becomes the sacrifice. If you don’t carve out time for a good marriage, you WILL NOT have a good marriage. If time with your spouse is not a high priority, you won’t spend nearly enough time with them.
Carving out the time means looking at everything you do. Your hobbies and play. Your activities and all the things your kids do. Your work and even your time doing church activities. None of these are bad, and you need some of all of them to be healthy. The issue is balance. If you regularly struggle to be alone with your spouse, your time use is out of balance. Never having enough time for each other says your marriage is not a priority. And that’s very bad.
Don’t tell yourself it’s just a busy season, and you will have more time for each other in the future. A lack of time together erodes your marriage. That makes it easier to justify not being together enough. It’s a vicious cycle, going some place you don’t want to go.
And a note to the men. If you want time for sex, you have to make sure you have enough time for the other things your wife desires to do with you. If you only make time for sex, that does not send a message you want to send!
~ This is Paul, reminding you that Doing Marriage Well takes time!
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 3, 2025 | Boundaries
Podcast: https://bit.ly/47sNjHy
Boundaries come in two flavours; negative, and positive.
Negative is obvious: “I won’t accept that” or “I don’t like it when you say that”. We all need some such boundaries to be sane and happy.
Positive boundaries are about the minimum we need to be happy and healthy. The easy way to explain it is with food. We require a certain number of calories. We also require certain amounts of various nutrients. If we fall short on any of those, we get weak or sick. And we could die.
A marriage is the same way. For a marriage to be healthy and growing, it requires various “nutrients”. A marriage RDA if you will.
You need a minimum of trust and communication to have a marriage. You must spend time together having fun and doing various things, including sex. You require respect and support. A lack of any of these makes for a sickly marriage. And too little of some of them will kill a marriage.
As with nutrients, every person’s needs are different. Some are gender based, such as women needing more iron, or more talking. Others are based on individuals differences. Each person is unique, and a loving spouse figures out the minimum of each thing their spouse needs.
And a generous spouse sees the minimum as a starting place, not the goal.
~ This is Paul, reminding you that Doing Marriage Well looks different for every couple.
The Dahlias are still going strong.
Need to plant more of them next year!
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by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 2, 2025 | Boundaries
Podcast: https://bit.ly/3VrxGbR
Note: This post is aimed at the guys.
I know a lot of women have felt “empowered” by the Boundaries in Marriage book. I think this is because many women were raised being told nice girls go along. They say yes, not no. They are agreeable and easy to get along with. And Christian girls get it even worse, often being told this is how God wants them to act.
The truth is, God didn’t ask any of us to be door mats. And when someone does that, it hurts. It hurts until they are told they don’t have to be that way, or until they get so tired of it they stop caring. Or some combination of the two.
When you tell angry, hurt women, they can say no, it’s not surprising some take it too far.
Men, if your wife let’s people walk on her, it is your responsibility to do something about that. This is part of headship.
The first step is to take a long, hard look at your marriage. If your wife has been taught to smile and go along no matter what, there will be places she is doing that in your marriage. Odds are, you’re not even aware of some of it. And let’s be honest, you like that she does that; and your selfish nature doesn’t want to let that go. But it’s the right thing to do for her, and for your marriage.
Ask her what she wants. If she won’t, or can’t, tell you, give her choices. Leave out what you usually do because it’s how you want to go. Beyond that, tell her she deserves to have what she desires. Tell her that because you love her, you want to do things her way more often.
Next step in with family: your children and parents. Stand up for her. Champion her desires. Push back when folks try to run her over. Be her hero, making a way for her to do what she wants more often.
BTW, I am not suggesting you are horrible for having gone along with your wife always deferring to you. You were also taught some wrong things. That’s why doing something different makes you such a hero.
~ This is Paul, and Doing Marriage Well requires two people acting freely.
My tools have been in buckets and boxes for several years. I finally got some cabinets to get them organised.
Just sorting them out is a huge job. But it will be nice when it’s done.
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by PAUL BYERLY | Sep 1, 2025 | Boundaries
Podcast: https://bit.ly/3JZP3xZ
I want to talk about another tool this week, one significant enough to deserve five posts. That tool is boundaries.
I can hear some husbands moaning in despair at that word. I’ve heard from a number of men who think Cloud and Townsend’s book Boundaries in Marriage: Understanding the Choices That Make or Break Loving Relationships is an evil, anti-man tome.
The reason for this is these men have not read the book, and are only working off of a far from accurate understanding of the book being pushed by someone using the book for their own ends. It might be their wife, or perhaps they have heard it second hand from a male friend who has been given a distorted rendition of the book.
So up front, I want to be very clear that boundaries are not a way of ensuring you only ever do what you want to do. That’s not boundaries, that’s called being selfish! And the boundaries book is not at all about being selfish.
However, as the subtitle of the book suggests, a lack of boundaries can hurt or destroy a marriage. And not respecting boundaries can do the same. No one likes a boundary that keeps them from something they want, but a world without boundaries would be a dangerous place indeed.
The rest of the week I will discuss why we need boundaries, and what both good and unhealthy boundaries look like.
~ This is Paul, and Doing Marriage Well requires healthy boundaries.
A sugar pie pumpkin in our garden.
These smaller pumpkins have a much better chance of reaching maturity before we get a hard frost.
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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