The RelationShop crew discusses relationships seen on reality TV (90 Day Fiancé, Married at First Sight, etc.) and throughout Pop Culture in order to provide good relationship advice that works.

Be sure to send in your relationship questions to TheRelationShop@power77radio.com.

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thing is relation Shop where we analyze pop culture to give you relationship advice that works on Toya and I have Eric and Jason up in here. All right. And for any questions, please send those into the relation shop at power 77 radio dot com. Good. Right. You come on. Somebody she got it. Oh, Questions. Oh, she was celebrating too much morning that morning. Toys away way. Have a question. This one comes from Alan. A little bit closer to home. Good. All right. So, Aaron, from his name of the town No, no, no.

That’s the town. Darren Aaron from Aaron from Ballon here we owe all right. Hey, guys. My husband is not a big talker. So when we get into disagreements, it’s very tough to get him to open up. Right now, we’re looking to purchase a house, and I want his input, but he leaves all decisions up to me. I know this sounds like a girl’s dream come true, but I’d like him to B’more involved making decisions so he could enjoy the things we’re both work towards. Also, I want him to open up more during disagreements instead of shutting down and telling me I could do whatever I want to do.

So how do I handle this? All right, all right. I would say sit down and have a conversation with him and let him know I need you to be present, right? And also, before you go to him with that, think about how present are you and things that he enjoys, you know? So, like, if he loves football or loves basketball or just loves any whatever he loves like, are you ever a part of that? You know, So make sure you’re also a part of the things that he loves that you maybe don’t love so much.

And then or if you’re not work on that and then talk to him and say, Look, I need you to be present because the real thing is that’s how you allow negative things in your relationship So it could start right now with you saying I want him to be a part of the house. I want him to be more president, arguments or whatever. Disagreements. And next thing you know, you’re gonna find somebody else that is interested and you don’t ever want toe open up a way for someone else to come in and destroy your marriage.

And this is these are the little seeds that are planted when those things start. So yeah, e. I mean, she just started shot to get him. A talking toy has got him. She got a slippery slope. E would say go by house to make him that makes him get get two jobs to afford it. And then he won’t. He won’t leave it up to you anymore. E think maybe they need to start with. Then we do a podcast called What to do when your husband won’t leave.

That might be the first part e a good ideas in that one. But I think the biggest question is is he just passive? Because that’s one issue to tackle. If it’s that the reason he shuts down is because you make him pay in conversations that might be a whole different issue. Are you creating the kind of environment where it’s safe for him to have input? Because it may be, you know, he didn’t give me any input. Well, if you always criticize him and you always go in at him and you always attack him when he disagrees with You mean like it’s not work?

You mean like Toya? Just Yeah, just Yeah. I mean, you have a disagreement and and you start accusing him of cheating. It may be a hard thing. This is this’ll is how it starts for years down the road thing. His father, I I would tell I would say Erin, Erin, from Alan, I would say number one. Try to see if you can schedule a regular time to talk. Since you have this house and you’re gonna make regular decisions every Sunday at six. Say we’re going to sit down and just talk about decisions.

Maybe I’ll get him involved. Ask yourself when he’s talking. Is it a safe place? Do you need to change how you approach him to maybe encourage him to be more talkative? And if that doesn’t work, then you probably need to go see somebody and and have them help you help him help her Help you help them make a catch that eso that he doesn’t cheat E. But yeah, that was a good, nice light. And you’re right. Maybe I did take it too far, but that’s what I heard.

That’s what I heard. So that’s what I’m going to stick with sometimes with my wife. My wife wakes up in the morning mad at me because of some dream. She had e just crazy. So come on, Toyota. Aaron knows that feeling. Yeah, Yeah. Don’t Don’t let Eric back. Makes it back down on it. I’m not backing down. I’m just like, yeah, but I saw something else in that question. But anyway, hey, thanks for sending that question. And for anybody else that has questions, send that into the relation shop at power 77 radio dot com.

And what are we talking about today? Well, we got a transition from chuckling into something that’s a little more serious. So today we do want to talk about abuse and relationships. I think this is a primary concern, especially during a quarantine season. And a lot of us have been in that abuses up. Domestic abuse is up. Child abuse is up. You know how many? Yeah, there’s a lot going on. And so what we’re gonna talk about today is physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual, and then neglect those five types of abuse and we’re gonna talk a little bit about maybe what they look like so we can identify him a little bit better.

And then what do you do if you find yourself in a situation where you’re experiencing it? So that’s what we want to try and tackle today. And let’s just jump in with physical abuse that seems the most black and white and obvious. So we’re just talking about hitting, slapping, shoving, grabbing, pinching, biting, hair pulling. I mean, you could you could name all kinds of them. But this is where people are getting physical with one another. And what does that look like in relationship? How do you get there?

What do you do if you’re there? I mean, that’s when the escalates over time todo get pretty were. So if you want to get on top of that one pretty quick, Yeah, I would I would say so for sure. Exactly. And I was actually thinking so not everybody has experienced abuse, like, primarily with their individually, But you’ve all pretty much seen it on a movie or, you know, someone that has been abused. And so what comes to mind? First, one that I can think of movies I’m talking about is like Jennifer Lopez in the movie.

Enough where we see her dating a guy. He seems really nice. He’s giving her the world. Then as soon as they get married, it’s like he just switches and he wants her to be a certain way. Then the abuse starts and she has to fight back and get away. You know, after you see that in your office, E I mean where Hey, everything was Well, how do you see Jennifer J. Lo in your office? E. I mean, we’re that couple where Hey, we were dating. It was great.

And we got married. The switch went off and yeah, that’s where I’m a little cynical because unless you only dated for three months and then got married, If you’ve been dating for six months a year, I think somebody’s character shows up somewhere. So it’s to me. It’s rare that you would be like, Oh, I never saw any. You may have not seen physical abuse, but you certainly saw some manipulation. You probably some some controlling because at the end of the day, right, that’s physical abuse is everything else.

I know that I’ve tried to control you and get you to do what I want you to do is not working. So my yelling, uh, my punishing you, my all my other stuff is not working, and a person gets to a place where they’re just so exasperated. They’re like, I gotta put my hands on you. Yeah, I guess this is probably a big show Where because way always go to physical, of course, emotional abuse. But they’re also there’s gotta be people out there. We’re gonna listen to this to go. Wow.

I didn’t recognize abuse when I saw it, necessarily because there’s, um when we get into spiritual abuse on and no, that’s why I say I think we started with physical because it’s a little more objective or some of the others become more nuanced and, you know, you get some people. They’re like, you know, if they said something that hurt my feelings, they’re abusing me. It was like, Well, no, they’re human, but but I think with physical abuse, obviously it’s not safe. Eso if you find yourself in a situation, whether it’s marriage or dating and they’re putting their hands on you or you’re both putting your hands on each other I think you’ve got to be wise enough to say this is not healthy on this.

Always escalates, and I I’ve counseled couples before where that whole game, that back and forth game that I’m gonna call the cops, that it’s just this toxic environment where it’s like that’s not a healthy relationship. If you put your hands on each other and you’re threatening, call the cops all the time. There’s some in maturity issues, and I think you guys need to be able to deal with it. The funny part is, and it will probably get into some of this in the spiritual abuse talk. But I think the tough thing is a lot of times we go to churches for help on this stuff.

And, you know, churches feel like they’re stuck in this little zone where it’s like, Well, you could only divorce because of sexual immorality. According to Jesus and Matthew, five and 19 and abandonment, according to Paul in first Corinthians eso. This is physical abuse. So you know what? Um, let’s just try to manage this well on, but the reality is it’s not safe. If you guys have to put your hands on each other or throw promotes at each other or whatever you’re doing because you can’t resolve conflict. And I think a distant separation.

Yeah, that would be really yourself, because I know there’s a tendency out there that ah husband hits you wife had. Whatever the situation is that you lean towards, that was that was just a missed a core. That was He was just upset, you excuse. Oh, you better You better. You better get on top of that earlier and be real with yourself or what you’re actually dealing with. Exactly. And actually, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, typically in a day, um, the violence hotline gets about 20,000 phone calls a day.

So and that’s on a regular day. Like we don’t even know what that is like. Now that we’re in quarantine, You know what I’m saying? Andan abusers access to firearm increased the risk of abuse toe 400%. And we’re in Texas where just about everybody has a gun. You know what I’m saying? 400% on then the intimate partner. Violence is most common against women 18 to 24. Um, but it’s it’s funny because as I’m not funny, but when I’m looking at these stats, I’m just seeing that because I was wondering, like, how many marriages actually go through abuse and, you know, you really just can’t find a number, because number one, we have women and men, you know that are abused.

But how many of them actually report to police? You know, so most of them don’t Dudes. I mean, imagine that, you know, and even less your wife keeps hurting me, like, really, bro. Yeah, And you’re right. That’s why most of our stats here are about women because we know that men are being abused, But they are even less likely to report along with the women where they’re less likely likely to report because they don’t want their spouse to go to jail or fear of their life or just thinking, Okay, it’s not gonna happen again.

Or I’m just gonna wait, Let me let things, you know, calm down. And so we were dealing with a lot of other factors. So our numbers, you know, if only we knew the true numbers, you know, on and and then I think about the kids and physical abuse. So think about the kids that are growing up and witnessing their parents, you know, like in those fights in those arguments, you know, choking people out in those types of things. So then I see, uh, it is really again.

According to that same source, each year, 10 million kids are exposed to domestic violence and one in 15 kids exposed. 90% are eyewitness I witnesses who feel the effect of their entire lives. So that means maybe they’re gonna then becoming abusers. Um, they’re just gonna be abusers. You know, they might even commit suicide because that’s what it said here. Two men exposes Children are 3 to 4 times more likely to perpetrate intimate partners. And then young people living in violent homes are six times more likely to commit suicide. Yeah, that’s that’s big.

You create generations of abusers. Eso itt’s more than just in the moment. So So I physical is big. But if you find yourself in a relationship where there’s physical abuse, be smart. Get help. I think A If you’re married a guided separation, you need to be not in the same proximity. I think the idea behind it would be separation for a period of time, with some direction and guidance, hopefully for reconciliation. But don’t fool yourself into thinking Well, we’re married. I can’t leave, It’s not healthy. And so get away from it.

Get your mind right and get back into it. So let’s That’s physical abuse. Let’s take a step deeper. Well, this is good up all the way in. Let’s talk about sexual abuse. Eso this is you know, obviously we have one category, which is sexual abuse of kids, right, which unfortunately happens to a lot of people. But then there can also be sexual abuse and marriage, and I think a lot of people go and no, you can’t, you know, But But the reality is that if somebody is coursing or attempting to course, any kind of sexual contact without consent, that’s that’s sexual abuse, Right?

So obviously you got you know, But Eric, I mean, I’m married, So my body is his love. His mind. Let me let me help you. Yes, there is such thing as marital rape. If your spouse says no and you force yourself on them that I don’t care, you don’t get to lean on your twisted Bible. verse. Your body is not your If your body is not your own, then you need to ask your spouse. Do they want your body? That’s not your own near them. If it’s not your own, you don’t get to force it on somebody else.

So, um, yeah, I think even even, you know, treating each other in a demeaning manner sexually, can can at times be a form of and there’s always a thin line. You don’t want people going. Oh, you slap my butt when you walk by me, Z Well, come on, man. Yeah. So I’m sure you may have a movie or two about that. You know what? I don’t know. This is under investigation, but I’m wondering about who? Yeah, with this movie. What is it? So 50 shades of gray That whole Serie A trip?

Yeah, the whole trill. Is that abuse? I mean, used to scrub my Saturday nights man way. Yeah, so I don’t know. I mean, because he used it. I mean, of course, it’s meant emotional. Emotional goes with all the abuse, right? So but just the fact that he’s using the sex and the control and all of that then, Yeah, there’s probably some abuse in there. Maybe if you’re talking about emotional. But if you’re talking about you gotta have a safe words. In case the person is that does not feel safe.

That might be an indicator. E need bubbles. Top five. It might be an indicator of sexual be. I want the whole room dedicated to your fantasies of control and manipulation of another person, and we just tied sex to it. That might be a red flag. E think. Sometimes we we can, uh, that, you know, spiritually that that whole your body is not your own stuff. Come on, man Way. Uh, it’s called mutual submission in marriage. You should not want, of course, your spouse to do something sexually they’re not comfortable with.

They should not feel like they do not have the freedom to say no to you at times e. I mean, that’s just that should be self explanatory. That should be. Well, some people might say she signed the contract. Think Oh, now we’re back to 50 shades of gray e because doesn’t work. Yeah, that’s right. Well, you go ahead and sign whatever contract it says. Consent to abuse sign. Yeah, I mean, a t end of the day s Oh, that’s sexual abuse. Obviously anything that is forced, coercion, manipulation, control of the other person.

Uh And then let’s jump into emotional abuse, which I think this is one of those areas that’s a little more nuanced because some people could just get their feelings or, oh, they emotionally abused May. Well, I mean, did they or did they not? So let’s let’s talk about it in the context of really like undermining another person’s sense of self worth or self esteem. So you could think about, like, constant criticism all the time. Name calling, damaging their relationship with their Children, people that air really manipulating and controlling another person by verbal attacks by things They talk about them by undermining the other people.

So I think there’s a lot of stuff that falls in it, and this is where everybody loves to go there narcissistic man, that way to move that and bipolar everybody thinks everybody is so that got me to thinking, Well, I’m sure that hurts. What are you thinking? That’s it. That’s it. So Okay, so the narcissistic I hear that all time, so I check that? But you guys introduced me Thio. I mean, to the term gaslighting, which I probably should have known. But you should have kind of new to me.

So So I’ve heard of it. I haven’t heard of that one. I don’t know why, but your Saturday nights are clearly so busy. They just talking about too busy for that. Yeah, So I’m figuring out those were kind of as far as the traits. They’re pretty similar traits of narcissists and do gaslight A lot s so basically what the motivation behind the two are different. So I gotta actually have five traits of gas Nars narcissist because they’re both similar. But the motivation is different. The a motivation.

So let’s go with number one Frequent line Somebody who was a frequent liar and they exaggerate all the time. The narcissist Use it to self boost right to self promote The gas slider doesn t to make the other person feel inferior to break the other person down to control the psychological distinction. Don’t sleep on Fowler today. It’s coming. It’s coming like a today doctor. Yeah, All right. Number two rarely admits flaws and gets aggressive when criticized. So the narcissist This? Yeah. They like to fight? No, not necessarily physically.

But they like to fight about that stuff or they bolt in those situations because you’re You’re touching a nerve on their ego. The gas like they escalated. They actually like it to intimidate. They use that for an intimidation. Okay. All right. Number three, they project false image where the narcissist does it to improve their image. The gas slider. They do it to make others feel bad about themselves for the intimidation factory. Right? All right. Okay. All right. Number four. You like it So far? I’m actually impressed for once.

Well, no, you have that one. Other time. You had a great question. All right. This is the second time I’m semi impress. Yeah, we’ll take that. All right. So number four, they emotionally invalidate or they coerce. Now, the narcissist, they both enjoyed doing the negative. But the narcissist does it to feel better about themselves where the gas lighter, of course, does it to tear down and manipulate. Alright. So number five will be they used. They actually use control of others as an extension of their self. So let me explain that a little bit.

They both have a tendency to make decisions for other people to promote their own agenda. So the narcissist does it to cover up their weakness. Alright. Where the gas slider does that? Teoh, You know, making other second guess their decisions. Maybe I’m the one making the wrong choice. I’m s o there, Ugo way Probably got 122 movies on. Oh, my gosh. You kidding? Yeah. So here’s your top five. How about that? Give me my dad’s voice Where I’m proud of your boy. Come on, give me one of those.

I’m so proud of E. That was the best list ever. E like it? Come here, boy. You like it? I like it, but, you know, going through that you go, man, I know people like that. I mean, it did bring the light. Wow, if you’re in a relationship and and the other person has made you feel like you’re crazy, that’s kind of that gaslighting because they will twist the truth to where you’re almost like I used to think this was truth. But now I’m doubting what I used to know to be truth.

Yeah, they’re masters at it. Yeah, that was That was pretty good. Was spent some time on psychology today. Google something out that sometimes I’m proud. That was good, because I hear narcissist a lot, but like that gaslighting but a narcissist can also gaslight course. So Okay, so it’s still they have the same traits against just all about the motivation, right? Wow, that was That was good. Now do I have any movies? I mean, the only one that I could think of was the family that prays one of Tyler Perry’s movies and they’ve been playing it back and back to back to back to back on Be a family that prays.

It’s crazy. It’s spelled like a crazy e. I haven’t seen it with E. Yeah, this one was good. But it showed that toe where a wife really like, just disrespected and made her husband’s second guess himself, that type of thing. So it was just a heavy and the emotional, but wow, that was a good No, that was You got me thinking about that. I like that. So we got to mawr, right? We got neglect and spiritually abuse, so I think we won’t spend a lot of time on neglect, but obviously it’s it’s the idea of, you know, they talk about active stuff and that’s what we’ve been talking about.

So neglect is more the passive. So it’s not that they’re doing something, but they’re withholding something. And really, at the end of the day, when if you look biblically when Paul talks about in first Corinthians seven, I think, is where it’s at. But he talks about, um, you know, if if someone became a believer is what he’s addressing at the church, and so they’re asking, Well, if my spouse is not a believer, should I leave them? And he said, No. If they’re willing to stay with you, stay with them because you never know if your faith may influence them.

But if they leave you abandon you, you’re no longer bound and so really, really, he’s speaking out of the context of you go back to Exodus 21 that was kind of the Old Testament. The fulfillment of a spouse husbands rolled to a wife was food, clothing and sexual fulfillment. Basically, those were and and they used to have that was part of the Jewish marriage ceremonies that they would include those vows those food, clothing, sexual fulfillment. So basically Paul saying You’re neglecting the duties that you’ve committed to a marriage, which is that abandonment.

So it could be that neglect of food, neglect of proper stuff and that kind of stuff the motivation behind neglect, you know, most of the time in the same dwelling else’s control is control. I’m gonna withhold from you in order to force you to do something. I want you to dio eso. So if Ugo there’s some guys out there right now, go wait a minute, my wife says, Well, if you don’t do that, I’m not giving you that. Yeah, it’s that neglect. I think that’s that’s manipulation.

I think neglect is pervasive. Uh, you know, super unhealthy Because, yeah, you could say, Well, my wife won’t have sex with me seven days a week. She’s neglecting me. No, you have a sex issue. She’s not willing to fulfill its work on yourself. So let’s jump in the last one Spiritually. Yes. And, uh, golly, this good thing this could run down a million routes because you have the overt ones right? Which you name it So go ahead. You guys have 1000 of them from history. Pick a cult pig example of spiritual abuse.

And we can have Adam Exactly. I mean, throughout David Koresh Waco way have a Scientology. That’s the big these days. David Koresh was over. I can’t remember the name of them. But they were in Waco, right? Yes, there’s the whole compound, basically. And he was the cult leader. So you know, you can’t You know just what, Jim Jonestown, Whatever. You can’t. You can’t miss that one. Drink Kool Aid. Cool guys drink the Kool Aid. But the idea behind all these is when you talk about spiritual abuse is there’s often isolation from family there.

There’s conformity to the group and the group rules and mores and breaking them obviously results in great punishment or death or ostracizing or something. So the characteristics of all these are power control, isolation, manipulation. I mean, when you get a bunch of people Jim Jones the same time to drink Kool Aid, Hopefully was it to catch a comment that was coming by or something? I forgot what that was behind it, but they all killed himself under some dream of something. Some dude came up with them like, All right, so here’s my question.

My question Is there a those air Major major examples Are there more? Is it spiritually abuse? So let’s say legalism. Is there some legalism that borders along the spiritual abuse That maybe not that drastic or your poison I think you talk about. I mean, just think if you follow church world, probably in the last 56 years, you could think of multiple people who have been removed from from positions. So you have Bill Hybels up Willow Creek Church. You had Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill up in Seattle. You have a lot of people that people are coming along and saying these people were spiritually manipulative, bullying, controlling, abusive.

In fact, I just Someone just sent me an article the other day that there’s a I don’t know where they’re at a Georgia or somewhere, but the gathering oasis that had they had this whole pinky promise thing. I think Heather Lindsay was the lady’s name that you know this stuff for purity for kids and that kind of stuff. And some people just came out there under investigation for spiritual abuse and control eso you see that often were spiritually leaders will, under the guise of what toy tried doing earlier, using that scripture to say everybody is not your own.

So you need to give it to me whenever I want you. Scripture s so a lot of will use Scripture to say, Hey, you need to submit to your spiritually authorities, which is proper structure, and that’s God’s design. And there’s people that are called the shepherd and care for other people. But everyone’s got a personal relationship with God, too. So when you start putting a spiritual person in front of your relationship with God and giving them too much control, they can spiritually abuse you. I think a lot of I’ve talked to a lot of couples where one of the spouses is maybe more Bible knowledgeable, and they’ll use their knowledge of Scripture to manipulate the other person into submit to me or, you know, just just different things.

And when you don’t know, you’re like this person’s been a Christian longer than me. They seem no scripture longer than me. It’s easy. So I think it falls under anything where somebody is using, uh, their position spiritually. Quote a pastor or spiritual leader or whatever you want. They’re using, uh, the inspired word, whatever it might be for that religion or Bible for Christians to manipulate and control somebody and course somebody into doing what they want. These kind of breed together a little bit with because I’m hearing some emotional abuse in that spiritual abuse case, we got lines kind across a little bit.

Sure, anytime it’s control in there, it’s manipulation for purposes is coercion. So I think the key is, as as we wrap up all of these, right? And I would encourage anybody if if there wondering about their relationship. There’s so much good information online, and there’s so many great resource is to say, Hey, help me understand this better And then where do I go for this? Right? Obviously, for domestic violence, there’s places set aside that can help walk with people through that counselors for these other things. But at the end of the day, in relationships, a big part of it’s about boundaries.

And so if you’ve never read Henry Cloud, John Towns is Boundaries book. That’s huge, because part of it is saying I’m gonna make the other person take responsibility for their attitudes and actions. I’m not gonna take it too often. We take responsibility. So let’s go. Physical abuse just real quick as an example. You’re a home. The husband has an anger issue. And so you never know you and the kids never know when he walks in the door from work. Is he gonna be angry? Is he going to yell at us?

Is he gonna throw stuff? And and too many times wives and kids take responsibility for their husband’s actions instead of a healthy boundary. Would be We’re not going to put up with the behavior because it’s not healthy. So when you come in the door, if you’re angry and yelling at us, I’m gonna grab the kids and go to Mom’s house until you cool down. That’s setting a boundary. If you don’t take responsibility for yours, here’s what we’re gonna do. On behalf of eso, Boundaries is really answered.

All these? Yes, and if anyone out there is a struggling or know someone that is struggling with violence right now, then call 1 807 99 Safe 1 807 99 Safe that’s at 7 to 33 And, uh, if you all have any questions for us in those into the relation shop at power 77 radio dot com And thank you so much for joining us, uh