Have you ever had dreams that didn’t come true?   We’ve just moved all of our posts from my previous site at To Love, Honor and Vacuum over to Bare Marriage, taking only those from 2018 forward. And we left about 1500 behind! Some of those older posts, though, meant a lot to me, and I’d like to rerun one today. I hope it resonates with you too. Sheila Wray Gregoire I heard an interesting sermon on Sunday, and I want to share some thoughts that it inspired. The pastor made the point that there are two kinds of mid-life crises: Those you have when you realize you’ve reached all your ..read more

We’ve finally made the move, and To Love, Honor and Vacuum is now rebranded Bare Marriage! Connor has been working on this for a few months now, and it turned into a much bigger job than we anticipated. I started To Love, Honor and Vacuum back in 2008. I started out as a parenting/mommy blog, and the title of the blog was based on my first book, which was published in 2003–To Love, Honor and Vacuum: When you feel more like a maid than a wife and a mother.   Our family in 2008 when I started blogging! (With my mom, my husband Keith, and Rebecca and Katie while we were on vacation). When ..read more

This has been a strange week on the blog and social media, with a bunch of new male commenters flooding this space complaining about women. The complaints were prompted by two things: our continued discussion about the Psychology Today article and the fact that women are developing higher standards for husbands (which we also talked about in our podcast this week); and this Fixed It For You: No, Kevin Leman, her period is not a difficult time “for her husband.” It is a difficult time for her. And if he has difficulty, it’s nothing in comparison to what she is experiencing. This inability t ..read more

We’ve got some wonderful inspiring stories to share with you today–plus a new research study with implications for dating.  This month on the podcast I’ve been talking about women heroes you should know–we talked about biographies of Josephine Butler and Katharine Bushnell, who were both amazing.  Today Rebecca and I tell you about two modern day heroes, plus two young women using the gifts God gave them to try to change their world!  Then we analyze that Psychology Today article we told you about–the rise of lonely, single men. Listen in! Listen to the Podcast Here Browse ..read more

What if there’s something super simple you could do that could improve your mood and your marriage? I talked on Monday about rhythms in our lives–how to honor our bodies’ rhythms, with the need for work and rest; for feasting and fasting. And I thought today we could talk about one of the biggest rhythms we have–sleep. Can we honor the transition time between work and rest? Here’s what happens in many households: You’re just desperate from some down time, so after the kids go to bed you collapse in front of the TV, streaming some shows, or playing some video games, until you’re exhausted. And ..read more

God created life with natural rhythms. But I feel like much of the effort of modern life is to obliterate those rhythms. Two things got me thinking about this lately, and I’d like to tell you about them and then explore this further. Exhibit A: I had COVID. Thankfully, I did not have a serious case, and I was over the worst of it within about four days. When I started to feel better I got up and tried to do what I wanted to do, and about a week later I crashed again. I felt worse last Wednesday-Saturday than I had the previous Sunday-Tuesday. I was just so dang tired. I’d record one podcast a ..read more

What if men are finding it hard to find a mate because women are getting higher standards? That’s the claim in a new article in Psychology Today that’s going crazy on social media right now:  And I checked out the references the post uses, and they appear to hold up! A peer reviewed study does show that single men are lonelier than single women, and that loneliness among men is increasing. Another study shows that men are more likely to be unpartnered long term than women, and that unpartnered men are faring worse than unpartnered women–and faring worse than unpartnered men did thirt ..read more

Time for another hero of the faith! Well, three, actually! This month we’re telling amazing stories of women that God used in history to fight against injustice and show that God values women. Last week we looked at a biography of Josephine Butler, and this week Kristin Kobes Du Mez, the author of Jesus and John Wayne, joins us to talk about her biography of Katharine Bushnell.  Bushnell fought against sex trafficking first in the United States and then in India and abroad in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the latter part of her life she dedicated considerable time to challenging bia ..read more

Are you married to a controlling husband?     I first ran this post back in 2016, but as we’re moving over to our new domain next week, and taking only the posts from 2018 and forward, I wanted to make sure this one came with us! I refer to it a lot. If you’re in this position, please know that you’re not alone, and you matter. Sheila Wray Gregoire I wrote a big post recently about how too often our Christian culture promotes a version of church and marriage that makes women powerless–and that this inevitably leads to abuse. Not that EVERY woman will be abused, but when we ..read more

I do not believe that pastors need to be perfect. I absolutely believe that all of us are works in progress, and that we will always have areas where we need to grow. And I think it’s a good idea, in general, for pastors to admit when they’re still growing or where they have certain areas they’re working on. However–and this is a big however–there’s a huge difference between a struggle to love well and a struggle to not abuse or objectify someone. Struggling about how to communicate well with your spouse when you’re just so tired? Struggling with how to prioritize everyone’s needs while work ..read more