 What he represents is patriarchy. We're here to do work as men, as patriarchs. There's nothing more natural than being a father. Welcome back to the 21 Convention 2020 here in Orlando, Florida, patriarch's edition. I'm incredibly proud to bring these next speakers to the stage. This is a first for a patriarch and 21, where we have a couple, a married couple, coming to the stage to field questions from the audience, to give an insight into how their business works, how their family works, their relationship, their parenting, how they balance it all, and remain two productive individuals that are growing as a couple, as a married couple. With these two, the guzzies, which just have a cool name to bring on, we've got the guzzies! So the guzzies will be coming up here. If you want to get your questions formulated now, go ahead and ask the things you're wondering. If you still have a family and you're looking like, hey, in the future I might want this, how do you guys balance it? You know, if it's something that you're going through, hey, I'm struggling with this, how would you go through it? And just get their perspective and you can talk through it. This is an amazing opportunity to look behind the curtain and see how things are working. And maybe you'll find a game plan, or maybe you'll find a perspective that can help you improve the quality and relationship you have in your family or the one you create. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome the guzzies to the stage. Okay, so like Zach said, this is literally a Q&A session. We've got an hour to kill with you guys. We're really excited to be able to do this with you. So we've got nothing else prepared other than to answer your questions. If you get to a lull and you've already asked a question and you've got another one, monopolize our time. We'll answer 16 of your questions if nobody else is asking. So by all means, we're just excited to do this with you. And it looks like Zach is already queued up and ready to go. So let's do this, dude. I'm holding this in our convention. You know, I wanted to save it for the Q&A. It's 2020. Everybody has access to social media. More men are finding their voice and wanting to share it as they go through their journey in life and self-improvement. And one of the things that we'll see a lot from patriarchs is now people want to start sharing their journey with their family. And for myself and for others on that path, how do you balance sharing time with your family with proper health like stage puppets and not wanting to become that guy who's sharing too much? Keeping it together, keeping it personal while also showing here's an example of what I'm doing. Yeah, that's a great question. And this is one that is, it's a challenge because when you are creating content, whether it's just an Instagram photo or you're creating full videos and it needs to be edited and everything else like that and there's time that takes you out of the moment. And there was a good period during what? 2016? 2015? 2016? When I was doing a lot more with Instagram and YouTube and every single family event that we did whether it was birthday parties or anything else, I was always there with the camera and it had the microphone and everything else like that and it was, I wasn't able to be as present. But then we've got all these great videos that serve as memories of that and so since then we've backed off to where we'll make it a point to she'll snap a few photos or I'll snap something but then for the most part it's just trying to be as present and engaged and whatever it is that we're doing and that's, you felt like that's been a good balance as far as working backwards from that? Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, and so what's it like for you as far as having to even think, because you're not doing this on your own platform or anything, this is mostly, she's like the Instagram boyfriend, but for me which is so backwards. But what's that like for you as far as thinking about that consciously? Well, I wouldn't, I don't know that I'd even think about it if you didn't do what you do but I've really appreciated your example of wanting to show people what family life can be and so I've started doing it a little bit more on my own Instagram and I guess I've started automatically in my mind when I'm really, when we're doing something together as a family and there's that feeling and you're kind of brought present of this is good, this is great, this is wonderful, there is part of me that says could I share this with other people? How can I share this feeling with other people and if I think I can capture it without compromising the moment I'll grab a picture or a video or jot down some thoughts to share but it's pretty minimal it doesn't feel like your business is very invasive for our life, we don't share meltdowns, we don't share very vulnerable moments for our kids or anything like that it hasn't been too bad No, and I think that's been very conscious and deliberate on our part where we want to be able to showcase a healthy family life, we also don't want to exploit our kids, where our kids are not props for me to be able to build my business and we don't want our kids to grow up feeling like everything about their lives has been publicized and even the stuff that we share with immediate family or things like that we're not into the whole like here's the potty training picks or that kind of stuff because we want our kids to be able to retain as much dignity as they can but also at the same time we certainly feel that if family is taboo on social media because you're afraid of how you over correct as far as how it's going to be with your kids then there aren't going to be any good examples of what family can be and people won't have families be normalized by being having it be on social media as well so it's a balancing act but I feel like we've got it down pretty well for now so does that answer that Zach awesome Hey so I kind of had a revelation last night when I was looking through some of my notes you know I love how a lot of the speakers are talking about you know tick-tock and snapchat and like yeah I keep the kids away from it and all and I'm all about that I think there's a lot of really bad stuff out there you know so in terms of social media as well as just media in general you know like I say back in the PG-13 movies of today would be rated R back then you know and all that but from a younger kid perspective I just wanted to get your opinion on things like just like cartoons you know some cartoons these days are already kind of being infected with some you know bad bad ideas and trying to enforce some bad stuff but I still see the value of you know when your kid growing up you know you love cartoons and their friends are going to be watching cartoons and I'm kind of worried about ostracizing my children by you know having them be in this whole dark bubble and they're going to be the weird kids because of it so I just wanted to get your take on that why don't you start that one um well there are a couple of aspects to that because in our family guzzies do things a certain way um part of living as a guzzy is accepting that you're weird you're going to be weird and not doing everything that everybody else is doing and learn to be okay with that people are going to judge you and you need to learn to be okay with that it helps that we have a weird last name and it starts off that way um but you're right we want our kids to be be in the world but not of the world and so we do I mean they watch they watch cartoons they play video games but we are very conscious of what we allow into our home because it's not just a few cartoons it's a ton it's a ton of entertainment for kids that's being totally corrupted and it just makes those corrupted lifestyles so appealing and it's not that way in real life it's not that pretty but you know they're very very good at that and so we we look into everything that they're watching at home and we talk with them we speak with them and so they tell their friends oh we can't we can't watch that at our house we don't have Netflix and their friends are like why don't you have Netflix and I heard my daughter say my parents don't want to pay for garbage they you know yeah that was a proud moment that one felt good so we talk through with them why we make the decisions that we do and I mean our oldest is eight it's eight six four and two they can't totally wrap their brains around it but we're planting the seeds of being intentional about what you're doing being okay being weird and without totally removing yourself from from society yeah and to go along with that one of the things that we've tried to do intentionally and so many of the answers that we'll give you guys is what we're still trying to figure out as we go along right now what we do is we limit screen time to where they have to have already done their daily chores they've already gone through school and then they got half an hour each and they can either all compound that together and you can watch each other play video games or do something else like that but they basically got half an hour each that can add up to an hour and a half if they're doing stuff together and the nice thing about that is it makes it so that the amount of stuff that they're exposed to is we're aware of it because they're not it's not six hours and we're off doing something else and we're not even aware of what it is that they're watching or engaged in because that seemed pretty safe and innocuous and whatever else that after we realized we're six episodes deep in something and they have to inject this one thing and then we talk to them about why that's a problem and then we help them find something else or the same thing with the games that they play or anything else like that but a big thing for us is that they don't have they don't have iPads they don't have phones they don't have anything else like that I love how Zach puts it is tablet toddlers or kids are not tablet toddlers we don't ask for access to one of ours we don't give them iPads in the in the car if we're doing anything less than like a five hour road trip and we've picked what the movies are that they're going to watch or anything else like that but this omnipresence of screen time really doesn't exist for them which is one of the easiest ways to combat it is you just kind of limit how much it is that they're even dealing with go ahead first thanks a lot for taking the time just kind of a compound question time back to your presentation from last year can you just go through some of the daily rituals or daily things that you guys do with your kids and then how you kind of keep your daily routine just to reinstill or reinforce the values that you're kind of teaching your house yeah absolutely and this is one of the things that started to change from where it was last year because as our kids get older and we're now in a neighborhood where there are so many other kids we don't get to see them as much we're not as as reclusive as in the right word but compact I guess is a family unit where they do they spend more time with friends and our oldest daughter now has a later bed time than her siblings and so it's it's diminished a little bit of that and so we're trying to hang on to it but there are a few things that we make sure that happen every day and some of them just happen organically one of the best things about my being self-employed and the fact that we home school is that our mornings are entirely our own and so one thing that typically happens most mornings is we kind of naturally just wake up when we wake up and then our kids tend to wake up about half an hour after that and we spend half an hour 40 minutes just hanging out in our bed with all the kids piled in there and everybody's just kind of goofing around and it's a really just good start as far as being in contact with each other throughout the day but what's it like because you're doing breakfast a lot of times well I've been out doing triathlon training or other gym stuff or anything what's it like for a routine from that perspective while I'm gone you know we'll do breakfast they make they make their beds I make sure they're dressed and ready for the day because kids act differently if they're in their PJs all day so I make sure to get them in their clothes at the beginning of the day even before we do school or anything else make sure everything's clean we get going on school which is also another really nice time it's just another contact point because it's just me and them there's no there are no friends there are no interruptions there's no screens or anything it's just us and then if everything's done I set them free and they're usually out the door and they come back if they're hungry for lunch or we've got 15 kids that are in our house because them being set free means everybody from the neighborhood comes over to be at our place yep and then we have dinner at the same time all together every day and then they're set free again and then they come home and every night we study our scriptures together we talk about our days we spend a lot of time bedtime isn't just go brush your teeth get your PJs on I'm throwing them in bed bedtime is let's study together let's talk together we pray together we read every night together and so kind of the beginning of the day and the end of the days are our most impactful time with the kids yeah and it's it's alternated where with the two older girls they share a room our son's in his own room and so it is a bedtime routine for us is about an hour to an hour and a half that takes out of our time and again we don't mind that as much because we have an abundance of time this would be infinitely more difficult if I were working 10 hour days and having to put that much time into it but we make bedtime something that we do them all the time and attention and energy that they need so that we can do things spiritually we can do things from a familial perspective we can help them wind down but also for us as a couple it's so important that we are done with them by 8 o'clock so that we get a couple of hours that it's just the two of us so that we can interact and sometimes that's just sitting out on the front porch and we may be sitting next to each other scrolling through our Twitter feeds just right by each other and that's all the interaction we get there's a bunch of different things that may end up happening but for us to be able to have that time together is crucial then on a weekly basis we make a huge point to have Sundays feel different our Sundays are different, those are days that we don't do any of the screen time like they normally do, we do church at home especially right now with all of the the lockdowns and the pandemic stuff and everything else like that so that's become something that's happened more deliberately and so we do that I mentioned this in my presentation yesterday we do adventure Thursdays where they don't do stuff with friends and I don't take calls or anything for the most part we just leave our phones even in the car depending on where it is we're doing where we're going or what we're doing but we try to engage in that as much as possible and usually those adventure Thursdays are opportunities to reinforce the things that we talked about last year as far as guzzies do hard things or we do kind things or we do good things or we do fun things and so it is a little bit broader than what it was last year because the kids are more independent but those fundamentals are still there and the bookend on the days is still there and crucial for us alright Michael, let's hear it I gave you a heads up on this one so much of marriage is conflict resolution keeping a happy marriage when sinners say I do there's sparks fly so this is the question I always like to ask elder candidates in the church I'm going to ask you guys this what was the last argument you got into how did you resolve it and who won you remember I mean the last thing we disagreed on was moving it wasn't an argument I can't tell you, Tanner always wins because I always end up feeling like he's such a better person than I am and that to me feels like losing it doesn't have to be the last one what's just the last one you remember I don't remember the topic and one thing that I will tell you is that the frequency of arguments that actually felt like arguments it's decreased almost exponentially over the years where early on especially because I would punish her for the things that my ex-wife would do there was this projection or this transposition or things like that or she would think that because I was acting this way that that's the same way that her parents would be in certain situations and then as we've both learned to be able to give each other the benefit of the doubt and be able to genuinely look at we're not, and this is something I think we've said multiple times where it's like we're not enemies we're on the same team here and we're even trying to get to the same goal we may just disagree on how it is that we're trying to get there and even now there's this big one of looking at maybe we should be moving somewhere so that we can be on more acreage and we can have more access to the kids for adventure and wilderness and things like that and she's been very gung-ho about it and I've been a little bit more reserved about it and the fact that it hasn't devolved into an argument especially when it's a big thing and it's very emotionally charged and she's pregnant and so the emotions get there and I'm busy with work and it's like there's a lot of potential for a lot of emotionality there and we haven't dealt with any major blow-ups which is not to say that we didn't but we haven't dealt with anything major in a very long time because we've started to be able to give each other that we are on the same team and that we're after the same goals and that we're not trying to intentionally disrespect or hurt or anything like that and most of the time we're both just if we do do that then it's easy to forgive each other and to give each other the benefit of the doubt and so we're quick to forgive each other as well. I actually think the times when it gets the most emotional and volatile for me is when Tanner has tried over and over to gently let me know that my perspective is wrong my frame is wrong or how I'm handling something is incorrect, it's not working and I'm not hearing it and so he escalates to kind of like get it through my head and of course that hurts my feelings it's very painful, he's broken my brain about five times that I can tell you about and it's extremely painful and I lash out and I'm it's very difficult but the way that we see it through every time is he doesn't back down he does not back down on what I need to hear but after you know like metaphorically striking the biggest blow he's very gentle and understanding and very I'm here to work with you through it and that's how it usually gets resolved it's never me saying oh you're totally right, I'm sorry it's me being able to say okay I see it and I trust you to help me get through it without you losing any love for me any infection for me and that's how things our biggest arguments are resolved and that's come from some mutual trust as far as she's seen me grow and develop and she trusts that I'm not asking her to do something that she'll do and I know that she can handle that and that she often will give me the same kind of criticism one of the jokes that we have between us is she'll tell me something that is an absolute paradigm shift that breaks my brain and she'll say it one year and then I'll hear it from a man another year and then that's when it actually clicks and makes sense for me and she gets to kind of jab her elbow in and yeah I told you you should have been working on this for a while there's this mutual trust that we both are very interested in actually bettering ourselves and there's evidence between the two of us that we see each other better themselves and so it's not a threat as far as this is what you need to improve on or this is what I would like to see different or this is what I'm struggling with or anything else because we both we both walk the walk as well and so it's easy to trust each other that it's going to work out that way yeah alright tax go ahead okay so I'm sitting back here listening to you I was very surprised Tanner when I learned how old you actually are I've known you for a couple of years and you're a lot younger than I thought you were the two of you project a wisdom that is I think far beyond your your ages I'm assuming your lovely wife is about the same age as yourself no she's 31 she's five years younger than I am even more impressive right cradle robber yeah okay um so wisdom is generally passed down through the generations through support networks and things like that so I would like to know as best as possible specifically for both of you it's really important for the female side as well where do you get your support where you get that generational wisdom where do you get how did you get where you are and more specifically for those of us who have wives where do you find that feminine support which is so missing out there right now because daughters and mothers are separated by huge distances these days and grandmothers sometimes are no longer here anymore and all that generational wisdom that would flow down through those ages is hard to find anymore you started as far as well okay I was blessed to have a mother who absolutely adores having children I never heard her complain about being a mom not once she had seven kids in eight years and she was very tired but she was blissfully happy she loves kids she loved having babies she would have kept going if she could and so I have four sisters and they all I mean they don't all have kids but they also got that from my mom that was very reinforced and then as far as so she's been very supportive in me and me wanting to be a mom and a wife and his mother has been very supportive of me wanting to be a mom as far as kind of a broader scope the church and the community we grew up in and we're a part of now is absolutely a huge support for women we have the largest women's organization and we have networks in place there is kind of this automatic system of no matter where you move you have women to reach out to and you have so many older women to reach out to you as well and we do have a very strong emphasis on the importance of being a wife and a mother so all of those values are reinforced through our church and through that women's group I'm trying to think of the other parts of the question I feel very a lot of the support I get is actually from Tanner I would not be the kind of wife and mother I am without Tanner I remember when my oldest was 6 months old I was still in that zombie newborn phase and I was just surviving and again he had tried to be gentle but he had to strike a blow of you are not thriving you are just surviving and we can't live like this and then he didn't just step back and say figure it out he has provided everything I need to be a good mom and a better wife and I find so much support for him as well so much reinforcement yeah and that's mutual where we've been blessed to find a complementary nature to our relationship where there are things that that I struggle with or that are challenges for me or that I don't have the energy for and I know that she can handle it one of the most kind of acute ways that this comes up but we always laugh about it every time is when we're camping because the division we're just happens so naturally where she's wrangling the kids and she's getting the food packed and everything or unpacked and cooking and I'm the one who's getting the tent set up and getting all this other stuff done and we both are just very focused on our own tasks and then we turn around and we both are just oh I'm so glad that you're here and you're doing this and I'm so glad that you're here and you're doing that and it just feels like it's magic that it ends up working and coming together but honestly the point that she hit on the most and we're blessed to have families that work that way and the reason that our families work that way ultimately comes from our beliefs based on our community and our church and our religion and I'll tell you guys that one of the dirty secrets about the way that we are the presentations that I give here the way that we are when we're on Twitter and if you're not following her on Twitter you should be but everything that we talk about it's the stuff that we learn about in church we just kind of sneak it in on you guys because we're not as overt about it being God stuff but it's the same principles really it really is and so so much of what you're hearing from us and so much what you have heard or will hear from us are the fundamental core doctrines and truths that we believe in based on a relationship with God and with our church and they resonate because they're true and then when you recognize that truth and you build an entire community around it full of other people who resonate with that and it becomes an incredibly impactful support structure that everybody can then lean on and rely on each other for as well so it's awesome to be able to have that for us I always have to write stuff down I can never think off the top of my head so there's been a underlying theme that's been occurring around the idea of submission men lead, women submit and I'm sure in like 2018 when Tex gave his first speech like hey how do I get my wife to do that it's a caricature of sorts about the role of women and even this year speakers kind of project like an authoritarian role of the man in the household but I do like Jeff Putnam's description of just being a judge an adjudicator for a lot of things I think it's a more balanced approach my question, I don't think there can be strong families without strong women and in the context of submissive women I was wondering if there's anything that you'd like to add or to maybe bust to break open that caricature of what it means to be a strong woman but in a submissive role like inside of a family because there's got to be balance we talk about the absence of fathers but you can't have an absent mother either just giving you a voice to say there's more to it than just giving us a different perspective as men hearing about being leaders I just would like to hear your what does it mean to you to be submissive and still strong because she is she's both submissive and strong because the caricature is on full offense of being you know girl power which is gross which is just feels like you dilute yourself you know and they're both those extreme examples are both incorrect I don't know besides childbirth that anything has taken as much strength from me to choose to let him lead especially at first when when he was first I sucked at it I was really bad at it and as far as strength and submission goes it sets your brain on fire it you're screaming it like there's this really just huge dissonance within you of naturally we think we know what's right naturally we have a good idea of how things should go and we like to tell ourselves we see things clearly and to let go of all of that and and give it to someone else at first required more willpower than anything I've ever done absolutely and then when you let that go you can focus on on the strength where the traditional conception of perception of strength comes in I still have to show my kids that I do hard things too whether that's exercise or making decisions about nutrition or keeping commitments that I don't want to keep or losing friends because I am not willing to not speak up for what I believe or all of these other more traditionally strong ways to demonstrate that I'm more able to work on that I'm more able to be strong where where I don't show fear when things are scary for my kids where I don't think of a hundred different examples where I don't panic all those things where it really matters and where my impact as a woman is distinct part of that is not making sure I don't undermine Tanner in front of the kids and you know because it's not like I can never speak my mind it's not like that doesn't happen but it's done privately and that can be really difficult too but I mean it's been nine years and kind of like going to the gym it's not like the weights get lighter you get stronger so that sort of submission comes so much more naturally now and I find so much security in it and peace and joy and fulfillment and to be able to show my daughters that and to let my son see it in a different light it's so much more enriching for all of us than to be constantly butting heads or to have them wonder how's this going to go today like who do I need to turn to today just to have so much cohesion and unity has been huge for us yeah and then the same thing there's the character on our end where you get the doormat the happy wife happy life you know whatever makes you feel happy or you get this you know a woman's in a children's place is to be seen but not heard and you know I don't need to take counsel from her because I'm the man father knows best that kind of stuff and I absolutely consult my wife I love the way that Jeff put it that she's an advisor she's a consultant a counselor and there have been multiple times especially because you can see her thoughtfulness and how seriously she takes things that she brings a perspective that I've never considered at all and then when I take that and I do factor that in it absolutely changes the direction that I believe is the one in which we should be headed and so ultimately the responsibility does lie with me the buck stops with me and even that the pressure that comes from that it doesn't mean I get to do whatever I want I remember the first time I experienced that we were buying a car like a year into our marriage and when she said well I just trust you to buy the right one and I'm like oh crap that means if I screw up I can't blame it on you I can't say well we decided this together like all of this burden of responsibility is on me and so rather than it being a free for all that it's like I can do whatever I want I realize that all that responsibility was there and it was another one of those fires that got lit under me that made me step up and accept that responsibility even more and so I absolutely love and appreciate and seek her counsel and her perspective is so valuable and sometimes what she says is exactly what we need to do and sometimes not and we both again trust each other that when it goes one way the other that there's not that ego investment in either direction go ahead yeah so in your speech and in other speeches here we've heard a lot about rituals or rites of passages for sons however as a father of two daughters what are some things that I could do and I'm divorced I have joint custody what are some things that I could do to help my daughters move through life man when you find out please tell me because I'm still trying to figure that out myself but you're right because when we're here we spend all this time thinking about masculinity and sons and everything else and I've really appreciated as I've listened to the other speakers that the patriarch component has moved and it's good that we focus on this because we don't get to talk about masculinity in the broader world and I hope that as we've been able to kind of get our ducks in a row when it comes to sexual dynamics and then you can move into bigger things like legacy and parenthood and family and stuff like that that hopefully we'll get our ducks in a row in thinking about how it is to raise our sons in this kind of a world and then be able to think more broadly and more intentionally about what it is with daughters one thing that I think you could probably do that she does and I'll let her explain more of it is helping them understand the unique aspects of what it is to be a girl and a woman and not that it's this weird bastardization of trying to be a man but actually what are the strengths of being a strong woman and how that plays out and yeah why don't you tell them how you do that with our girls and I don't have it all figured out but let's see so our oldest is a girl she's eight and Tanner's been spending a lot of time with our son because he's old enough to deadlift he's old enough to go off-roading he's old enough to do all these things and they've just really been bonding it's been very fast it's been the snowball effect and we were talking in the car the other day that that it's just as important for our eight-year-old to get to that level of affection with you and you know it's like what are you going to do take her to go get her nails done you know what could you do but I remember I had a very good relationship with my dad and I remember he was an air traffic controller and he loved talking about planes and I remember I don't care about planes but I loved listening to him talk about it he wanted to share with me he thought I was smart enough he cared enough about me in my opinion he wanted to bring me into his world even if it was just to show me his world he took me to work with him he introduced me to all of his co-workers and that was huge for me find ways to bring them into your world and they don't have to learn to love the things that you love but just show them what you're doing show them how you're trying show them your goals show them what you're working on and another thing I would say is at about I don't know at 8 at 12 at 16 find ways that you can treat them differently give them some sort of responsibility put them in charge of something give them some sort of something that makes them feel I'm no longer any of the ages I was before and I'm never going back to that it can even be pierce their ears when they're 8 or let the you know when you start letting them wear makeup or when you start expecting them to do a certain chore or when you start relying on them for dinner every Thursday or give them a task have her make something for you give them responsibility they want it I've been teaching my girls don't be you should be a delight and a joy to your father find ways to make that happen let's find ways together to make that happen you should be making his life more beautiful look at all he does look at all he does let's add to that let's enrich it let's enrich his life and as you continue to consciously treat them like they're never again going to be younger than they are they want to grow they want that approval they want to to grow in the way that you want them to if you trust them enough to do it alright I hope this question isn't as uncomfortable to ask as it is for me to ask it but being that as I've said before I'm about to become a father you don't get this many times to ask truly a husband and wife together this question but two parts when you first had your first child and now having four children what is your marital sexual relationships looking like back then and now in terms of are things still spontaneous or are they planned you know do you how how much effort do you have to put into it versus how much of it is kosher there's more effort as far as yeah you've got I mean we've got four kids they can bump in at any time or anything else like that but at the same time it's not we heard a couple forgot about this we're sitting out on our front porch and we happen to have we're happened to be situated in the neighborhood perfectly where you can hear people from like six houses down and it just comes perfectly into our ears and we hear this woman I don't even know who she's talking to and how did she put it she said we're not having sex it's not Tuesday we were both laughing so hard because you just you can understand it you know when things are that busy and that chaotic and everything else like that but at the same time it's not like that and one of the things you know obviously I know you're not actually asking us to be explicit and it's a tricky it's a tricky question but one of the things that I will tell you is that the the what the intensity as far as what you would see on screen or on anything else as far as the the tactical approach to our marital relationship is different and a lot more tame than than what it was when we were first married but the connection the intimacy the spirituality the way that we draw from each other as far as my taking from her taking from me and the way that we draw closer to each other and everything is infinitely better and so in a way it feels like this is probably a stupid analogy but it feels like in a way the world talks about sex kind of like kind of like you're driving an airplane down the runway and you just keep going back and forth and back and forth and you're thinking sweet I'm going really fast and that's not what it's actually intended to do and so when you've got the built in trust and the spiritual relationship and all of this other thing that comes with it yeah you're not doing these crazy sharp turns or anything anymore but you're actually taking flight and you're doing what it's intended to do and you realize how much of a joke that other approach to it actually was and so as far as that component of it it's better now than it's ever been and it's still spontaneous it's still frequent it's still satisfying it's still connective and it also doesn't feel like we're trying to just do it the way that the world tells us we're supposed to do it either right and I would say with the new baby be understanding be patient but be persistent don't because a lot of times when you put whatever it is off for a new baby to allow room a lot of times then it just stays put off forever it's really easy to get caught in that in that inertia of I'm trying to be patient trying to be understanding, trying to be kind therefore I have done nothing with my life we don't have sex, I don't work out but the new baby and that just continues so there's a balance to be had but don't be honest through the whole thing I think that's one thing that has led us to a more fulfilling and rich intense sex life is that we have been more honest with each other way more honest without you know without getting defensive without we have just been a lot more open and honest with each other and that has made a big difference alright it looks like we have time for one more if anybody else wants to sneak one in yeah let's hear it Will I just want to say I think that was an incredibly brave question to ask and it was an incredibly brave question to answer so thank you both so much for that so over the course of the convention as I've been observing you guys and your relationship just seeing you interacting there's been a quality that I've been struggling to name that's really obvious but I don't know what it is and sitting here and just listening to this answer what it is and there's many of them but this is the one that seemed most relevant is that there's trust the trust between the two of you is really remarkable and I'm curious about that has it always been there, has there been opportunities to cultivate that trust to deepen it to discover it for the first time because going from just dating to having four and a half kids that's a pretty major journey that you've been on together but the trust seems it feels to me like it's probably deep in since then I'm just wondering if you can both speak to that journey of trust that you've both been on together and that you're sharing with us I suppose yeah that's a great question like she was talking about as far as allowing willfully choosing to submit when I wasn't somebody who was worth submitting to there was an element at the beginning of our relationship where we were both choosing to trust each other even though that trust was totally unproven especially because we did things really quickly we were we started dating and we're engaged and married and then she was pregnant all within like six months of each other like we went through things really really quickly and that's just kind of the nature of who we are as we're tear the bandaid off kind of people and so there was that element of choosing to trust even though it was uncomfortable to do so and there's risk involved with that but then that has happened over the years and a lot of the reason why that happened is because we were dealing with the fact that because things happened so quickly my family wasn't very pumped about my getting married to her her family wasn't that pumped about her getting married to me we were dealing with the fallout of my previous marriage and everything that came from that we were dealing with there were it felt like the odds were totally stacked against us and it meant that there wasn't anybody we could rely on except for each other and so it really kind of forced us to be able to go into and toward each other as opposed to she could go back to mom and dad or I could go back to to mom and dad or to friends or to anything else like that and so it really did become this kind of us against the world and thankfully now so many of those relationships have improved but there was that kind of forced baptism by fire in which that had to happen so that's one element of it and then the other one is one that we've already both hit on a little bit but we don't work on our marriage we really don't we work on ourselves and as we work on ourselves and we trust that we see each other working on themselves and working on improving and everything else and I certainly ask her where my Bly spots are and she asked me where hers are we help each other out by offering that kind of information but we don't work on our marriage we just try to make ourselves the best versions of who we are we work on how we are as parents and as we see each other do that as I see her do little things like she she drops the weight after every pregnancy she looks phenomenal after every pregnancy and people will say that that's superficial or that's vain or whatever but I know that one of the reasons she does it is because she wants to be attractive for me and that she wants to set that example for our kids and I see the work that she puts into it or I see the things that she posts on social media and the friendships that get blown up from that because she stands for what's true and what's right and I see her do brave, hard, strong, guzzy things how can I not trust that because she's willing to put it out on the line she's willing to do the work and it happens I see the results I see it's like I said at my very opening speech I've watched nine years of her efforts bear very good fruit and so why would I not continue to trust that she continues to cultivate that that it's going to continue to bear more very good fruit I think a lot of that trust that we've had to exercise has looked like like I said earlier me stepping back and giving him space and letting him do what he thinks is going to be good and from my perspective the trust for him has been trusting that he can give me expectations that he can set boundaries that he can give me criticism and suggestions and that I won't lose it that I won't say that's it I'm done that's too much that he can trust that regardless of my initial reaction that I'll internalize it and I'll be honest with myself and so there has been willpower on both sides and self-discipline on both sides because trust is a choice and a decision and it requires that self-mastery it looks different for both of us but it has required that for both of us awesome that's a great question well thank you we did for time, Zach's not in here to finish us out so thank you guys he represents his patriarchy we're here to do work as men as patriarchs there's nothing more natural than being father