I’ve been following Jaime and Josh for a couple years now, enjoying their short reels describing life in the “messy middle” as they dismantle and heal from the patriarchal, purity culture marriage and family framework they inherited, which wasn’t serving them well at all. Both Jaime and Josh have a gift for giving language to their experiences, explaining systems and structures and the impact they have on well-meaning and sincere believers who just want to be the best version of themselves. They are beautifully honest and vulnerable with their stories, hoping to help others avoid the pain they have experienced. Their work is therefore redemptive and holy work and I am so pleased to introduce them to you, if you haven’t come across them on social media before now.
Places to follow Jaime and Josh:
TikTok: Josh and Jaime, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and linktr.ee
Email List: https://form.jotform.com/250095854378164
Email: clickingonallfishers@gmail.com
You can find this episode of The Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Substack, and more!
TRANSCRIPT:
Rev. Ruth Perry (00:15)
My guests today are Jamie and Josh Fisher of Marriage is Happening. Thank you so much for being here today, Jamie and Josh.
Jaime and Josh (00:23)
Thank you, Ruth. We’re really excited.
Rev. Ruth Perry (00:25)
I started watching your videos on Instagram a couple of years ago. And it was a while before that that you started posting them on TikTok, you said. But the thing that drew me to your content is your just spectacular ability to put language to evangelical experience and the teachings that all of us were formed in growing up in purity culture and patriarchy.
And a faith that was so sincere and genuine. And I don’t want to have you on today as an evangelical bashing session. I think people take it that way when they hear any kind of critique of how our teachings impacted our lives. This is not a bashing session, this is the truth of the fruit of these teachings.
Jaime and Josh (01:08)
Yeah.
Rev. Ruth Perry (01:08)
And we need to have these conversations. So thank you so much for being here today.
Jaime and Josh (01:13)
Thanks for inviting us and making the space for this. Yeah, full exploration. Not just bash I have so many positive things I would say that came from my upbringing as well. Sure. The good and the bad. They sit right next to each other real close.
Rev. Ruth Perry (01:25)
Absolutely. Well, can you just start today with sharing your story? Take us all the way back, however much you want to share. Give us a sense of your background and what brought you to the point where you were making videos about marriage and sex and intimacy and all the things you talk about today.
Jaime and Josh (01:42)
Start. Sure. We’re both 43. We were both raised in a church called the Church of Christ. Kind of a conservative, non-denominational. A lot of times we describe it fundamentalist, even I would say Mormon adjacent in that like Mormonism has a really high value on the in-group, the belonging. A lot of religions do, but then also the supremacy of scripture, you know, and a focus on scripture and a lot of time spent together with church people, because those are of course are the people that are going to heaven. They’re your kingdom people. So both of us grew up going to church three times a week. I come from a little bit of a different thing because my family is first generation Christians in that faith, whereas his family actually like descends from some of the founders of this faith. well, pivotal figures, pivotal figures in this. No descendants.
Been around long enough where it might as well have been. And and I think yeah, as anybody who’s kind of looked at religion honestly can say, every faction has a faction, right? So even though we both came from the same denomination, so to speak, even though it was non-denominational, you came from one that was a little bit more liberal and free. Yeah. On top of being a first generation Christian, where my version of that faith was more fundamentalist.
Yeah. And a little bit meaner to be honest. That’s true. You know. And and then also generationally, one of the founders of that particular kind of sect had converted my, great great grandfather, fifth great grandfather on the battlefield of the civil war, right? So it’s like deeply ingrained. It’s not just we just found this because there was a nice place to go and somebody was nice invited me, you know. Yes. And so our experiences are a little different in that upbringing. And so I grew up just believing God had saved me. I also have a pretty traumatic background.
My parents got divorced when I was eleven, but my dad gravitated toward this church, like a lot of narcissists, because narcissistic abusers are so profoundly protected in that space. And I think the narcissists know that. Like, this is a safe space for us because we will be given a platform and a voice and a lot of protection and grace, right? Forgiveness. We need to forgive him for what he’s done. And certainly we should ask his family to forgive him for what he’s done. And so both physical and sexual violence against everyone in our family, but particularly me and my sister and my mom and I have four siblings. And our story is real crazy but it includes everything you can imagine, including kidnapping and drug addiction.
But I also had, so I had a version of church that told my mother, despite the fact that he’s physically abusing us, he’s bankrupting our family, he’s sexually abusing the children, that she needed to stand by him. He needed a good wife, forgives her husband, meets his sexual needs. So he could stop having sex with a seven-year-old if you just meet his needs. Just like a good church. That’s the kind of things they preach, you know? But a real church said that to my mother. And she had the wherewithal to be like I’m getting out of here. These people are nuts.
But even within that church, part of the reason she was able to escape, and I say escape because my dad was like really the most controlling of domestic violence type of men, is there was a preacher who came who was hired by the church. He happened to be blind, but he heard my mom’s story without the presence of any other leaders there and literally took her aside and said, I will help you get out. I know the church leadership, I know what their official stance will be. We’re just gonna help you leave quietly. And his wife and his support gave her the courage to go. And so I watched Bad Church, but I also watched like Good Church. I watched like the teachings of Jesus, like draw near to the oppressed, draw near to the vulnerable and the weak.
And then I watched people risk their career. He got fired eventually for what happened. And he knew that was possibility and he did it anyway. So I watched people come between me and abusive behavior and I watched them sacrifice a lot for that, which is really the message of Jesus. And then I ended up going to a church following that that heard my mom’s story as a divorced woman. That was another threat the church, the original church we had grown up made, like, well as a divorced woman, we cannot accept you. You have s it’s you know, as if this was murder, you know, like you’re a divorced woman, we can’t accept you. And then I went to a new church who not only embraced my mom but really became such a beautiful healing community.
Embraced my four young siblings who we were so scarred. We were so hurt, little wounded little kids. You know what an adverse childhood experience is, it’s like an ACE score. It’s a term used to describe abuse and trauma. I have an A score of nine, which is like getting an A minus in childhood trauma. But there’s also this other thing called a resiliency score. It’s actually factors that come alongside you and can mitigate the harm of trauma. And this church community was truly a massive resiliency factor, not just for me, but for my siblings. And we all agree. So I saw the ugly and also this good and just how profound was. But the good really showed me the love of Jesus. The the good really showed me the redemptive process of love and deliverance. It spoke to me very profoundly. Even as a little kid, I saw that as God’s deliverance. And I saw, that people were willing to stand in for us. So that was a powerful message that deliverance and salvation weren’t just ideas that were ethereal or like the concept. I was delivered from the hands of someone who was horrible to us. And we found safety and even financial security and help in the arms of people who also claimed to walk with Jesus.
So that was a conversion of a different type, but which solidified my allegiance to my faith, from a very young age. And then I would go on to meet Josh at a Christian college. But I wanted to let him tell a little bit more about the So it wasn’t just the Christian church on the good side of the coin that helped you. It’s also your family at a very wide extended family that didn’t necessarily believe the same type of Christianity or practice the same type of Christianity. Some didn’t practice any religion. Right. But they were very loving in practice. Absolutely.
So part of that resiliency factor I think was if you I mean you could explain it better, but was having this wide support system. Yeah. My family of origin, my mom’s side of the family, I would say matriarchal. Right. And I didn’t realize just what an advantage that was. and I use the term matriarchal by definition as a family that focuses on the well-being of the children at the first and foremost, and then all the things that need to line up so that children thrive. Including including the fact that the adults are thriving, right? I mean children are relying on everything from the adults. And so in a matriarchal family.
The circle of support is I didn’t realize just how I also had that in my life and just what a beautiful example that is. But also how much tension that would bring our marriage and that Josh was raised in probably the most epitome of patriarchal fashion. That’s why I wanted to bring it up. So that’s a very important context. Yes. Just w how different we’re But there’s a lot of differences culturally. Yeah, I think you knew. I saw it. Yes. Yeah, for sure. But in contrast, I mean we joke all the time that Jamie should write a book about her life and she always downplays it, so I think we should be called Nothing to See Here by Jamie.
But my life and my upbringing extremely boring in contrast. But but very playbook Americana. A two-parent household. We both come from families of four kids. We’re both the oldest of four. So we both kind of slightly parentified. You actually parentified, I think, in many ways. And so we had this kindred spirit of we understand what it’s like to be in that role. But man, my family, very patriarchal, not just in terms of its influence on the church. my mom’s side of the family, my maternal family is actually the one that brought this religiosity with a focus on making sure that men are comfortable to the relationship. So she is a sweetheart of a woman, does her very, very best at all circumstances to make sure that my dad doesn’t have to feel discomfort at all. And as a first generation Christian, that was very appealing, I think.
To think now I have a place to belong. He’d also come from a lot of family trauma in his family of origin with a lot of unfortunate his his mother had died at a very young age. His sibling had also died of cancer at a very young age. So I think he was lost and then found. But he was found in a way that centered him and his needs and his comfort. And so I grew up in that. And I think the contrast between how Jamie grew up and I grew up, I think we both arrived at 18 in college, kind of looking at her life and thinking, well, it’s a miracle that you have turned out as well as you have, given all that adversity and all the things that aren’t God’s plan. Right. And I wouldn’t say that any of that is God’s plan or not.
You know, I don’t want to get into that. But I would say that for me, I internalize that I’m the one coming from stability and I’m the one that has some tools and I can offer these things to you. And it was quite the opposite in practicality. But we were both in the environment of a church that talks about, if you’re a man, you need to be taking leadership roles. And if you’re a woman, you need to take a step back. And so I think that even in our dating life, we weren’t as bad as we were as when we got married in terms of this dynamic, because there’s so much rhetoric around what it means to be a good husband and to make yourself bigger and to be a good wife and make yourself smaller.
And so I think we found ourselves very early on married young with a lot of bad information. And to be quite honest, I think we got married in part because in fundamentalist Christianity, especially in purity culture circles, you’re not allowed to not even just have sex, you’re not even supposed to be exploring your sexuality. You’re not supposed to about it, you’re not even supposed to think about it. Right. So you get to this spot really quickly, which is crazy. It is crazy. I can’t even imagine telling teenagers that. But it’s also so common, right? There’s
Rev. Ruth Perry (10:28)
Ha ha.
Jaime and Josh (10:28)
so many of us that that found ourselves in that spot. And so I think from there, I don’t know that we need to go through every leg of the journey, but it started off poorly in terms of our communication, in terms of our needs. Jamie had a very clear idea of values that she wanted to have for herself and for our family, and then extended into her kids. And a lot of that had come from this really beautiful tapestry that was woven together by a wide support system and maternal values. And then I’m over there thinking, like, well, yeah, but you’re the one that comes from the broken family, right? I’m the one that has the stability. So maybe we should try more of what I His family did everything right. Right.
My family did everything wrong. Right. And that was And it’s just by the grace of God that we came out. Okay, but should listen to him because his family did things right. Yeah. But the thing is, that’s repeated in culture. I mean, part of the reason we got married, so I mean, very frankly, in our dating life we broke up a lot because I was really uncertain about being together, because I saw very clearly our differences, our value differences, our family of origin differences, and really did not think it lent itself to compatibility. I thought you were a very good person. I admired you greatly.
But I was like, I don’t know if we should mesh our lives. We’re so different. Yeah. And Well, and I of course didn’t listen to her because there’s nobody in our circles that says, Hey, as a man, you should really take the voice of a woman seriously, especially if it’s in contrast to what you want. Because so much of a man is like, you should pick what you want and go after it. Put your head down, keep working hard, prove yourself worthy. In fact, the harder it is, the more you can martyr yourself, the higher the value. We saw Jesus, he’s on the cross, he’s dying, he’s suffering a wound in his side, and he has to pick a new mom for his best friend. That’s pretty tough. So be like that guy. And the more pain you can experience, the more hardship it is, the more difficult the task, the more worthy you can prove your own masculinity. So, of course, as an 18-year-old who come across this person who is bright and sparkly and despite all of these awful things, is able to walk in and change the temperature of a room and see people. And I desperately want to be seen.
And I’ve never seen anybody who can do that to the degree that she does. And I have valued myself as a high achieving student and a high achieving athlete and a high achieving Christian, so to speak, because I’m taking it very sincerely, very seriously, that like I I’m making my choice. And so if you don’t want this, so what? I will prove myself worthy because this fits the rubric of how to be a successful, not just man, but Christian man.
In my limited less than two decades of experience, and let’s go all in on the chips, right? So I just kept telling her, it’ll be fine, we’ll work it out. And you can, we have. But I don’t know that either of us would go back and think that’s a good idea. Like, yeah. So no. So all of my hesitations, all of my reservations about our compatibility, I would try to the best I my 20-year-old self and the language I had at the time to communicate to him.
And he would, A, take that as a challenge, kind of like, well, she’s playing hard to get. And as a man, I’ve been taught the fairy tales say keep going after her. And then I questioned myself though, because both church culture and wider culture says that you’ve experienced abuse, you have daddy issues. You can’t trust your own voice. Because look at you, you’ve been injured. You are morally harmed. And so those voices that you have, those hesitations, even in church language, those might be the voice of the devil, right? Because look at you, you’ve got this good, godly man in front of you.
And he’s got integrity. He is just so faithful. And you don’t like him. This could be from the enemy. Right. Right. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you don’t know what’s best for you. And and and also, you’re just a little, a little woman. I mean, women can get just so confused, right? They’re led astray so easily. Look at that Eve. She ate that fruit. Look at her go. She’s just out there making mistakes.
So I had this pretty strong inner voice that was like this isn’t for you. And even stronger after I met his family. I was told and my whole life I can’t tell you how many lectures I sat through where they’d be like, and God’s vision for the family is two parents. Except for you, Jamie, I understand your circumstances, but let’s not follow her mother’s example. I was actually used as an example in Bible studies, cause everyone else’s parents were married, and I had to sit there and nod and be like, absolutely, my family is the sinners, but we’re here at your graces. Yeah. Us poor lowly sinners, our my single mother.
And I started to view that way that somehow I was lacking because I had this single parent, which is so ironic because we both agree now of the two of us, I was parented more thoroughly. I was parented with more love. I just came out with much more skill, much more community, more capacity. I felt loved both emotionally and physically, the belonging I had from a parent who worked not just hard herself, but actually a meshed us into community, knowing that she wasn’t going to be enough and that children need more. And so I was actually raised, honestly I would say he was not raised. I would say he had parents that are like, we give you a roof and you have food.
Hopefully that’s good enough ’cause I’m the wife and all of my energy is spent on this man over here. And the children are kind of left to their own devices, to be honest. There was it’s more complicated than not not much. Yeah. I think all we need to know is that really from that kind of cradle, we started a relationship. We got married young, ’cause I was definitely I wanted Jaime to be my life partner. I’m like, this is the person I want. We both have an alignment in our faith. And I can tell this is a really special person. This is not somebody you just let go. And also, yeah, at 21 years old, we’re been dating now on and off, but mostly on for a couple of years. And it’s like, well, physical things are starting to kind of you know ramp up as they do. And I’m tired of trying to be the quote unquote good guy to shut things down because I’m trying not to make a fool of you. I’m trying to respect your family, I’m trying to honor God.
I’m sure right. Yeah. So all these things that again out of I guess you mentioned my family, this part is important. They did lay some groundwork of what they thought was important and then expected us to go do those things. And a lot of those things were achievement-based, right? So this doesn’t fall out of that category. I wanted to achieve being a good Christian more than I wanted to achieve being a good lover, for sure, right? Like there were moments where it would get kind of hot and heavy, and I would shut it down thinking, this is my job.
And nobody told me that that’s not something you can just kinda flip the switch back on. Right. It’s like once you get married ’cause we’re talking when we were dating. When we’re dating, right. If we started to explore any lines of sexuality, yeah. He was very big on absolutely not. This is the sinful. We can’t do that. Yeah. Anyway, it started this and I think this is gonna be a very common thing for a lot of folks. Not everybody, but
It started an unhealthy relationship to our own sexual relationship, our own communication, a lot of disappointment, a lot of letting each other down, a lot of not understanding why things weren’t working. And then again, the church’s answer to that is well, marriage is the solution. Just get married and you’ll just figure it out. You’ll have time and space and God will lead you. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. You don’t have to learn high quality communication. You don’t have to learn better language. God’s just gonna lead. Yeah.
Well I’m laughing just because this is the things I really believed. Yeah, suffice to say he he did not. He did not. The Lord. We really struggled. And then again, based on the messages I’d gotten in patriarchal society as what it meant to be a good man, is you just don’t give up. You just keep putting your head down. You just keep trying. You asked. You don’t gain new skills. You don’t gain new skills. You put your head down. You don’t show curiosity. Or if you do, it’s so minimal as to say that you tried and made an effort, but mostly just do the things you know that worked for you in the past and don’t think that maybe you know, the same mistakes that are coming from that are gonna be repeated if you don’t change anything. You just wait
And hopefully. All the things that are bad you call the devil. All the things that are good you call from God. And this way you never actually have to explore what’s really happening. Right. Right. You don’t have to ask big questions. Yeah. You don’t have to look for big answers. Yeah. You get to stay c actually kind of comfortable. I was deeply uncomfortable, but he was like, This keeps me comfortable? And that’s a good point. Because I think that again, the church’s message, and again, maybe healthier churches have better messages. I have no doubt that that’s the case. But the messages we got were both that I should not have to be in that discomfort, right?
As a man who’s doing all the quote unquote things right. I’m checking all the boxes, right? I I’m not just going to church. I’m the person who’s preparing the Bible study. And I’m not just going to school. I’m getting the A’s. And I’m not just going to work. Yeah we’re doing all these things right. That man, that type of man in society, is entitled to a certain level of comfort and care. I certainly saw again in my family of origin, people who were less qualified getting many perks.
So it followed to me to think of course this is just how it’s supposed to go. And did I think at 21 when we’re getting married that this is gonna be like a a lifelong struggle? No. Did I know on some level that she wasn’t doing well? If I’m answering honestly, yes. But I was not brave enough or courageous enough to stop and ask questions about what that was or why that was happening, or what I could do differently and leave space for that. I was just really afraid of not achieving. So I would rather
Get an incomplete, then get an F. And so when she brought things up that were really important, it was very common for me to dismiss them. No, no, that can’t be true. Because I’m starting from the premise that I’m a good person and that marriage is forever. So, then we have to work backwards. If you’re dissatisfied, I need concrete language in ways that I understand, because that’s that’s how it works, right? Like I’m a man and it needs to work the way that I understand it.
I can’t possibly imagine anything as a man that I haven’t seen before. So she had different language and different skills and different communication. And I showed no curiosity about that because I was so afraid of not meeting the standard of what I thought it meant to be a good person. And I didn’t want to go to hell. And I didn’t want to, not have friends, and I didn’t want to not have a relationship. So I just chose instead to keep using the energy flow that she would give me and the support she would show me.
And translate that into external, for lack of a better term, works, right? I’m gonna go in and high achieve in and school further. I’m gonna go like community serve over here. I’m gonna go help fix this nonprofit because if I can’t fix what’s happening in my home, we’ll just hope and pray. And then all these other things will still be points in my bucket that I’m still doing a good job.
I’m a good man. Let me go. And then you add kids to that mix as a young couple. We moved across country. And of course it went fabulously, right? So it just started to cycle on each other where I got deeper and deeper in this martyrdom of not doing well, but thinking that maybe that made me a valuable man, Christian husband. And you, I think, being more and more uncomfortable and dissatisfied, but not knowing how to speak back to me because I wasn’t listening. I had no incentive to or I should say I had no relational skill.
To be able to sit in the discomfort that was going to be required to grow. And it wasn’t until Jamie started putting up like very, I think, clear boundaries about like, I’m not doing this anymore, I’m not doing it this way, I’m not doing this with you. I thought, like, okay, well now the rubric has shifted. I’m not mature enough yet to think about what does my life look like if I can’t achieve. But if it’s clear my grades are now coming through where I thought were incomplete, they are failing.
Okay, well then I need to do something about it. And I can say honestly that I didn’t start that from a place of I really genuinely want you to do better, as much as I was coming from a place of I want to be doing better. Right. This is my security. It’s not okay. Yes. So that was a Which also went over real well. Yeah, yeah.
Rev. Ruth Perry (21:00)
What did do they say? We don’t change anything until staying the same becomes more painful than going through the change.
Jaime and Josh (21:06)
Yes. Yes.
Rev. Ruth Perry (21:08)
And I’m really resonating with that performance based faith where I was raised to believe I was not legalistic or fundamentalist. We always said we’re not like the fundamentalists, but we were 100% fundamentalist and that performance-based aspect of the faith where I was gonna be a good girl no matter what. And I was gonna conform and perform and I got all the gold stars in church and in my family. but then kind of a similar thing, I got married young and the ways that I had been formed and trained in my evangelical background were not producing good fruit.
Jaime and Josh (21:42)
That’s it.
Rev. Ruth Perry (21:42)
And as the woman, I was the first one to recognize that because it was the brunt of it was on me. And it’s the same thing for you, Jamie. Can you talk about what your marriage was like while you’re still under these patriarchal and good Christian frameworks?
Jaime and Josh (21:57)
Yeah, I think as Josh alluded to, ironically, our dating life wasn’t reflective, like the problems weren’t as clear only because once we took on the role of the titles of husband and wife, we tried to lean into the teachings and ideas that had been assigned to those roles. Rather than organically looking at our strengths and weaknesses and then assigning things in marriage based on our real humanity.
We just tried to live into the ideals of roles we had been given. And I struggled a lot because honestly, I had a single mom for most, a lot of my formative years. And then all the women in my family are real strong and I would say even sassy. And then also very beautifully incredibly generous though. The women do set the tone and temperature of my family of origin, but to the benefit of all, I they really do analyze the group and then make adjustments. But everyone’s tide rises when those women get together, they take action together. And then, very beautifully, the men I had witnessed actually support that work because they realize they benefit from it. The tide is raising all the boats, including their own. The kids are benefiting, they’re benefiting.
And the women are better. So the the men really come alongside and lift that up. And gosh, what a beautiful example. But rare, I think. although I will say I’d love to talk about this more some other time, but I think more common in New England families. I’m from Connecticut. and I see this actually a good deal in New England families. There’s a lot of reasons, but you’re having to shovel snow. There’s a ruggedness to New Englanders, when there’s a lot of labor, it’s just all hands on deck. Also my family of origin doesn’t have strict gender roles in terms of well, the woman does everything in the home and the man like absolutely not. I saw women build sheds, I saw women change and I saw men cook casseroles. I saw men take over the whole dinner and clean it up. And vice versa.
I’d seen women do this too, but I had not seen strict roles in my family aversion but I had been taught it in church and so because people had told me you’ve got to worry about yourself Jamie because look at all the things you’ve come from so you’re new to the faith you’re new you’re new to the faith so listen to the people have been in so I was really trying hard. I was reading all the books. I was going to women’s Bible study. I was trying so hard to be a good wife and very quickly I think the first time I sobbed in regret of our marriage was literally six weeks in and I was just like, and I said it. I said, I regret getting married. I was just crying.
And I did not have words for all the dynamics that were beginning to take hold in us. But I was playing smaller in ways I didn’t really even mean to. And we were just talking recently about how I would have been better off as a young mother, as a single mom, because I would have made sure I was okay first and never considered him, but because when the kids are small, there’s so much bandwidth that caretaking takes up. After caretaking, I really just needed to think if I was okay. I we just we both needed to be asking, is she okay? And then really just modify all of life around that. Yeah. because that is so laborious and so all consuming. But because I was a good Christian wife, I had this massive bandwidth for caretaking and then also was constantly like I’m like, how can I nurture a marriage? Is he okay? Which literally left no bandwidth for am I okay? And I was not.
Yeah. And I was still taking that love and support you were giving and then translating it through my poor theology again to then externalize that out, right? So he’s like, I’ll take on more hours at work. I’ll take on harder projects at work. I’ll volunteer more in the community. why my gosh, my wife just fills my cup. Let me take it and pour it everywhere else. And so Well, I I important to note though, that’s not necessarily even like what I would be doing, I think, with my natural skill set. I think I just thought I was supposed to be doing that. Right. So I was depleting myself and then thinking I’m not doing well, but at least I have somebody who’s coming and filling my cup back up, and then still not where I I don’t there’s not really an excuse for it. I just know was doing poorly and then without the skill to be able like to ask who’s filling her cup up. I wasn’t in a good space, but I certainly wasn’t creating a good space for our family.
So I think I would have benefited from a different interpretation of theology, but it would have said, like, where do you find the place where you light up and light the world up? Not a place where it’s the hardest for you to go and do something, because I brought all that baggage back. And that I was maybe the worst version of myself relationally, already lacking a foundation of good skills coming to this relationship. So some of what we talk about online is definitely this systemic problem, right? That we’re all finding ourselves ourselves in that you can be a good willed person and have negative impacts. And that’s not something I had acknowledged early on. You can also be a good willed person and have all the systems around you be toxic. And then you’re swimming upstream to try to do things right. So I think ultimately the question that you asked at the outset about how did we get to start telling the story online, you noted Ruth was that you as the wife in the relationship noticed first that this is not working, right?
And clearly Jamie just articulated the ways in which she started to think, this is not working from the very beginning. And then kids became kind of this distraction and we’re trying to like figure it out. But as the kids got a little bit older and there was just a little tiny bit more rest in there, I think it was evident to Jamie, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not gonna continue to support this in the same way because it’s not working. It’s not working for anybody. And if you can’t see that because you’re so dedicated to continuing to martyr yourself, I can’t control that.
But I think that a huge value of yours as well is transparency. And so it’s almost like a flip switch. Not that you changed, but I’ll put it this way. You mentioned a second ago that your family, the women control the temperature of the family. Yeah. In a in a way that benefits everybody. Yes. We had been operating in rooms where I had been controlling the temperature and it was way too hot. Or we have been adjusting to his temperature. And if we didn’t, he would often like kind of like a lot of men do, like kind of like pout emotionally like not like was he was never abusive, which actually I found my twenties wish I’m like, I wish this man would just hit me. I wish it ’cause then I would know and also I knew ’cause it you’re in church, right?
I had the desire to leave our marriage in our late twenties a lot, but I just knew I’d lose everything. ‘Cause all my friends were in church. Even my own mother, was a single mother, but very, very male centered single mother. I don’t know how to put that, just very much like would talk about her life as in I messed everything up, but someday you’re gonna find a godly man in a godly marriage and that you’ll do the right thing that I couldn’t do. That’s how she would talk about her life, which is so funny because she provided one of the most incredible childhoods that I’ve ever, ever even heard of. And yet she actually would sit here and has so much shame about what she perceives as a massive failure because church.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. but I would say that we handed the thermostat over to you, not because I thought this isn’t working and I’m paying attention. It was like I’m taking control of the thermostat. I just said like I’m just not doing this anymore. Yeah. I’m sorry. I don’t care about We are not alone. Some of this is individual failure. Some of this, a lot of this is bad information, some of this is the systems that have surrounded us.
But all of this is probably relatable to other people. And if we could put this stuff out there as we’re trying to work it out, we started making videos and that this probably a through line even to today. We’re not making these videos saying we figured it all out. No. Or like we know what the answer is, or that we even saved our marriage. It really started from a spot of we really effed this up. And both of us tried so hard not to. Yeah. And the pain of that is so exhaustive and extensive that I wanted to bury my head in the sand. I wanted to bury my whole body in the sand. Like, don’t tell anybody this. But I think Jamie had a much better head on her shoulders about like, no, that shame isn’t gonna do anybody any good. What if we just started telling the truth? And she was very clear, you don’t have to come along on this journey with me. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but I feel a deep desire to tell the truth about like what has happened here. And the more I thought about that, I was like, you’re right.
We got into this jam over the course of years, because I haven’t listened to you, and I know that you’re a smart person and a wise person and have all these beautiful ideas. And for whatever reason, well lots of reasons we’ve already articulated, but none of them good enough, I haven’t been influenced by them. And so now we’re here at this crossroads, and I’m going to make a different decision. I’m going to say, yeah, I think you’re right. If we got in trouble by not listening to you, then maybe the only way back out is by allowing you to have the influence, which I deeply believe is true. I just haven’t been able to be humble enough to accept in this performative masculinity.
So that was how we started telling our story because we actually started telling stories separately. Yeah, we both had separate TikTok accounts. Yeah. And told our own perspectives. So even now, there’s some people that follow us individually in TikTok that don’t know we’re married to each other. Although I think that doesn’t happen as often. Yeah. But for a couple of years at the beginning, people like, my gosh, I saw this guy who talks about patriarchy in his car. And I’m like, that’s my husband. and they would, you know.
And they’re like, you’re married to each other. And and so people would find us separately, us just really talking openly and honestly about our journey. And for me, the honest conversation, because once again, I had gone through very traumatic things and recognized that experiencing community was one of the healing elements. People coming alongside of you and either saying me too or loving you anyway, knitted me back together in really dark seasons of life.
And so I knew for a fact, I don’t think we’re individual failures here. Both of us as oldest children and as so committed to the Lord in all the ways we possibly could think of had so earnestly tried and then so earnestly failed. No one had tried harder. And it still didn’t work. And so I was like, I think this is a system that surrounds us. Like the language that surrounded us failed us, the systems around us failed us.
Even things like not having paid parental leave. With our very first baby, I had severe birth injuries. I was literally crawling around on the ground caring for an infant, but he didn’t have a single day of paid leave. And we were young in our 20s. We could not afford to have no money. So here I am, days postpartum, literally unable to walk, unable to walk caring for an infant. I shouldn’t have even been allowed to be alone with myself.
Let alone with an infant. Right. And but that’s the United States of America. It’s it’s a profound cruelty toward parents. It’s a profound cruelty that this entire country exacts on young families. And so he was a goodwilled man, but he couldn’t take a day off. So his goodwill went to work, but then here I am by myself. And again, I don’t I don’t know. As a man, like the bar is so low.
So I wanted to be a good man. And then what is the rubric for that? Okay, well, most guys aren’t taking any time off twenty years ago or don’t have the time off. So the fact I took a week off and unpaid, that must be okay. That must be good enough, right? And and then right back into the grind of doing a job that, is very important, but like took everything from me. So I do have a lot of empathy for men on some level who are trying to like work through this because this is really the first generation we’re being called to account. And some of this accountability really does rest on society in ways that they don’t have individual power over. And yet, it’s also just like the very first little glimpse, fluttering of an eye waking up to a reality that women have been here the entire time to. So on that side of the coin, I have zero empathy. I’m like, shut up. Get over it. Wake up. Do the work because we’re not special. We’re just late, right?
So I think that some of this comes through in our content because we’re trying to put this information out. And I’ve already seen in the handful of years we’ve been doing it that some of these needles have already started to move. There’s a time where we will post an older video and maybe a younger generation will be like, How could you even have believed that? I’m like, like, that’s amazing. Yeah, we love that. We love that you’ve never heard that idea. That’s that’s wonderful.
But for those of us who are still struggling through it, we really want to make sure people know that they’re not alone and that there are pathways to navigate it. They they are not easy. I mean, there’s been many a day on this journey of trying to like make reparations relationally where I thought like I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do this or I don’t know if it’s worth it. And then you stop and think like what’s the alternative? Of course it’s worth it. Like this this like you’re somebody that matters to me. But I had to get past this point as a man where the work was no longer about transaction. Again, being very honest at the very outset of this, I wanted to do the right things because I wanted to be perceived as a good person.
And I also wanted the achievement of being in a marriage and I wanted to be viewed as somebody who was admired and successful, right? Like, but it wasn’t about like making sure you were okay still. Like and so it had to get to this point of time where it’s like, I to fully accept that even though I didn’t mean to have the harm and the impact I have had, that it has had that impact, and therefore I have no right to certainly to demand anything in return, but not even to expect it really. I’m gonna do this work because it’s the right thing to do.
I had my bearings on my ship in the wrong direction. I was always trying to do the right thing, but maybe for the wrong people. Like maybe the people closest to me in my own household should have benefited first and whatever I had left over then could have gone out into capitalism. But I was doing it the opposite way because of the way the reward systems were incentivized, right? So I don’t know. I I hope it does help people. Aand we talk about topics all over the map from parenting to, sex life to just systems issues and faith.
I don’t know, Ruth. I’m curious. You said you’ve watched some of the videos. I don’t know if there’s any particular videos that come to mind that, you know, you were struck by or Or had overlaps with your own relationship. It sounds like when you got married young as well. So it sounds like you also as a young wife ran into the the burnout and yeah, what overlaps does it have with your experience? And then what overlaps did it have, like maybe certain specific topics kind of reach you? I’m just curious about that.
Rev. Ruth Perry (34:20)
Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever watched one of your videos and not related to it. There’s so much overlap because the conditioning in the culture of the Christian church in America is so strong, and you don’t recognize that you’ve been conditioned into a culture. You just think that you’re being faithful to God. And so that layer of the eternal aspect of our salvation is so impactful too.
So I had the scripts from my church that I was handed, and the scripts from my family, where there’s a strong traditional gender role demonstrated for me with a really authoritarian father and a very submissive mother. And my husband came from a same very different like I’m from New England, I’m from Maine, my husband’s from the South, Pentecostal, and I’m Baptist. And so that we had a lot of differences, but we had purity culture, we had
patriarchy and all these scripts. And now as I look back, it’s heartbreaking because everything we needed to have a healthy, mutually beautiful relationship was right there in the scriptures. If we had just obeyed the one another commands and considered each other better than ourselves and loved each other and served each other and mutually submitted, you know, if we had recognized that God gave man and woman dominion instead of thinking that I was a subordinate helper, like an assistant,
Jaime and Josh (35:37)
Right.
Rev. Ruth Perry (35:38)
and just all these like terrible things that warp your reality. And the fruit is clearly bad. The day I cried was the first day back from our honeymoon when my husband went to work and I stayed home to do the laundry and the dishes. And I wept that day. It was like day one. And just immediately recognized I’m losing something of my humanity in these scripts.
Jaime and Josh (35:59)
Yeah.
Rev. Ruth Perry (35:59)
But then not having the language to understand my experience for so long. So just over functioning and doing it all and being the primary parent and the person who keeps an immaculate home and beautifully cooked meals, doing all the things and serving in my church too and making our community connections and having people over for meals and just way over functioning. And it’s impacted my health. And for me, I think the biggest thing has been menopause where my hormones have fluctuated to the point where I can’t do it anymore.
Jaime and Josh (36:30)
Mm-hmm.
Rev. Ruth Perry (36:30)
And so we’re changing course now. And it seems like it happened sooner for you because you’re smarter probably. But it’s not sustainable.
Jaime and Josh (36:38)
I don’t think so. Yeah. Yeah. Sustainable. I think too, it’s funny, I look at just different generations and I look at the people right above me and what they were given and how the scripts manifested and subsequently what they had access to in terms of freedom. And then I look at even just right below me and the women coming up through evangelical that are in their mid thirties and how actually there’s more freedom and there’s more health, even there than there was for me. And I just I have empathy for all of us on that journey. And I actually feel a
Rev. Ruth Perry (37:05)
Yeah.
Jaime and Josh (37:05)
a spark of deep luck that I’m not just ten years older. Because I think I would have I would have spent so many more years in this servitude over functioning burnout role. Right. I feel so grateful that I had that family of origin that’s actually not Christian, but matriarchal. And so I knew, I watched women have full thriving. I watched women have full fun. I watched women have a life. I watched women that my women in my family aren’t subservient and they’re not burnt out. They have deep joy and great beautiful connections. And so I very quickly was like,
I’m good. Like after the burnout kinda sent in and I realized okay, these kids are getting a little older and I’m gonna make plans to get divorced. Like that’s what I’ll do. ‘Cause I was probably only thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two at the time and realized if this is what life is gonna be like with him, then it’s not for me. I have a lot of life left and I don’t want it if this is what it’s gonna look like. So I kinda started making those plans.
Quiet quitting our relationship and also starting to talk about a relationship like that. I didn’t want to hurt him because I knew all the reasons why he behaved the way he did, and I had empathy for it. And even a deep amount of love for him. But I also knew I would not tolerate his wounds becoming my pain any longer. I also had tried to meet those wounds. Forever, I overfunctioned as a means of if I just do enough, he’ll stop being so wounded and start seeing me. If I just do enough, he will start listening more. He’ll take me seriously.
And I realized like, no, he’s performing for an audience of the script of patriarchy and of Christianity and also of manhood that has nothing to do with me. A script I did not give him. A script I had no say in its writing. And no matter how hard I work, it does not matter. All the things that deeply kind of hurt him and I knew his pains and I didn’t want to add to it. But then I realized I’m getting sucked into it. I am now like a like black hole. Yeah. Vicariously being wounded through those things and that’s not a life for me.
And so I started talking like, the kids are older and we get divorced and he was shocked. And I was like, I don’t know why you’re shocked. I’ve been here for over ten years just trying to talk with you and you won’t have a conversation. So I won’t live that way permanently. I I want to see these I want to give the kids stability. I want to see it through. I’d been a stay-at-home parent so I had no career to speak of or no money. So I’m like, I’m gonna give myself some time to get that together and then I’m gonna go. Yeah. You know that was a wake-up call for me for sure.
I think that even the way you just worded it a second ago of like you won’t have a conversation, would not have been a way I would have even remotely have considered that to be true because I’m like, No, I’m always here to have a conversation. But my conversation style was very patriarchal, very much learned, very much ingrained that like in order to take something seriously, you must combat it. It’s gotta be had out in a legal forum, basically. So you present your exhibit, I present my exhibit, we go back and forth, and eventually the jury will decide, and the tiebreaker vote is mine because it’s patriarchy.
So, yeah, if you say something really wise and it makes me uncomfortable, I can dismiss it. If you say something really smart and I need to think about it, well, I can think about it, but I can come back later and not consider it. I didn’t realize, I would have told you that very first time you mentioned that that was your plan. I was like, what are you talking about? I am committed to this relationship. I am engaged. I am trying, but I didn’t have no clue like that I had shut you down to such an extent that you were no longer even trying to communicate important truths to me because it was too painful to.
Bring something up like that and then be dismissed again, right? So if I could change one thing, it might just be that. I might just go back and tell like every man, hey, look, this should be so, so obvious, but apparently it is definitely not, which is as a man, especially if you have stacked upon stacked unearned privileges, the way you see the world is not not only not the only way to see the world, it’s probably not even an accurate way to see the world, right? So when people are trying to communicate to you, it is very important not just to take them seriously, but to shut up and leave space for that and sit in that uncomfortability. There’s a lot of what they’re gonna be telling you that’s not gonna match your perspective. It’s not gonna match your experience. And that doesn’t make it invalid. I did that all the time to you as a a younger person. Well I’ve never seen that.
Yeah, yeah. It doesn’t affect me that way. I don’t think it doesn’t matter. Well I didn’t ever said that, but that’s how it would be internalized because I again and I this is gonna sound so stupid, but I really always thought in a combative kind of way of finding a middle ground. Well, devil’s advocate, whatever you want to call it. And a best case in patriarchal circles is also loud and overbearing and a little bit mean sometimes. ‘Cause I’m gonna try to win. I’m gonna attack you. Because attacking you means I win. Yeah, yeah. And I and I’m trying to win because I care. And it’s like, no there’s no winners in this. Believe me, we’re both losing right now, but you can’t see that. My gosh. You think just because you got louder and I shut down, you won. I still struggle with this by working really hard on it.
I think that if I go back and we we talk about this a lot, if I were to watch the tape of some of our early first year marriage conversations, I think you wouldn’t be shocked at all. I think I would just weep. Because there were so many times where I thought I was just trying to engage in a conversation with the very limited tool belt I’d been given. And Jamie would just be like, I’m walking away. And I thought, well, that’s not the way I thought it was supposed to go, but I guess
I guess it doesn’t matter to her. No, no, no. It mattered tremendously. It just the skills I brought to the table about how to talk about it were so stunted and so underdeveloped that she couldn’t have a real adult conversation with a child. And like, whatever. Like the way you would kind of yeah, I mean, have a maybe a toddler come to your house and you know, they’re calling outside the lines, you’d be like, Okay, well, I’ll just clean it up later. Yeah, that’s kinda It’s not worth this kid I’d have no relationship with and no influence over to kind of fight about little things.
It is what it is, right? Looking back, I think that I was the toddler, but I thought I was a full grown person, right? So, it’s just really, really sad. And I’ve cried many tears over that over the years of like I just wish there had been a different guidebook. I wish there would be somebody, somebody, one person in my life that would have told me. And I think, there were, but they were women. I just was trained to dismiss those voices. And I think that many men are still trained to dismiss those voices. So to even have a shot at being a man who contributes to this conversation, I hope matters, you know.
Rev. Ruth Perry (42:34)
It matters a lot. I’m really, really grateful for your voice, Josh, and I love your series. Chronicles of a clueless husband. I just love
Jaime and Josh (42:41)
yeah.
Rev. Ruth Perry (42:42)
both of your honesty so much. The truth sets us free.
Jaime and Josh (42:45)
Yes.
Rev. Ruth Perry (42:45)
Has it just been conversations or are there particular resources that have helped you build your tool belt?
Jaime and Josh (42:52)
It helped that I was in the mental health field, so I had access to some of these things on the professional side. But I think therapy was huge. I went through multiple rounds of clinical work. The first time really just thinking, I should do this just so I know what it feels like. And the second time thinking, I think I have a deep amount of grief.
And then third time you’re like, I think I don’t have a secure attachment. But it needed to start with just the humility to try it. I did not have even being in a social services, human services field, the wherewithal or wisdom or maturity or humility to think that I really needed that, but I needed to get into the habit of it until eventually got to a point where you could pick specific modalities, right? It’s like, okay, I really want to target this like deep seated feeling of unworthiness as a man. Where did that come from?
I’m gonna pick a memory from childhood and go back and unpack that through EMDR. Really tangible work. So I’m glad you asked that question because I think sometimes people think, well, it maybe it just occurred to him and and now it’s better. No, no, no. If you’re gonna dig yourself out of a six foot grave, you need the tools to do that, but it’s gonna require an awful lot of work and an awful lot of help. You don’t get out of that hole by yourself. So I think it’s a great therapy has been huge for me.
And I would tell people that if you’re gonna go to the therapy route, you can’t be going because someone else is telling you to go. You gotta be going because you are deciding to go. And hopefully you are clear on what your presenting issue is. You don’t have to fix all of your problems at once, but pick one and start there and then commit to doing the work on it. And that work might take months, it might take years, right? I actually also am not a huge, huge fan of having a therapist indefinitely. I’ve had like five different therapists over the course of the last like decade and a half, and they all specialize in something different.
Because I’ve needed different things at different points in time. So make it work for you. I’d also say that having a partner like Jamie who’s just incredibly smart and skilled and loving and full of grace is certainly a a resource that a lot of people don’t have, right? So I mean, most of what I’ve learned, people like, did you get that from school? Or did you get that from I’m like, No, I got it from her. Even in social work sometimes I’ll share something and well, that’s really wise. Where’d you get that? Oh, my wife told me that. That’s where I learned that from. So she’s a great partner to have.
I think for me, particularly in my thirties, as I got to my thirties, I started to listen to a lot of podcasts, seeking out a lot of books, particularly on the topic of sexuality, like She Comes First, I think that’s Emily Nagoski, was really pivotive and transformative. I think the work of Glennon Doyle and even Jen Hatmaker, sort of that vulnerability voice and the truth telling voices of women like that, opened up a way of speaking about life that like was like, I already have this inner voice, but we can all say it out loud. It felt like it gave me permission.
I also, around the time I, you know was thirty, thirty-one, I knew at that point, we had been together for ten years and we had four kids. And I just immersed myself in a lot of self help because I realized, being from the faith tradition I was in, I had lived life in such a way where like God brings things to you and my idea of walking with God was just accepting things that came my way.
I realized at the age of 30, none of my life looks the way I would want it to. It doesn’t reflect any of my values. How did I get here? How do I undo this? How do I find a life I really want. And so I was just listening to a ton of self-help, which actually is male driven that space. Ten, fifteen years ago is very male driven. And so it always lacked quite a few key pieces, but it was really helpful for me to like set goals and start to have routines and take really good care of myself and I started having hobbies outside of the kids and outside of Josh.
And I started just finding my voice and my power and realizing how much that brought energy into my life and then feeling even stronger and more determined, even more determined not to settle for the marriage that it was at that time. So I think those were resources that really pushed me forward. and just really helped me find my voice, but also helped me just get a little stronger every day to trust that voice.
Rev. Ruth Perry (46:25)
Well, I guess we’ve run out of time for today. I feel like we could just keep talking and talking. There’s so many things I would love to talk with you about. But people can go back and watch your videos. Marriage is Happening. You’re pretty much on all the major social media platforms under Marriage is Happening. And make sure you follow them because they’re just constantly working on something and talking about it. And I’ve been able to benefit from your own healing work and I’m grateful and appreciative to you for being honest and putting your work out there and I’m grateful that you are here today. Thank you so much.
Jaime and Josh (46:58)
Thank you, Ruth. Thank you so much. Thank you for the beautiful conversation.
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