If Books Could Kill - The 5 Love Languages

00:00:00.000 Michael. Peter. What do you know about the five love languages?

00:00:03.720 Yes, this is when I had to update my deal breaker on dating sites from the Myers-Briggs

00:00:07.780 personality type indicators.

00:00:23.820 The core thesis of the five love languages is that people have different preferences

00:00:29.580 in how they express and receive love and that those preferences fall generally into five

00:00:36.260 categories. Words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, physical touch, and acts of

00:00:44.400 service. Yes. The basic lesson that Gary Chapman, the author, is teaching here is that if you want

00:00:51.660 to be a good partner, you need to learn to speak your spouse's love language. This is why I've been

00:00:58.500 like slightly nervous about this episode because it honestly just seems so harmless and constructive

00:01:05.540 to me. I don't know about like these five categories specifically, but the idea of having

00:01:12.240 this meta conversation with your partner about the ways that you appreciate them and the way that you

00:01:17.400 appreciate being shown love seems like totally fine to me. I actually agree. And I think that

00:01:25.000 of all the books we've covered so far, this one is the least objectionable on its face.

00:01:32.360 Right. There is a real utility to this core concept of realizing that your partner may not

00:01:39.300 receive affection the way that you do and trying to understand what makes them feel loved and

00:01:46.280 appreciated. Right. And I think the sort of simplicity of that idea is the reason that

00:01:51.880 everyone knows this book. It's just a useful way to think about relationships, about how you and

00:01:58.300 your spouse might differ and like what it means to be a good partner. I never actually knew that

00:02:03.760 this was based on a book. I thought it was just something that started appearing in framed posters

00:02:09.140 in Airbnbs starting in like 2015. There are some other really good elements within this book.

00:02:16.320 Chapman uses the love language idea to discuss how love is not just like a magical feeling,

00:02:23.040 but something that requires effort to maintain.

00:02:26.440 He says that being loved gives us a sense of purpose and makes us feel valued and significant,

00:02:32.480 which I do just for the purposes of our canon want to point out is also what Fukuyama said

00:02:39.120 about liberal democracy.

00:02:41.740 He's got the thymus section of the poster up in all the Airbnbs.

00:02:45.520 Just trying to connect as many threads as I can through our episodes.

00:02:49.060 He also has some good real estate investing advice.

00:02:52.660 The book has sold over 15 million copies.

00:02:57.660 It was originally published in 1992 and was fairly popular, but actually took off in the late aughts and early 2010s.

00:03:07.420 An updated version is published in 2015.

00:03:11.360 Okay.

00:03:11.540 Which is important because I read the updated version and then I went back and read through

00:03:17.700 the original version. And several of my friends, like you, when I told them I was doing the book

00:03:23.420 for the show, they said they didn't think the book was too bad and they thought the ideas were good.

00:03:28.480 And what I said to them was, I bet you read the 2015 version.

00:03:32.440 Oh, so it's like the misogyny minus version, like they cleaned it up for the hashtag blessed crowd.

00:03:40.540 Now, interestingly, the main way the love languages concept has been, like, absorbed by our popular culture is as, like, a self-directed personality test, right?

00:03:50.600 People love to describe their own love languages.

00:03:53.740 It's functionally a meme now where people just tweet, like, having a giant laundry pile I never put away is my love language.

00:04:00.640 I think it's important to note that, like, that's not what Chapman was trying to get across.

00:04:04.080 he wanted people to understand their partner's love language so that you can learn how to make

00:04:10.180 them feel appreciated. So our culture has sort of done a classic American culture thing of taking

00:04:17.440 something and repackaging it. And it's like shallowest and most selfish iteration. It's

00:04:23.080 supposed to be how to be nice. And it ends up being how other people can be nice to me.

00:04:26.520 Yes, right. No, I want gifts. I want gifts. So when you did Men Are From Mars, you got

00:04:34.940 suspicious of John Gray's credentials halfway through the book and you started digging around

00:04:40.340 and found out that his PhD is pretty much fraudulent. Gary Chapman does not put PhD on

00:04:46.380 the cover, but he holds himself out as Gary Chapman, PhD. And I was like, okay, you know,

00:04:51.940 fool us once, right? As of now, there is a zero tolerance environment for marriage counselor

00:04:57.700 authors on this podcast. His PhD is real. He got his master's and PhD in religious education

00:05:05.280 from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, as well as a master's in anthropology from

00:05:11.360 Wake Forest. One of those sounds real. Yeah. Look, I didn't want to get into the merits of

00:05:17.520 seminary schools. But suffice it to say that we are treading in more legitimate waters than we

00:05:23.440 were with Gray. So Gary Chapman is a pastor, essentially. He's like he's coming to this from

00:05:28.460 religious angle. He is a pastor. And yeah, it's important framing because, again, the core concept

00:05:35.780 of this book, I think, is quite good. The actual book sucks. And that's basically what we're going 0.98

00:05:43.440 to talk about. Before we get into the substance of the book, I think it would be useful at this

00:05:48.980 point in our podcast to talk about the hallmarks of like shitty bestselling self-help. We need like

00:05:56.560 five rules of the five types of bestselling books and then write a bestselling book about it.

00:06:02.140 Yes. So I think like first and foremost, a lack of science, a thesis that is presented as if it

00:06:09.720 is scientific when in fact there is absolutely no science being done.

00:06:14.380 So is this five love languages thing just like something he fully made up?

00:06:17.800 Yes.

00:06:18.380 He is pretty explicit about that.

00:06:20.180 He basically says, you know, I was talking to couples over the course of my counseling

00:06:25.300 career and I sort of formulated this concept.

00:06:29.300 So there's no, it's not predicated in any real science.

00:06:32.580 There's no like psychology hiding somewhere behind it or something.

00:06:37.040 He just sort of vibed this out.

00:06:38.480 This also makes it harder to debunk because he's not citing any studies.

00:06:43.160 He's just like saying stuff.

00:06:44.900 The sad truth of this is that had he relied on some science and cited it, we would now 1.00

00:06:51.460 be like pulling apart his application of that science and explaining why it's so stupid. 0.95

00:06:56.880 But you can't incorrectly cite scientific research when you're not citing scientific 0.99

00:07:03.780 research.

00:07:04.380 I'm tapping my head right now like the gif of that dude.

00:07:06.440 chapman like hints at science like he'll occasionally say things like psychology

00:07:12.800 supports this like psychological research supports it and you're like oh great and then

00:07:17.780 you look back at the notes like the footnotes of the book there are four and three of them are to

00:07:23.080 the bible no way what's the fourth one too the fourth one is just to an article on a website by

00:07:28.860 someone named kelly flanagan titled why one text message is more romantic than a hundred valentine

00:07:34.080 cards. What? I would like to see Kelly Flanagan's footnotes, please. It's that, Proverbs, and Luke

00:07:42.960 twice. So quality number two of the bestselling self-help book, it's presented as a cure-all.

00:07:51.260 Yes. There's no nuance. It's not like this is a useful thing to keep in mind. It's like here is

00:07:56.320 how to fix your relationship flat out, period. And like this is the one thing you need to know

00:08:01.400 to solve every single relationship problem.

00:08:03.860 This is what John Gray was doing, too.

00:08:05.180 Number three, filler.

00:08:07.180 A book that is like 200 pages long

00:08:10.100 when you can get the entire message from the back cover,

00:08:12.680 that is like quintessential self-help, right?

00:08:15.140 Yeah.

00:08:15.440 Now, a big reason that these books get popular

00:08:18.020 is the simplicity of the central concept, right?

00:08:21.140 Which generally means that you're going to need filler.

00:08:24.160 Something I forgot to mention

00:08:26.020 in our Rich Dad, Poor Dad episode

00:08:27.680 was that he includes an entire Robert Frost poem start to finish because it takes up like a page

00:08:36.080 and a half. The tactics that these people use to take up space are incredible. So first you have

00:08:41.200 like the chapters themselves, which all start with an anecdote that is very repetitive. A couple

00:08:47.500 comes in and they're like, we don't get along anymore. And Chapman is like, what if you spoke

00:08:52.200 each other's love languages. And they're like, whoa, you saved our marriage. And then he like

00:08:57.740 extrapolates a bit. End of chapter. Now, if you remember in like The Secret, the last 40 pages

00:09:03.460 were like biographies of the contributors for this book. The last 30 pages are FAQs and a love

00:09:11.880 language quiz. Hell yeah. You also at the end of each chapter, there's like a little listicle

00:09:17.460 summary of the advice the chapter contained. Man, he couldn't even do that with the footnotes

00:09:21.900 though. He couldn't add some extra links to HuffPost. I didn't realize how funny the footnotes

00:09:27.700 were until you asked what the other footnote was. I think the last feature of the bestselling

00:09:35.060 self-help book is not actually within the book. It's the cash grab spinoffs. Is there like love

00:09:41.660 languages for kids? Yes, there is. And like love languages for her, love languages for him. Yeah.

00:09:47.320 You've got the five love languages of children, the five love languages singles edition, the

00:09:51.740 Five Love Languages of Teenagers, The Five Love Languages for Men. There is no for women. 1.00

00:09:58.220 The Five Love Languages Military Edition. Okay. Teens Guide to the Five Love Languages. Now, 1.00

00:10:05.720 you might think that's duplicative, but The Five Love Languages of Teenagers is for parents to

00:10:11.960 understand teenagers. The Teens Guide to the Five Love Languages is for teens. And there is also,

00:10:17.700 So I forgot to mention, my apologies, the five love languages of God.

00:10:21.820 Oh, OK.

00:10:22.440 Now, that one I actually read a little bit because I was I was like, what does he mean

00:10:27.000 by giving gifts to God?

00:10:28.800 Is he talking about like human sacrifice?

00:10:30.440 That's what I was wondering.

00:10:31.620 But no, it's it's actually like God is speaking the love languages.

00:10:35.280 So it's like God is giving you gifts.

00:10:36.620 But then isn't God's like number one love language like retribution?

00:10:39.960 If you actually read the Bible.

00:10:44.020 All right.

00:10:44.880 I think it is time to dive into the book.

00:10:47.480 The opening little vignette takes place on an airplane.

00:10:50.460 He is seated next to a man who turns to him and says, what kind of work do you do?

00:10:54.820 And Chapman says, I do marriage counseling and lead marriage enrichment seminars.

00:10:59.580 And the guy goes, I've been wanting to ask someone this for a long time.

00:11:04.000 What happens to love after you get married?

00:11:07.260 Chapman's like, well, what do you mean?

00:11:08.720 And the guy goes, I've been married three times.

00:11:11.060 And each time it was wonderful before we got married.

00:11:14.060 But somehow after the wedding, it fell apart.

00:11:16.960 All the love I thought I had for her and the love she seemed to have for me evaporated.

00:11:21.900 He then walks Chapman through his three marriages.

00:11:25.620 He says, in the first one, we had three or four good years before the baby came.

00:11:30.400 After the baby was born, I felt like she gave her attention to the baby and I no longer mattered.

00:11:35.740 He talked about the second marriage, which was following a six-month dating period.

00:11:41.160 Then they split.

00:11:42.500 Then the third marriage, he dates her for longer.

00:11:44.840 but he just says, you know, she became a negative person after a bit and I began to resent her and

00:11:49.680 we broke up. See, if she had this on her Hinge profile, he would have known what he was going

00:11:54.080 to do. And then he turns to Gary Chapman and says, so my question is, what happens to love after the

00:12:02.000 wedding? Is my experience common? Is that why we have so many divorces in our country? And those

00:12:07.460 who don't divorce, do they learn to live with the emptiness or does love really stay alive in some

00:12:11.880 marriages. If so, how? This is quintessential Gary Chapman dialogue. Just the most like

00:12:19.600 transparent exposition you can imagine. Yeah. If so, how? What's with the divorce rate in this

00:12:25.700 country, Gary? Can you lay out the premise of your work for me, please? Right. Are there languages of

00:12:31.480 love, Gary? Would you say so? This is every scene in the first half of Tenet. It's like, can you

00:12:37.300 Can you just explain sidactically to me what the fuck is going on right now? 0.73

00:12:40.860 So he uses that little question as the sort of prompt for the book. 0.91

00:12:45.180 And then he sort of makes his way to the love languages themselves.

00:12:48.920 The first love language, Words of Affirmation.

00:12:52.380 And we start the chapter, like almost all of his chapters, with a wife asking for help.

00:12:57.260 Okay.

00:12:57.620 She says that she's been asking her husband to paint the bedroom for nine months to no avail.

00:13:02.840 Has she tried a different modal verb?

00:13:05.120 no matter how she asks him she says no matter when he doesn't do it now what chapman advises

00:13:12.960 is don't ever mention painting the bedroom again and instead start complimenting on the things he

00:13:19.780 does do okay in the hope that these words of affirmation will motivate him to paint the

00:13:25.820 bedroom oh in meta from mars like you were hinting at the author talked about using the term would

00:13:31.480 you instead of could you when asking your husband for a favor and now we have chapman saying stop

00:13:37.580 asking start giving him compliments for other housework he did at the end of the day how many

00:13:44.500 psychological tricks are we as a society prepared to deploy to get these guys to do their chores

00:13:51.000 this actually came up a lot in men are from mars women are from venus this idea that as soon as you

00:13:56.700 stop asking him to do things, he will spontaneously do them for you, which seems just totally wrong

00:14:03.900 to me. Because like, if all you're doing is being nice to me, how would I even know that you want me

00:14:10.340 to paint the bedroom? I'm trying to think of something that would work less on me than just

00:14:13.540 never asking me. I would immediately be like, oh, she doesn't care anymore. Yeah, exactly.

00:14:16.320 I just didn't do anything. And then she dropped it. Awesome. It seems to me like it's a way

00:14:22.100 of just redirecting the fact

00:14:24.620 that you're annoyed

00:14:25.760 that you're being nagged about it.

00:14:28.300 Yeah.

00:14:28.580 And trying to turn it into like,

00:14:30.180 well, I would do it

00:14:31.300 if you weren't nagging.

00:14:32.680 Exactly.

00:14:33.040 Which I don't think is actually true.

00:14:35.240 I think you just don't want to do it 0.99

00:14:36.620 and you're too chicken shit. 1.00

00:14:37.660 Right. 1.00

00:14:38.000 Like either nut up and do it

00:14:39.960 or like launch a negotiation

00:14:41.840 of like, I don't want to do this

00:14:43.040 for these reasons.

00:14:43.960 Right.

00:14:44.340 Exactly.

00:14:44.820 It's like, well, if you were different,

00:14:45.820 I would have done it by now.

00:14:47.020 Right.

00:14:47.420 What you mean to say is

00:14:48.540 I don't want to do this.

00:14:50.480 And also, I don't want to be bothered about not doing it.

00:14:54.440 So there is some good advice for couples in here, compiling lists of your partner's positive

00:15:00.520 traits and then using them as a reminder to give affirming compliments.

00:15:04.640 I thought that was a nice little suggestion.

00:15:06.800 But then he has one particular couple who is struggling make their lists and I'm going

00:15:13.040 to send them to you.

00:15:13.960 OK, Andrea's list looked like this.

00:15:17.000 He is aggressive in his work.

00:15:18.300 He has received several promotions through the years.

00:15:21.700 He's a good financial manager.

00:15:23.600 He's always thinking of ways to improve his productivity.

00:15:26.700 He's generous with finances and agrees I can use the money from my job any way I desire.

00:15:32.040 Mark's list looked like this.

00:15:34.180 She keeps our house clean and orderly.

00:15:36.420 She helps the kids with their homework.

00:15:38.420 She cooks dinner about three days a week.

00:15:40.320 She teaches first grade Sunday school.

00:15:43.220 She chauffeurs the children to all their activities.

00:15:45.880 Again, this is supposed to be a list of like positive traits that the spouse has, right?

00:15:51.860 The prompt was things you like about the other person.

00:15:54.580 That is the quote from Chapman.

00:15:56.300 His list about her is essentially a list of chores that she does.

00:16:00.940 And hers about him is just like he has a job.

00:16:04.880 If someone described me in these terms, I would like not feel like they loved me.

00:16:09.860 How could you?

00:16:10.620 Mike's podcasts come out on time.

00:16:13.280 Mike's really passionate about his podcast.

00:16:15.300 I'm like, do you think I'm smart or funny?

00:16:17.680 Right.

00:16:18.360 This is my LinkedIn profile that you're giving me.

00:16:20.940 It's not even framed in terms of like, oh, I admire his passion or something.

00:16:25.620 Right.

00:16:25.940 Right.

00:16:26.320 Like something that feels like more of a real compliment.

00:16:29.400 It's just like he is doing business successfully.

00:16:32.560 Yeah.

00:16:32.760 He's always working and he's very good at working.

00:16:35.440 Bizarre.

00:16:35.980 In the earlier editions of this book, the lists are longer.

00:16:39.320 It's still all chores for him and finance stuff for her.

00:16:44.000 The husband says in the older version that one of the positive traits of his wife is she does the washing and some ironing.

00:16:51.580 The wife's list includes he bought us a recreational vehicle.

00:16:56.820 Side note, this is one of, I think, two parts of the book where a wife mentions that she loves that her husband owns an RV.

00:17:04.820 and i think it's probably worth floating the real possibility that chapman has made

00:17:13.920 some of these up yeah yeah that they're just sort of like gussied up versions of much simpler

00:17:20.020 anecdotes from real life which means that like maybe he's creating fictional dialogue where men

00:17:27.200 express appreciation for women right and he's just continuously listing chores this is also

00:17:31.980 where his background as a pastor comes in, right?

00:17:33.860 Right.

00:17:34.200 It's not like he came up with the five love languages

00:17:35.820 after working with a broad swath of couples.

00:17:38.800 He was presumably working through the church

00:17:40.720 with fairly conservative Christian couples.

00:17:44.600 There's a layer here that I think is like

00:17:46.880 the book's central flaw,

00:17:48.680 which really didn't hit me

00:17:49.720 until I was staring at this little list.

00:17:52.600 He is proposing the idea

00:17:53.840 that you can solve marital problems

00:17:55.480 by speaking the other person's love language.

00:17:57.880 But like the question lurking unanswered

00:18:00.740 behind nearly every anecdote in the book is, should these people be married?

00:18:05.880 Right.

00:18:06.060 Chapman's anecdotes always end in all of the couple's problems being resolved,

00:18:10.100 no matter how dire the situation seemed before.

00:18:13.140 That creates a sense in the reader that any problems in a relationship can be solved using

00:18:17.620 these tactics.

00:18:18.820 Yeah.

00:18:19.140 That's just not true.

00:18:20.100 And maybe even veers into being dangerous advice, right?

00:18:23.100 If you're in like a particularly unhealthy or abusive relationship.

00:18:26.080 Right.

00:18:26.260 And again, Chapman is a conservative pastor.

00:18:29.220 The only times divorce are mentioned in the book are when he's either talking about how

00:18:32.900 close a couple came to divorce before he saved them or how unfortunate it is that divorce

00:18:38.700 rates are so high.

00:18:39.580 Maybe his love language is just reactionary boilerplate about how society is crumbling

00:18:43.640 all around us. 0.99

00:18:44.660 Millennials need to get off their phones. 1.00

00:18:46.240 All right. 0.57

00:18:47.040 Quality time.

00:18:48.460 This is number two.

00:18:49.840 The chapter is about the idea that some people feel most appreciated through quality time

00:18:55.160 spent with their partner, which she makes clear involves like giving your undivided attention.

00:18:59.960 The primary anecdote is that this couple comes in and the wife is like, he never spends any time

00:19:06.000 with me. And the husband, Mark, says she's always complaining about me not spending time with her.

00:19:12.480 And Chapman is like, well, maybe try spending time with her. Yeah. And Mark is like, Dr. Chapman,

00:19:17.640 you've saved my marriage. I'm not exaggerating. This is the course of events. Chapman tells the

00:19:24.700 guy to spend quality time with his wife and he goes right dr chapman that is what she has always

00:19:29.880 complained about i didn't do things with her and it's like so she was telling you mark yeah so do

00:19:34.560 you just need a man to tell you this and you think it's real i mean that's genuinely what's

00:19:40.420 happening and uh this is not the only time that this exact dynamic plays out in this book like

00:19:46.100 his wife has just been telling him the same thing for years they go to counseling and chapman is

00:19:50.940 like yeah yeah spend time with her and he's like without you dr chapman we would be divorced i would

00:19:56.620 say the main issue in our relationship is that my wife keeps asking me to walk the dog what should

00:20:01.200 i do well i don't know man if you sort of take a step back and look at these books like i'm

00:20:08.480 coupling men are from mars and five love languages together even in their telling they can't put

00:20:15.840 together a tale of like normal, competent and loving men. You know, like these guys are just 0.76

00:20:22.040 like hapless losers. This is in John Gray's book, too, where like there's very few examples and the 0.92

00:20:26.840 examples that they have. It's like not even like sitcom episode levels of complexity. Right. It's

00:20:32.520 just like he never brings the groceries in from the car. And like, well, yeah, then he should just

00:20:37.460 do that. It's not like these are not like real human problems. All right. Let's move on to

00:20:42.700 receiving gifts.

00:20:44.540 Most of this chapter,

00:20:45.420 relatively anodyne advice

00:20:46.980 about how some people

00:20:48.360 like to receive gifts

00:20:49.360 and like different ways

00:20:50.380 to become a better gift giver

00:20:51.860 and how to balance it with finances.

00:20:54.860 This one has always resonated with me 0.99

00:20:56.420 because I do not give a shit about gifts. 0.98

00:20:59.220 This has like always been 0.98

00:21:00.740 like something that I was not aware of

00:21:02.460 about myself until I found this framework.

00:21:05.120 I was like, oh, OK,

00:21:05.860 like notes to self, note to others.

00:21:07.800 When dating me,

00:21:08.680 like I just don't really care

00:21:09.900 if you give me flowers.

00:21:11.000 I'm not going to remember that

00:21:11.800 in like six hours.

00:21:12.480 Right. And like that seems vaguely useful to me. One of the most useful things about this framework is just a simple reminder that because you don't like something or don't think something is important, it doesn't mean that other people have the same feeling.

00:21:26.620 because it's just reminding you that other people's brains don't operate the way that

00:21:30.800 yours does right one weird little aside about this chapter is that uh in the new version he

00:21:35.820 used the term friend zone offhand okay and i was like oh that's weird because that is a term that

00:21:42.840 originated primarily with the pickup artist community and it's just sort of weird to see

00:21:47.480 a marriage counselor using the language i'm not sure that he understands what he is saying

00:21:52.740 how does he use it that's like a weird thing to bring into like a couple's paradigm he basically

00:21:58.360 leads off with an anecdote being like jeff had been in the friend zone with becky and then uh 0.94

00:22:05.660 jeff catches like a baseball at a game and gives it to her and then they fuck or whatever i don't

00:22:10.260 i don't know it was bizarre this one also feels fake yeah no i i didn't understand that one either 0.75

00:22:16.520 but i but again i was sort of like yeah maybe this is just not the love language yeah sure

00:22:21.060 Maybe it is normal for someone to just get a gift and be like, I like this guy now.

00:22:27.340 This is something I always trace to Hollywood, but I wonder if it also goes back to these pop bestsellers.

00:22:33.680 The idea that you've expressed interest in someone and they're like, no, no, I don't like you.

00:22:38.480 And then you do some grand gesture or like give them a gift and they're like, OK, I'm into you. 0.98

00:22:44.180 Just as like one of the dumbest and most pernicious myths in American life. 0.98

00:22:48.780 Like in real life, people like you less when you do that. 0.99

00:22:52.420 Yeah. 1.00

00:22:52.720 In real life, you need to be mean to women and treat them like shit and then they'll 1.00

00:22:58.560 like you. 1.00

00:23:00.380 The way out of the friend zone is through negging.

00:23:02.780 Oh, God.

00:23:03.680 He talks about giving the gift of yourself, which means just being present.

00:23:08.620 Oh, that's just the other one.

00:23:09.740 That's just like the quality time one.

00:23:11.460 Right.

00:23:11.700 Exactly.

00:23:12.200 It's quality time.

00:23:13.040 I was like, all right, this is more filler.

00:23:14.680 Right.

00:23:14.900 He was like, all right, what other kind of gifts can you give?

00:23:16.640 I guess you can give yourself.

00:23:17.500 Yeah.

00:23:17.840 The gift of self part contains another example of a situation where you're just looking at a

00:23:24.040 straightforwardly awful relationship and you're supposed to believe that he has like salvaged it

00:23:29.140 using the power of love languages. I am going to send you an excerpt. It says, Sonia once said to

00:23:34.760 me, my husband loves softball more than he loves me. Why do you say that? I inquired. On the day

00:23:39.940 our baby was born, he played softball. I was lying in the hospital all afternoon while he played

00:23:45.180 softball, she said. Was he there when the baby was born? He stayed long enough for the baby to be

00:23:50.000 born, but 10 minutes afterward he left. It was awful. It was such an important moment in our

00:23:54.680 lives. I wanted us to share it together. I wanted Tony to be there with me. That baby was now 15

00:24:00.300 years old, and Sonia was talking about the event with all the emotion as though it had happened

00:24:04.420 yesterday. Have you based your conclusion that Tony loves softball more than he loves you on

00:24:08.660 this one experience? No, she said. On the day of my mother's funeral, he also played softball.

00:24:14.360 Did he go to the funeral?

00:24:15.800 Yes, he did.

00:24:16.800 He went to the funeral, but as soon as it was over, he left to get to his game.

00:24:21.160 I couldn't believe it.

00:24:22.400 My brothers and sisters came to the house with me, but my husband was playing softball.

00:24:27.020 Okay, this guy's clearly having an affair.

00:24:29.080 Clearly doesn't like his wife. 1.00

00:24:30.300 I mean, look, this man is a demon. 0.98

00:24:32.520 These are like the most important days in her life over the span of like 20 years. 0.95

00:24:38.480 And he just like strategically picks them to play softball.

00:24:42.180 I'll see if I can make it.

00:24:43.420 Yeah.

00:24:43.580 I'll try to pop in at some point for the birth of our child.

00:24:47.920 So Chapman goes to the husband and the husband says, I knew she would bring that up.

00:24:54.040 And then he says that he actually went to the softball game to brag to his team about the baby.

00:25:01.080 And he was like shocked that she was upset when he came home.

00:25:05.560 I don't know.

00:25:06.740 And then paraphrasing his response about the funeral, he basically says, well, I bet she didn't tell you this, but I spent the week prior to her mother's death helping out.

00:25:17.820 So after the funeral, I wanted to play softball to relax.

00:25:21.900 OK.

00:25:22.580 So those are the reasons he provided.

00:25:24.500 And Dr. Chapman is like, well, look, this is a well-meaning, sincere guy who just doesn't understand his wife's love language.

00:25:32.780 The final advice that he gives here is, quote, if the physical presence of your spouse is important to you, I urge you to verbalize that to your spouse.

00:25:43.600 It sounds like she has.

00:25:44.720 It sounds like this is a story that she's told throughout the marriage.

00:25:47.180 Literally has been mad about the softball game for 15 years.

00:25:52.920 Yeah.

00:25:53.340 And then he did it again on the day of her mother's funeral.

00:25:56.960 Yeah.

00:25:57.460 What else is she supposed to do here? 0.99

00:25:59.220 But again, this is a situation where Chapman is like, hey, the next time she has a once in a decade trauma, don't go play softball.

00:26:08.480 And he's like, Gary, you're a miracle worker.

00:26:11.700 How do you come up with this?

00:26:13.200 It's like he's chalking this up to like a misunderstanding.

00:26:16.280 Right.

00:26:16.540 He just doesn't understand the gift that you need of time.

00:26:20.040 This is not the gift of yourself.

00:26:21.840 This is an obligation that you have as like a human being who cares about another human being.

00:26:27.220 Yeah.

00:26:27.500 There is no saving this man.

00:26:29.620 Maybe this is another feature of these self-help books is they give this advice that is kind

00:26:33.880 of like the starting point, right?

00:26:35.800 Of like understanding each other's love languages.

00:26:37.540 Like that seems like a useful framework, but ultimately you have to implement it.

00:26:41.120 And the problems in the relationship aren't necessarily people not knowing this stuff.

00:26:45.820 The information is available, but they're just not doing anything with it.

00:26:49.440 I like can't believe these guys who are like the way he frames it is like, oh, I wanted

00:26:53.940 to go tell them.

00:26:54.700 He makes it seem as if there's this perpetual softball game going on that he can like pop in and out of.

00:26:59.780 No, he was trying to make the game.

00:27:01.620 He was like, push, push.

00:27:06.100 Although, to be fair, my when I on the day that I was born, my dad did get an oil change on the car.

00:27:11.440 But that pays.

00:27:13.120 That's an investment.

00:27:15.460 I mean, it was like a labor takes a while.

00:27:17.680 So he was on the way.

00:27:18.980 He's like, there's not really anything for me to do for the next four hours.

00:27:21.380 So I might as well go get an oil change.

00:27:22.680 and that's why i'm like this that's why i'm like this peter that's an incredible dude thing to do

00:27:28.200 i know the dudest imaginable thing acts of service is essentially what it sounds like people who

00:27:35.720 feel appreciated when the other person does something for them is that this just the same

00:27:39.620 as all the other categories though i've never actually understood this one because isn't a gift

00:27:43.080 a type of act of service and isn't quality time a type of act of service well it's not a perfect

00:27:48.100 science all right these are but acts of service to gary chapman again mostly means chores oh that

00:27:56.180 makes sense so like yeah i i took care of this thing for you it would sound less romantic if

00:28:00.600 the category was called chores but that's what it is oh god logistics oh this is mine peter holy

00:28:05.980 shit this is mine so physical touch is the last one this chapter has the standard anecdote where

00:28:14.020 there's a miserable couple that ends up loving each other again after they figure out their 0.98

00:28:17.600 love languages. Chapman takes a moment to criticize non-monogamy. Okay, great. He says, quote,

00:28:22.960 this age is characterized as the age of sexual openness and freedom. With that freedom,

00:28:27.880 we have demonstrated that the open marriage, where both spouses are free to have sexual

00:28:31.920 intimacies with other individuals, is fanciful. Those who do not object on moral grounds eventually

00:28:38.060 object on emotional grounds. Yeah, tell me you've never worked with gay couples without telling me 1.00

00:28:43.120 you've never worked with gay couples. There's no citation or anything. It's just sort of like,

00:28:46.620 yeah open marriages don't work moving on as a kid who grew up in a christian household i will say

00:28:52.360 when whenever christians talk about sex it gets it gets really weird really fast because like the

00:28:58.240 only framework they have for it is like marital intercourse and so they have like no idea how

00:29:02.860 like dating works if i was a 24 year old virgin and someone was like you're a few legal documents

00:29:09.020 away from having sex yeah i can't tell you how quickly i would have jumped into it oh yeah there

00:29:14.280 are a lot of gender tropes in the physical touch chapter men want sex all the time while quote

00:29:20.720 women need to feel a close emotional connection for sex to be satisfying women be talking women

00:29:26.840 be emoting i was reading an article by someone who was in a seminary learning these and mentioned 0.98

00:29:34.320 that people in the class kept accidentally describing women having sex with men as an

00:29:39.660 act of service rather than physical touch that basic thought recurs throughout the book like

00:29:44.840 the sexual desire of men is a given and the sexual desire of women is not discussed does

00:29:53.320 he only mean sex here or does he also i always thought this meant you know cuddling no he does

00:29:58.280 not just mean sex no he means cuddling uh massages things like that it's it's meant to be inclusive

00:30:04.780 of uh all sorts of touch with friends i always like really appreciate it when friends are just

00:30:08.840 like touchy people. It feels like I like know where I stand with them. I hate it. Oh, do you?

00:30:15.000 You're just recoiling. I shouldn't say I hate it. But when guys do like the back pat, I'm like,

00:30:20.120 oh, OK, what's your what's your problem? Are we are we in a fight?

00:30:24.340 So I think this is as good a time as any to discuss the sexism that runs through the book.

00:30:29.760 Chapman, again, is a conservative pastor. He very plainly subscribes to certain gender roles

00:30:35.740 and marriages. In one late chapter, there is a story about a marriage that appears to involve

00:30:41.900 a potentially abusive husband. According to her, he is mistreating her, verbally berating her,

00:30:48.380 telling her that he hates her frequently. He refuses counseling and therapy. She goes to

00:30:54.580 Chapman. She says all of her friends were telling her to leave him. In the early editions of the

00:30:59.660 book, Chapman theorizes that the guy's love language is physical touch and his advice is

00:31:05.600 for the wife to start initiating sex frequently and more aggressively no way she says that will 0.58

00:31:13.180 be hard for her because sex with him makes her feel used and unloved oh my god tells her to deal 1.00

00:31:21.000 with it by remembering jesus's sermon on the mount in order to gather the strength holy shit look i 0.99

00:31:27.560 wanted to make a sermon on the mount joke but it's like a little too serious of a situation 0.51

00:31:32.500 It's a really dark anecdote, actually, that he's just presenting this as like, 0.99

00:31:36.440 fuck him until he's nice to you, basically, or like give him what he wants. 0.99

00:31:40.540 There's a husband who is fairly strongly implied to be 1.00

00:31:43.760 abusive or at least mistreating her significantly.

00:31:46.780 He's not involved in the therapy. 1.00

00:31:48.580 And the advice based on a guess about his love language is to fuck him more. 0.99

00:31:54.020 He doesn't need to change his behavior at all. 1.00

00:31:55.760 It's only her that needs to change how she reacts to it.

00:31:57.820 In the newer editions, he changes the story so that his advice is just to be physically affectionate, ruffle the guy's hair, things like that.

00:32:06.840 And then she asks about sex.

00:32:09.640 OK.

00:32:09.980 After which his advice is to engage in it more slowly over time as she begins to feel more loved and appreciated.

00:32:18.460 But that's again, just do this thing and he will spontaneously treat you better, which is like not my understanding of abuse dynamics.

00:32:24.760 Right.

00:32:25.020 If you're nice to him and ruffle his hair, he'll get less bad.

00:32:27.980 I don't know.

00:32:28.700 He basically toned down how problematic the advice is, but I'm not sure that it actually

00:32:33.560 changes how effective it would be.

00:32:35.520 Right.

00:32:35.820 And there's a sort of like every marriage can be saved vibe running through this, right?

00:32:39.760 Every problem can be solved by doing love language analysis, no matter how severe the

00:32:44.560 crisis is.

00:32:45.940 And when you're looking at a little anecdote like this one, it really jumps out at you

00:32:50.300 where you're just like, oh.

00:32:51.200 Now I'm becoming more shocked that he didn't tell that one lady to start playing softball. 0.61

00:32:55.740 It's actually your problem.

00:32:57.000 Since that anecdote was in the first book, that softball league was taking place in the 1980s.

00:33:02.700 So I don't think she was allowed. 1.00

00:33:05.060 This is a no-wife zone. 1.00

00:33:06.440 This is where we go when our wives are giving birth or their moms are dying. 0.98

00:33:10.780 What do you think your love language is, Peter?

00:33:12.980 Did you get more insight into yourself reading this?

00:33:15.080 Truly, I don't know.

00:33:16.020 I can mostly do a process of elimination.

00:33:18.960 I didn't do the quiz at the end of the book.

00:33:21.220 I want to take it so bad right now.

00:33:22.400 If I had the process of elimination, I think I land somewhere around words of affirmation, acts of service.

00:33:31.900 So does this mean I should tell you you're smart and funny and do podcast chores?

00:33:35.560 Absolutely.

00:33:36.400 You'll learn more about that in the five love languages of podcasters.

00:33:40.420 His next book.

00:33:41.600 Although I guess, as you said earlier, the question isn't what is your love language, but what is your wife's love language?

00:33:47.600 Right.

00:33:48.000 And why isn't it putting up the shelf that you said you were going to put up?

00:33:50.220 I was reading off that one anecdote to Lee about the guy not painting the bedroom, and she was like, interesting, interesting comparison.

00:34:02.800 She's tried every modal verb with you, Peter.

00:34:05.300 She's tried should, would, could.

00:34:07.380 Has she tried complimenting the things I do do?

00:34:11.280 Peter, you've been podcasting great today.

00:34:14.000 this is also a good segue into like the updates in the new edition like i mentioned there are

00:34:22.580 handful of editions of this book with the big mass market retool occurring in 2015

00:34:28.840 giving it the old roll doll so in the new version there are a lot of like little changes designed

00:34:36.500 to make the book less expressly sexist less reactionary overall less overtly religious

00:34:43.180 Early editions are fairly expressly Christian.

00:34:46.660 Jesus washing the feet of his disciples is an example of an act of service in the early editions.

00:34:52.760 All of that gets removed.

00:34:54.420 That means I don't have to wash your feet when we hang out in New York.

00:34:57.540 I'm glad about that.

00:34:59.260 The sexism in the earlier editions, pretty much endless.

00:35:03.100 Yeah.

00:35:03.320 There's one couple in turmoil, and Chapman asks the husband what he loves about his wife.

00:35:10.000 The guy says, she is a good mother.

00:35:12.240 She is also a good housekeeper and an excellent cook when she chooses to cook. 1.00

00:35:17.820 Ooh, good one. 1.00

00:35:19.560 Throw that with the knife.

00:35:21.020 About 40 pages later, there's an entirely different couple,

00:35:24.640 and Chapman asks the husband how he knows his wife loves him.

00:35:29.040 The husband says, oh, I've always felt loved by her, Dr. Chapman.

00:35:33.320 She is the best housekeeper in the world.

00:35:35.720 She is an excellent cook.

00:35:37.440 She keeps my clothes washed and ironed.

00:35:40.060 She is wonderful about doing things with the children.

00:35:42.660 All of these seem to have come from, like, the 1950s or, like, some weird world where, like, only the men are working and the women are at home. 0.66

00:35:52.220 Right.

00:35:52.440 This is the 90s.

00:35:53.500 Most of these couples, both people are working.

00:35:56.600 But even if that was your dynamic, it still doesn't make sense to, like, list off the chores as the reason that you feel loved.

00:36:05.580 Like, surely there was something more to traditional relationships, even in Christian households, than just like this transactional, he makes the money, I do the cooking and cleaning. 0.55

00:36:16.860 Yeah. 0.98

00:36:17.100 I keep just reading this shit being like, it's just not what love is, right? 0.99

00:36:20.620 Like, I feel like I'm losing it. 0.99

00:36:22.480 That's like that review of the Star Wars prequels where it's like, describe the characters without describing their jobs or their clothes.

00:36:30.660 Yeah.

00:36:31.240 And like, no one can do it.

00:36:32.320 All of that disappears from new editions.

00:36:34.720 the end of the book again has two love language quizzes one for each spouse okay the way it works

00:36:43.520 is it presents two statements and you choose which one resonates with you more and then it does that

00:36:50.160 about 20 times and by the end of it you you know your love language right okay the statements in

00:36:54.760 the new edition are functionally identical for husbands and wives just with the gender swapped

00:37:00.920 like it's two versions of the same quiz.

00:37:03.220 But in the early editions,

00:37:05.280 they had all these weird differences.

00:37:06.880 Oh, hell yeah.

00:37:07.820 So it's like when you're vacuuming 1.00

00:37:09.260 or whatever for the women. 1.00

00:37:11.300 Not super far from what's about to happen.

00:37:13.380 Okay.

00:37:14.400 So for men, the statement is, 0.83

00:37:16.740 I feel loved when my wife does the laundry. 0.98

00:37:19.720 And for women, it's changed to,

00:37:22.180 I feel loved when my husband helps with the laundry.

00:37:26.520 For men, you have,

00:37:28.180 when my wife cooks a meal for me,

00:37:29.820 I know that she loves me.

00:37:31.680 For women, it's when my husband helps clean up after a meal, I know that he loves me. 0.91

00:37:37.140 So basically, we're just assuming that the women are doing the laundry and the cooking. 0.99

00:37:41.120 Right. 0.85

00:37:41.420 And it's like, if he's doing this, it's as a helper.

00:37:44.520 For men, you have keeping the house clean is an important act of service. 0.90

00:37:49.900 Do you want to guess what the women version is? 1.00

00:37:52.100 Oh, when like when my husband takes one chore off my hands. 1.00

00:37:55.240 It's I love when my husband helps clean the house.

00:37:58.260 Helps clean the house. 0.99

00:37:59.240 One of the funnier ones for men, it's I love having sex with my wife. 0.99

00:38:04.140 And for women, it's changed to I love cuddling with my husband. 0.99

00:38:07.560 Oh, there is there is no representation in this book for horny women. 0.90

00:38:12.240 There is absolutely none. 1.00

00:38:14.160 Women are asexual creatures in this book. 1.00

00:38:17.580 It is baffling. 1.00

00:38:18.520 Yeah, especially considering that men get both sex and RVs.

00:38:21.920 I feel like for a self-help book, that's like pretty three dimensional.

00:38:24.560 There are others and like many of them are very subtle, but weird.

00:38:28.140 Like, there's one that I can't quite put my finger on, but it's odd to me.

00:38:32.700 For women, it says, I like it when my husband helps out despite being busy.

00:38:37.420 OK.

00:38:37.900 But then the male version is, I like it when my wife helps out despite having other things to do.

00:38:44.360 Oh. 0.54

00:38:44.800 Like, the term busy is reserved for men.

00:38:47.580 Right.

00:38:48.240 Because that's, like, a work term.

00:38:49.740 Yeah.

00:38:50.120 It's, like, work adjacent.

00:38:51.480 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:38:51.700 You can't be busy with, like, house stuff or kids stuff.

00:38:54.220 No, no.

00:38:54.620 You're never busy.

00:38:55.380 You just have things to do. 1.00

00:38:57.000 It's like, come on, you don't know what busy means, lady. 1.00

00:39:02.080 I got a softball game you don't have shit to do. 0.99

00:39:06.400 My favorite, my absolute favorite one, for wives, it says, I love it when my husband gives me a massage. 0.99

00:39:13.400 But for husbands, it says, I love it when my wife rubs my back.

00:39:17.980 Oh, what? 1.00

00:39:18.960 Less gay, right? 0.85

00:39:20.320 It's like, come on, I'm not a lady. 0.98

00:39:22.820 I don't get massages.

00:39:24.080 I get my back rubbed.

00:39:25.260 You call it a massage. 0.99

00:39:26.140 I call it heterosexual first base. 0.64

00:39:29.180 I'm going to a spa to get my HFB. 0.95

00:39:32.240 So that's the book. 0.99

00:39:34.040 Now, with all of this weird sexist shit going on under the hood here, our attuned listeners 0.99

00:39:40.340 and perhaps you, Mike, are thinking, what's this guy think about gay people? 1.00

00:39:45.880 Oh, shit. 1.00

00:39:47.460 God, I hadn't even thought about this. 1.00

00:39:49.480 I just like took it for granted that like, of course, it's heteronormative.

00:39:52.660 Gay people don't exist in this book.

00:39:54.760 They are not mentioned. No anecdotes about them. Of course. Nothing. It is like the female orgasm.

00:40:00.560 It is just not discussed or implied. But Chapman maintains a website, which at least at one point

00:40:08.600 included a little blog. And a few years ago, a blogger named Kristen May went digging around on

00:40:14.540 it. So this is a Q&A. And the question is, my son has recently told us that he is gay.

00:40:21.900 I'm having a very hard time dealing with it.

00:40:24.180 How can I help him with this and still show love?

00:40:27.600 And I have sent you Gary Chapman's response.

00:40:30.260 He says,

00:40:31.180 Disappointment is a common emotion when a parent hears one of their children indicate that he or she is gay.

00:40:36.860 Men and women are made for each other. 1.00

00:40:38.700 It is God's design.

00:40:40.140 Anything other than that is outside of that primary design of God. 0.98

00:40:44.500 Now, I'm not going to try to explain all the ins and outs of homosexuality, 0.94

00:40:48.740 but what I will say is this.

00:40:50.100 We love our children no matter what.

00:40:52.700 Express your disappointment and or your lack of understanding,

00:40:56.320 but make it clear that you love them and that you will continue to love them no matter what.

00:41:00.260 I would also encourage you to ask your child to do some serious reading

00:41:03.460 and or talk to a counselor to try to understand him or herself better

00:41:07.060 while continuing to affirm your love.

00:41:10.160 Yikes.

00:41:10.860 I'd actually love somebody to follow up and be like, 0.76

00:41:13.200 actually, could you explain the ins and outs of homosexuality?

00:41:16.180 I'd like to hear what you think homosexuality consists of.

00:41:19.300 I want to know what he thinks of as the ins and outs, you know?

00:41:23.680 I feel like this could be worse.

00:41:26.520 He's like, you know, you love them no matter what.

00:41:28.840 I mean, look, Chapman is not a psychopath, right?

00:41:31.960 He is a dummy, but I don't think that he is, like, truly evil in the way that, like, Matt Walsh or whatever is, you know?

00:41:41.100 Right, right. 1.00

00:41:41.380 But this is the sort of, like, hate the sin, not the sinner shit that keeps kids in the closet. 1.00

00:41:49.180 Right. Express your disappointment and or your lack of understanding. 0.99

00:41:52.500 You will have two emotions, disappointment and lack of understanding.

00:41:55.960 Right.

00:41:56.320 There is also a section of the website titled Understanding Homosexuality.

00:42:01.480 Oh, no. 0.71

00:42:02.100 And I will send you the text of that in full.

00:42:04.940 The top is responsible for bringing the lube.

00:42:07.220 Wow, Gary, that's really very detailed.

00:42:10.340 He says,

00:42:11.460 I'm meeting more and more Christian parents

00:42:13.620 who are struggling in their efforts

00:42:15.200 to understand homosexuality.

00:42:17.080 Almost all parents,

00:42:18.280 even those who say we should tolerate all lifestyles,

00:42:21.060 will feel shock and deep pain

00:42:22.700 if one of their children announces that he is homosexual.

00:42:25.520 The initial reaction is that they have failed their children

00:42:28.080 in some critical way.

00:42:29.520 The fact is that research has failed

00:42:31.040 to discover the causes of homosexuality. 1.00

00:42:33.180 We simply don't know why some people

00:42:35.080 have same-sex attraction.

00:42:36.640 So what's a Christian parent to do?

00:42:38.100 The example of Jesus would lead us to spend time with them, communicate with them, and demonstrate love for them, even though we do not approve of their lifestyle. 1.00

00:42:48.340 Okay, again, could have been worse.

00:42:50.540 Yeah, it's more of the same sort of like, look, they are awful and gross, but you must still love them. 0.82

00:42:56.840 I poked around on the archived version of the website and found at least one other section titled Relating Positively to a Child Who is a Homosexual that suggests Christian counseling for your gay child and ends with, quote, your child's choices need not destroy your life. 0.96

00:43:19.620 Me being gay has destroyed my parents' lives. 0.55

00:43:22.440 I think that's fair. 0.94

00:43:23.740 These dated to like 2013 and 2014 again.

00:43:27.520 They're discovered by this blogger a couple years ago, I think 2021, and then scrubbed from the site a few weeks after.

00:43:35.480 So all of this has vanished.

00:43:37.400 I found one other interesting little tidbit.

00:43:40.380 In 2012, he did an interview with the Christian Post where he said that part of what led to the topic of sex being perverted by our culture was belief in evolution.

00:43:53.740 OK, there's a lot going on with Chapman behind the scenes. 0.93

00:43:56.580 And basically, like all of your instincts about his shitty religious beliefs, probably 0.97

00:44:02.580 correct. 0.77

00:44:03.340 I mean, one explanation of them scrubbing this from the website to be slightly generous

00:44:06.940 is that, like, maybe this just isn't his belief anymore.

00:44:10.060 And he's like, oh, that's where I was 10 years ago.

00:44:12.200 But that no longer reflects who I am.

00:44:14.700 It's possible.

00:44:15.280 But I do think that, A, we might have seen him say that in some format and I couldn't

00:44:19.720 find it.

00:44:20.320 Yeah.

00:44:20.480 And B, we know that they're trying to market this book to a mass audience, right?

00:44:25.480 Right.

00:44:25.840 My best read on it is that they were like, oh, that's not good.

00:44:29.320 That's a little outdated.

00:44:30.380 Let's knock that off the website.

00:44:32.220 And we are good.

00:44:33.780 Right.

00:44:34.060 I agree there's some possibility that he's softened on it, but I don't see any specific

00:44:39.420 reason to believe that that's true.

00:44:41.300 Yeah. 0.99

00:44:41.400 There's not like love languages for like same sex couples. 0.98

00:44:43.820 Right.

00:44:43.960 i also don't think that you go from evolution denying pastor to like lgbt positive that sound

00:44:52.020 you hear is thousands of gay people removing their love language from their hinge profile

00:44:55.820 so there's like a meta item here as we're talking about his religion and what comes out of it

00:45:04.220 there's like this phenomenon of christian pastors publishing this sort of self-help and relationship

00:45:10.500 advice that I think is worth drilling down on because it's so ubiquitous. And I think the blog,

00:45:16.660 the old website, is a good example of how pernicious it can be because not only do the

00:45:21.740 books have some weird undercurrents, but also there's like a pipeline into some more expressly 0.98

00:45:27.900 reactionary shit. Right. And then at the macro level, you have the Christian publishing industry, 0.98

00:45:33.820 which I kind of want to talk about a bit, if you will allow me. I love this shit because I grew up 0.99

00:45:39.040 in the church, I kind of grew up straddling these worlds that there's a whole sector of the economy 1.00

00:45:45.560 of like Christian music, Christian books, and like none of these activities follow the same rules

00:45:52.040 as like secular world. Like there's all kinds of weird like bulk buying that goes on. And there's

00:45:57.520 these bands that are like huge in Christian world who like no one has heard of outside of that world.

00:46:02.800 Right. It's really interesting. There's like this weird insularity, but it's like 30 percent of the

00:46:06.500 U.S. population. It's like a huge market. By the way, I would have pinned you as having

00:46:10.960 a religious upbringing when you said the word Jesus because you were like Jesus. You really

00:46:16.240 hit the Jesus. I was like that. Wait till you hear me say Beelzebub. 0.94

00:46:22.460 Mephistopheles. I think it's hard for most people to comprehend how influential and vast

00:46:28.720 the Christian publishing industry was, especially in the 80s and 90s. There's a book written a few

00:46:35.260 years back by Daniel Vaca, a professor at Brown, called Evangelicals Incorporated that tracks

00:46:42.040 the origins of this industry. It was a pretty good primer. So the modern Christian publishing

00:46:47.920 company traces back to about the 1930s when two evangelical publishing companies spring up,

00:46:55.000 Erdmann's and Zondervan. During the Great Depression and through the post-war era,

00:47:00.600 these companies played a big role in creating the sort of like distinctive culture of American

00:47:06.400 Protestantism. They are early pioneers of this dynamic that we're kind of talking about,

00:47:12.060 where you have this like a robust, culturally conservative media ecosystem that exists

00:47:17.760 alongside the mainstream secular one. Right. And if you're not looking right at it,

00:47:23.520 you might not see it at all. In the 80s, you start to see mainstream media recognize the scale

00:47:28.560 of Christian publishing. In 1988, HarperCollins buys Zondervan. At their peak in the 90s,

00:47:36.560 there were 4,000 Christian bookstores in this country. Barnes & Noble, I don't think ever got

00:47:42.860 over 1,000 locations to put that in perspective. For the last 50 years has not been uncommon to

00:47:47.680 see evangelical books top the nationwide bestseller lists. Now, these publishers would

00:47:54.120 publish like all sorts of expressly religious books, of course, but Zondervan in particular

00:47:59.820 pioneers a space for books that contain what Baca calls an ambient evangelicalism. Books that

00:48:09.400 include conservative Christian tropes and principles, but aren't expressly Christian,

00:48:15.840 or at least aren't holding out their religiousness too aggressively, right? And I think that space

00:48:21.800 is very firmly where this book sits, right? It's guided by conservative evangelical principles.

00:48:28.660 It's written by an expressly religious pastor. And it nonetheless is carefully holding itself

00:48:34.860 out as largely secular and non-ideological, right? Chapman's not hiding that he's a Christian

00:48:40.960 pastor, but I think he would say, well, this has advice for everyone, right? It sort of like

00:48:46.180 maintains a deniability that the book is particularly religious or influenced by any

00:48:51.840 particular ideology. And in recent years, Chapman and the publishers have clearly taken care to

00:48:58.440 scrub much of like the residual religiosity from the book. And I think that's important because I

00:49:04.160 think the veneer of secularism allows them to launder some very reactionary thoughts and

00:49:10.640 principles to a mainstream audience that doesn't actually understand what exactly they're being fed

00:49:17.040 right and also provides like a way of entry into a more explicitly reactionary media apparatus

00:49:22.780 right so you have like the latent homophobia and sexism of the book yeah but then if you take it

00:49:29.280 to the next step and go to this guy's like seminar or visit his website you're just like confronted

00:49:34.060 with the express denial that LGBT people are valid, right? 0.73

00:49:39.020 And evolution. 1.00

00:49:39.880 Yeah.

00:49:40.520 And you're just like one step away

00:49:42.280 from a very conservative sort of worldview.

00:49:46.880 And I don't think people know that about this book.

00:49:49.140 Yeah, that was on the back of all the posters

00:49:50.900 in the Airbnbs, but I never checked. 0.99

00:49:53.100 By the way, gay people don't exist. 1.00

00:49:55.040 What's your love language? 1.00

00:49:56.400 I love women and women only because I am a man. 1.00

00:50:00.500 Women in softball, baby. 1.00

00:50:02.500 Sports.

00:50:02.940 It is interesting because like on some level, like, yes, this is true, but also like the vast, vast, vast majority of people who know about the love languages like never bothered to pick up the book. 0.98

00:50:14.480 It's sort of like, well, thank God nobody reads any of these fucking books. 0.97

00:50:17.600 Right. That's the thing is like, it's great in this particular case that no one read the book. 0.99

00:50:24.080 Whereas like, yeah, The Secret sells 30 million copies and no one knows that it's about like quantum physics magic.

00:50:30.820 Yeah. With this, there's like a two sentence summary of this book that everyone would benefit from. Right. And so you hear that summary and that's all your brain processes and you move on. And that's great. Yeah. If you actually saw what that came out of, you'd be like, oh, it's actually kind of bad that this sold 15 million copies. Right. It's not ideal.

00:50:52.740 And one of the interesting things about that concept of ambient evangelicalism was that there were people in Christian media whose express goal was to drive Christian principles in the broader culture without it being clear what they were doing.

00:51:12.520 Right.

00:51:12.700 And when you look at a book like this through that lens, it becomes a little more unsettling.

00:51:17.560 Frankly, I don't know how much this is driving Christian principles, but the idea that someone can build a book around really rigid gender roles, really antiquated gender roles and make it a 15 million book bestseller is a little bit disturbing. 0.99

00:51:37.380 It doesn't make me feel good about the ability of our culture to digest this shit properly. 0.98

00:51:43.380 It's funny to me because, like, the gender stuff actually bugs me more than the gay stuff. 0.99

00:51:48.700 Just not having gay couples in your book is, like, pretty bad, but also, like, whatever.

00:51:52.980 This is a book for straight couples.

00:51:54.260 Fine. 1.00

00:51:55.260 But, like, the gender stuff is so fucking pernicious. 1.00

00:51:58.560 It puts all of the moral agency on women, no matter what the problem in the relationship is. 1.00

00:52:03.740 That's so ubiquitous in the culture, just that, like, women are in charge of fixing fucking everything. 1.00

00:52:08.780 Someone being like, I don't like gay people. It's so transparent that it almost feels better than someone writing out like 20 anecdotes that have really weird gender dynamics. 0.99

00:52:22.720 A, it becomes like harder to explain why this sucks. And B, it almost like speaks to someone's worldview more. Right.

00:52:31.380 I did a search for like criticism of this book and you find things here and there.

00:52:36.760 Some people were questioning, you know, how scientific it is, et cetera.

00:52:41.200 Right.

00:52:41.520 But what I also continuously stumbled into was like on social media of various types,

00:52:47.720 the individual comments from women raised in conservative households who read the book

00:52:53.920 and were like, the gender dynamics made me uncomfortable.

00:52:58.240 Yeah. I didn't find too many people writing at length about that, but it was a common theme.

00:53:04.760 Yeah. It says I should ruffle my abusive husband's hair.

00:53:07.520 Right. There were people noticing that this sucks, but it just didn't get a lot of play. 0.98

00:53:12.120 But this is something that is like becoming a theme on the show, 0.93

00:53:15.300 how these books take over the culture without anyone really noticing or caring.

00:53:19.880 Right.

00:53:20.140 OK, 30 million people bought The Secret, but like there's no reason for like,

00:53:23.700 you know, the New York Times to write a lengthy review or for anyone to publish a sort of thorough

00:53:29.180 authoritative debunking, something like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which like I could not find 0.95

00:53:35.060 lengthy reviews of the only people that have debunked it are other fucking real estate 0.95

00:53:39.920 grifters, like people trying to sell their own book. If you're someone who is like looking for 0.96

00:53:44.480 sort of 101 style advisor, yeah, you see this on a poster somewhere and you're like, oh, I'm going

00:53:48.560 to check this out. There's really no authoritative source being like, here are the reasons why it

00:53:53.660 doesn't hold up. It's sort of like the the elite liberal media has kind of just been like, eh,

00:53:59.280 it's just for the plebs. Right. But like these books are wildly influential. And that's why you 1.00

00:54:04.840 need to review them. Yeah, exactly. 30 million people are reading the secret because 15 million

00:54:09.260 people are reading five love languages. Yeah. So like, yeah, maybe pick it up and see whether it

00:54:14.980 says that like women should be doing every household chore, you know. Right. Right. I think 1.00

00:54:19.600 you're right it stems from an elitism i can't believe the overwhelming advice from a show

00:54:26.160 about books it's like whatever you do don't read the books thank god nobody's reading

If Books Could Kill - April 20, 2023

The 5 Love Languages

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