Hello and welcome to "Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage".

I am so glad you are here.

This is the marriage seminar for people who hate marriage seminars!

I've got a kick out of watching the couples when they first come in on Friday night.

The girls are all lit up and just...

"I got him here! I got him here! I got him here!"

And the guys are going: "Oh, man, I can't believe" you know "I got here!"

But it's cool, guys. You can relax. You're gonna love it.

This is not one of those "Let's beat up on the men for not being women" seminars.

Yes! That's what I'm talking about!

What is it with that anyway?

Man, you know, you ask a lot of women to describe their ideal man and they'll describe another woman.

What's up with that?

So, we're not gonna do that. We're going to just going with this thing in a normal healthy way.

We are men. Men are men. We are not sick, we're not perverted, we're not twisted.

Well, you know, we're not broken. We are men!

Alright? And God... Yeah... !

And God made us the way we are for a reason.

And I'm gonna show you, girls, what that reason is.

OK? And I'm gonna try to explain to you the world of men a little bit through this thing.

We will also discuss the women's side of things as well.

But I really want you to understand this men thing. Women are much more complicated than men.

Men are very simple. Simple. S-E-X simple. Alright? So...

That's what I'm talking about! OK?

So, we're gonna have... We should have a really really great time.

Now, tonight we're gonna do a session called "The Tale of Two Brains".

Hence, the two brains.

And we're going to be discussing how men and women think very differently from each other.

Why is that important? Because men and women are very quick to make into heart problems

what are essentially head problems.

A woman acts a certain way, a guy feels she doesn't care about him.

He says: "There's something wrong with your heart. You don't care about me." No, no.

It's the way she processes information.

And the same with the guy. A man thinks in a certain way.

And the woman thinks there's something wrong with his heart. No, it's his head. OK?

So, I'm gonna try and explain to you what that's all about.

Then tomorrow morning we're gonna do a session called: "Why does he do that?"

"Why does she do that?"

OK? So, you see, one thing is to understand men and women in general.

It's another one to understand the one you got stuck with, OK?

So I'm gonna show you how you can discover specifically what makes your spouse tick.

And it's powerful information that will absolutely revolutionize your relationship.

Alright? Then we're gonna do what I call: "The Yo Mama session".

And it's called: "The No.1 Key to Incredible Sex"

And boys, if you'll miss that, there's just something wrong with you! OK?

So, you gotta check it out. And then we're gonna end with:

"How to stay married and not kill anybody." OK?

All very deep emotional stuff.

Now lot of people say: "Well, what's your background, what's your deal"?

Well, my background is that I'm a minister. Now, if you're not much of a church-goer, don't let that make you nervous.

Some of my biggest fans are heathens. Alright?

And this isn't one of those things where we sneak you and then beat you over the head with the Bible. Alright?

But I do have a Bible verse I need to show you, OK?

Because I found a Bible verse that if you follow the advice from this one Bible verse,

you will never ever ever have a problem in marriage.

How many of you think that's worth seeing?

You follow the advice of this one verse, you'll never have a problem in marriage.

"It is good for a man not to marry."

It says: "It's good for a man not to marry."

Alright? "Why would he say that? That's such a terrible thing to say."

Because, he goes on to explain: "He who marries will have trouble in this life."

You know, people come up to me: "Pastor Mark! Pastor Mark! Something's wrong! Something's wrong!"

I say: "What is it?" "We've got trouble in our marriage."

I go: "No, that's about right."

There ain't nothing wrong! That's pretty normal.

Now, you don't hear these verses read at weddings very often.

We kinda downplay that.

You don't see those on hallmark cards.

You don't see 'em on cakes with pretty calligraphy:

"He who marries will have trouble... "

"...but it's too late for you!"

You see, if that's the case, you know, why you can't marry, because marriage is absolutely wonderful.

It's great! It's fantastic!

But it's not that's without trouble.

And I want to show one other verse to you. Now, you do not have the deep theological training that I have

so you might have a hard time understanding this verse

but I'll try to explain it to you. This one's found in Proverbs

and it goes like this: "Where no oxen are, the manger is clean."

Let me explain that to you, OK?

What does that mean? Well, it means if you're gonna have an ox,

you're going to have ox poo, alright?

Now, if you don't like poo, and most of us are not real big fans of poo,

if you don't like poo, the temptation is - get rid of ox!

"You're preaching, brother!"

I don't want to get rid of the ox, alright?

So why would you keep the ox around? Because, it goes, the second half of the verse, it says:

"But much increase comes by the strength of the ox."

Well, now, there's the Catch 22: on the one hand we all love the benefit of the ox,

but nobody likes the poo.

And what it's trying to tell us here is you cannot have one without the other.

There is no such thing as a poo-free marriage.

It just doesn't exist!

Unless you shoot the ox!

But that leads to other problems.

So this weekend is not about attaining a state of perfection in your life, alright?

It's about getting a proper positive to poo ratio in your life.

You see, because if all you get is poo, then you've got one sick ox.

Are you hearin' me? Alright?

So, there's no such thing as a poo-free marriage.

For those of you who are having hard times grasping this, I have a mathematical version of it.

It goes: Ox = poo / positive

Some would say positive / poo, but anyway, it's the ratio that we wanna get going here, OK?

Now, marriage is a wonderful institution.

Statistically speaking, we know that married people are healthier than single people,

they are actually happier than single people, assuming you are doing this right.

You can be profoundly unhappy.

They actually make more money than single people and I'll mention a little bit later why that's true, OK?

They have better sex than single people. Now, you don't see that in our culture.

You know, in all the movies and shows, you know, it's the single people all having a really great sex. And the married people...

You know, someone says: "How's your sex life?" "Are you kidding? I'm married. "

And it's not true. It's a bunch of baloney, OK!?

Married people have great sex compared to single... Single people don't even know what they're doing, for crying out loud!

And statistically speaking, married people live longer than single people.

It's particularly true for men.

Statistically speaking, one of the most dangerous things

a man can do in America today is to remain single.

It is the equivalent of smoking two and half packets of cigarettes a day.

It's true. They've found out that if you take someone who has two and half packets a day,

and health problems, and the shortness of life and all these difficulties,

and a single guy, it's pretty much the same.

I guess the worst would be a single guy who smokes two and half packets of cigarettes a day.

Alright? Marriage is wonderful, it's great, it rocks! I love it! OK?

If you do it right. Now, the problem here is, so many people don't do it right.

And it's not that they don't wanna do it, it's that they don't know what to do.

We live in a culture today that seems, somehow in a relationship area to be completely clueless.

We seriously do not know what to do. This weekend, what I want to do is show you specific things you can do

that will absolutely energize and transform your married life.

How many of you think that's worth hearing?

So...

Now I want to talk to you about what I call "the laws of relational physics".

You see, the laws of physics affect everybody, whether you believe them or not.

If I step off the stage, I'm probably in all likelihood going to go down.

If I start floating around you might gonna freak out and run.

Why? 'Cause the laws of physics... "Well, I don't believe that!"

...no matter what I believe! I'm going down! Right?

It doesn't matter if I'm a born-again Christian, it doesn't matter if I'm a heathen, I'm goin... 'cause it affects everybody!

Well, just like that there are the laws of relational physics.

And they affect everybody, whether you believe them or not.

And this might come as a little bit of a shock to those of you who are church people,

especially hearing that from a minister.

But the truth is you don't have to be a Christian to have a great marriage.

I know a lot of heathens who have wonderful marriages.

I know a lot of born-again Christians who have horrible marriages.

Why is that? They're breaking all the rules.

And they assume that somehow the rules don't apply to them. But they do.

Here's an example: if you're driving a car at 80 mph around a curve that says only 40,

and you keep going 80, chances are you're gonna get hurt

even if you're listening to a Christian radio station.

Even if you have a statue of Jesus on the... He might be going: "Aaaaaaa!"

But...

Why is that? Because the laws of physics still affect you. But for some miracle you're going to get hurt.

Same true with relational physics. And I wanna explain that to you, I will take a look at that.

Now, this weekend I'm gonna be speaking to you in basic stereotypes.

In other words: "Women generally tend to be a certain way..." "Men generally tend to be a certain way..."

But they're not all that way, I get it!

Some of the people just have a cow: "That's not true for all....!"

I'm admitting, it's not! Alright?

Just generally speaking. We don't have time to get into all the shades of grey.

But generally speaking, men are certain way, women are certain way.

If I start describing something that's not you, don't have a cow, just interpolate for your relationships.

In Debbie's and I relationship there are areas where we are completely opposite of a typical man and woman.

I remember when I was first studying this stuff, I thougt: "Oh, man! I'm a woman!"

So just interpolate. I will say this: that if you tend to be one way in a certain relationship

your wife generally will be the other way. I don't think I've run across the couple yet, and I'm sure there are out there,

that act the exact same way.

So if you break the rules, chances are your spouse's breaking them right with you. And you'll just flip on the steel.

OK? For example, a typical stereotype: "Men are more interested in sex than their wives."

Why would you say that? Because, generally, it's true.

But it's not always true. There are lot of relationships where there wife is much more interested in sex than her husband.

And if you're here tonight, and your wife is much more interested in sex than you are

I think I speak for all the men here when I say that we hate you!

Please don't tell us who you are.

We will hurt you, alright? So...

So just go with the flow, it'll be cool. We'll have a great time discussing this thing about marriage.

I believe marriage is a life-giving institution.

We live in a culture today that believes marriage is a life-sucking institution.

"It will suck the life out of you!"

And that's why we say: "Make sure you're old enough, make sure you have enough money,"

"Make sure you have enough education, make sure you've been dating for 37 years first... "

"Make sure, you know, get all the stuff. Why?! You've gotta get everything together and ready, so when you say 'I do' you can withstand it."

But it's not that way. It'll give you life, if you'll do it right.

If you do this right, marriage can be the closest thing to heaven on earth.

If you do it wrong...

Well, you fill in the blanks, OK? So now,

we're gonna start discussing men's brains - women's brains.

and how they're very different from each other.

Now, I wanna start with men's brains.

Alright? Now, men's brains are very unique. Men's brains are made up of little boxes.

And we have a box for everything.

We've got a box for the car, we've got a box for the money, we've got a box for the job, we've got a box for you,

we've got a box for the kids, we've got a box for your mother somewhere in the basement.