Healing Toxic Relationships: Love Lessons with Dr. Mark Hicks

Brad Minus: And welcome back to another episode of Life-Changing Challenges. I know we've been on a little bit of hiatus here for the last couple of weeks, and I appreciate everybody allowing me a little vacation. But I am back with, you know what? I probably should have came in like this. I. It's life changing challenges everybody.

I have Dr. Mark Hicks, also known as Dr. Love. No, actually just kidding. Dr. Mark Hicks. I have on with me today, mark. He's got a, he's got a book, that's, that's, that's out that pretty, pretty cool. And, it's called Learning Love. We're gonna talk about that a little bit later. He is also a speaker, a counselor.

He's a relationship specialist. He's got a doctor in ministry. So we're very, very excited to have him and had to learn about his journey into his, you know, his expertise now in relationships and you know, how he can make our relationships better. But anyway, mark, how you doing today? Doing great.

Glad to be here. Awesome, awesome. You know, I didn't give you my, intro question. I'm, I usually do that before we actually hit the record button, but I'm just gonna let you wing it, so here we go. Sure. Mark, can you tell us a little bit about your childhood? Where'd you grow up and what was it like to be Mark as a kid? 

Mark Hicks: It was really pretty good. I was very lucky. I have come to understand, through counseling, through just working with people that there are a lot of dysfunctional families out there. There are a lot of toxic relationships and I was one of the lucky ones.

I grew up with, parents that had a good marriage. No, marriage is perfect, of course, but theirs was great. They were high school sweethearts and were together, until my dad passed away. They had a happy life together. I was raised in, small town, Tennessee with just. All the stereotypes that you would, think come with that?

Just small town, living high school football on Friday nights. You know, there was 68 people in my graduating class. It was just all the beauty and sometimes the boredom of, the teenage years of the small town living. My sister and I had a great life growing up and an interesting part of that is that didn't happen by accident.

My dad actually did not have that kind of good story. His dad was a heavy drinker when he was a child. He quit that before I came along. I knew my grandfather was a really good guy. He was great to me, but he was not always a great guy. He was kind of a violent drunk when, my dad was young and my dad made a conscious decision when he was a young man.

When I have kids, I'm gonna raise them different than I was raised. And he did, he provided a great home for us. We had a great life. And so, yeah, I'm one of the lucky ones. 

Brad Minus: That's amazing. You know what, I consider myself a lucky one as well. I was an only child, but both my parents, you know, they love each other.

They love me. And, I was extremely lucky. Now, you know, we were growing up, you know, as a teenager, you're always like, it was almost cool to have the dysfunctional fact. 

Mark Hicks: Yeah. 

Brad Minus: You know what I mean? It was almost cool, but I'm with you. I was the one even in high school that Friday nights were for mom and dad to go to the movies or, go get a pizza or whatever, and I hung out with my friends on Saturday night.

That was just the way it was, except for. Football games and stuff like that. Sometimes they fell on a Friday, but when you were in school, I can't tell from here, but were you into sports as well? 

Mark Hicks: I was into sports. Yeah. I, played, some basketball and some soccer.

Soccer was new in east Tennessee when I was young. So I was one of the very first soccer players in the region of East Tennessee. Played goalie. Really enjoyed that. Just, I kind of liked the novelty of it because it wasn new, it wasn't something everyone was doing. And so I really had a good time with that.

So I was into sports, I was into a lot of things. I was on the student council. I was the. Tennessee State President of the Future Business Leaders of America, one of my claims to fame. So, I had kind of a variety of experience when I was in school and enjoyed all of it.

Brad Minus: I hear you. I even my dad to this day is like, oh, you're just a jack of all trades, but you're, you have a master of nothing. And I'm like, yeah, pretty much, so then you, you got a lot of education, so I imagine that you, did you go to to, to University Wright out of high school?

Mark Hicks: I did, I went to a junior college and like I say, my high school was very small, so I went to a school that doesn't exist anymore. It was a little high Wase college that's no longer, functioning. It was a nice little school, good place to get started coming from a small town. And then I went on and got a bachelor's degree, went got a master's degree, then got another master's degree, and then later in life in my late forties, got my doctorate.

Pretty much my entire twenties, was in graduate school, working on two different master's degrees. I have a master's in mental health counseling and a master's of divinity. Nice. 

Brad Minus: Where was that done? 

Mark Hicks: Graduated, with a bachelor's in psychology from Carson College. I, went to Southern Seminary, for my Master's of Divinity, and then to the University of Tennessee, for the master's in mental health counseling.

Brad Minus: Okay, well there's a discussion 'cause I bet you people, people would love to know what it is it like to go to a seminary for college. 

Mark Hicks: You know, it was interesting. I love the deep learning of life and that's what has really drawn me to, psychology and then spirituality and theology.

And I've sort of had both of those tracks, so I sort of bounced back and forth. I had the bachelor's in psychology, went to seminary. Studied spirituality and theology and then ended up studying counseling. And then I went and got my doctorate ministry, but I did my dissertation on recovery, addiction recovery and the theological and spiritual and church support aspects of that.

And so really what I've majored in is just. People of what makes us tick on a spiritual level, on a psychological level, on emotional level. You know what? I've always been drawn to? What really makes us live life the way we live it, for good or for bad? How do we live that good life? What makes us healthy people on an emotional level, on a spiritual level, psychological level?

And so, yeah, I, I really enjoyed, the work of seminary because you're studying these great theologians and philosophers, and especially back in the old days, there wasn't a lot of difference between theology and philosophy. It really was how spirituality affects life. And so I love studying it.

Brad Minus: Didn't answer my question, but That's okay. So like I said, it was, I think it was the difference of like, university of Tennessee versus the seminary. Oh, yeah, no, that, 

Mark Hicks: Yeah. But I actually love both. Yeah. It was very different. Of course. As you can imagine, seminary is a little more buttoned up.

More, more of a quiet place, more reserved. University of Tennessee, there was more going on. There was more action and, more trouble to get into. But it was, I, I really love both campuses and both experiences. 

Brad Minus: All right. Oh, so is it pretty much, a truthful statement to say that, when you're at the seminary?

No, no. Girls walking around with Daisy Dukes. 

Mark Hicks: Not generally. No. No, no. Okay. There's girls there, but, yeah, they tend to dress more conservatively, on the seminary campus at the University of Tennessee. Plenty of Daisy Dukes among other things. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. 

Mark Hicks: Yep, 

Brad Minus: What was the first thing you did coming outta school? You went right through. Mm-hmm. Except for the doctorate. That was later. But when you got your master's, obviously that was true. What was the first thing that you ended up doing when you came outta school? 

Mark Hicks: I ended up working in the United Methodist Church. I was pastoring. I also did some sideline work of, counseling, at a local hospital. Had a clinic there that I worked in on, some hours, but I was full-time. I. Pastor and have spent my life doing ministry. I did some international, mission work, lived overseas for a while.

But I also was always kind of drawn into the psychology of it. I did a lot of counseling as a pastor, but I also did things like, I had a free counseling clinic that I worked with the local. Charity organization that helped people with rent and, utilities and so forth. They came to me and they said, you know, we can hand out money, but we have people that need help on other levels and we can't help them.

And since I had the degrees in psychology and counseling and theology, that's like, you can kind of talk to a lot of people about a lot of different things. And so we set up a free counseling clinic, to do that. And so I've sort of been in, I've been in ministry, but it's been in a wide variety of them,

in addition to the traditional pastoring that everyone thinks of. I've been in recovery ministry, international mission work, counseling clinics, homeless ministry, a lot of different things. 

Brad Minus: Nice. So the, that charity that you mentioned, which actually helped people out with rent and, and that type of thing.

I was giving to. A charity called the Children's Cancer Center. I remember prior to this, we were talking about how our lives were affected by cancer. Mm-hmm. And that was exactly what their mission was.

It wasn't the mission of like, let's find out, a cure. Their mission was that they knew that families have issues when, when their kids goes into the hospital. 

Mark Hicks: Yes, 

Brad Minus: when they have A-M-L-A-L-L, because usually one of the two parents, if it's a two parent household, has to cut their hours or actually, you know, take a leave of absence whatsoever, and there's no money left, you know, and they, now they've cut a two income household down to one, and now they've got.

Gigantic bills they gotta take care of. Children's Cancer Center was one of those charities just like you worked for that helped people with carb power payments and utility payments and rent payments when their kids were in the hospital. So, happy that you did that. And obviously you've devoted your life to the ministry, so that's just something that has just been a part of your life, which we need more of you.

The question I've got is basically, it's interesting because I know that, you know, we've all got this idea that priests in the Christian faith, do not get married. But we know that pastors don't conform to that, you're able to have a family in the whole bit.

But, you know, sometimes we conflate the two. I know that a lot of people do. It's like, oh, you're a pastor, and they just, at first when you got into that, was that something that was automatic to people? Did they confuse the two and obviously, you know. Which didn't provide you with a lot of, prospects for love, or did you find that people knew the difference and it wasn't that big of a deal 

Mark Hicks: in the South where I grew up and went to school.

The Catholic faith is not as prominent. We have Catholic churches in the South, but it's much more, Protestant, and so, yeah, it was. Pretty well expected, that it's almost the opposite in, Protestant faith because people don't want single pastors. They want pastors with the traditional family.

There's a lot of pressure for that sometimes, within the Protestant, churches, they want the pastor to be married. They want the pastor to have children. It's. Seen as the traditional role. And so it was expected really. And in fact, there's a bit of pressure too. When I was in college and, had an eye towards going to seminary, there's really,

I don't know that I felt it deeply, but it's just sort of there. It's sort of this underline and you can see some people that are open about the pressure that you really need to find somebody in college and kind of check that off the list because especially if you're going into the church, they don't want single pastors.

They want you to have that stable, traditional kind of stereotype family. 

Brad Minus: Oh wow, okay. That's pressure. You got a pressure to find someone, which could, you know what? That kind of pressure could cause you to possibly choose the wrong person because of the pressure coming into from what you really love doing.

Now I do understand that you've been married twice. Yes. When did you meet your first wife 

Mark Hicks: in college. Oh, you did? Okay. Met, we met it, we met in college. Got married, right after college. And that was an absolute disaster. That was a horrible decision and coming from a very healthy, happy family growing up.

There's a just a sense that, well. Relationships just work. You know, if you're good people, they just work. And so I think I went into, adulthood with a rather naive idea of the world. I didn't really know the games that get played, the cruelty that's out there, the manipulation that's out there. I didn't understand a lot of things in the world coming from that.

Stereotype of small town America and the nice, happy, healthy family. And so, yeah, I got into a tremendous mess. What I thought was a good decision at the time ended up being a disaster. But because of my, religious background, but also just out of pure stubbornness and ego, I would not.

Think about divorce. I would not admit that there was a problem. I never told anyone that there was a problem in the marriage. I decided that I would be smart enough, strong enough, faithful enough, wise enough, whatever, enough that I would make this. Relationship work. And I stayed in a very toxic situation for 13 years with that attitude until I came to the point that I was just wishing for death, and really contemplated taking my own life.

At times, I never came to a place of really formulating a plan, but it certainly crossed my mind that I can't live like this. And that's when I decided that, I needed to be divorced or I needed to be dead, and I decided on divorce. 

Brad Minus: That's, you know, that's powerful what you said. What's the, okay, so you're, I'll be quite honest.

When you're talking to a Jewish kid, what is the church's. Or the Protestants. That's right. You, follow the Protestant faith, correct? Yeah. What is the Protestant view on 

Mark Hicks: divorce? It's different among different denominations. My denomination is United Methodist, so I was not fired for that.

I was able to keep my job. I was rejected by a lot of people. I remember one particular lady came in one day and really just told me how despicable I was and how horrible I was and how I did not deserve to be in ministry, that I was a bad example to the children of the church, et cetera, et cetera, because I was getting divorced.

And you know what really hurt at that moment was not so much that she was saying it, but I thought she might be right. 'cause I felt like a failure. I felt like that I had failed in my, all that, all that stubbornness, all that ego of all this. I would make it work. I had to admit I couldn't. I failed at that.

No matter how much I tried, it was not going to work. And I felt like a failure in that moment. And there's a lot of prejudice now. I had a lot of people that did accept me. Now there are other denominations, that will fire pastors, for. Being divorced, but United Methodist was not one of them.

So I was able to keep my job, despite some people thinking that I should not be able to. It's difficult to be divorced anyway. It's a difficult process to go through. It's a painful emotional process to go through because even if you're in a bad situation, when you leave that bad situation, you're still losing the dream.

You're still losing all that effort you put into it, all the dreams you had, all those moments that you thought you might be turning the corner, that you, maybe this time you can make it work. There are those moments along the way. There are those moments that are good, in a relationship.

Even if it's a bad relationship and you think maybe this is it. This time, maybe we can make this work. And you get that glimmer of hope only to have it smashed there is the loss of that dream. It's a horrible thing to go through. But when you're in front of people, when there are expectations and ministry's certainly one of those.

There's probably other professions as well that would echo this. But when you're out front in front of people, particularly as, a teacher and someone that's held up as an example, just because you're a teacher doesn't mean you always get everything right. It's a tough thing to go through publicly.

It's difficult even if you have a quiet job in a cubicle, but it's even more so when you have the public, that there's no shortage of people that will give you their opinion of you, of course, when you're going through a tough time. And so it was a struggle. 

Brad Minus: How big was your congregation at that point?

Mark Hicks: At that point it wasn't large. There's a lot of small churches, through the south, and so there was probably about a hundred people, in that church. Not a lot. 

Brad Minus: Well, I mean that's, 

Mark Hicks: considered about a mid-sized church in the United Methodist denomination in the South.

You have the huge mega churches and you have some churches, throughout the south and a lot of Protestant denominations that you'll have five or 10 people. That's actually pretty common. So a church of about a hundred is not too bad of a size church actually. 

Brad Minus: Still enough to cause you some headaches.

Oh, yeah. So, so, absolutely. Especially when you're gonna kind of going against the grain a little bit. Yeah. So I have, many episodes where I have talked with people that, that have gone in and out of toxic relationships. So there is no reason for us to delve on that. But I do wanna ask the question is, when everything was said and done, when the divorce was final and it was now behind you, what lessons do you feel like you learned?

Mark Hicks: Should have left earlier. So stubborn was one of them. There's two primary ones. One, I shouldn't have been so stubborn. This whole thing of I will fix this is absurd. That's just ego. It was embarrassment. It was this idea that I didn't want to admit that I had made a mistake getting married and and I didn't wanna go through all the judgment.

That I knew I would be subjecting myself to. So there's a lot of fear in that as well. And I shouldn't have had to come, shouldn't have allowed myself to come to the place of just utter despair, just. Nothing left completely drained and thinking about death before I would leave. No one deserves to be in these toxic relationships that you, you need to get them healthy, which some people can, you can do that if you get the proper help or they need, some relationships have to end.

No one was put on this earth to be abused, to live in toxicity, to be in that kind of misery. That's not what relationships are for. And so I should have. Put my ego aside and made some decisions earlier. The other thing is, and it, again, this was ego. As a young man, I didn't tell anyone and that was a huge mistake.

I kept it to myself. We always acted like we had it together in public. We had a good public view. When we did get divorced, it ran shock through my family, my friends, everyone who knew us. 'cause no one had any idea. 'cause we were fine in public. It was behind closed doors that everything was so, you know, just dreadful.

And so, it was really just an act that we had fallen into to put on, to carry on in public. And I never told anyone. That was a horrible mistake if you're going through, a toxic relationship. Don't keep that secret. Don't let your ego keep you from getting help and getting support.

That was an enormous mistake that I would, advise everyone not to make. 

Brad Minus: That's a good point right there. And I think a lot of people are like that. It's funny because I've had a few other episodes like I'd mentioned before, and there are a few of those that were wives of pastors that ended up going through, some of this toxicity, and it wasn't their fault. But then I've been on the other side as well. So that's, interesting. And I think the biggest lesson there is that if you feel like you're miserable for some reason and that misery stems around your partner, you need to really take a look.

You know, when, so you said that you had tried. To, figure this out. You wanted to push ahead. Did you start, did you try any professional help? 

Mark Hicks: At the end we did. And that was another mistake. We should have done it long before that. I don't know, looking back if my spouse would've done that, maybe, I'd have my doubts, but at the end when things were really falling apart, we did.

And I've been on the other side of this, I've been a counselor for a long time, so I have been in that situation where. People come into marriage counseling and it's a very common mistake. It's sort of like, calling the fire department when the house is completely engulfed and saying, save my house.

Right? And that's what a lot of people do. They wait till the fire is completely engulfed their marriage. Whereas if they had come into a therapist, a marriage counselor. A coach, a relationship specialist, anybody that can help professionally when there was a smaller issue, a small kitchen fire that you could put out and deal with.

But no, we'll just wait. We'll see if it gets worse. Let's gonna get worse. And, you know, the, everything was kind of burning down around us by the time we got into counseling. So, another lesson learned, you know, get help and get help early. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. And I'm imagining just going back and, I think you and I are actually closer in age than you might think.

So back then there wasn't this access to, professional help even offices where now those small problems. People could just go onto a mental health app, and they can talk to someone right there, put down the phone or an iPad or your laptop click in and you both can sit there and talk to a doctor.

You don't even have to go to an office anymore. Yeah. So, you know, with those type of resources that we have today, then I would say yeah, the minute that you're finding that small grease fire. Talk it out. Get somebody to help you out.

Mark Hicks: I 

Brad Minus: really believe 

Mark Hicks: people need to be in counseling. I write, I write in my book, everyone should be in counseling. Really? Because life is just so difficult, even if it's not about your marriage, even if you're happily married, parenting is hard. Finances are hard, even if you have money.

Managing money is hard. Life is just complicated today. You have so much more complications even within the family. For example, in the 1940s, whether it be right or wrong, we knew who was doing what within the family. As far as the chores, the responsibilities in the 1940s, that wasn't up for debate.

Now people can argue whether that was right or wrong. I'm not, I'm not getting into that debate, but it just was. Right now, there are no roles. Those all have to be negotiated. It's just more complicated to be married. It's more complicated to be in a family who's picking up the kids, who's making dinner, who's making financial decisions.

All has to be worked out. Life is just more complicated within the family and really a lot of other places. And if you were, if you were sick, you would go to a doctor if you had a. Two, think you'd go to a dentist if your car wasn't running properly. You go to a mechanic. We go to, we go to lawyers, we call plumbers.

We have any number of professionals that help us. Why would we do anything less with our emotional health, our mental health, our relationships? My life could have been different, perhaps a lot easier if I had gotten the help I needed. It may not have saved the marriage, but it could have helped me a lot earlier to understand that couldn't be saved and gotten out of it a lot, a lot better way than I did.

We get help from professionals in so many areas, and yet we resist counseling unless we're desperate. You don't have to be desperate. Go for a checkup like you do your doctor. 

Brad Minus: That's profound. Who do you spend most of your time with?

You. Yeah. And that means it's your brain. So you don't spend 24 hours a day in our car. You might spend 24 hours a day in your house, but, your electricity is not always on. You're not always on the internet, you're not always on your phone.

But those are things that, you know, we go and we have a mechanic, we've got a dentist, we've got, all this other stuff. But 24 hours a day, seven days a week, your brain is working. 

Mark Hicks: Yeah, 

Brad Minus: why wouldn't you have something to make sure that you took care of that?

Thank you. I never thought about it until just now, until you just brought it up. So I appreciate that because I've always resisted myself, read a lot of books, a lot of dudes, a lot of learning development that way, but I've never thought. Yes, I, now that I think about it, I agree with you a hundred percent.

Everybody should, well, you don't 

Mark Hicks: even have to go all the time. You don't have to go every week, but have someone, go and work through some things you're dealing with now, get established and then maybe you go once a month or once every three months, but just kind of keep. Track of when you need to, check in, or at least have someone that knows your history, knows who you are, that you can call and make an appointment when something happens.

'cause something's going to happen. Life is not easy. Something's gonna be hard along the way. Just like we have a, you know, maybe a lawyer on retainer or we have a dentist that we go to on a regular basis. Have that person that, you know, when time gets tough and I'm not dealing with this well, or I just need to kind of think through some things, this is the person I call now when I say that people I get.

Pushed on this all the time. Well, not everybody can afford a counselor, and I hear that. I get that, and I totally understand it. That's why I set up a free counseling clinic, in the past because I understand not everybody can afford it, but my argument is not everyone can afford a dentist either. That doesn't negate the need for a dentist.

We haven't eliminated the need for counseling just because some people can't afford it. We need to find solutions to that. 

Brad Minus: Exactly. And I quote, life's normal sunshine and rainbows. Yep.

Life, nothing hits hotter than life. And it will beach it to your knees if you let it. Anyway, that's, there's my rocky bbo imitation. Totally true. Yeah. No, no, no. That's beaches like my gods. So anyway, you got out of this marriage, did you stay with the church? Did you move on? What happened? No. I 

Mark Hicks: did stay with the church for a number of years after that.

Yeah, I think things were rocky there for a while, but I found some good people, found some places that I could serve, do some good work. Got into, disaster response, for several years and was leading some disaster response, programs through the church, responding to hurricanes and tornadoes in the southeastern United States.

I got into that for a while and that was something that was very fulfilling and that was all through, a church ministry. And like I said, earlier, I ended up doing recovery ministry, leading a program for several years. So, for about. 15 years. I stayed in the church after I was divorced, doing various forms of ministry and mission work.

Lived overseas for a while doing a number of things. 

Brad Minus: Tell us about your overseas experiences. 

Mark Hicks: I was, in the Czech Republic, which is the, most. Atheistic and agnostic, most secular nation on earth. At least it was at the time.

It's a completely secularized society. Really does not have churches to speak of. Has some beautiful old churches from, the olden days. Some are a thousand years old, and they're just beautiful and they take a great deal of pride in them, but it's not really a people of faith.

And so, I was working there in the English speaking United Methodist Church of Prague, which was just a fabulous job. I actually had my own radio program there, walk these two paths of faith and spirituality along with psychology. My radio program, was called Life Strategies and it was a psychology program of bringing, common, practical wisdom to life of how do we deal with the struggles of life.

It was a nationwide radio program that I had there in the Czech Republic, that was sponsored by the church the radio station said, no, you can't bring religion into it. I said, well, I have a master's degree in psychology. I can stick with that. But I want to say in the closing that that's sponsored by the church because I want to say to this very secular culture, the church cares more about more than about just faith or bringing you into a certain faith tradition.

We care about people. We want to help live life. And so I said, if you'll let me say the church sponsored the program, I won't bring religion to it. I'll stick with psychology and counseling. And he said, that's a deal. So we, ended up doing that program sponsored by the church, and it was a great outreach.

It did sort show some people that were very leery of the church, that we weren't just trying to make you Christian or make you Methodist. We really cared about people and how can we help people live life? And so, that was a, that was a great program and a great experience. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. Now you're gonna go back to the Czech Republic and it, you know, it's gonna be a, a big portion, much big portion of the Christian faith, and they're all gonna say, well, I used to listen to this radio program, you know, all of a sudden I found myself going to church.

Couldn't figure it out. Yeah. Would that be great? Yeah. Yeah. 

Mark Hicks: Maybe 

Brad Minus: Well, because we know that a lot of checks bounce. 

Mark Hicks: Yep. 

Brad Minus: Yeah, it was a long way to get there. 

Mark Hicks: That was, you know, throw that 

Brad Minus: in there.

Mark Hicks: That was good. Right. That was a missed opportunity. 

Brad Minus: Hey, that joke was brought to you by the United Methodist Church. That's right. Don't move into a new neighborhood without one. Anyway, so you were in the Czech Republic, but somewhere down the line.

And you'll have to tell us why, because this is a big portion of your book, is that you did find someone else. 

Mark Hicks: I did, yeah, I swore after my first marriage that I would never, ever get married again. I would never even consider getting married again. And that I met Heather and changed my mind. And it's just, it's been great.

We, no, marriage is perfect. I'm not gonna set myself up as perfection, certainly, we have a great life together. We very much love each other and have a wonderful life. She was there with me in the Czech Republic. We have traveled the world together and done a number of things, adventurous together and seen a lot of.

Seen a lot of things and, and just really enjoy life together. And I, I've, I've come to say, very often, you know, I've, I've had a bad marriage, I've had a good marriage, and good is better. Right?

Relationships better because it's easy to find bad ones. But the good, the good relationships are just better. They, not just the relationship itself. It makes life better. It is healthier, it is happier. It makes life better when we have better marriages, better families, better friendships, better relationships with our coworkers.

And that's really what my book is about because it's not just about marriage, it's about the principles, the core principles that we can learn in order to build. Relationships in every area of life. 

Brad Minus: So did you meet Heather in the church as well? 

Mark Hicks: No, we actually met online, because the, we met at, on eHarmony.

Dating in the church and I did not have any ideas of getting married. But you know, it gets pretty lonely just sitting around your house by yourself all the time. And so I thought, you know, I'm gonna go out and meet some people, you know, go out to dinner and just, have some conversation.

It'll be nice. And so, I started kind of seeing some people and you just don't date people in your own church. That gets really, really awkward now, every old grandma in the church wants to set the single preacher up with their granddaughter. The answer to that is always no. And it's not a, a slam on the granddaughter.

She may be perfectly lovely, but you just do not go down that road. So the answer there was no. Don't do that. And so there was really no place to meet people in my line of work. It wasn't going to be a real good idea to go to the local bar and pick up girls or anything. So, it was really, just a point of where do I meet people?

So, yeah, I got online, and we met on eHarmony. She had a similar situation. She was a, a single mom working at home, she's a online, chemistry teacher for an online high school. So she was teaching full-time, doing it online while she was keeping her three boys at home. That remote job enabled her to be at home with the boys.

And so, you know, where's a single mom of three children who works remotely going to meet people? So she did the same thing. She got online. And so yeah, we were one of those eHarmony couples. 

Brad Minus: Awesome, awesome. There was, and I don't remember. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name of the movie, but a great thing you were talking about how there's a great scene in it, and it's Ben Stiller and, ed Norton.

And ed Norton's a priest, and Ben Stiller is a rabbi. I seen that. I can't remember of all of the grandmothers and stuff. Oh, rabbi, you gotta come over and meet my granddaughter. She love you. You're such a, you know, it was pretty cool.

It was good, but it just, it's, it's nice that that's depicted on something else, that you actually are able to have that case study. So we actually to bring that true to life. Yeah, absolutely. And it was a great movie. I just wish I can't, I literally, I was gonna, it's trying to get on, IMDB and I, I can't find it.

But yeah, it was him. And then Jenna Elfman was the love triangle and that was very funny. They called it to the God squad. It was pretty cool. But it, it was great. But I'm glad that, that, that obviously you found someone after, after being a toxic relationship. So let's, that's, let's go down to these principles because, I'm.

You learned and kind of grasp these principles as you were developing your relationship with Heather, correct? 

Mark Hicks: In some ways, yeah. It was certainly the coming out of that toxic relationship I. I don't know that I was thinking it as much consciously at the time, but what was really stirring in me that I I see looking back was I really doubted if love existed.

I thought, you know, maybe it's just some, wow, maybe it's just something that's a few lucky people stumble into, because look at how many toxic marriages there are. Look at how many people get divorced. And of the people who don't get divorced, how many of them are happy? You know, they stay together for the kids or for money or for, you know, for religion or whatever it might be.

But I started to really question whether love can exist. Does it exist? Is it really possible? And if so, how would we go about doing that? And then coming from counseling background and, and professionally. That's what we deal with. We deal with relationships. Almost every problem you deal with from a counseling standpoint is a matter of relationship with yourself, a relationship with someone else, in religion and theology and spirituality.

It's the same thing you're dealing with where your relationship with yourself, relationship with others, relationship with God. It's really goes back to that. And so in every area of my life, whether it's counseling, spirituality and theology or my own personal experience, I was kind of driven towards this idea of how do we make relationships work?

And through all of that, through those studies of counseling and theology, I started to see some patterns. The the real. Inspiration four. The five, what I call the five components of love, are the five books of the wisdom literature in the Old Testament. Now there's no place you can go to in, the Old Testament or any other place and says, here's the five components of love.

But in reading those five books of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, I really began to see some patterns of some things emerging. And it's called the wisdom literature, but I came to understand that really the greatest wisdom is love. If we understand love, then we understand. How to grow ourselves, how to have relationships with others.

We understand God because God is love. And so that's a quote from the Bible in one John, that God is love. Not just loving, but God is love. And so from those books, I began to just get inspiration. It wasn't a literal translation or anything, but it was an inspiration of seeing how. Wisdom, the wisdom of love is built.

And so from all of that, and this took years of sort of formulating these ideas and writing some stuff and then writing some other things. And eventually it emerged very clearly for me that there are five components of love and we can learn them. That love is a learned skillset. That the trouble that we have, the reason we struggle in relationships so much is that we wing it.

We just think that it happens naturally that you just sort of go with your gut, you go with your feelings, and we assume that we know what love is because of our family, and that's usually a terrible source because we've either come from a toxic family or an abusive family, or even if we came from a healthy family.

Every family's got its own brand of weird and quirky and odd, and it works for some families, and they're happy and they're healthy, and it's just wonderful. But then you go out into the world, it doesn't necessarily work. You don't necessarily understand how to build relationships because it just sort of naturally happened for you, and we've lost the idea that you learn how to love.

Just like you learn how to walk, but in a healthy family, in a healthy situation, you learn how to walk before you remember learning it. And in a healthy family, in a healthy situation, you probably learned a lot of what I teach in my book before you remember learning it. It just came natural because you were raised in a healthy environment.

But no family is perfect. Everyone struggles to some extent. And so the purpose of the book is to see. Where is it? What component am I missing? Or maybe two or three or even five if you came from a toxic, abusive household. But the good news there is once you understand the components of love, you can build it.

You can work on those and as I said earlier, get help to do that. Go to a therapist, go to a counselor, find help for that, and work on those things so you can build relationships at home, at work, with friendships, any capacity of love. 

Brad Minus: I love it. Do you wanna give us just a quick rundown of the five principles?

Absolutely. 

Mark Hicks: Great. The first component of love is grief. And that one surprises people because they always think when we talk about love, we're gonna talk about bubblegum and butterflies and everything's sweet and beautiful and we get to that. Not gonna die that at all. We'll get there, but life is hard where no one gets through this life without scars.

And a lot of people have been really deeply hurt along the way. Particularly if you have come from a dysfunctional or a toxic or abusive childhood, or if you've been through a divorce or a terrible breakup, or so many people have stories of just heartbreak. Maybe someone truly dear to you has died a particularly a young age.

It just leaves these deep scars in our life, and if we're not careful. We'll start putting up barriers to try to protect ourself. We'll put up emotional walls. We'll keep people at arms length. We'll protect ourselves from being hurt again because we've been hurt before. And what we're really doing there is building our own emotional prison that we're pushing everyone away that we could be connecting with.

And grief is the way to overcome that. Grief is our comeback story. It's not fun, but it is healing, knowing how to grieve. And if you struggle with that, again, there's help for that. Knowing how to grieve the losses of life. The hurts of life is our comeback story. We come back to a place that we have healed.

We can't fix the past, but we heal in a way that we can go forward and be connected even though we may have been hurt in the past. What I often say is some things in life are so painful. It's like it leaves a hole in our heart, but you can live a really good life with a hole in your heart. When we start to understand that we're not stuck in those painful things of the past, we can heal from that.

And even with the hurts in our life, we can go on and build happy, healthy relationships, make those connections despite the hurts because we know how to grieve. That lays the foundation. We can come back from anything if we know how to do that and get the help to do it.

The second, component of love is emotion. This is the bubblegum and butterflies. This is what everybody thinks about with love, and it is one very important, but it's one of five. It's not the only aspect of love, but it is an important one that we make that emotional connection. And for some people that's super easy.

They love that emotional side. For other people, they're more cerebral. They're more introverted. They're just not so sure. And that's okay. You don't have to change your personality, but it's like any other skillset. Work at it. Just try it a little at a time. The point is, the people who you care about need to know you care about them, and so find ways of saying that.

It's great if you could say, I love you, but if you come from an abusive household where love was a weapon or something, you may not be able to say those words then say, I appreciate you. Or say thank you when somebody does something kind for you. A sincere thank you. Yes. Find ways that you are able to express your caring and your love for other people at the place you can now, and it will grow.

The more you do that, the easier it will get. Like any other skill set. But it's important regardless of our personality, to build our capacity to connect on an emotional level. Now, the. Component of love is practicality. This is the one that balances the emotional side. You may have heard, someone say, well, I love them.

But I just can't live with them. Yes, those are people who have mastered the second component of love, the emotional side. They've got a connection, but they have failed at the practicality, the how do we live together? Well, what decisions are we making to live together well in this relationship, whether it's a work, relationship, friendship, marriage, whatever it is.

And that's things like, if you're married, how are you gonna handle your finances? How are you gonna make parenting decisions? It can be things like anxiety and depression take a toll on us. It also takes a toll on our relationships, and those are treatable conditions. It becomes a practical aspect of our relationships to get the help we need to treat those kind of mental struggles and emotional struggles in order to be able to show up for the relationship.

It becomes a practical matter, getting the help you need to treat those things. And also a practical matter, as we discussed earlier, not every relationship can continue. A practical reality is we have to have boundaries. No one was meant to be abused and in order to build healthy relationships. We sometimes have to end unhealthy ones.

That's gonna be hard, particularly if it's like a parent or a family member or getting divorced. Those are very hard things to do, and that's why the first component of love is grief. But getting those unhealthy relationships out of our life or limiting them through boundaries is the way we can have the room in our life for healthy ones.

These are all practical decisions that help us live together well in healthy relationships. The fourth component is acceptance, and there's two aspects to this. A lesser one is we have to accept people, not abuse. There's a line to this, but people are gonna make mistakes. We do have to accept people. If we're gonna have healthy relationships, people are gonna make mistakes along the way.

So within limits, we do accept those mistakes and we work through those. But more importantly, it's about accepting ourselves. You have to love yourself before you can love other people. Brene Brown is famous for saying that she's done some great research on this, some great writing on it.

Other people have as well. That is the capacity of love. You have to love yourself, and you cannot love others more than you love yourself. We fool ourselves thinking we can sometimes, but it is the limit. If you wanna love your spouse, love your kids, love your friends more, you have to love yourself more.

Love is not a commodity like money. If you need more money, you can go get a second job, borrow money from a friend, take out a loan to the bank. A lot of ways to get money. If you need more love, it has to grow organically. It is an organic function within us. It's who we are.

And so we have to grow that love within us, and that's how we love more. That's how we grow greater connections. We have to love ourselves and so many people are doing well. They have an emotional connection, and they're making good decisions in life, but they're thinking something that's really wrong in my relationship.

This is just not working. One of the culprits can be, and very often is we don't really love ourself. We've put a lot of effort into loving someone else, but we've limited that capacity to love them because we can't love others more than we love ourself. We have to learn to love ourselves and build that love within us in order to give it away.

And then finally, the fifth component is passion. And this is the passion for life. This is enjoying life. Very often we forget this one. Now we know that life. Serious sometimes, and that's why practicality is the third component. We know life can be tragic. That's why grief is the first one. But let's not forget that life needs to be fun.

Life needs to be enjoyable, especially with the people we love. And if we get into these relationships. Say in our marriage and we're going to work, and then we're coming home and we're making dinner and we're doing homework with the kids and we're doing some household chores and mowing the yard or whatever we do.

And we're getting everything done and we're running this household like, like clockwork and everything's getting done. And then we watch our television show and then we go to bed and we think, what is wrong with my marriage? So maybe you forgot to have some fun.

You may have forgot to really enjoy it. And very often we see this in people thirties, forties, for example, they've been told that the way to live life is to get married, have kids, get your education so you can get a good job, get that good job, get promoted, get the house. There's this whole checklist that we're supposed to have.

Nothing wrong with that. It may not work for everybody. But for a lot of people, yeah, that's their goals. They want to have all those things. That's good. And then they get to their thirties and forties and they think, is this it? Well, you forgot to have fun doing those things.

Those things weren't just a checklist. They were things to enjoy, to enjoy that marriage, to enjoy the kids, to enjoy that new home, to enjoy your job. Now we can't. Every task isn't gonna be fun, but some of 'em can be. And so many times we get so wrapped up in the grind of life and the must-dos and the to-do list and all this stuff that we forget to look for things that are fun, things that are funny, things that make us laugh.

Things that can really en, we can really just enjoy the people we work with, that we, our neighbors with, and the people we live with in our homes. And when we have bring that passion. It helps all the other things. It helps us through the grief when we, when we have a passion for the people we live with and we enjoy those moments, even in the hard times that we can, it brings an emotional connection.

It helps us see things more clearly to make practical decisions, and it just builds the love for ourselves and others. When we are having a passion for life, that becomes the fuel in our engine. It becomes the wind in our sails when we bring a passion for life, because we just remember to have fun. So if you can grieve the tough times of life.

If you can make an emotional connection, making good decisions to live together well, you love yourself so that you can love others, and you remember to have fun and have a passion for life. You can build healthy relationships in every area. Even if you come from a dysfunctional family or been through a divorce, or been through other relationship struggles, you can use these five components to build the relationships you want 

Brad Minus: Fantastic. So everybody listen. Mark hicks.com is the URL 

Mark Hicks: actually Mark A. Hicks. 

Brad Minus: Yes. 

Mark Hicks: Mark a hicks.com. 

Brad Minus: And that's gonna be in the show notes, so they're gonna have a link right to it. Take a look at his website. It's actually really, really well done.

The book is Learning Love, building a Life That Matters and Healthy Relationships That Last by Dr. Mark a Hooks Hicks. So you're good there. Check it out there. There's a pre-order available there, but is it, wait, is it actually out now or is this 

Mark Hicks: It's actually out this, this very week is, we're recording this.

Oh, perfect. It came out and so Yeah, it is, officially out in, bookstores everywhere. If they don't carry it, your favorite bookstore, make sure you ask for it. But it is available online, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, wherever you might wanna buy books. It's available wherever books are sold.

Brad Minus: Perfect. And I will make sure that there is a link to that, to directly to that on probably on Amazon, in the show notes as well. And then are you on some socials? 

Mark Hicks: I am, I'm on, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram. You can go to my website. There's, links to that. But yeah, I'm on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and all kinds of good stuff.

Brad Minus: Great. So I'll also make sure that those socials are also linked in the show notes. Even if you think you might be in a good relationship, or definitely if you think you might be teetering on one, that might be a little toxic.

Especially if you're thinking about making a run at, like I said, if you're not in a great relationship, you're gonna wanna see if you can get better. Definitely check it out. If you're in a great relationship, you wanna make sure that it stays that way. I would definitely check this out because listen, I consider myself in a good relationship right now.

He's taught me a couple things just in this little 45 minute, conversation that we've had, and there's things that I want to check out as well. So I'm definitely gonna do that. Thank you Mark, really for sharing your story and sharing your five principles of love.

And, yeah, I really appreciate you doing that with us. It was my pleasure. Thank you so much. If you are watching this on YouTube, please go ahead and like, and subscribe. Hit that notification bell just so you know when the next episode is dropping. If you are listening on Apple or Spotify or any of the other podcast directories, please leave us a little review and I don't even care if it's a bad review because any data, anything that I could learn about the episodes helped me evolve the podcast and just make it that much better, so I'd appreciate that.

But Mark, thanks again. Really appreciate you joining us and giving us some of your wisdom. And for the rest of you, for Mark and for myself, thank you for listening and we will see you in the next one.