Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to episode 155 of Outnumbered the Podcast. We're so glad you're here. Today we're talking about healthy mindset when it applies to marriage. Yes, it's another one in our series on marriage.
Speaker: The way that you think about your marriage is going to affect the way that you feel about your marriage. And so we are sharing three areas to focus about your mindset. And we are also sharing three tools that will help you get your mindset about your marriage into a healthy space. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome back. We are so happy to bring you another episode in our marriage series and we think this is a great way to finish off the year talking about great marriages. So today we're talking to you about healthy mindsets for marriage and we can't wait to share our thoughts on this with you. But first, Bonnie's got something to share with you.
Speaker: Okay, yes, Audrey and I love talking about marriage. And not because we have perfect marriage, it's just because there's so much to talk about and so much to learn and it's a really fun topic. But I wanted to share a hilarious story. It's one of my favorite stories about marriage and communication. I have a friend, well, this couple that is friends of mine and my husband's and we get together quite often and they are just hilarious together. And she is more the talkative type and he is less so.
Speaker: And she tells a story about how one time they were in the car and he was driving and she was just chatting away, telling him all about something. And she lost her train of thought and said, oh shoot, what was I talking about? And he just said, I don't know. But the next time you're talking, one of us should be listening. That is a great story. Not a great way to handle your marriage, but a great story. Totally. All right. That is awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, so we're going to talk in this episode about having a healthy mindset for your marriage, not because like Bonnie said, we always have healthy mindsets in our marriage, but we have a little bit of things to share. So we have three areas we're going to focus on, and then we're going to share three tools that we use to try to keep our mindset in our marriages healthy.
Speaker: Yes, totally. So if the goal is a healthy mindset in our marriage, then we have to remember that our thoughts and our mindset is just as important to keep healthy as like our physical body, right? We're always talking about how to eat healthy and exercise, et cetera. But sometimes we forget that our emotions and our thought processes also need to be kept.
Speaker: in a good working order if that makes sense, right? We can actually poison a relationship just like you can poison a body by holding on to things like resentment, frustration, attitudes of annoyance or anger. We just like to let that stuff fester inside and it can be poisonous to a marriage.
Speaker: Yeah, we know so much and there's so much research and so much available, maybe just people talk about it more, how to keep your body healthy, exercise, diet, and all these different aspects. And then there's your mindset.
Speaker: thoughts and not so much talked about in that, not so much shared, not as big of an emphasis, but we found that in marriage, having a healthy mindset is so important. So, all right, the first focus we're going to share, the first mindset focus is thoughts about ourselves.
Speaker: If you've listened to any of our episodes, you know that this is something that Bonnie and I are passionate about. We have an episode about body image that you need to listen to. We have an episode, even in our intimacy episode, we shared some about how toxic thoughts about yourself will have an effect on the intimacy part of your marriage. So that is the first place, first place that we have to focus is our thoughts about ourself.
Speaker: Yes, totally. I have so much to say about this, but I will try to keep it brief. I mean, if you think about it, it's very simple to understand how negative thoughts about ourselves would negatively affect a relationship, right? Especially with the person who's supposed to be the closest to you, right? We need to develop ourselves to the point of
Speaker: where we have enough to share with another person, right? If we're in, we talk about this one when caring for our children as well. If we don't make self -care a priority, how can we care for our children? The same goes for our spouse. How can we give them our best if we don't even know what our best is, if we don't cultivate it, right?
Speaker: We need to be working hard to embody confidence, excitement, especially about our marriage, right? Happiness, joy, a passion for life, right? If you don't yet know how to make yourself happy, you cannot expect your spouse to know how to do it. So learning how to make yourself happy and develop your own talents and skills is number one before you can ever have a happy relationship.
Speaker: Yeah. Yes. That is so, so true. So let's take, for example, one thought. If you have a thought about yourself, I'm such a horrible wife as women. Okay. I'm such a horrible wife. Good grief. How, if we believe that, if we tell ourselves that, if we believe that, how can we believe if our spouse says to us, you are an awesome wife. We'd be like, no, actually I've been telling myself for years that I'm a horrible wife.
Speaker: Totally, totally. Yeah, so how can we work toward complementing ourselves? And as we've talked about in other episodes, especially our episode about body image, it has to be believable. So we can't start out with a thought, I am the best wife in the whole world. I mean, I've got this nailed, right? That's probably not going to be a believable thought if we're having, if we're struggling with a thought, whether we're a good spouse or not.
Speaker: So maybe start with just one tiny thought. I want to be a good spouse. There you go. Perfect. And that is a good place to start. Hey, hey, you've got a, there you go. You've got a positive thought. Now dwell on that one for a little bit. Yeah. And you know what I've realized is that if we do not believe certain things about ourselves, it doesn't matter who tells us, you know, that same thought about ourselves, we're not going to believe them because we know ourselves better than anyone else, right?
Speaker: your best friend who knows you really, really well could come and say, oh, these are all your talents. And you'd say, I don't know, because I know myself even better than you, best friend, right? So that's why we have to focus on our own thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. And sometimes we have to start very, very simply. Like you say, I want to be better. I want to be a good spouse or I want to learn to love myself and then grow from there. But you cannot lie to yourself and you have to work on those positive thoughts first in your own head.
Speaker: Right. I think in our episode on body image, we were talking about starting with a fact that is undeniable. For example, if you have negative thoughts about your body, you can start with the thought, I have a body.
Speaker: That's not deniable. I have a body. So you could start in a marriage. You could start with, I'm in a marriage. I'm in this marriage. And it probably wouldn't be a huge stretch for most of us to say, I love my spouse. Or I try to show him that I love him. Or whatever you're working on, right? Just to believe that there's an attempt there, and then you can grow from there.
Speaker: Okay, so the number two mindset focus that we're gonna talk about is the thoughts about our spouse. Now, this is usually where we start, right? But we kind of went one step backwards and talked about ourselves first, because we think that's important. But now we need to talk about how we think about this person that's so important to us.
Speaker: Yes, and it's the second place to start because if we're having toxic thoughts about ourself, as you said, Bonnie, that's going to spread and then we'll have toxic thoughts about somebody else. So once we've worked on ourself and we're in a more positive space about ourself, then we can turn our focus on somebody else.
Speaker: Because let's admit it, it's easier to see faults in another person than yourself, especially if you're in the negative mode of seeing faults. So you see faults in yourself, you see faults in other people. I bet if you're in a space where you're seeing faults about yourself, you're seeing twice as many faults in other people because that is where your mind is. I'm not being condemning here. I'm speaking from experience. If you're in a negative space, boy, that thing is contagious. Yeah, it is poison.
Speaker: Seriously. A quick little example here. So we moved into our home a little over three years ago. And when we moved in, I was just in love. It was honeymoon phase for sure. Our yard was perfect. Our house was perfect. Everything was perfect. Even the things that weren't perfect were perfect in my mind because I was so excited to get in this new house. Well, now I'm realizing the honeymoon period is a little bit
Speaker: ended now all of a sudden there's so much yard to mow and there's so many bushes to trim and oh my goodness this wall drives me crazy and this paint color why did we choose this and I found myself spiraling into this place of getting angry and frustrated at everything in my house and I've stopped seeing all that good that I saw at the beginning because that's just where my mind has gone so because my brain is frustrated with a few things it has gone out seeking
Speaker: proof that that's true, right? Like, oh, this house is too small for us. See, see there, see there, see there, right? And that's exactly what happens in a marriage. You know, usually the first couple of years, this beautiful honeymoon period, and then all of a sudden, oh my goodness, if I see his clothes on the floor again, I'm gonna lose my ever -loving mind, right? And then we just start to see faults all day long. And if we choose to stay in that mindset, there will be no end to the faults that we can find.
Speaker: No end, we just keep coming up with them. And that is just gonna end in misery and it will make you miserable, make your spouse miserable and your children and your neighbors and everybody, you wanna get out of that as soon as humanly possible. One thing we talk about a lot in life coaching is that whatever you focus on, you enlarge, right? You focus on gratitude, you feel more grateful. You focus on the good, you see more good, et cetera. Same thing in a marriage, by being purposeful in seeing the good, you will just find more and more of it.
Speaker: Yeah, that is amazing, isn't it? How whatever you focus on is kind of like contagious. Like you focus on the good, you see more good. You focus on the negative. Oh, there's more negative there. Yeah.
Speaker: So the third place mindset focus that we want to examine is our thoughts about other people's marriages, our peers, influencers on social media, celebrities, our friends, our parents. This is the third place of thinking about marriage that we need to examine.
Speaker: And you have to realize that none of us grow up in a vacuum. None of us can grow up without thoughts about a marriage. Even if we didn't grow up with parents that are married, we still see couples all around us and we all develop these thoughts. And it's so easy to fall into that comparison trap of thinking somebody else has it better than you. But it's so important to realize that every person and every relationship has its own issues. And we always only see the highlight reel. Even when something
Speaker: goes wrong in a marriage, we only see a portion of it as outsiders, right? And it's so important to remember that. I will also say this, if you are looking at all your friends and thinking they all have better marriages than you, be aware of the fact that they probably think the same thing about you.
Speaker: They probably think that you have a fantastic marriage too because they see how you and your spouse joke around and are on your best behavior when you're out and about, right? They don't see the arguments, they don't see the frustrations, they don't see the clothes on the floor. The grass just always seems greener. But I will also say that I think we are personally uniquely suited to handle our own trials and our marriages, right? And that there are certain things that we're meant to learn from each other if we'll stay open to that.
Speaker: Yes, yes, absolutely. And kind of a subset of this focus is to think about your own parents' marriage. So probably I'm guessing that most of us don't think our parents had the most ideal marriage in the world because we were children in their home and we saw a more intimate, close part of their marriage than other people see.
Speaker: So most likely you saw faults in your parents' marriage. And even to the point of, let's just theoretically say that there was something really bad in your parents' marriage, maybe physical abuse. Let's just use that for an example.
Speaker: The thoughts that we have to be careful in focusing on our parents' marriages is thinking or feeling like we are destined to be the same way or have the same way. I bring this up in the physical abuse because most physical abusers are children of physical abusers.
Speaker: So there is that thought out there that I just can't help it, I'm just this way, or we're just this way, or that kind of thing. So thinking about your own parents' marriage is an area to focus because it's likely the marriage that you saw with the least rose -colored glasses. So whatever you think about your parents' marriage, it's a place to examine
Speaker: and see what and if you're bringing from that into your own marriage. Yeah, that's a really good point. You saw that with the least amount of filters, right? Yeah. You saw the good and the bad. Although, admittedly, no child knows exactly what goes on in their parents' marriage either. But yeah, we all see what goes on behind closed doors. And so we're able to see, oh, look at my parents' wonderful strengths. And this is how they complement each other. And ooh, look at their weaknesses. And this is how they struggled with each other. And it can teach us some valuable lessons.
Speaker: Right. I know one thing I ask myself often is what are my children learning about marriage from me and my marriage? That's kind of turning it the other way and kind of how painful one, right? I can guarantee if my kids just watch my husband, they will end up with wonderful marriages.
Speaker: Yeah, and you know, I think it's something that we come into a marriage not even really recognizing that we have specific paradigms surrounding marriage that we've just have been a consequence of growing up in the life we grew up. But because you're marrying someone
Speaker: different than you, they will also bring their own paradigms into marriage. And it's important to examine those right from the get go. What do we think marriage should be like? Why do we think that? And I would even go so far as to list those expectations. That could be a really fun exercise for a dating couple or a couple in the first few years of marriage or a couple that's married 40 years to sit and say, you know,
Speaker: What did you expect coming into this? And list those expectations and then compare each other's lists and say, oh, that's interesting that you thought I would always make you dinner and I don't like making dinner. You know, are your expectations even rational? Maybe when you write them out, you're like, oh, actually, I don't really want to expect that. That's silly. But just to get on the same page.
Speaker: Yeah, that's so true. Yeah, so where do we look when we're looking for examples on what we want our marriage to be like? So we've talked about the comparison trap, thinking others marriages are way better than yours. We've talked about looking at your parents and maybe their marriage was super idealistic or maybe it wasn't what
Speaker: you know, the best marriage. So where do we look? And who are we trying to model our marriage and ourselves after? And so I would really encourage you to look
Speaker: for healthy. We're talking about healthy mindset. Look for healthy marriages. No marriage is perfect. We've got that. Okay. We've said that. No marriage is perfect, but find a couple who you can just tell their marriage is better than yours or what they show to the public is better than yours. No marriage is perfect. We can say that about every marriage.
Speaker: The only marriage that we can't say that about is the relationship between the spiritual relationship between Christ, the Son of God, and His bride, His bride, the church. That is the perfect example of a relationship. But we can look to
Speaker: the Bible for some really good marriages. Maybe for me, it's my grandparents. My grandparents' marriage was so stunningly beautiful. And that was like something that I always tried to model myself in my marriage after. So there are good examples out there.
Speaker: you know, if you don't have anyone that you're related to, there's good marriages out there and you can look around and find some and there's nothing wrong with trying to model yourself and your marriage after a marriage that you see is healthy.
Speaker: Right. And I think that a great place to start is amongst maybe in a community that has a lot of the same values as you. So like a church community tends to be a great place. Maybe there's a retired couple or even a couple that's just 10 or 15 years older than you, has a little bit more experience than you that you could look at and say, huh, maybe I want to pick their brains and see how they make things work. And that could be a really, really awesome conversation to have with somebody to say, hey,
Speaker: I know your marriage isn't perfect, but we really love what we see. Can you share some of your tips and mentor us a little bit on your marriage? I think that would really flatter me if somebody said that to me, and also make me work harder to have it be the marriage that people think it is.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. And maybe you just see one thing in a marriage that you'd like to know, you know, get the key on. And so you say, you know what, my husband and I really love how you guys do this thing. Tell us more about this. Give us some tools or keys to have that in our marriage. It doesn't like the whole marriage has to be perfect. Just maybe an element of it.
Speaker: Right. Right. Or maybe there's one particular thing that you're struggling with. Maybe you have a really hard time with disagreements. You guys get hotheaded and it ends up in a fight. Maybe you can find somebody, especially if there's a couple that has similar personalities to both of you and say, hey, how do you guys deal with disagreements?
Speaker: We would love to hear some tips. I think marriage is something that is so difficult and we don't really spend a lot of time and effort on improving it. We might go to, you know, one little marriage class before we get married or some counseling later on in life, but it really deserves a lot of study and prayer and practice to get good at it. And I don't think we spend enough time on it.
Speaker: I know. That's like going back to what we're talking about paradigms. So it's like the paradigm for a dating couple is so much love, so much in love. And the paradigm for a married couple is so much complaining, so much browsing. Look at any stick come on TV, right? They've been married 20 years. They're all biting at each other and being so mean. I'm terrible.
Speaker: All right, now Bonnie and I are going to share three tools that we really, really appreciate in keeping the mindset, our mindset healthy for in our respective marriages. So the first tool, tool number one that we're going to share is respect. Respect to your spouse, respect their role in the marriage.
Speaker: Yes, this is so important and something that we kind of gloss over when we're dating. Oh, it's going to be just so wonderful and perfect. But we never sit down and talk about, wait, what do you think a dad looks like or a husband, right? What do you think the role of a wife is? The first thing I would say to do in this regard is to sit down and talk about it, right? Maybe even write it down just like you're listing your expectations when going into marriage or after you've been married for a while.
Speaker: One of the biggest struggles, I think, that a marriage can go through is just having totally different expectations. And they can change throughout the marriage, right? You know, if you get married to someone who's, I think we talked about this in the, maybe the working mom episode, whose mom never worked outside of the home, but you expect to have a job or you want a job, that might be a hard thing for you both to adjust to because it wasn't the same expectation, right?
Speaker: And if there are big disagreements, this is a place where you'll have to do a little bit of work to come to an agreement or make some concessions on either side. Well, I'm willing to do this if you're willing to do this kind of thing. Yes, that's right. Because like if you have a thought, again, we're talking about mindset. So let's say you have a thought, if he loved me, he would always, fill in the blank, take out the trash. If he loved me, he would always take out the trash.
Speaker: And maybe, maybe they're, maybe they have no expectation. Maybe their mom was the one that always took out the trash. So they're like, why doesn't she take out the trash? Doesn't she love me? So communication, go listen to our marriage communication episode. But I wanted to say that trying to fill somebody else's role
Speaker: makes you less able to fill your own role. So if you're trying to do your role and somebody else's, you're not going to be as good at your own. So I just, you know, personally, ladies, if we're trying to wear the pants in the family and that's our husband's role, then we're going to be less successful at our own role. Just a little tongue in cheek.
Speaker: thing there to show that we just really need to have respect for their role. And even if we think, oh, I could do this so much better. But it's not your place. So just respect. Respect is the first tool that we use to keep our mindset, our marriage, our mindset about marriage healthy. Yeah. And this is something I personally really struggle with. I am a grade A control freak and I think I can do everything better than everybody else.
Speaker: It's terrible. And so I like to take over, especially when someone doesn't do things in a timely fashion like I think they should. And it's terrible because what I do is I overload myself and then I get cranky and whiny and stressed out because nobody else is pulling their weight because I've taken everybody's job away from them.
Speaker: My kids included, right? And so sometimes we need to have conversations. Like I'll sit down with my husband and say, I realize I'm a control freak. I need some things off my plate. What do you... And your marriage doesn't have to look like anybody else's, right? You can sit down and say, you know what? I like taking out the trash.
Speaker: But I would really appreciate it if you would change all the diapers or you would do dinner or whatever. And you come to an agreement so that each each person has a very specific role to fill. And then if you're like me, withstand that temptation to take over, even if they're not doing things the way you want them to, because that gives a person a purpose in the marriage, right, just to have a very specific role to fill. And if they don't feel needed, you know, that causes a lot of problems.
Speaker: Okay, so moving on to tool number two, we would suggest that we all try to continually improve ourselves as well as our marriages. So just like going back to those thoughts about ourself, if we stop trying to be better people, why would our spouse try to be a better person? Or why would our marriage improve and progress? I really feel like a marriage is kind of like a living entity, right? It's gonna start out really immature, like a child, right? Really fun -loving and excited about life.
Speaker: and then it's gonna go through like a sullen teenage period and then it's gonna grow into adulthood, et cetera. And if you're not working on yourself as well as the marriage, it might get stuck in one of these phases and then you're gonna end up with a really immature marriage when you need a more mature, progressed marriage and it's gonna cause some growing pains.
Speaker: Ooh, that is such a good analogy. And it brings to my mind something that was shared in one of my college psychology classes about the different stages that love goes through. And it wasn't, I mean, you know, it was college in a liberal town, so they weren't applying it to marriage or necessarily, but they were talking about the different stages that love goes through. And, you know, just the immature,
Speaker: young love, and then as it goes through and how love, just from a psychological perspective, changes and grows and matures as two people love each other for an extended period of time. It was really neat. That just came back to my mind.
Speaker: Something that I use as a tool all the time is this question. Is this thought helping me or my spouse or our marriage improve? Is this thought bringing improvement?
Speaker: So, that is a really good one to ask yourself because when you ask your mind a question, it's going to look for an answer. So, the second part of that is what thoughts can I think to improve myself, my spouse, my marriage, right? So, just using our thoughts to create change is a really, really powerful tool.
Speaker: You know, if you're having, go back to that mindset focus, thinking about yourself. If you're having a negative thought about yourself, ask yourself, is this thought helping me improve my marriage? So a cute little example here is I went through several years of marriage with kids with the thought that I was a horrible mom because I couldn't stand cleaning up puke.
Speaker: Oh, I really enjoy cleaning up people. What's wrong with you? So my husband, you know, we're talking about this and we're.
Speaker: I don't know, mutually on our hands and knees cleaning up somebody's barf somewhere. And I'm like, you know, I'm like gagging myself. And he's like, he said to me, why are you even here? Get out of here. He said, I have like a stomach of iron. I really don't mind cleaning up puke. Go away. Let me clean up puke the rest of our marriage. I'm like, are you serious? Like you don't think I'm a bad mother because I'm I can't stand to clean up puke. He's like, why are you still here? Get out of here.
Speaker: But I had this dumb thought as I'm there gagging over cleaning up some dumb kid's puke that I'm a bad mom because I gag when I have to clean up puke. And he didn't have that thought at all. So anyway, just a little example there.
Speaker: Is this not helping me? Yeah, I love that. I know I've shared this story in one of our other marriage episodes, but for years I struggled with my husband leaving his socks on the floor. I know tiny thing, like get over yourself. But it was one of those negative thought cycles where I just let myself spiral because I'd asked him before, can you put him in the hamper? And this is early in our marriage, you know, it was a little night. But anyway, finally, the thing that helped me was by just changing my paradigm and changing my thought process.
Speaker: And I had to find a believable thought. I couldn't all of a sudden think, I love smelly socks on the floor. It's my favorite thing to pick up.
Speaker: No, I had to change to something believable, which was my husband worked so hard to support our family all on his own, this big family. I'm so grateful for him. I can pick up the socks, right? Even though my job is busy too, and I have a lot of work on my plate, but that was the thought I needed to stop getting so worked up about this teeny tiny inconsequential thing. And interestingly enough, it's gotten a lot better.
Speaker: It's actually better at picking them up as well. But it wasn't going to come from my resentment. It was only going to come from love, right? And sometimes if we do a little bit of digging, we can find a thought that is both true and very helpful in pulling us out of that misery cycle.
Speaker: I think that the best gift I've given my own marriage is the gift of my own self -improvement. So as I work on myself and becoming a better woman in general, a better Christian, it naturally makes me a better wife because being a wife is such a huge part of who I am. So as I try to get better at drawing closer to God, as I try to get more patient with my kids, as I try to get healthier physically and mentally,
Speaker: that naturally my extension improves my marriage. And I know that my marriage is better off now than it was 15 years ago, because back then I was less of a developed person and I'm grateful that I've taken time on myself. Yeah. I'm over here standing up, giving you a standing ovation on that one. That is so such a good gift. And again, I keep going back to our episode on intimacy, but if you want to improve
Speaker: the intimate part of your marriage, improve your thoughts about yourself and see what happens. Okay. All right. Tool number three, aim toward a common goal. You're on a team, you're in the same marriage, aim in the same direction. So that is the third tool.
Speaker: Yes. And this can really apply to any facet of life. So you can talk about like big long -term goals about like where you want your family to be. You can talk about, I mean, you can have a small project you work on together. You want to get fit together. You want to run a triathlon together or you want to build a chicken coop together or anytime you can take your spouse as a partner and work towards a common goal, it will strengthen your marriage. And
Speaker: That's something that has been harder for us in these last few years because we're a lot busier with more kids. We don't have as much time to work on things together. We usually have to kind of divide and conquer. You take those kids here, I'll do this. But it is amazing how working together on something can strengthen our marriage so much. Yes, this can even be working together to make a meal to feed your family. High five at the end of it. We did it. Saved kids another day, another meal.
Speaker: Yeah. So something we have, a little tradition that my husband and I have that we do is we talk a lot about our 20 year vision. So a lot, a lot of talking about 20 years, like the share it forward. Okay. So in 20 years, where do we want to be? Like if you talk about that, that's like, that's aiming toward the same goal. So it gets you through the daily
Speaker: the daily stuff if you're aiming towards something in 20 years. And then we also, okay, we've been married 25 years now and so we can also
Speaker: look backward at how we've been a team up to this point. So something that I've been saying to my husband consistently for the past 25 years, like once or twice a year, I'll ask him, hey, if you'd have known 18 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, you know, 25 years ago, I ask him every anniversary. If you'd have known that we're going to be where we are today, 25 years ago, would you still have married me?
Speaker: Of course, he absolutely says a resounding yes every time. He's so sweet. But the only right answer. Yeah, it's neat to think backward now as well. Like if I'd have known 25 years ago that I was going to be here and we were going to have this many kids and our marriage was going to be like this, would we have still done it?
Speaker: And that is a neat way to have a shared path, a shared vision. And then you can do that forward as well. Where do we want to be in 25 more years? Where do we want to be in 20 more years? Where do we want to be in one more year? And just have a goal and aim toward it. Oh, that's so beautiful. I can't wait to get to our 20... We're a couple of years away from our 20 -year anniversary to be able to look back 20 years and also look forward 20 years. That's really cool.
Speaker: I wanted to share that there was a church talk given in our church a while ago where it was given by a pilot and he said, you know, when you start out on a flight, you have GPS coordinates or whatever and it tells you which direction to go. He says, if you alter your flight trajectory just 1 % north or 1 % south, it will alter your ending point like
Speaker: a hundred miles, a thousand miles, like this huge difference if you just slightly change your course. And I think that should be our goal in marriage is just to regularly check in and do minor course corrections, right? Like, oh, I love where we are, but could we do this a little bit better?
Speaker: Could we change this just a little bit better? And what you're talking about is exactly that, right? You sit down, you look at where you've come from, you look at where you're going and you just say, are we on track? Yes, totally. Let's try to shift this a little bit so we can get even closer to our destination at the end. And that's just such a beautiful thought that you are working together to build this amazing family that's going to give back to the community. I personally think that families are just the backbone of society. If we do not have healthy families, our entire
Speaker: communities, society, countries, the world is just going to fall apart. And that's our job as parents to create these healthy marriages to then give back to the world.
Speaker: That is such a neat thing to think about how the little course corrections can make such a big difference in the long run. My final thought is a little bit tricky, so stick with me through it. When I was three years into my own marriage, my dad died.
Speaker: That had a big effect on me and my marriage, not only thinking about my husband helping me through that time, that pretty intense time of losing my dad when I was so young, but
Speaker: thinking it had a big effect on our marriage because of my daily monthly weekly thought about relationships ending before you're ready for them to end. And so the thought for me has always been
Speaker: How do I want to look back on my marriage? Like, if it should end before I'm ready for it to end. Like, did I treat my spouse in such a way? Did I have the right mindset about my marriage in such a way that I could look back on it and be so thankful for it? Or my spouse could look back on it and be so thankful for it if I was the one that passed away.
Speaker: And so it's instituted into our marriage a couple little things that mean a lot in the long run. So two things, I'll just share two examples. We always end every conversation via phone by saying, I love you. And we never like, that's the ending. I always say, love you. And then when my husband leaves and goes to work or goes to town or just when one of us leaves in the car,
Speaker: in a vehicle. The other one is at the window or at the door waving goodbye so that there's no, I think that was hard for me. That one came about because I didn't get to say goodbye to my dad. He was killed in a car accident and so it was sudden and I never got to say goodbye.
Speaker: So getting, saying goodbye to my husband or him saying goodbye to me every time that one of us leaves, like, you know, we're going to town, we'll be gone 10 minutes and we'll be back. But it's just a little bit of that ending every conversation with I love you, because that's been the mindset of our marriage, that relationships are really, really special and important and we want ours to be a healthy one.
Speaker: Oh, that's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. So we hope that we have shared some focuses and some tools in this episode that you guys can institute maybe one focus or one tool or maybe some little thing that we've said can be a help to you in your marriage and maybe just a little tiny course correction that makes a big difference in the end. And just know that Bonnie and I think that a healthy mindset for marriage is so important and we're rooting for your marriages to that they can be healthy
Speaker: and you can have a healthy mindset, healthy thoughts about your marriage as well. Thanks for listening, friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week. I'm going to save that for the question, the tool part.
Speaker: I think I ended there somewhere.
