Transcript
Speaker: You are listening to episode 92 of Outnumbered the Podcast and our first episode in our new series on marriage with kids. Today's episode is talking about communication and we're breaking it down into three specific areas. Number one, how to communicate with your spouse when your personalities are vastly different. Number two, making time to communicate with your loved one. And number three, how to talk about sensitive subjects that are a part of every marital relationship. We hope you find some tips and ideas for improving communication between you and your spouse.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. We're experienced moms to a combined total of 18 children. Our mission is to help overwhelmed parents find peace in parenting and humor in the chaos. Come join us as we attempt uninterrupted conversation about parenting with joy and intention.
Speaker: Welcome, friends. We are happy to be with you today. And to talk about our topic, we are introducing a brand new topic to the podcast. We are going to be talking about marital relationships, about marriage. And honestly, we started to cover most of this in one episode, and we thought there is no way. So we're turning it into a series, and we're super excited about it. Well, Bonnie's super excited. I'm sort of reluctant.
Speaker: Oh, but that's because it feels so personal. And also it feels like, you know, my marriage feels like a work in progress. And so I don't, at times, you know, everything is cyclical. And at times I'm like, Hey, don't turn to me for marriage advice because I'm just like screwing everything up.
Speaker: I think that's just motherhood in general. I don't consider myself an expert on any of our topics. Sorry, guys. Sorry to be honest here, but there we go. But we do have a little bit to say. And just for reference, our next anniversary will be 25 years. So surviving 25 years with nine kids and not just surviving, but still loving my relationship and my marriage is maybe I have a few things I can share.
Speaker: Yeah, totally. In fact, we figured it out that between the two of us, we have a combined total of over 40 years of marriage experience. So that makes us sound a little bit like we know what we're talking about, even though we don't. So there you go. Audrey's going to give us a funny thing her kid said. So go ahead, Audrey.
Speaker: All right, so because we follow the methods laid out in our very super popular episode, sibling rivalry with our kids, our littlest kids happen to just adore each other and they never resent the baby of the family. In fact, it's just kind of like my three -year -old thinks that
Speaker: Um, the baby is kind of her toy, her personal toy. So she loves him to death. It's like her baby. And so that means that she's always on top of him and kissing him and hugging him. And it's like constant kissing 24 hours a day. So.
Speaker: One day I just kind of said, I kind of had enough and I said, okay, sit on the couch for five minutes. Just sit here for five minutes and don't touch your little brother, please. Just five minutes. So she sits on the couch and her eyes are following around the room and he's just kind of toddling and stumbling and bumbling around the room. And at one point he brushes up against her and she gives this whole body shiver and she says, thank you for touching me.
Speaker: Oh, that is so cute. She is dying to get this mothering instinct out. And you're not letting her touch him, and she's going crazy. Oh, it just broke my heart. I was like, OK, all right, fine. Get off the couch and smother my kisses. Bye. Go wrestle with it. OK. That is adorable. Oh, thank you for touching me, baby. Oh, my gosh.
Speaker: Side note, my three -year -old is also, you know, a baby lover. And now that my belly is showing, like pretty much every time she sees me, the baby, oh, the baby, the baby, the baby, she like, my belly and kisses it. I'm like, okay, here we go. It's most of that, most of that is just chump kid, but all right, whatever.
Speaker: It's super duper cute. I love it. Yeah. And as we mentioned in the episode on sibling rivalry, that's where it starts. The lack of sibling rivalry starts is when the baby, they become familiar with the inside. So, ah, good times. Love it. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, so we're going to start off by defining what marriage means to us because there are different definitions of marriage out there. And Bonnie and I can really only speak with authority on the kind of marriage that we're in. So probably similar to most our listeners, what marriage means to us is a union between a man and a woman.
Speaker: at the basic level, but this to us means a commitment for life. And my marriage is a very spiritual thing that I try, my husband and I try to model on the relationship of Christ and his future bride in the Bible. And so he tries to model himself on Christ and I try to model myself on what the bride of Christ would be like. So for us that's what marriage is. The purpose of marriage is to produce
Speaker: production, to produce not just children, but to produce a memory that goes forward into the future and can be maybe something other people can look on this relationship and be inspired by it as well.
Speaker: Oh, I love that. That's beautiful. I'm going to write all that down, put it on my wall. I love it. Yeah. I feel like mine and my husband's is similar. We believe that our marriage can actually continue on into the next life. And so we look at our relationship with that sort of potential. It's a lot bigger than just, well, I'm going to stick with you until things get really hard and then maybe I'll go find somebody else. But the reason we wanted to define that is because I think it's very important
Speaker: that everyone in a marital relationship understand what they want out of it and what they're working towards, right? If two parties are on different levels, then you're going to end up with a lot of conflict because you're not even working towards the same goal, right? So sometimes it's assumed that the goal is X when really somebody else's goal is Y. So that communication is really, really essential.
Speaker: And on that note, this episode is all about communication. Okay, so this was the first topic that we came up with in the marriage series because it is just so essential and it affects every aspect of a relationship, right?
Speaker: We see sadly so many marriages fall apart all around us these days, and there is literally almost nothing more heartbreaking in the world than seeing a marriage fall apart. So we hope that some of the tips that we are sharing about communication today can help us all recommit to having this amazing marital relationship that we're looking for. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. It kind of seems to me like COVID and the quarantine and couples having to spend more time together.
Speaker: is either making or breaking a lot of relationships. It's really sad to see. It's really hard. Maybe that was part of the impetus that Bonnie and I used to start this little series. Yes, we're going to talk about communication today. Bonnie had to choose the hardest part of marriage for me to start with. Thanks, Bonnie. I think it's hardest for all of us. Let's just be honest.
Speaker: We want to talk about how to keep it from becoming a problem and then what to do when we are having communication problems when it breaks down.
Speaker: Right. And I think it's also essential for us to realize that so many marriages fall apart, not from something catastrophic, like infidelity or some horrible betrayal. But most of them break down from small things built up over the years, right? Like being distracted, being a little lazy about our relationship, or just a shift in our priorities and not caring about the same things anymore. Right. So communication, when personalities are different, is where we're going to start.
Speaker: I think this is why communication is such a challenge is because nobody has the same exact personalities. We've been shaped by experiences and all that, and we bring all that history into a marriage. So even if we're all the same, oh, Myers -Briggs personality type, which by the way, isn't the most helpful to marriage. Yeah, you won an opposite. Yeah. But anyway, even if you are exactly the same personality type,
Speaker: maybe you have different ways of communicating and you definitely have different histories and baggage that you bring into marriage that you have to work around. So, um, I know I mentioned this in another podcast, but, um, I am going to refer in this episode to the social styles handbook, um, because people have different ways of communicating. And sometimes when, um, when I'm communicating, communicating one way with my husband, that's actually,
Speaker: sounds different to him and I think I'm being polite or something. He thinks I'm being manipulative or just for an example. I'll get into more details later, but a better understanding of how people communicate in general is super helpful in a relationship, a marriage relationship.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, anybody who's been in a relationship for five minutes knows that we are all different and we all have different ways of letting the other person know about our needs, right? Just at the outset, I'll confess that I am a talker, big surprise, and my spouse is not.
Speaker: So I've noticed that I literally think things through by talking them through. And I think a lot of women are like this. And yet my husband never talks unless he's 100 % sure of what he thinks and what he wants to say. And so sometimes it's maddening because I'm like, let's just talk this out. And he's like, I don't know what to think. I don't know what I think about it yet.
Speaker: Well, let's talk about it, and we'll come to a conclusion together. Guys, I'm crazy. I also now know that one of my needs is to connect emotionally through talk, and he does not. So right at the outset, there's some real conflicts there, right? And we've had to figure out ways to get through that and really, really express what we need and how we would like to get it.
Speaker: We both have to get pretty creative to feel heard and be really unselfish enough to focus on what the other person needs and how we can give to them. Okay. Well, Bonnie, my husband and I are basically exact opposites of you and your husband. That's funny.
Speaker: Because I am exactly like that. I don't want to say something until I'm 100 % sure that that's what I think and what I want to say, because I don't want to be wrong. I want to be right when I say something. Not like I have to be right, but I want what I say to be the right thing to say. And when he hears himself speak something, then it's like he's trying it out, which to me is completely foreign.
Speaker: Yeah. So we're like complete opposites of you guys. So same issues, but from the other perspective. Well, and that's why we're good podcast partners because I'll talk all day long and you think very hard before you say something, which is probably something I should work on.
Speaker: Oh, okay. So going back to this ways of communicating differently. For example, the way I communicate, and I'm going to use as a concrete example, the thermostat because I think this is a pretty common thorn in the side between men and women, husbands and wives. What to set the thermostat at, right?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. So let's say it's the middle of summer and air conditioning is on and my husband likes it super cold and I don't need it quite as cold as he does. So let's say I come into the room where the thermostat is and I thinking I'm being polite say,
Speaker: Do you think, would it be okay if we maybe thought about turning up the temperature of the thermostat, like maybe one degree? And to him, that sounds like manipulation. He has communicated to me that if I want the thermostat turned up, I should say, I'm going to turn up the thermostat one degree because I'm cold. And he'd be like, fine.
Speaker: That's such a guy thing, too. Women don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so we tiptoe around the subject, and our husband's like, what are you even trying to say? Can you just talk?
Speaker: Well, I love that example. Yeah, for sure. Always a breakdown in communication over how cold or not we are. It's funny. Yeah, I think they actually have shown that guys, you know, like, everybody's body temperature is not 98 .6. Like, men run like a couple degrees hotter than that. Well, it makes sense, especially because men generally have faster metabolisms than women, right? Yeah. They eat more, they burn more calories, so I guess that makes sense.
Speaker: Okay, so one thing I want to mention about these different personality types is that it's important to know each other's love languages. So we've talked about this book and we both have enjoyed reading it and applying it to our family members. But when you know both your own and your spouse's, you can practice communicating how your spouse does and then better communicate why you need to be communicated with that way as well, if that makes sense.
Speaker: And then like we've mentioned before studying those personality types, I have noticed that my husband loves to have fun and he is a peacemaker. So when I argue, like I said, sometimes I just need to talk things out. When we have any sort of conversation that's a little bit heated or I try to bring up something uncomfortable, he just shuts down because he wants to keep the peace. Like that's his number one priority is to not ruffle feathers. And then so I realized sometimes I just have to shut up
Speaker: so that he can think things through while simultaneously making sure he knows that I need to be heard at specific times. So just this kind of back and forth tug of war as we find a good balance.
Speaker: Yeah, that's me again to a T. Like I'll just shut up just to keep the peace. So for me, I have to find ways to communicate when it's outside of my comfort zone, my comfortable way to communicate. So for me, that means talking when I'd rather not talk because my spouse needs to talk about it. And for him, that means, okay, so referring back to love languages too.
Speaker: You guys, if you supported us on Patreon, you would hear on our February Valentine's Day episode, we talked a lot about what our and our spouse's love languages are and how we handle that. So if you're really enjoying this, go support us on Patreon and listen to that episode too. Okay. It's so fascinating. I love it. Yeah. Okay. So my love language is
Speaker: My husband's is quality communication quality time with the emphasis on communication. So that's super important to him Well, my love language is words of affirmation. So I have Had to explain to my husband that for me Specific compliments work better than General compliments so it's not just hey
Speaker: you're really beautiful, but I really like the shape of your nose or whatever. Because to me that's more memorable than I can remember it later just for my love language. So he's had to learn to communicate just in specifics and tell me specific things
Speaker: that maybe he's not inclined to break it down like that. Like maybe he just sees the whole of me as such a beautiful creature and he doesn't want to, you know, break it down to just my nose or whatever. You do have a lovely shaped nose. Thank you. Thank you. And then for me, that means I just have to take the time to talk about things when, and I'm not only talking about hard subjects, I'm just
Speaker: sitting down and spending time with him when I'd rather be, oh, you know, say sewing or when one of the kids is screaming in the background and I feel like that needs to be taken care of or whatever. So I just have to take the time to let him know that he's important enough to me to stay in the conversation when I'd rather just be quiet and thinking. Yeah. Yeah. And isn't that what we're aiming for is to be selfless enough to show the other person that you're willing to go out on a limb and do things
Speaker: a different way that maybe make you slightly uncomfortable because you love them and you know that it's important to them. That's the essence of marriage right there, basically. Yeah. Okay, so that first aspect is dealing with communication when we have personality differences, which is all the time. The second aspect we're going to approach is making time to communicate.
Speaker: I think that all of us have experienced probably a really low key fun time in our marriage. Oftentimes it's when you're first married, no kids. You go to work, you come home, spend a bunch of time together on the weekends. You go on vacation together, or maybe it's a little bit later in marriage when your kids get a little bit older, but most of us have at least one peaceful time in marriage where it's been easy to talk to each other, right? Lots of time, not a ton of obligations outside of the house.
Speaker: And then you have the rest of your life, which is just busy and crazy and kids and jobs and obligations. And it gets really hard to make time to communicate, especially if communication is like talking is not one of your primary ways of showing love, right?
Speaker: Um, without making it a priority, I honestly feel like we're just roommates. You know, we're just busy roommates where he gets up, goes this way. I get up and go this way and we barely, you know, touch base again until we go to bed. Um, so we're going to talk about a couple of solutions for that. Yeah. I wanted to talk about some tips for finding time to talk too. So one thing I have to be careful of is the timing of difficult conversations.
Speaker: So if I have something that I'm upset about or something that I'm frustrated in, and I need to be careful about the timing. So not only making time and finding time, but finding the right time to talk about something. So when we're both hungry before a meal is not a good time to talk about something that's frustrating me. Or at the end of a busy day when we're just worn out.
Speaker: not a great time. So maybe the timing of difficult conversations. Another thing is we try to train our kids to respect times when adults are having conversations. So that means if it's a conversation we're having just about something general and we're sitting in the living room, they should not come in and interrupt because they found a leaf outside that had a crack in the middle and they wanted to show it to us.
Speaker: Seriously. I know. Or if it's conversation we're having, you know, in our bedroom with a closed door that because we don't want them to walk in and show us all the, you know, leaves from outside or whatever, then they need to not be banging down the door saying, are you done yet? Are you done? Can I come in now? Just give us the space to have our conversation if we need to do that.
Speaker: All right, another thought I had here is take time to discuss the positive and happy things. Talk about your dreams and your goals, like you did when you were dating, right? Don't just make time for conversation when you have something that you need to communicate because you're frustrated about it, right? I mean, come on, this is a relationship. Let's talk about our dreams and our goals. And if you only have the time to talk, or if the only time you sit down and talk to each other is when there's trouble, when there is trouble, your relationship is in trouble.
Speaker: So make time to talk about good stuff. Yeah. And then you both associate talking with negativity and you do even less of it. Yeah. Right? So just kind of a downward spiral. Yeah, exactly. And my final suggestion is become interested in their interests, something outside of you so that you have mutual, something mutual to talk about. Now, I admit my husband has interests that I have zero interest in, but not all of his interests are
Speaker: I'm not interested in. I've chosen a couple that are interesting enough to me that I've taken time that I wouldn't have otherwise to learn about these things and get excited about them so that we just naturally want to talk about these things and discuss them and spend time together. We're talking about it even when there are kids yanking on our hands to get us to come
Speaker: see them do a cartwheel, and we're still talking about it. And he follows me out to see them do the cartwheel because we're in the middle of this great conversation about whatever the latest thing is that we're mutually interested in. And same for me. He's not interested in sewing. That's not really something that we talk about. But I do have other interests that he has taken an interest in as well, where he might not otherwise have been interested in it. But he did seek that outside of himself because it was a passion of mine.
Speaker: as you cared about it. Yeah, I love that. And again, if there's anything that says love more than talking about cars when your spouse loves cars and you don't care, then I don't know what there is. That's awesome. So many good tips. So just a side note about the interests. I personally
Speaker: despise talking about politics. I just hate it. And I'm not interested in it generally at all. But during election season, things are popping up. I have more thoughts in my head. And so we've been having some great discussions because my husband loves politics and he loves trying to talk about it. And mostly I just shut him down because I'm like, I don't care.
Speaker: So it's been really nice for me to step out of my comfort zone. And then he feels like the expert too, right? Like I say, well, what about this? Well, what about this? And we had these great conversations. He's able to share more of his knowledge because it is kind of a hobby of his that he does more research on it than I do. So I love that.
Speaker: That's kind of a nice part of a symbiotic relationship like that is that he discusses, you know, like he's the expert on something. And like, for example, when my husband does have some garment question or clothing or fabric question, then I get to be the expert if he comes to me and we're talking about something like that. And yeah, that's a really cool part too.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Everybody wants to be the expert at some point, right? And I also love that you brought up the timing of difficult conversations because as the talker and as the person that needs to talk things through to think them through, I've been known to call my husband at work in the middle of the day and tell him some hard thing that happened because I just need to talk it through. And he's like, why did you call me at work? This couldn't have waited till I got home. I'm like, no, of course it couldn't.
Speaker: But lately I've been able to hold on to it a little bit longer until we have a really nice quiet time to sit down and really discuss things in depth. And then it allows me to think through my thoughts a little bit. So I guess I'm learning how to do it like you guys do.
Speaker: So just to kind of pull up logistical tips for finding time to talk. First of all, making it a priority, obviously we mentioned that. My husband and I almost always chat on his drive home. So he has about a 20 to 30 minute commute. So he'll call me when he gets in the car and we get to talk. And what's wonderful about that is it's towards the end of the day. So we get to share what went on during the day and any problems or solutions that we figured out.
Speaker: Um, it's fairly private because my kids can't listen in. They only hear my side. And if I need to say something sensitive, then I lock myself in my closet for a few minutes. Um, and it's just nice to check in. You know, I haven't seen him for eight or nine hours and he's coming home for dinner. And so we just check in and say, we love each other, ask about what's going on, et cetera. And then, and then we can kind of finish the conversation later on when kids are in bed.
Speaker: And that's the other time we usually try to chat after kids are in bed, obviously, but sometimes we're too tired even for that. So we have transitioned to talking a little bit after the kids are excused from the dinner table, but before they go to bed. So I don't know about your kids, but my kids eat in about 37 seconds. And as soon as we say they're excused, they take off. And sometimes we're allowed a little bit extra time, you know, alone at the dinner table to finish our conversation or bring up something else. So that's been really fun.
Speaker: Oh, you know, our kids are, um, we have enough kids to the older age where they're still, where they have started hanging out at the dinner con.
Speaker: at the dinner table after the little kids have left and we have really super good conversations. And it's really neat to have the kids, the older kids enter in on those conversations. And I would say that my husband and I have learned how to communicate better. That's part of the equation is because there's adult and teenage children listening in and participating in the conversation too. And that's, we kind of model for them adult conversation and what it sounds like and what it looks like.
Speaker: you know, how that goes. OK, that's really fun, and that's just kind of something new that we're entering into as well. But I really love having deep and meaningful conversations with my big kids. It's like, oh my gosh, you're there's a real human in there. You're like a real person, not just this little, you know, gremlin that needs to be fed and washed up all the time. And then my final tip about finding time for talking together is going to bed together. This has been a hard one for me for many years because
Speaker: As a stay -at -home mom, very often the only time I had for many years to do my own pursuits was late at night after my kids were in bed. And so I would stay up very late and my husband would go to bed at 10 or whatever and we would not go to bed for a long time. So when we do make time to go to bed together, I really feel like it reconnects us in a way that almost nothing else can. Yeah, that's a really nice thing to do little things like that through your day and at the end and beginning of your day that you can do together.
Speaker: Just a little side note, it's not talking, but one thing that my husband and I like to do together that's communicating is we like to pray together in the morning. And so like we're not talking to each other, but it's kind of a mutual conversation, communication with a higher being that really, really makes our relationship stronger.
Speaker: Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up, too, because I've noticed that my husband, who is less of a talker, brings things up in prayer that I wasn't ever aware of. And afterwards, I'll go, oh, I didn't know that was something that we should be concerned about. Yeah, you know. So just to band together for that higher purpose, I love that. That's a great way of communicating.
Speaker: All right, now we're going to move on to how to talk about sensitive subjects. Okay, you guys, this is when it's hard to communicate, not just because you have personality differences, or you don't have the time, but when it's something hard to talk about. So this is like sex and money and in -laws and
Speaker: so much more that is difficult to talk about sensitive subjects make communication difficult so in our early marriage one little truth thing that our husband had because we went through a lot in our early marriage so growing up i didn't really see a lot of healthy examples of
Speaker: conflict, but mostly conflict resolution. I'm sure a lot of us can say that about our childhood. But so when my husband and I had our first disagreement, like I didn't know how to resolve it. And I thought basically like, okay, well, shoot, I just screwed up. The marriage is going to be over now. But in his family, he grew up with lively dinner table conversations. And sometimes somebody would be the devil's advocate just so that the conversation would go on longer. And he grew up in that kind of
Speaker: environment and so he also didn't know what to do with this sensitive little wilting.
Speaker: wallflower that he had married. So our truth was that if we were going to talk about something that was hard or difficult, sensitive, that we had to hold hands while we were talking about it. So that we knew that when it was all over that we were still married and we still love each other. Me. Okay. Basically me. That our marriage was still going to go on. And that, but see this, just this physical act of like touching was like, it's like grounding, you know, like
Speaker: It's going to be okay. We're going to talk through this. We're going to get through this. And on the other side, we're still going to be holding hands and married. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. I love it.
Speaker: Yeah, I wanted to say that it's just so important not to ignore these topics. And how many of us do that? Honestly, for the first probably eight years of our marriage, we just kind of ignored a lot of these. We just swept them under the rug. And let me tell you, it didn't work so well. They came up to bite us later on. The real problems come when you ignore these sensitive subjects that need to be talked about on a regular basis. So a few of my tips are to set aside time to talk without interruptions, like you were talking about, the difficult or the sensitive subjects.
Speaker: needs special time, like not when you're both exhausted or you're both starving or you're both overwhelmed. And our trick is to do it in public. So this, I mean, not like where everybody can hear you, obviously, but we'll go to like a little corner booth in a restaurant or at a park or something.
Speaker: And what this does is it avoids getting too angry or like emotional breakdowns because you're keeping your public face on. And so sometimes I'll be inclined to get upset about something and then I think, okay, well, I'm not gonna freak out here at the park. And then I allow myself to calm down a little bit and think, okay, it's not that big a deal, right? I mean, obviously there are some conversations you probably don't wanna have in public, but for the most part, that's kind of helped us a little bit.
Speaker: And then the last tip is to use I statements. I'll talk about those in a minute, but those are really important. They talk about that in counseling along. Okay. Those, I love that public setting for when you have to have a civil disagreement.
Speaker: All right, so I wanted to mention the importance of honest communication. So what we talked about before, where your husband and me just shut down to keep the peace, that's not really being honest. Okay. And so there can be like some resentment that you have to work through after that, or just, you know, it's a basic like disagreement in your mind. You can't with yourself because on one thing you think something that you didn't communicate and on the other,
Speaker: you were trying to keep the peace and like it's like this internal war. So it's not being honest and it's not good for a relationship. So keep in mind the goal of talking about these sensitive subjects. So when you have something that you disagree on or it's a difficult thing to talk about, the goal
Speaker: at the end after this conversation is resolution or a peaceful solution. And so if you keep that in mind during the whole conversation that we are trying to work toward resolution and a peaceful solution to this thing that we're talking about, I can just keep that internal question running through my mind. Is what I'm saying going headed toward the goal and the peaceful solution or am I just being disagreeable or not trying to work toward the solution?
Speaker: And then I wanted to also mention how detrimental one -sided conversations can be. Um, like you talk about your need to talk. And if, if, you know, your husband just sits there and listens, if my husband needs to talk, and if I just sit there and listen, his cup isn't really being filled up by me only listening. I need to part, you know, be a participant in that conversation. And then one final suggestion is have an example couple.
Speaker: to uphold inside of you, in your mind, or both of you, maybe you have the same couple. And this is like perhaps an older couple for me, it's my grandparents. When I'm having a hard time discussing something with my husband, I think, okay, how would my grandma discuss this with my grandpa? Like how would she communicate to my grandpa and not go to the space where you focus on, well, my grandpa would never say this or my grandpa, you know, don't do that.
Speaker: How would my grandma communicate this to my grandpa? Because she is such a lady and such the kind of person that I'm trying to become. And so if you have a couple, an example couple that you can uphold in your mind, it helps you get outside of your own head and kind of that negative self -talk, well, I can't resolve this just because I'm such a stupid person or I'm so bad or whatever.
Speaker: But get yourself, get your eyes on somebody else and think about how they would handle the conversation. And sometimes that's a little trick that helps me work through it. Oh, I like that. So many good thoughts. I love the goal of peaceful resolution because sometimes I feel like I'm just picking fights because I'm angry and I need to get stuff out of my head. But if I stop and say, is this going to lead us towards peaceful resolution? That's a no. So stop talking. Go calm down, you know.
Speaker: And the example couple, I will also say this, maybe you don't have an example couple. Maybe you don't have a marriage in your sphere of influence that you've seen that you want yours to turn out like. So create your own, right? Look at that, like go back to Audrey's example of her 20 year vision.
Speaker: Look at your 20 -year vision in your mind, and how do you treat each other there? When you're 65 years old, are you nitpicking each other's housekeeping habits, or are you just so gracious and kind and loving? Start those habits now. That's a beautiful thought.
Speaker: I will say that when it comes to talking about sensitive subjects, it's important to remember that both people's feelings are valid. Feelings are just something that's a combination of your thoughts and your experiences, and we can't be telling people that their feelings aren't valid. They feel them for a reason, and we need to try to understand why, right? So those I statements I talked about before, here's a couple of examples.
Speaker: Instead of, you never listen to me, you're always looking on your phone. How about, I feel ignored when your phone is out. Or, I am frustrated because I don't have any money to spend. Or, I'm uncomfortable initiating intimacy. All these things where you're just expressing your own feelings and they can come back and say,
Speaker: I didn't know you felt like that. I feel like this." And then you can come to that common ground. When we start saying you this, you that, then it's like the blame statements and then it just kind of spirals downward. It's not a positive conversation. So what we try to do is to say our piece as briefly as possible, especially if it's emotionally charged, and then really listen to the other person and remember that
Speaker: None of us knows everything. We think we know where the other person is coming from, but chances are good we don't. And when we both say our honest eye statements without blame, then we can come to that common ground and say, oh, now I understand where you're coming from, and they can understand you too.
Speaker: Right, exactly. And I did have a tip for if, I watched this video the other day, maybe I'll try to find it so we can link it in the show notes. But it was, so if, let's say you have a spouse and they are making those you statements and so what, or they're very frustrated or saying, you know, they're expressing their frustrations. So one thing that you can say,
Speaker: without, to let them know they're heard, but without agreeing with the statements is, I hear you saying that you feel very frustrated about this, or that I hear you saying and then repeat the thing that they said. So that you can let them know that you're hearing them without agreeing with the thing that they have said, if it is not something that you agree with. Again, the honesty thing here.
Speaker: So just like I said, working toward that peaceful resolution, sometimes, like you said, somebody needs to express something before they can let it go or hear how it really sounds or get it out there. And then that needs to be said before you can move on. Sometimes that's the case. Yeah. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker: So then at the end, because it's a sensitive subject and a difficult conversation, make sure it ends peacefully. Like kissing makeup, right? Like we tease our kids, kissing makeup, be kind. Be the first to say you're sorry. Just hard topics can take the toll on a relationship.
Speaker: If you've had a hard conversation, then maybe later in the week, try to do something to do a relationship repairing thing. You know, maybe go on a date night together or whatever it means to you. Go for a walk. Buy them a gift. What is their love language? How can you maybe give them a little extra love after, and how can you give each other a little extra love after you have had a difficult conversation?
Speaker: hard conversations can do damage to relationships. So then look to repair the relationship. And I too wanted to mention just some daily, just dailies, tell them that you love them and daily, daily do this little relationship building, relationship repair. One thing that I have to tell a little story on
Speaker: myself and my husband, I guess. So one thing that we used to say at the beginning of our relationship, if we were having a disagreement is, Oh, you're not the person that I married. But, um, the, but that's the thing. Okay. Here we're almost 25 years into it and we're not the people, the same person that we married because we've grown together and we don't want to be that same person because we've grown so much and learned so much since then. So we,
Speaker: We want, like, growth is our goal for our relationship. Yeah, I love that. I love that. And to realize that we are all going to change and morph, it's just important to do it together, right? And constantly do so to become more the person that your spouse wants you to be, right?
Speaker: Just a couple of final thoughts from me. One is that therapy or counseling is always a good idea, okay? So if there's any problems communicating or even just something doesn't feel quite right, it is not just for people who are having severe marital problems. In fact, my husband and I went to counseling for a little while and it was so helpful and I'd like to go back.
Speaker: But one thing she said is, I'm so glad you guys are here because you guys are doing great and you just are working through a few little things. She says so many times when couples come to me, they say, how can we fix this? And she says, you should have come 15 years ago. And that just broke my heart that sometimes these little problems just compound, compound, compound until it's so
Speaker: hard to fix them, that it's going to take so much more work than if we had attacked them early on, right? So that's just, it's just a wonderful resource. If at all possible, I highly recommend counseling to anyone that can do it. It's awesome. And then the final thought was this. There was, we got a bunch of marriage advice at my bridal shower. You know, everybody wrote down something on a car and gave it to me.
Speaker: And my favorite piece of advice that has just cycled through my head nonstop for the past 16 years is it's better to be married than to be right.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, because I'm the kind of person that likes being right. I like to nail my point home until everybody understands that my way or the highway, and sometimes I just think, is this worth it? Is this worth it to just, you know, nail my point home and say, no, no, no, no, you're not quite seeing it the way I'm seeing it? No, it's just better to have a peaceful relationship and let it go, right? I love that.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really beautiful. Thank you for sharing those things. I have some final thoughts too. So remember the reasons that you got married with your spouse together and remember them often, review them. Some people have a tradition of on their anniversary trying on their wedding dress or looking back through their old anniversary cards or their wedding album or something. So remember the reasons you got married often. Look out for your spouse's interests, like put those, set those at
Speaker: up as an important thing that you want to make them happy. And then, yeah, you did mention my 20 -year vision. We try to set an example for our kids' future relationships and communications. Let's say you don't have a sample couple that you can look up to.
Speaker: Can you be the sample couple that your kids could look up to because that's whoa? That's really tough like you know your kids know you the most intimately They see your relationship like your relationship is the one that they see the most
Speaker: hmm, the closest like, you know, they see all the details they see when mom and dad argue and all that. But could we keep in mind that maybe our relationship could be one that our kids could pattern their relationship future relationships on. And then I did want to say that I do believe as parents with children, we have a responsibility to make our marriage work. And all the studies you can go Google and whatever they all show that kids with
Speaker: their original married parents, their biological parents, married to each other, do so much better in so many categories and areas of life than kids whose parents are divorced or only one of their parents is their biological parent. So I'm not saying that to make anybody feel bad if you're already in that situation. I'm just saying. So I feel it's my responsibility for my children's future to make my relationship work. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker: it's always easier to do something for a purpose higher than yourself, right? Yeah. Okay. So to wrap up, I wanted to say that we are going to be including a couple of resources in the show notes, the social styles handbook that Audrey mentioned, and then we'll also link to some of John Gottman's books. Have you ever read any of those, Audrey? I'm not sure if I've read his books. I've seen a couple of his talks. Yeah. He is a fascinating
Speaker: I'm not sure exactly what he is, sociologist, psychologist who studies marriages. And I've read a couple of his books and they are just so eye -opening. So we'll share those in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening, you guys. Thanks so much for tuning in. Did you know you can help the podcast in several ways? First up, we're on Patreon and there are three different levels to support us there.
Speaker: Just head to patreon .com slash outnumbered. Next step, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a written review on iTunes. It helps other parents find the podcast and receive the help you're enjoying. And finally, you can follow us on Instagram at outnumbered the podcast. We're always having fun over there too. As usual, if you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, you can reach us at outnumbered the podcast at gmail .com. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.
