If you’ve said to yourselves that your kids’ activities, and games, and practices, and whatever they’re into — play rehearsals — that that’s right, because they have them every night of the week, and you had to go to all of them…
If you’re telling yourselves that that’s the reason you’ve ignored your marriage, if that’s the reason that you’ve put it on the back burner and sort of didn’t give it any attention…
I want you to know that you don’t have to be there.
If nobody’s ever told you this — you don’t have to be there for every game, for every practice, for every play rehearsal, for every walk and run, if they’re in track or whatever it may be.
Not to say that you’re not to support your kids — but you do not have to be there every time.
If we’re saying that the marriage is a priority, let that line up with what you’re doing on every weeknight.
How good are you at receiving in your marriage?
How easy is it for you to receive from your husband?
From your wife?
The thing that they want to give you — are you able to accept it?
Are you always the one who gives?
And by “always,” I just mean most of the time.
(Breaking my own rules here.)
Are you the one that’s picking crumbs off the floor, while your husband or wife comes and brings you a plate full of colorful, beautiful, delicious food?
But because you don’t know how to accept it, you don’t know how to take it from them…
You go back.
You refrain.
And You return to: “Here’s what I know. Here’s what I’m comfortable with.”
How good are you at receiving?
If it’s been hard for you — if this is ringing a bell — I want you to give it a try.
If you’ve ever wondered and you asked yourself this question — is our marriage salvageable?
Is it fixable?
Can we do something about this?
Or have we gone, you know, past the point of no return?
Has this been going on for too long?
There’s one — you know how there’s the soft reasons and the hard reasons?
There’s one hard reason — and condition, so to speak — that is the only thing that you need in order to move yourselves forward.
It’s the only thing that you need to do to make you two unstoppable.
And make anything that would come in your way obsolete.
If you want to know what that is, I talked about it in my last video — go check that out.
Your marriage — I don’t know if any of you need to hear this — your marriage is worth doing the work for.
If you and your spouse have not had the conversations for quite a while now — the conversations that you know you need to have — right?
If you haven’t talked about the things, and you’ve kind of been withholding from one another — maybe on both sides, or just one of you doing that…
When you start then having the conversations that you actually need to be having, it will feel wrong.
Or it will feel like it’s happening all the time — like you’re bickering, you’re disagreeing, you’re having these discussions, or these arguments, or these conversations — right?
All the time.
Because it will.
It will be.
You’re going from essentially nothing to then — like, this is happening several times a week, or a couple times a day, or what have you — right?
And it will feel uncomfortable.
But just know that you’re not doing anything wrong.
It’s just that it will feel uncomfortable.
And that’s all right.
Let’s talk about boundaries in marriage — particularly as it relates to your in-laws.
Do you have a hard time?
Do you not know what to do when your in-laws come in and they want you to take on their — fill in the blank — anger, guilt, shame?
They want to — or you perceive as if they want to — make you feel one way or another.
Do you know what to do with that?
Do you know that it’s just like the analogy that I made with brownies the other day?
I can’t make you eat the brownies.
No matter how many times I bring them in.
No matter how good they are.
And no matter how many edge pieces.
Or how many middle pieces.
Or how many nuts.
And how much extra cocoa powder I put in there.
Or what kind of Belgian chocolate I made it with.
I can’t make you eat them if you say, “No, thank you.”
The same principle applies in your marriage — with your in-laws.
This is such a common misconception.
Forget the fact that I am a marriage coach who dedicates her life to this work.
If I don’t work on my own marriage with my husband, it will look like the plant that we’ve forgotten to water for weeks on end.
It will look like the field where the farmer goes to harvest and he forgot to plant — so there will be nothing to collect.
Even though I may have what we might call a unique advantage, if I don’t work — if I don’t put in the work — I’m going to have the same result.
I’m going to have the same result.
So there’s no shortcuts to this.
Not for you.
Not for me.
And not for any of us.
