Does this resonate in your marriage?
Imagine your 15-year-old comes and offers these words:
What’s wrong with me acting like I’m 5 years old?
You loved me then when I did that.
I just like to do things like I did them then.”
If you’re hearing your spouse, or more importantly, even perhaps yourself, saying these words out loud, this is what that might sound like:
“This is just who I am.
I’ve always been this way.
I’ve always been like this.
Why are you surprised?
You can’t want me to change.
Why do you want me to be different?”
Do you see how this isn’t something to brag about?
So I want to invite you to consider if this might be the biggest lie of them all.
A lie that isn’t serving you even outside of your relationship, but also it certainly isn’t serving your marriage.
So consider that, and this lie—you can stop telling it and living it.
Try it out for yourself.
Try it on for a day or even a week and see what that gets you.
How do you know that you’ve gotten yourself a great one in your marriage?
Here’s how I know that we’re so good for each other.
This is as real life as it gets.
I just sent my husband a text message saying,
“I just went to Scheels.”
We had discussed this earlier—to return the shorts that we had bought at Dick’s Sporting Goods, to which my husband promptly responds, first with laughing,
then saying, “I’m sorry,” all in the right order.
Then, admitting himself that he would have absolutely taken them back to Shields for sure as well.
But then, as if that weren’t enough, he says,
“I almost went to the mall on my way home from dropping the kids at church last night, to pick up your ring—the same ring that we had gone and picked up two days earlier together.”
So, I ask again, how do you two know that you are a great match for each other?
Do tell.
If I knew how to do this the right way, which I don’t yet, you would be seeing a video where I show you me watching a video clip, and then my face stirred up at the end, and I added my commentary.
Until I figure that out or find somebody else to do that for me, here is the message I came across.
Brené Brown talking about something that, in my mind, totally aligns with your marriage and mine.
So, hear this:
Don’t go through the world looking for evidence that you don’t belong, because you will always find it.
Don’t walk through the world looking for evidence that you’re not enough, because you will always find it.
I want to add this:
If you keep looking for evidence that your marriage is doomed, if you keep looking for evidence that there’s no way that the two of you can save it, or that your husband, that your wife, are not the right person, or the best person for you, that you are totally incompatible, this whole thing—meaning your marriage—has been a mistake, that too, you will find.
Ask me how I know.
So, maybe, just maybe, start looking on the other side for proof.
Start seeing the things that are, in fact, just as true, and evidence to the contrary.
Try that.
Try it for even a week.
Do a little bit of that every day for seven days straight.
And then come report back to me and tell me how that went.
You just might be amazed.
Ready? Go.
Here’s a question for the day:
How is your marriage?
When was the last time that you two had asked each other that question?
You know, part of looking at what happened in the last week when my couples come in is being able to evaluate how they did.
It’s looking at what all happened, and we sometimes evaluate it not to dig into it again, but to figure out what it is that they need to learn so that they don’t do it again.
Or worse yet, right? Keep doing it for the next decade.
We do this even without realizing it or thinking about it when it comes to other areas in our life, but we somehow forget to do it when it comes to our marriages.
Taking a minute and evaluating it, right?
Ranking where each one of you is at the time in your relationship.
Because I haven’t come up with a different system yet,
I tend to just ask them to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10:
How connected are we feeling right now?
And you each answer:
How seen do I feel by you?
And how cared for?
How loved?
Asking all those questions with regular frequency and then addressing what comes up.
And if you score really high, and you get a nine or a 10 or 11 even, that’s fantastic and a reason to celebrate.
And if you don’t, and the numbers are lower, that’s also fantastic because you know what you need to address, what you need to look at together.
Right? Like how and what you need to recalibrate.
When was the last time that you would have asked each other one of these questions?
If it’s been a really long time, it will be well worth your time.
I promise.
This has gotten completely out of control.
This new name-calling is what I call it.
Instead of calling the behavior, we multiply or magnify it.
You see some behavior you don’t like in your spouse, and you immediately jump to some conclusion and include it in the commentary, right?
“You’re so bipolar,” or “You’re such a narcissist.”
You know what the reality is?
You know how many people are actually meaningfully diagnosed with NPD in this country?
Less than 5%.
So, the chance that all of your friends, or your entire family, or your husband and all of his entire family are narcissists is nearly impossible.
So, if someone’s behaving in unkind ways towards you, call it being unkind.
If, in a particular moment, they’re being selfish, they don’t want to share, call it what it is: selfishness.
Or if you experience them not caring, tell them that.
If they’re lying to you, call them out on that.
But for heaven’s sake, stop using these big words of diagnosis when that doesn’t serve you.
And it gets me the most when it comes to kids.
When it’s a 10, 12, or 15-year-old using these words, when they don’t even understand them, have you noticed that?
And they attach them to a friend, or a girlfriend, or a family member, without even realizing that that—that it doesn’t even apply.
You know what the tragedy is?
They hear it from us.
And they see the adults in their lives, right?
They see it happening, and then they copy the behavior.
So, this is a PSA for all of us in a marriage and just in life.
Use the words that are more fitting and will do less harm in the long run.
Like this video if you agree.
I can’t be the only one that’s noticing this.
Are you too finding yourselves in a constant fight about what’s for dinner and who’s making it?
This is the solution that I found.
We go through phases.
We go through seasons where some foods are just more appetizing.
It’s not where you want to put your fighting energy.
It’s not worth it.
The food should be so simple and so easy.
Here’s my latest little obsession: egg scramble.
It’s healthy.
You just have whatever kind of veggies cut up ahead of time.
They’re in the fridge, ready to use.
If you have meat, or bacon, or sausage, or whatever leftover chicken.
So, my question for you is, what are those easy, everybody-loves-these, we-always-have-this-on-hand meals that you can maybe, for this time in your life, agree that that’s good enough?
And then you split up the weeks.
You split up the days.
So yummy.
