Are you and your spouse – come Sunday night, Monday morning – saying to yourselves, “Ugh, not again. What a disaster of a weekend?”
It came up in a session with a couple of mine AGAIN – so we need to talk about this.
If you don’t plan with your spouse what you want to get accomplished during your weekend, don’t be surprised that it, on its own, doesn’t happen and becomes a disaster situation instead.
Think about it this way: We don’t ever just get in the car and say, “Let’s just drive.” “Where do you want to drive?” “I don’t know, let’s just drive, anywhere is fine.”
If that’s the approach, then we can’t be upset that we didn’t get to a particular place south of here or do a particular activity west from here.
In the same way, you can’t just put “ANYWHERE” into GPS and then be angry, yelling at SIRI that it didn’t take you to the airport or the beautiful part you wanted to check out for your next camping adventure.
Where you’re looking back at your weekend, realizing that neither one of you got to “those places” you wanted to go to – this is why that happens.
You’re doing the equivalent of writing “ANYWHERE” into GPS. And you’re surprised that it didn’t work.
Now, when I talk about the planning piece of it, that includes – or rather, REQUIRES – for YOU TWO to have a conversation about the weekend – yes, you guessed it – IN ADVANCE.
So if you and your spouse are, in fact, struggling with this, and you want to NAIL it going forward and stop being angry at each other every Monday morning or Sunday night, if you want to make sure THIS will be the last weekend where that happened, I walk you through it step by step.
So many couples struggle with this piece.
Here’s the key to understanding: It’s NOT asking your spouse, when you want to do something, that you need to ask for permission.
When you want to do something, it is about making sure you consider the other person’s plans, their needs, their wants, and the family’s plans, needs, and wants, right?
If you have kids, but even if it’s just the two of you, you want to show up in a considerate way.
If you have a trip planned, or if you have some desire to do something, you run it by your spouse.
You don’t just make single-handed decisions about how you’re going to spend your time or how you’re going to spend your money.
You run it by each other so that you’re both on the same page.
And as part of that conversation, you can share with them, and they will share with you.
Here’s why this is important: Here’s why I need to or want to go somewhere for a week, for a weekend.
Like, I just left for a week and left my family behind because I came to celebrate an 80th birthday of someone I love dearly.
I wouldn’t have missed it.
I am aware of who I am and what I am leaving my husband stuck with at home.
And I want to make sure that he’s going to be okay.
I don’t want to leave him in the dust.
I don’t want this to be a “Here’s what I am doing, and you deal with it, like it or not” situation.
That is NOT the approach, right?
When we bring it to the other person, when we bring it to one another, what makes it MEANINGFUL, what makes it CLOSENESS-BUILDING, is that we each get to say: “This is what I want. This is why this is important. And this is why I want to participate in this. This is why I want to show up to this – party, or this celebration of life.”
Or I want to be considerate of my family and respectful of my husband and what he is doing.
I don’t want to assume that it just works, so I am going to run it by him and say, “Here’s what I’m thinking, here’s what that would mean for you. You’re going to be on all the time, right?”
If I am leaving in the middle of the school year and doing something like this, it is in my best interest to want to discuss it.
So, if you feel like either one of you is in that place of “I feel like this is being done TO ME and I have no say,” or someone is not considering you and the whole picture of your life, show them this video.
Have a conversation with your spouse and talk about how you can change it going forward.
Let me guess.
When you see your kids, and I mean your adult children, doing something you don’t see as fitting—say, they are not using their time wisely, or they stay too late at work in your opinion, they don’t pay enough attention to their kids, maybe they have a sitter for every single night of the week, and then again on the weekends so they can work more or so they can go out and party.
Or they spend too much money on the wrong things, in your opinion.
Maybe they stay up too late, wasting their time and energy on the wrong things, or they don’t eat the right food.
Or they feed their kids the wrong food.
Maybe they purchased the wrong car for their family, in your opinion.
It’s tempting, I know. 🙂
And because you can’t resist the urge, you say something.
You criticize them, you advise them to change their course of action.
You tell them how you feel about the said situation.
The problem is—they don’t take it in.
And you find yourself caught off guard by this.
But they don’t take it in because they didn’t ask.
They don’t react well.
They don’t apply your advice immediately because—you know why?
Their “feedback door” wasn’t open.
They didn’t ask for it.
No wonder we say, “It fell on deaf ears.”
Because they might as well be deaf.
So the next time you notice something about your adult children that’s not to your liking, before you open your mouth and give in to the urge, remember the IMO rule—the “In My Opinion” rule.
Did they ask for my advice?
Did they ask for the wisdom I have to offer about this issue or situation?
And if the answer to all of the above is no, remember number one—they are adults.
Number two—no matter how convinced you are that you know a better way, this is your opinion.
And even if you’re NOT wrong, they aren’t going to be able to hear it.
Do you know someone who might have forgotten this truth?
Share this video with them before you forget to do it.
My dad just took me to the airport, and the gentleman he is, and the old-school he is, he refused to let me carry any of the bags, even though he had heart surgery and has all sorts of other health issues.
This is the thing that you do. You carry the lady’s bags.
It made me think of all the times in the last 6 months in my work with my couples where this topic has come up.
People will tell me, “We used to have a protocol. We used to have a ‘I’m gonna wait for you at the airport, I’m gonna pick you up, I’m gonna help you with the bags, I’m gonna open the trunk, I’m gonna do all the things. I’m gonna hug you right before you take off and when you land.'”
And then, with time, slowly but surely, all of these things sort of disappear to where now it’s like, “Get an Uber,” or “I hope you can get a friend to pick you up,” or “Park your own car at the airport and drive yourself home.”
Do you have a protocol that you enjoy?
Was there a protocol at one point in time that you did enjoy, that you did appreciate?
And over time, that kind of dissipated for whatever reason—maybe it’s a dozen different reasons—but now it’s, “I just need to get myself back home from the airport,” or “I’m getting myself to the airport when we travel.”
What is it that you miss about it?
Have you told your husband?
Have you told your wife?
“This is—I really miss this.
I really miss that we used to do this.
I really miss that we used to welcome each other after being apart like this.”
There is no ONE way that works for every couple out there, but there certainly is a way that will work for the two of you.
So, find out what it is and get back on that horse.
Let me tell you, it’s lovely when you do.
Here are the top 5 things you need to know as you start your marriage:
BUT first, I have to tell you a story.
I was leaving from Vienna the other day, coming back to the US.
They rebooked me last minute through Paris, so it was a Paris-based crew.
As we all got on the plane, the captain says, in his lovely French accent, “We will be de-icing the plane. So, some trucks will be coming around the wings, but just know: that’s totally normal,” as I say it in MY best French accent— as if to say, “Don’t worry, people. Don’t start stressing out or pushing the call buttons. Yes, the windows are gonna get sprayed. That’s how they do it. That’s all totally normal.”
Sitting in my exit row seat, I literally laughed out loud.
As one would—because it’s me, living in a place where they de-ice the planes 5 months out of the year, where nobody ever says anything.
I couldn’t help it.
Nobody tells you not to worry or that it’s normal.
Go figure.
But it made me think of—and wonder—if you are going into marriage, or you’ve started on that ride, not knowing that some things are, in fact, normal there too, for a long-term, intimate, committed relationship—like the one that your marriage is.
So here goes: Me putting my captain hat on and warning you.
Number one: You will have fights with your spouse.
You will have disagreements—that’s totally normal.
The key is knowing how to resolve them.
Number two: You won’t be able to read each other’s minds.
Not now, not later, not ever.
That’s totally normal also.
Number three: It will not always be smooth sailing.
That’s totally normal.
Not because you are doing anything wrong, or your spouse is doing anything wrong, necessarily.
It’s just that you will have a bad day, and then your spouse will have a bad day too.
And sometimes they will overlap.
And then—life will happen.
As it does.
Just know that’s totally normal too.
Number four: You won’t always feel the high of the honeymoon stage of your relationship.
That’s totally normal.
Nothing has gone wrong.
You just might need to give it some loving again, this marriage of yours, is all.
A good dose of TLC, as they say.
It’s gonna need that regularly, FYI.
Number five: What happens in the bedroom—you know, when you do the things that married people do—it doesn’t always happen like it does in the movies.
That’s normal too.
All that said, just remember these are totally normal.
Nothing has gone terribly wrong.
You didn’t marry the wrong person.
You don’t need to throw in the towel.
Alright, which one of these surprised you the most?
Let me know in the comments.
