Marriage and Intimacy Tips for Christian Couples: Secrets of Happily Ever After

Juggling Work, Family, and Romantic Transitions Without Losing Yourself

• Monica Tanner • Season 3 • Episode 264

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Do you ever feel like you're juggling too many hats, trying to be the perfect businessperson, parent, and romantic partner all at once? 

In this episode, I'm unpacking the art of transitioning between the demands of work, the responsibilities of parenting, and the pleasures of romance with your partner. We explore the nuances of adapting to each role without losing your sense of self or the spark in your relationship.

I'm going to give you insight into a  woman's mind, filled with endless 'mental tabs' that can sometimes hinder intimacy. I'll share my top strategies for closing those tabs, setting boundaries, and creating sacred spaces that signal it's time to shift into lover mode. 

Plus, you won't want to miss the details on my upcoming "Seduce Your Spouse Challenge," a three-day challenge designed to fan the flames of passion in your marriage.  Register here --> https://monicatanner.com/syslive

Whether you're looking to enhance your connection or simply find more balance, this episode offers the practical advice and supportive insights you need to keep love thriving amid life's constant juggle.

Speaker 1:

I want you to recognize that there are times to employ the skills for business, there are times to employ the skills for parenting and there are times to employ the skills for loving each other. Have you ever wondered what makes the difference between those couples who absolutely love to be together and the ones who merely tolerate each other in their old age? Hi, I'm Monica Tanner, wife to a super hunky man, mom to four kids, relationship coach and intimacy expert. My goal with this podcast is to help you and your partner swap resentment for romance, escape the roommate rut and nurture a bond built on trust, communication and unconditional love. Each week, I'm sharing the secret strategies that keep couples madly in love, dedicated and downright giddy about each other, from the honeymoon phase to the golden years. I'm on a mission to craft the code of happily ever after, and I'm sharing those juicy secrets right here, because an awesome marriage makes life so much sweeter. Let's get to it. Hello and welcome to the secrets of happily ever after podcast.

Speaker 1:

I'm your host, monica Tanner, and in today's episode, I'm excited to share with you some thoughts I have on transitioning between working, parenting and being a lover to your sweetheart. So I had a whole nother episode prepared for this week, and then I spoke at a conference full of entrepreneurial couples who work together and I shared my partner framework, one area of which I talk about transitions, and when they were talking about it at the end and everybody was giving their key takeaways, so many people talked about the section of transitions and how challenging that's been for them. And then, on my way home from the conference, I was flooded with emails and messages with people asking for more information on these transitions, so I decided to do a whole podcast episode on it. But before we get started, I want to invite you to a special three day challenge that I'm going to be hosting starting on Monday, march 4. So we're going to be doing a live three day challenge, all about how to seduce your spouse. So I will be including ways in which you can transition from parent to lover in this three day challenge. In order to join us, you're just going to go to wwwmonicatanorcom backslash sys challenge. That stands for seduce your spouse, and I promise you're going to love what I have in store for you on how to increase the intimacy between you and your spouse in the everyday moments. So I'm going to be talking about how to seduce your spouse, just not on the big occasions, but just in the everyday. So make sure you join us for that.

Speaker 1:

So when we talk about the importance of transitions, I want you to think about if there's ever a time when you start talking to your partner at home and all the sudden, your spouse starts trying to solve your problem, when, in fact, all you're really looking for is someone to just empathize with you or listen or be a sounding board, without needing to solve anything. Or Is there ever a time when you are ready to start getting cozy in the bedroom and your spouse is not into it because they are thinking about either their to-do list, the kids or something completely off topic? So the reason why this happens is because you or your spouse is not intentionally transitioning between the different skill sets required for A being successful outside the home meaning business or entrepreneurship or whatever it is that you do to bring home income to your family versus in a parenting type setting versus in your connected, loving, intimate romantic relationship. So the thing is is that there are different skill sets required in each of these different areas of your life. Now, even if you don't know what the skill sets are for the different areas. It's important just to understand that there are different skill sets required to be successful in business, versus parenting, versus loving, and one of the things you're going to learn in the seduce your spouse challenge is some of these different skill sets required to be a good, loving, romantic partner to your spouse.

Speaker 1:

But one example I love to give is of a couple that I recently had the opportunity to work with, and when they came to me, the wife's primary complaint was that she didn't feel like she had a voice at home. She felt like her husband was constantly making plans or decisions about things that would happen in the household and that she didn't get any say. And as we dug into this a little bit deeper, I learned that as a profession, the husband was a pilot, and so when he made decisions, he was not used to ever being questioned, because when you have the lives of hundreds of passengers, as well as flight attendants and your co-pilots, in your hands, if there needs to be a decision made or a new plan of attack, the pilot decides what's going to happen, and there's not time for the co-pilot to question. They just need to carry out the plan, and so this is what this husband was used to at work. He was actually very decorated and getting promoted quickly because of his ability to make good decisions under pressure. However, when he came home and started ordering his family around as if they were in a high stress situation and there was no time to question the plan, his family didn't appreciate that, and so we worked together to learn different skill sets. So, while making quick decisions and being able to quickly convey the plan to everyone around you is important when you're flying a commercial airplane, being able to take influence from your wife and your children or those loved ones around you as an important skill set when you're at home. So what gained this man? Lots of respect in his vocation wasn't necessarily gaining him any respect at home. So in order to gain the respect of his family, he needed to learn new and different skill sets to employ.

Speaker 1:

Now, I often run into this type of scenario because I tend to work with entrepreneurs, leaders, who are used to getting a lot of respect at work from the people who work for them. When you're in charge of a team, people tend to listen to you. They tend to not question you. They tend to just jump into action as soon as you tell them what to do, whereas when you come home, one of the beautiful and humbling parts about having small children or teenagers and a loving spouse is that they challenge you. They don't necessarily listen to you.

Speaker 1:

And when you're at work, you gain success and wealth by solving problems, by streamlining systems, and when you come home, that's not necessarily the goal. Chaos in your business needs to be fixed, while chaos in your home is not necessarily a problem to be solved or a system to be streamlined. Most of the time, chaos at home is just to be endured, and I know that doesn't sound very sexy, but being able to be present and available, especially to your significant other when there's chaos at home, is a huge virtue being able to listen without fixing, being able to support without trying to streamline, being able to comfort and give your partner a nod saying I'm right here with you. I get this is so hard, but it's not gonna last forever, and I'm right here with you. So there's less managing and more just being there and present and enjoying the fleeting time that you get to spend with these kids and these teenagers and these little people that are challenging you in every sense of the word.

Speaker 1:

Have you taken the intimacy level quiz. Yet If not, you absolutely should. All you have to do is go to monocatannercom backslash quiz and take a three minute quiz. At the end I'll tell you what level of intimacy you and your spouse are at and I'll give you next steps to be able to increase your intimacy. Regardless of what level you're at, you can always make improvements. So do yourself a favor and go to monocatannercom backslash quiz and learn about your level of intimacy and how to improve it.

Speaker 1:

So one way I like to talk about making a transition from the skill sets that you're gonna use that are gonna make you successful outside of the home, versus the skill sets you're gonna use inside of the home is what I like to call my Mr Rogers principle, and I've talked about this in past episodes. But just to review, when I was growing up I used to watch the show called Mr Rogers Neighborhood and Mr Rogers used to come onto the set that was all set up like a home and he'd come from outside to inside as he was singing a song and he would go over to the coat closet and he would take off his blazer and put on a house sweater and then he would sit on a bench and he would change his shoes from kind of outdoor tennis shoes to more indoor slippers, and that was an outward physical representation that he was making a transition from whatever it was that he did outside of the home to being inside of the home, where he taught us about sharing and caring and being kind. And so I often recommend that, when you work outside the home, that you find some sort of physical transition from the things that you do outside of the home that make you successful to being present and available at home. This means using your active listening skills. This means, when your children or your spouse is telling you the story of something that happened to them during the day, that you suppress your tendency to try and fix it and instead let the person who's talking to you know that you trust them to figure things out. Maybe you could ask hey, do you want me to just listen, or would you like me to help troubleshoot with you? And oftentimes they'll tell you no, I totally know what to do, I just need someone to listen. Or yeah, you're really good at solving problems like this. I would love your suggestions about it. Right, that way, you're never trying to solve a problem that the person who's talking to you doesn't need solved by you. That's probably the biggest and most important skill that you would use inside your home when you're with the people that you love, is conveying to them that you trust them to figure it out, unless they're asking for your help, in which case go ahead and fix away, however, remembering that your children and your spouse are not your employees, so you don't get to get upset when they don't take your recommendations. You just get to support them unconditionally. So that's the transition, whether you're going from outside the house to inside the house, or for me, I work at home, so I am one way in my office and then I physically transition by taking these earrings off when I leave my office and go from business mode to mom mode. So if you can find a physical representation of your transition, that's really good. Now let's talk for a minute about transitioning from home mode to lover mode, because that's a huge one that oftentimes, especially the women that I work with, struggle with this transition.

Speaker 1:

It's hard to turn your brain off, especially when women's brains are wired to be thinking about a lot of different things at once. Everything we do as females is interconnected. The way I like to describe this is like a computer with a whole bunch of tabs open at the top. I go through my day thinking about the things on my to-do list, the things I'm doing for my business, what needs to be done around the house, what's for dinner, planning our upcoming vacation. These are all tabs that are open in my mind, and so before I can feel really sexy and give my undivided attention to my partner, I've got to be able to shut some of those tabs down. So, as a good partner, if you want my undivided attention my best recommendation is that you help me close down some of those tabs Now. A lot of times that involves a good kind of offloading conversation where I have the opportunity to tell you all the things I'm thinking about and, instead of trying to fix them because we're still not in fixing mode you just listen and empathize by saying, yes, oh, my gosh, that sounds so hard, or I think you handled that really well, or what can I do to make that easier for you, right, so you can listen while I offload and close those tabs? Another recommendation if your spouse isn't particularly helpful with closing down those tabs, now I want you to be able to ask for help closing down tabs, but if your spouse isn't around to help you close down those tabs, I have lots of recommendations for ways in which to bridge the gap between all of the things that you have, all of the tabs that you have open in your mind, and being able to clear them out and make room for romance.

Speaker 1:

One of these ways is called sensual meditation, and that's where you take 10 to 15 minutes and you just ground yourself. You can do it in a comfortable position in your room or in your bed and you just turn on music that you like and you surround yourself with sensations that you enjoy and you just think about getting in the mood for a little bit of romance. You can also do this with a good nightly routine that maybe includes a hot bath or a walk around the block. There are so many ways to transition between boss mode, parent mode and lover mode. The key is to be intentional. It's to recognize that you need to be able to bring a different part of your brain on board to be successful in these three different areas. Now, a physical representation of moving from parent mode to lover mode could be undergarments or some certain article of clothing or makeup or jewelry or cologne.

Speaker 1:

That activates the idea that now it's time to unwind, to get close to your partner, to connect emotionally, physically and sexually, because this level of connection is so important, not only emotionally for the two of you as a couple, but physically for your health, for your well-being, mentally that you know you have a safe place, haven to go, where you can just be yourself. There are so many stress-relieving benefits of connecting passionately with your partner. So being aware of these different transitions over the course of 24 hours is something that you can do to really hone in your relationship and reignite the passion that the two of you feel for each other. Because oftentimes, when I talk to couples, it's like Groundhog's Day they work, they do their responsibilities at home and then they go to bed, wake up and do it all over again, and many of times your left thinking did I give my partner any of the best of me today? And so, if you get anything from this episode, I want you to recognize that there are times to employ the skills for business, there are times to employ the skills for parenting and there are times to employ the skills for loving each other.

Speaker 1:

Now you can also be very mindful of making boundaries around your time and around different spaces. For example, date night is always a wonderful way to demarc time or dedicate time to being a couple. Daily transition is a great way to daily set apart time to be a couple Different rooms in your house like, for me, the office is for business, the kitchen living room area is for parenting and my bedroom is for sexy time. So be aware of different transitions and different things that can set apart those areas for the different activities that are really important to you and your marriage. I want you to start having these conversations with your spouse. What are you doing to transition between professional mode, parent mode and sexy mode?

Speaker 1:

All right, and if you want further training and specifically how to go from business and parenting mode to sexy mode, make sure you join us for the seduce your spouse challenge starting Monday March 4th, and make sure you join us next week. Same time, same place and until then, happy marriageing. If you had as much fun as we did just now, I hope that you'll head over to your favorite podcast player and leave a rating and review for the show or share it on social media. That's how other people can find this awesome content and we can spread the message that happily ever after is possible. Feel free to check out my website, monnecatannercom to find out more ways you can work with me and, as always, thank you so much for spending this time with me. We'll see you next week.