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

Marriage is a Team Sport Like Volleyball - Spiking Joy into Your Relationship

• Monica Tanner • Season 3 • Episode 268

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Today I'm serving up an episode that reveals how the team spirit of volleyball can spike the joy in your marriage. Imagine applying the same strategies that lead a volleyball team to victory to your own partnership; think encouragement, well-defined roles, and celebrating every win together. I'll share with you the secrets of a successful team—secrets that can transform your marriage into a partnership where gratitude is the net, acknowledgment is the ball, and positivity is the winning play.

Full of puns and analogies from spending a weekend in a giant convention center in Las Vegas surrounded by hundreds of volleyball games going simultaneously, I had some strong thoughts of how elite teams work together towards victory and how this applies to marriage.

I'm also thrilled to introduce the Passionate Marriage Club, an exclusive membership designed to help couples like you strengthen their bond and actively work towards their very own happily ever after. Become part of a community that believes in learning new relational skills and practicing them until it becomes second nature. Learn more about the Passionate Marriage Club here --> https://monicatanner.com/club

Monica Tanner:

Marriage is a team sport. You can't win at marriage on your own. You have to play well together as a team. 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 crack 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. I'm your host, monica Tanner, and I'm excited about our episode today. I am going to be drawing some parallels between a team sport in fact, specifically the team sport of volleyball and marriage. So I am a big sports fan. I grew up playing soccer and learning lots of lessons from both individual and team sports, as well as now that I have kids in their teenage years, I spend a lot of time watching sports, and one of my new favorites to watch is volleyball. My third child plays volleyball and she just started playing for a very competitive team. So we travel all over the country for tournaments, and I just spent five days in Las Vegas watching three days of volleyball At this massive tournament. There were 885 teams playing on 115 courts in this massive convention center and literally three floors of volleyball courts, and you're walking literally miles between courts and watching these volleyball teams on either side. Now, this tournament consisted of 15, 16, 17, and 18-year-old teams, so the level of play was really high, and as I was walking around all weekend watching all these different teams play, I made a few observations about what made some of the teams really elite, the ones that advanced to the championship finals versus the ones who went home early. And, of course, as I always do, I made a bunch of parallels about how the skill sets that are really valuable in volleyball are also really important in marriage, and here's the reason why Marriage is a team sport. You can't win marriage on your own. You have to play well together as a team. So today I want to talk about three really important areas where a sport like volleyball contains really good parallels and lessons to our marriages. So, if you know anything about volleyball, one of the reasons I love it so much is because it is a true team sport.

Monica Tanner:

A lot of sports, you can get away with just having one or two really star standout players, but in volleyball, you need all the players on the court to really be doing their jobs and you need them each to know what their roles and responsibilities are, and they're very different. For example, my daughter plays libero, which is a very defensive position. She has a very specific purpose on the court, which is to play defense. She's a lot shorter than the rest of the girls and her job is to pass the ball to the setter. Now, the setter has a very specific job, which is to distribute the ball out to one of the hitters, whose job is then to get the ball over the court in a way that makes it hard for the other team to defend it. Now, the hitters also have an important job of blocking and playing defense, and when you have a team that works really well together, you have good blocking, good defense, good setting and great hitting. Everyone on the court knows their roles and responsibilities and knows the coverage that they need to have, and then you get to watch really good volleyball. Now that type of teamwork is also really important in marriage. Throughout your life together, there's going to be lots of different stages and seasons where your roles and responsibilities might change or adjust, but in the best marriage partnerships, each partner takes responsibility for their roles and responsibilities and they are a good team player.

Monica Tanner:

Now that brings me to the three areas in which I notice the difference between these elite level teams versus the ones that went home early, and in a lot of these areas, you could compensate for lack of height or lack of skill level. So teams that were really good in these three areas didn't necessarily have the tallest, most talented athletes, but their teams did really really well because these three things set those teams apart from the rest, and they're important in volleyball, and they're just as important in marriage as they are in volleyball. So let's get started. The first area I noticed that was really important to these elite level teams was the level of positivity and encouragement that the players both on and off the court, displayed. I loved walking around the convention center and seeing the teams that really supported each other, meaning the bench, the parents and the players were unified and encouraged. When there was like an ace to serve or a kill shot or a really good dig, everybody on the team was super positive and encouraging. On the flip side, when there was a dropped ball, these same teams were still positive and encouraging to each other. There wasn't a lot of blaming and pointing fingers and you should have gotten that ball. You heard the term reset a lot. I got the next one and let's go.

Monica Tanner:

So, just as that positivity and encouragement created a lot of momentum for these volleyball teams, that type of language and behavior goes a long way in your marriage as well. In marriage, this looks a lot like gratitude, acknowledging each other's efforts and celebrating victories together. There's a lot of clapping and cheering both in the game and from the sidelines. When you have a couple who's really good at positivity and encouragement, these types of couples show gratitude for each other in the big things and the small things every single day. They don't withhold gratitude even for the things that they feel like the other should be doing, just because it's my quote, unquote job to make dinner when my husband and my children say thank you. That creates a lot of positivity and momentum for me. It makes me wanna make dinner again and again and again. When one of our kids does well on a test or they have a great workout and the rest of us are clapping and cheering from the sidelines, it creates a lot of positivity and momentum in our family culture, just like it does for those girls on the volleyball court. So that's the first area that I found was really really important positivity and encouragement.

Monica Tanner:

The second area I found that really separated these elite teams was their level of accountability and taking responsibility. Like I said, in volleyball there are a lot of dropped balls. Now sometimes, when the ball would drop or a serve would go out of bounds, you would either hear silence or you'd hear things like what are you doing? That's your ball, let's get those passes, which I noticed wasn't really helpful and it stopped the team's momentum Versus. There's this thing that volleyball players do when a ball drops in front of them or they make a mistake where they're tap their chest and they say I got the next one, and then as a team, they Meet in the middle of the court. They put their arms around each other and pat each other on the back and on the butt.

Monica Tanner:

To me, it's this beautiful ritual that signifies unity, camaraderie. We're all taking responsibility, owning our mistakes and working to improve as a team. This keeps that momentum going. It's the very same in a great, healthy, thriving marriage. When we have that trust and unity in our relationship. We can admit mistakes, we can apologize when we get it wrong, we can take accountability for the balls that we let drop and work to improve and problem solve for the next time. The flip side of that looks like blaming each other when something goes wrong. I really like the symbolism of how the girls tap their chest when they know they have something to improve upon. I think that's so important in our marriages that, no matter what the problem is, no matter what went wrong or whether or not you were part of the play where the ball dropped, we can always be looking to ourselves to try and understand better.

Monica Tanner:

What was my role in that? It looks a little bit like patting your chest and saying, okay, what happened here and how could I have done something differently to make that go better? And then, of course, bringing in that positive encouragement by saying I got the next one. I got the next one. Let's reset and do it again. So accountability and taking responsibility is such an important part of our marriage teamwork.

Monica Tanner:

Have you taken the intimacy level quiz yet? If not, you absolutely should. All you have to do is go to monnecatannercom 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 monnecatannercom backslash quiz and learn about your level of intimacy and how to improve it.

Monica Tanner:

And then, third, last but not least so important, both in team sports as well as in the team sport of marriage, is good communication. Now, when you watch these really good volleyball teams the team that's on defense before the ball is served over the net, they're already showing each other which parts of the court they have. My daughter especially. She points to her left in front of her and her right behind her, signifying I've got these areas of the court. If the ball comes in this radius, it's my ball. Now, of course, with six girls on one side, there's always going to be what they call seams, and the best servers serve in those seams and in the corners, where it's really hard to defend. This is why communication is so crucial. My daughter's coach is always telling her to be loud, to call the ball, to be a bigger presence on the court, and then, once the ball's in play, there's all these numbers. So the setter is already communicating before the play starts where she intends to set the ball. She doesn't even say this verbally, so the other team doesn't hear. She signals to her hitters where she intends to set the ball. That way, before the play even starts, the hitters are already planning for where the setter is going to set them the ball.

Monica Tanner:

This type of communication makes a good team great. They not only communicate verbally but non-verbally as well, with their body language, with their looks and to the way they carry themselves on the court. Once a team starts blaming each other, yelling at each other or not communicating at all, you can see the plays and the strategy start to break down. That's when teamwork stops working and performance goes way down.

Monica Tanner:

Even if you have great athletes on a team, if there's poor communication or ineffective communication, even the best athletes can't overcome those breakdowns in communication. The same goes for marriage. Blaming, stonewalling, giving each other the silent treatment All of those ineffective modes of communication break down intimacy and trust. Great couples are constantly communicating with each other. They're always asking for more of what they want. They don't expect their partners to read their mind to know where they're going to be and when, to know what they want and need. It's always better to communicate the things that are on our minds than to expect our partners just to know.

Monica Tanner:

So those are the three obvious parallels between a team sport like volleyball and the team sport of marriage. But of course, there are tons of intangibles that we can talk about in later episodes, which include vision casting, knowing where you're going, having the same goals, working hard, making great decisions that are not only good for the individuals but also for the team. All of these things turn mediocre teams into elite teams, and the great news is you can learn all of them. Just like the skills required for an elite athlete, the skills required to create an elite relationship are all learnable. You have to practice, you have to be coachable, you have to want it and, like I always say, you have to be intentional. The great players spend time perfecting their craft. So if having a great marriage is important to you, you've got to put the time in, you've got to get your reps, you've got to learn the skills.

Monica Tanner:

So if you're raising your hand right now and you're thinking that's me, I want an elite marriage, that I want to encourage you to check out the Passionate Marriage Club. These are the elite couples who are invested in making their marriage great. Each month, you're getting trainings, you're getting accountability, you're getting community and support as you turn your marriage from good to great. Like I said, it's not necessarily the most talented athletes that make that podium, but it's the ones that understand the power of positivity and encouragement, responsibility and accountability and good communication. So that's all I have for you today.

Monica Tanner:

If you want to check out the Passionate Marriage Club, just go to monnecatannercomcom and you'll find all the details and information you need right there, and be sure to 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.