Marriage and Intimacy Tips for Christian Couples: Secrets of Happily Ever After
Have you ever wondered what makes the difference between those couples who absolutely LOVE to be together and the ones who merely tolorate each other in their old age? I always want to run up to the cute old couples who still hold hands while walking down the street and ask them all their secrets to relationship success. This podcast gives me the opportunity to do just that!
I'm Monica Tanner, wife to a super hunky man, mom to 4 kids, weekly podcaster and relationship and intimacy expert/enthusiast. I help couples ditch the resentment and roommate syndrome and increase communication, connection and commitment, so they can write and live out their happily ever after love story. If that sounds like something you want, this podcast is absolutely for YOU!
Each week, I'm teasing out the principles that keep couples hopelessly devoted and intoxicatingly in love with each other for a lifetime and beyond. I'm searching high and low for the secrets of happily ever after and sharing those secrets with you right here. Sound marriage advice for couples who want to live happily ever after and achieve a truly intimate friendship, because an awesome marriage makes life so much sweeter. Let's get to it!
Marriage and Intimacy Tips for Christian Couples: Secrets of Happily Ever After
The Recipe for Resiliency with Brian and Jen Goins
Ever wonder how some couples seem to navigate the ebbs and flows of marriage with grace and a smile?
This week, I'm chatting with Brian and Jen Goins from Family Life, who join us to share their 27 years of wisdom on building a relationship that thrives. We discuss the everyday skills essential for cultivating both individuality and unity in marriage. This episode isn't just about the dos and don'ts—it's an exploration of the delicate art of compromise, the celebration of our partner's uniqueness, and the passion that can be ignited through embracing our differences.
Laughter and code words might sound like the ingredients for a spy novel, but in this episode, they're the secret spices for a strong marriage. We're not only talking about the romantic side of things but also about how to handle tough conversations with grace and love. And for those moments when challenges arise, we discuss the transformative power of seeking guidance and the strength found in having a community to support your marital journey.
Brian and Jen provide real-life examples of how to keep the spark alive. If you're looking to strengthen the foundation of your marriage with compassion, laughter, and a good dose of reality, this episode will equip you with the tools to not just weather the storms but also to dance in the rain. Join us for this enriching episode that's as much about friendship and fun as it is about love and loyalty.
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 so excited to be sitting down with my guests today. Brian and Jen Goins from Family Life. Welcome to the podcast today. How are you guys doing? We're doing great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're doing really well.
Speaker 1:Good Well, so glad to have you here. Why don't we start by having you tell us a little bit about yourselves and your family and family life?
Speaker 2:Okay, you want to start with the family. I'll do family life.
Speaker 3:Okay, you want to start with the family, I'll do.
Speaker 3:Family life Sounds great so we're Brian and Jen Goins and we live in Melbourne, florida. We have been married for 27 years and have been doing marriage ministry for probably about the last 17 years of our marriage. We have three kiddos. We have an adult, a daughter, who is getting married, hopefully in the next year, and she's finally engaged. And then we have a 21-year-old son.
Speaker 3:He's in college, he's also engaged, and then which is kind of a crazy story but then we have a 16-year-old son who is still with us, so we still have one in our home for a couple more years. He's not engaged and, praise the Lord, he's not engaged. We really enjoy working with couples and doing marriage ministry together, but we also really enjoy our family and doing things outside. We live in Florida so we have a lot of fun things we can do here, but I'm also from Montana and so we do a lot of fun things there in the summer and in the winter being outside, and we love to play games with our kids and with our friends, and so that's just a little bit about us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, just so you know, our kids last weekend both got engaged less than 24 hours apart.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, that's exciting.
Speaker 2:They were trying to set a record or what? For sibling engagement? Yes, but it was a little crazy in two different states, one in Nebraska and the other one in Arizona.
Speaker 1:So it was a crazy weekend last weekend. Yeah, big weekend for you guys, adding to your family, that's very exciting.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, so we're excited. So we can't wait to send them your podcast so we can set them up for success.
Speaker 1:Well, I would appreciate that. Yes, I do always wish that people would get the skills earlier, right Than waiting until it's actually a problem Right.
Speaker 2:It's like you never really know that you need anything until you're in pain you know. So it's like when everything's great, you're not going to prepare for it, but it's when you start feeling a little bit of pain or disappointment you start going. Wait a second, this isn't the way it's supposed to be, it's true and it's actually easier to learn them when you're not in pain.
Speaker 1:So I always laugh because one of the best skills I think my husband and I developed we learned it through ordering crumble cookies every week. We learned how to negotiate and disagree and things like that through crumble cookies when the stakes were very, very low. But now we can use those same skill sets when we're talking about anything big in our marriage.
Speaker 2:That's really good, and it makes me hungry for crumble cookies.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 2:So who's negotiating Like do you want more? I'm very curious about this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's really interesting because my husband and I, I think, are very different, right, we grew up, we have very different backgrounds, we have, you know, so there's a lot of we have a lot of differences and we have a lot of opinions in our marriage, right, and so crumble cookies is like a great metaphor for the things we don't. We disagree on the flavors that are our favorites, right, like. He likes chocolate rich, like, and I like all the vanilla kind of lemony flavors, right. So, but also we disagree on the health benefits, the frequency that you should be ordering crumble cookies, right, the emotional benefits, you know, I feel like it's a fun date night. We should be doing it every week, and he's like the expense of the crumble cookies and you know.
Speaker 1:And the health benefits of eating crumble cookies every week, like, do we get two so that we each get the flavor we like, or do we share one because it's not as many calories? So, you know, there's all these different things that we kind of disagree on, and it's a good practice, I think, to differentiate, right, like I'm not going to fold into his you know opinions, but I also don't want to beat him over the head with mine, and so it's good to practice these skills. I call it standing up to each other with soft power, right? So it's like standing up for the things that we want and desire in the marriage, but in a loving, you know, cherishing way to our partner.
Speaker 2:So, oh, that's great Love, that, yeah, we like to talk about compromise and communication and when you have those differences, they don't have to divide you.
Speaker 1:Exactly exactly. They can create passion and fun and help you develop into stronger versions of yourself who are better as a team together. So yeah, Well, good. All with a crumble cookie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's all with a crumble cookie. That's amazing. Crumble cookie yeah, that's all from crumble cookie. That's amazing. So, as we you know for us, when I work for Family Life, jen actually helps lead women at our church that we go to, and so that's her full-time gig, but we also teach with what's called Family Life's Weekend, to Remember. So there are conferences that have been going for about 40 years now, which is hard to believe. They've been updated. We just updated it about about five years ago again, and we get about 50,000 couples that'll come through on these three-day experiences at hotels all around the country. We got one there in Boise every year, and so, which is which is a lot of fun, we got to make sure you and your husband can go.
Speaker 1:Definitely putting it on my calendar yeah, and so we.
Speaker 2:We help couples like that with conferences. We also have podcasts. I host a podcast called married with benefits and we just recorded season four. It doesn't. It's one of these things where it's like when I get a curiosity and I want to explore it, I create a season, and so we have three seasons all on questions, questions, every husband's asking questions, every wife is asking questions, every couple's asking about intimacy. So those are the first three seasons and every couple's asking about intimacy. So those are the first three seasons. And this last one we just did is all about the habits of highly happy couples, and so it's been fun to put that together. That'll come out in June. And then we create content. We do video series for couples where they can get in small groups or they can host their own event and they can go through material on marriage together and have questions and talk about it.
Speaker 1:So fun. I love it. I love what you guys do Well. So with all of that background, I want to get into, in your experience, what are three threats that couples will likely face in their marriage? Like what, what usually are the big challenges that couples are facing?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I don't think it'll come as any surprise. I mean, we, you know, especially as you've done this, you've talked to enough couples to realize I think just one is just having expectations that you don't realize. You know, coming into marriage you start feeling. You start feeling these expectations that you didn't even know existed, like for us, I know we we joke about Saturdays we didn't realize that we would ever have a fight until we had Saturdays. I came in having a perfectly good idea of what Saturday should look like, but for some reason Jen didn't have a good idea of what Saturday should look like yeah, and that usually has a lot to do with your background, with how you grew up.
Speaker 3:Your family of origin has such a huge impact on how you view the world. And so if you come into a Saturday and your idea is a Saturday is it's a vacation day and it's your day off after a hard week and you go right into laying around or swimming or doing your hobbies or whatever that is. That's where kind of Brian had his ideas like watching sports and eating whatever you want to, and things like that, and my family was. That was for Sunday, and Saturday was still pretty much especially the first half of the day was a work day that we cleaned our home and we took care of our yard and we did chores and things like that. And so then all of a sudden, when he's like nine o'clock comes around and we're like I'm getting ready to like, okay, we got to get to work, she's got the mop out.
Speaker 2:She's wanting to clean. It's all inside, like I. She's got the mop out, she's wanting to clean, it's all inside, like I'm okay if it's outside, but if it's inside I'm like I don't have anything to do with it, I want to get outside. So I think just those expectations of not really knowing how to communicate them I think that's where we struggled early on too. It's like how do I even have a conversation about my expectations? And so I think that's one one is just that it's all of us is.
Speaker 2:I don't think you realize how selfish you are until you get married. And and that marriage has this way of unpacking your own selfishness, like I was a really easy to live with when I lived alone, like I was a perfect roommate to myself. And then you get married and it's like, oh no, I actually I think of myself first and trying to go from a marriage where it's, you know, I think a lot of people think marriage is all about you know, somebody adding to my life, versus how do we create a we, how do we go from a way, and I think that's a, that's a big threat, yeah.
Speaker 3:So those are kind of the inward threats, uh, that are from within your own expectations, your own family of origin, your own selfishness that comes out. But we also have outside threats, and so we have social media that comes into our lives. We have maybe past relationships that are outside of our marriage but could be our parents, it could be our siblings, it could be old romances or old relationships, it could be old patterns that are from you know from before, and so those kind of things can come into our marriage and threaten them.
Speaker 2:Or just difficult adjustments, like just difficulties in life. We live in a hard world. You know it's not an easy world to navigate and so when you think about, you know whether it's a, you know you have you go through a miscarriage or you go through a job loss. There was five years into our marriage I was a freelance writer, which really just means unemployed. It's like how do I know? I wasn't expecting that. When we said I do, jen was like I didn't know I'd be married to a freelance writer that wasn't bringing in any money and so how do you deal with that?
Speaker 3:Which goes back to the expectations.
Speaker 3:Right, you kind of have an idea of what things are going to look like and and go on a lot of great vacations and really feel like, can they know their purpose?
Speaker 3:And then you look at your life and your husband or your spouse and the comparison thing comes in and you just we're not as good, we're not as driven, we're not as rich, we're not, as you know, whatever influential. Uh, our kids aren't as great or what I mean. A million different things that you can compare yourself and it threatens the happiness and the satisfaction that you have in your own marriage. So that's a, that's a big outside influence that can come in and again, like with parents, a parent expectations or family of origin expectations um, those can come in and you know, maybe you're always going back to mom or you're always going back to dad or you're comparing your spouse to your parents. Maybe you're always going back to mom or you're always going back to dad or you're comparing your spouse to your parents. Those are just big threats that can outside, threats that can come in and and and cause some damage in your marriage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I had one, one of the very first couples I worked with, and it was so rewarding, um rewarding, but really it was like my first you know, um how do you say it? Like soiree into how um important the pull is of really seeing your marriage as unique and different from all other marriages was. I had, um, uh, the the both. I think both of these threats were really at play in this marriage, because I had a husband who was really really working so hard to create the marriage that his parents had in every way, and it wasn't until we, like really started to recognize why he was so unhappy in his marriage. It was because he didn't marry, you know, his wife wasn't his mom and he, in reality, wasn't his dad and they couldn't create all of the exact same.
Speaker 1:You know, scenarios that he had experienced growing up, and so, as soon as he recognized that that was driving so much of his unhappiness, we were able to break that cycle and he all of a sudden saw his wife with new eyes, like, oh my gosh, wow, I can, instead of you know, working so hard to put her in this mold of who my mother would have been married to, my father, like I can actually appreciate my wife for all her talents and skills and things that she has to offer that are totally different, right, but he couldn't get past this idea that, wait, this isn't the marriage that my parents had, this isn't, you know, the family that they created. So really, it's so important to recognize like what's that kind of internal operating system, like what's driving you know my unhappiness or whatever, and then it was really easy to teach them the skills once you realized, oh, my wife isn't ever going to be my mom, right.
Speaker 2:Thankfully.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thankfully, yeah, she's this incredibly talented and wise and beautiful and, you know, very capable woman. But he had to recognize her uniqueness before he could start to appreciate it.
Speaker 2:That's good. Yeah, I think, monica. I think it hits the whole thing of just having a vision for your unique marriage is what I'm hearing you say, and it's like I think a lot of couples come in going either having a negative vision I don't want to have my parents marriage, yeah or they have this other positive, unrealistic marriage, like I want to have either the Hollywood or I want to have what I think is my filter of what the relationship would be like. That guy versus going okay, we're unique, jen's unique, I'm unique. Guy versus going okay, we're unique, jen's unique, I'm unique. What is our unique? We look like and how do we move towards a positive vision versus I just don't want to have that marriage, I want to have this unrealistic marriage. So I think that's one reason why we love creating things like the art of marriage is that it gives us a chance to help couples create their own vision for what that marriage could look like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and be excited about it, right?
Speaker 2:It.
Speaker 1:It's like we need to write our own story. Whatever that is, it's not, and what I've learned watching couples do this is your unique marriage story. It's usually more beautiful than anything any Hollywood screenwriter could ever come up with, right. And so when you realize we get to be the authors of our own story our own, happily ever after it is really exciting, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the third threat that we talk about is also an outside threat, but it does have to do with a faith view that there is an enemy that is out there. And if you believe in scripture like we do in the Bible, that is gonna be that there is an active enemy that doesn't want you to succeed in your marriage. And so the enemy in scripture is called Satan, which I know is kind of a big word and not everyone believes in that. But I mean, I think if you look in this world, you know there is evil in this world and there is someone who, something or someone who seems to be bringing us down as a culture. So, however you view that, if that's an entity that you just think is evil, or if you think it's an actual person, like we do, um, that that is a part of something that's going to be attacking your marriage.
Speaker 3:And there are times where you're going to look at each other and say what is going on? Why does it seem to be so hard? And that could be that because there's an enemy that does not want your marriage to exist, and one of the things that we always say is that the reason why that makes a difference is because then you could look at your spouse, even when you're in the most egregious maybe not most egregious, but where you're in a disagreement, when you're in an argument and you can say, hey, wait a minute, we have an enemy, but it's not each other. This person is not my enemy. There is someone out there who wants us to fail, who wants us to be fighting, who takes joy in our pain, and it's not you.
Speaker 3:And so let's take all of our. Instead of taking our frustrations and our anger and putting against each other, let's like turn back and look out and see how we can fight this together as a couple, and maybe even just that mindset. It will not make all your problems go away. But that idea of you're not my enemy right now I'm so mad at you. You feel like my enemy but you're not, and so how can we change some of our thought processes on on? My spouse is not my enemy, and so let's not fight each other. Let's try to fight what's out there instead of each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's so beautiful. I like to think of that as a you and me mentality versus us mentality, right.
Speaker 1:How can we orient ourselves against what the real problem is? Right, right, yeah, yeah, so good, so good, okay, so we've got these enemies and or we've got these challenges, these threats. I have intimacy death traps and your threats, your uh threats really overlap a lot with these intimacy death traps. Um, but you guys also teach these must have habits for a healthy marriage. So how can we use these habits, like teach us the habits that we can use to kind of combat these threats that are out there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good. Do you have one you want to jump in with?
Speaker 3:Well, I think we need to lay the groundwork of where we get them from. Yeah, that sounds great.
Speaker 2:A little bit about Shanti and oh yeah, so you know, we really.
Speaker 2:We found a great colleague of ours. Her name is Shanti Feldhahn and she has written a book called the, the, the the the surprising secrets of highly happy marriages, and she really has found it through data. She's a Harvard trained researcher and she really looked at, okay, looking at, and those, those that are the pros in marriage, those that have because the whole idea is like how do you, who do you want to really learn from? You want to learn from pros, you want to learn from people that actually would rate as highly happy, and highly happy means that both couples are saying that, that they're generally believing the best about each other and their marriage, and so they're both feeling like they they're they would qualify as what's called highly happy versus a couple that would be just happy, saying that you know they might have, they're good, but one or the other is maybe saying not all the time, or it doesn't really happen what they're, they're struggling in some way, or there's just struggling couples, and so she's like I'm going to look at what are the highly happy couples do much like what Stephen Covey did with great leaders and he found what were the habits of great leaders, and so there were about 12 secrets.
Speaker 2:We won't go into all of them, but this is what that last podcast that this past season was is. We unpacked every single one of those of those habits, so we'll just list a few of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But, um, one of them was just just that, that highly happy couples they hang out. Uh, and it wasn't about like we tend to think of date night as the thing, and I think date night is a great thing to do. You have crumble cookies when you go out on your date night and generally have a fight about it. So, um, but hanging out was more than just about having a date night. Right, it was. It could be both quantity and quality time. Yeah, for a lot of couples, especially when you have a young kids, because you guys have young kids and and it's like finding time we have teenagers now but yes, you remember the, the young kids right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have you taken the intimacy level quiz yet? If not, you absolutely should. All you have to do is go to monicatanercom 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 monicatanercom backslash quiz and learn about your level of intimacy and how to improve it.
Speaker 2:And so if you have kids or you have stepkids and you're just, you're always moving in different directions it's really being intentional about how do we find the time just to even hang out, just to even and maybe that is looking at your calendar and going, okay, we're going to these practices and we could just send one of us to go do the practice and the other one could stay home. Maybe you have to do that because you got to divide up the kids and all that kind of stuff. Or like one couple that looked at their calendar, they didn't have any time. They said we go to this soccer practice and it's a 20 minute drive and so to make sure we have time together that was their time. They just started taking 20 minutes out of their calendar each week to drive one place and to drive back, and that became their opportunity to rekindle their relationship because they just were taking too much time with everything else and everything besides each other. So I think that's one of the big tips is highly happy couples find ways to hang out together.
Speaker 2:For Jen and I we have this principle we call calendar companionship. We try to do something one in seven, one in 30, one in 365. Once a week. We have a check-in coffee time where we just usually happens even more than once a week. We have a check-in coffee time where we just usually happens even more than once a week because our kids are a better age now, yeah, but we have coffee and we just kind of lay out what's, what's the date going to look like and we have simple questions that we ask each other. And then 1 and 30 we do try to have a fun date night, get out, do something great. And then 1 and 365 just to get away just for the two of us. Do we do something to whether it's a marriage conference or just a vacation where we can have some time together?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the whole point of the hanging out too is that. Or, if you think about it, one of the things that we talk about is that when you start, if you do have some disagreement or you're feeling like you are kind of going apart, then you're like it's better if we stay separate. But the reality is is that it's better actually if you come together and so, even if you're feeling distant, it's so much easier just to kind of stay distant and to stay in your own rooms or to be out and in or to you know you're going to work. You're already apart a lot, naturally, unless you work together, which some people do. But the whole idea is that the things that bring you together, and especially the things that you did at the beginning, if you enjoy doing certain things together starting a new hobby, or reading books together, or exercising together or whatever it was that you did at the beginning those are the things that can still continue to bring you together, even when you don't want to be together.
Speaker 3:That's the thing is that you have to take that first step of saying, even though right now, because there's something between us, I don't want to hang out with you, but those are the things the proximity of doing things together actually can bring you back together. And the reality is, as you think about the friends that you have, if they live next door or if they live 30 minutes away, it's like the people next door, because of proximity, are probably going to end up being the people that you do life with, just because you're close with them. And so when you start moving away from your spouse, say no, we've got to start doing things together, even if it's a little cold at first, it's not comfortable hanging out together and making an effort to do that, to have that relationship and that friendship because that's what your marriage has to be built on is your friendship can really help out, yeah, and so it's amazing how many couples can find it easy not to hang out anymore, which is sad.
Speaker 2:That's why you got married. You got married because you wanted to have a companion for the journey but because of it's easy to get distracted with Netflix.
Speaker 2:There's plenty of things that hobbies, great good things work, that can act as an anesthesia for a bad marriage and I can find myself living with a stranger and getting away from. The very thing that would make me feel more happy as a person and more fulfilled is actually to have friendship with the person I'm living with. So that's one thing hanging out. The other one I think is really fun is that highly happy couples use sign language, and I thought this one was one of our favorite ones, and what they mean by that is like great couples have a way to remind each other that they're in it, even when they don't, even when they're at odds with each other Like I'm still for you, even though I don't like you right now. They usually do it through a really simple thing, like a touch or some type of a sign or a sound that they, or a phrase that they end up.
Speaker 1:I was going to say I use, we use code phrases. I teach that too, but I use phrases. But yes, Like what?
Speaker 2:what phrase do you use?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like, uh, I tell this, I kind of famously tell this story of, um, my husband is very gregarious, right, and so he makes friends everywhere he goes, and early in my marriage I was, it was, I was really insecure about it, right, like I just, you know, I'd see him talking to some beautiful woman that I didn't know and you know, and so we've had, you know, the the whole, the conflict resolution, where I finally got really vulnerable and I was like it's uncomfortable for me to always see you, you know, talking to you, know people or whatever. And and so we came up with this code for it. Like he said, part of that discussion was I choose you like, I always choose you, right, and so we can be at a party, you know, we can be, you know, just hanging out or whatever. And if I start to get insecure, I can, he knows, and he'll, he'll, he'll, give me the code word I choose you, same on the other side, right, If I get really busy with something that I'm working on and I haven't had a lot of time to, you know, give him the type of reinforcement that he needs, and I can tell you know, I'll always say I choose you Like, yes, this is really important to me, this passion project or something that I'm working on or whatever, but I choose you.
Speaker 1:And so when we go on, you know, when we like sometimes we're traveling with the kids and we're apart, you know that's kind of just our code word for like, hey, I choose you, no matter what else is going on, I choose you. That's just one of them. But you know there's obviously innuendo ones, but there's just things that we've picked up over the years that we know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and when you say it, you can even say that when you're maybe even feeling a little bristled at each other and it softens you. Hopefully, you know it can soften you and you kind of have a little smile and you roll your eyes and you're like, oh, I know you choose me and all of a sudden, even if the subject is not totally taken care of or you still might need to have a conversation, you kind of know you have that like we're in this together. Yeah, you know we're going to make, yeah, you know we're gonna make it, we're gonna work it out and the the challenge is you have you still have to talk about it if it's a, if it's an issue that has to come yeah, but it's a good way of saying like I'm aware of you, right, right, that's a good one.
Speaker 2:There's one couple that, yeah, they, they just they would they touch pinkies. And another. There was another couple where they have this big football guy. They got interviewed and they were. They.
Speaker 2:They were talking about this principle of sign language and or a phrase, and and he's like, yeah, we, we've got one. And and the shanti was saying, well, what is it? And he's like I don't want to say it. He's like, why is it? Because I'm I'm too embarrassed, like this big hulk of a guy, you know, lineman, and he's and linemen. And she goes, no, don't really tell me. And so the wife is gagging him on, like, no, go ahead and say it. And so he's like here, kitty, kitty. And so when he high pitch and when he says that, or when she says that that's their way to go, okay, we're still together, we're in this thing. Jen likes to give me a pat on the back, like with two, two paths, which I can't stand. I just cause it feels like it's super parental, you know, but it's become a joke to us, and so so it breaks the ice.
Speaker 2:It just breaks the ice.
Speaker 3:It makes us, you know, laugh a little bit and be able to, to you know, kind of make that reconnection without a lot of um, just with an easy, easy a reconnection, that's. That's easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I, I think, one that we were out with, like some couples and and it can be intimate too you were saying innuendo and there was this couple we were out with and we were I don't know how we got on the subject Just like do you have like a sign for when you're in the mood or afraid, something like that.
Speaker 2:And the white, the wife, said she's like we do and I've already done it, like in this, in this dinner time, when we're like, what is she? You know, we want to know what she did. She's like, nope, it's just between us and so, but he, derrick knows, and so it's no, it's time to wrap up and and let's go home. So we're all trying to go. What did she do? Did she say something? She touches me, what was it? Yeah, so happy couples and it's fun to develop, it's like most couples actually start realizing oh, we actually do have something. We. We either have something, some phrase that we learned, or maybe it's from a movie or like the I choose you type thing. Um, and just it's fun just to sit back and go. Do we have one number one? Secondly, if we don't, what could it be Like? Let's come up with something fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's interesting. I was thinking about the expectations like one of the threats being expectations, and I think that when you're talking about sexual intimacy with a couple, there's a lot of expectations around sexual intimacy. I work with couples a lot around this right and one of our code words is hold you, and it comes from when our kids were very little. You know they would just put their arms up and say hold you, and you would know they just needed some. You know a little bit. They wanted to be held and so you know they wanted to be held and so you know that became a code word for us.
Speaker 1:Like hold you means I want to snuggle and the expectation is very clear, like I don't want this to lead to anything else, like I just need to know that you're here for me, like I had a hard day or something's going on or something like that, and so we can just look at you and say hold you and know that. That's like our signal to comfort each other in the way that is most comforting, without any other expectations of anything else. Now, that doesn't mean it can't lead to that, but it just means like hey, I want some non-sexual reinforcement kind of love in this moment, right, and so that's. You know, just such a. Those code words are so important. So sign language I've never called it that, but yes.
Speaker 1:It is so crucial, I think, to these masters of relationship.
Speaker 2:And there's a lot of other ones that again, you can have someone check out the podcast. It'll come out probably in June, all of these. And we talk about going to bed mad how happy couples actually go to bed mad. They just look at different. You know, because there's a verse in scripture that talks about, or in the Bible that talks about. You know, do not let the sun go down on your anger. And so a lot of us have heard you need to stay up and fight. And reality is like you might be in a terrible place, you might be hungry, you might be tired, you might be mad. You know, whatever it might be, and you're not in a good frame of mind to even have that discussion.
Speaker 2:But what happy couples do is that they, they tend they will go. Let's call a timeout, let's get some rest, let's get something to eat, but they're very intentional about resolving the issue, whereas I know for me, I can be more passive when it comes to conflict and I'll go to bed mad and hopefully wake up and the problem's gone, which it hasn't, but I'll just choose to think that it has. Maybe she'll come back around to my way of thinking at some point in time. So we talk about that unpack, that I think the last one that we've mentioned, um, as far as habits go, is just that that highly happy couples. They actually believe in kind of a they have a higher purpose, and so you know and again, I don't know how much of your audience would be considered faith-based, but it's amazing how many couples that realize that there there might be something bigger than themselves and how to identify that, not just in pursuing that. For us, we believe in God and we believe that Jesus Christ was his son, and so it's like for us to be able to go.
Speaker 2:How do we connect spiritually over that? How do we align spiritually? How do we pray together? How do we go to a community of faith together? Having all of those things around you as a couple realizes you're not alone, that there's somebody that actually wants you to build this great family, this foundation, and when you actually see yourself, kind of, you actually look higher, you look up and you see that there is somebody that that is for you and wants you to move in this world and to to then also look out and go. Who can I help with this message? Who can I? Who can I show this kind of love, the love that God has for us, to others. And when a couple unites around those things and they take their eyes off themselves about how they want their spouse to change and the marriage to work, all of a sudden you realize that you have something bigger to live for. So that's been. It's been neat to see how that unites couples is. When they're united around a common faith or a common purpose that's bigger than just their marriage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so important and, since you bring that up, a lot of my audience is very faith-based, so I'd love to spend just a few minutes talking about faith-based ways to handle conflict.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well, I know one thing for me that has really helped us is for us to again going back to that idea of believing the best in my spouse, that they're not my enemy, and just even recognizing that the Bible talks about that, and for us to come together and go. What are the principles out of the Bible that we can live our life by, so we're not having to guess. There's so much in the Bible about conflict resolution and about your tongue has the power of life or death. And when we kind of go to our default patterns, like whenever I get passive and I don't want to move towards Jen in conflict, it never works out for me. It never works out well.
Speaker 2:But when God says you know, hey, you need to go if you have an issue with your brother or sister, which Jen in that sense is somebody of faith, she is my sister even though, um, she's my wife. But anyway, resolve the issue quickly, right, resolve the issue quickly. And when you do that on a consistent basis, it becomes easier and I would say that we've grown in that. I haven't been perfect, but we've grown in that, so that's been super helpful. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think too, just remembering that we are called to be compassionate and kind, that we're called to use words that build people up and not tear people down, that we're called to tell the truth in love, and so don't shy away from issues. We don't shy away from telling the truth to each other, but we do it in such a loving way we realize that not everything always has to be said that we can really take our words through a kind of like a marketing department, as one of our friends says, where you're like how is this going to be presented in the best way? And so we take it through the marketing department, like how would a marketing department do this? And that's how we present our, our, um, uh, frustrations or just issues or topics that come up and, um, do it with kindness and gentleness and compassion as well, doing it really in love. Um, another thing, kind of taking the the uh, matthew 18, 18,.
Speaker 3:You go to your brother or your sister, and I think this is we're at a stage, I think, in our culture, where, if there's huge issues, that it might be time to bring another person, because after you go a couple times, then the scripture says take someone else with you.
Speaker 3:And so if there is especially, I mean, for me, I'm very passionate about abuse and marriage and and so, and especially in Christian marriage, which it happens you know a lot more than we probably would like to admit that a man or a woman but usually statistics I'm sure evening out a little bit but just having a woman say, hey, if there's something going on in your marriage, like, yes, talk to your husband about it, but if you're being abused in any way, or if there's manipulation or gaslighting things I'm sure you've talked about, maybe it's time to bring in a counselor or a pastor or a trusted friend and to really confront that, because although we want to love our husbands and we want to submit to our husbands, uh, we don't want to submit to abuse and, um, manipulation and things like that, and so it's really important to to have that of like. Don't be afraid to to bring someone else into that conflict if it's not being resolved, um, between the two of you yeah, I think the other thing.
Speaker 2:The bible talks a lot about encouraging one another. Um, gather together the you know. The bible basically says that life isn't supposed to be a solo sport. And I've heard somebody say if you want to go fast in life, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. And we're going together. But to have other couples that are in our life with us. That's why we like going through studies with others. Jen's always in a study with other women. We've done couple studies with others. Jen's always in a study with other women. We've done a couple studies together before.
Speaker 2:And there's just something about being around other people, being vulnerable with your own pain, and it helps you realize you're not alone. There's other couples dealing with the same thing and that you can encourage each other and hold each other accountable to go okay. Well, how can we change? Because ultimately that's what you want. I want to have a better marriage. You don't want to be miserable in your own marriage. So how can I actually change? Because I might need to change. There's something in me that's causing that pain and frustration. How do I change that? And having somebody else in my life, that can be a better filter for the most part, as long as you choose the right friends, the right people that you want to be around, that are going to build you up.
Speaker 3:There is something about that that holds us accountable and gives us encouragement and makes us go the next day, the next week, the next month, and we encourage each other together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so important all of these things. Yes, community, and I really feel strongly, too about the idea of having somebody who is an advocate for your marriage. Right, like I always say, I mean, I obviously do marriage coaching, but it's not because something's terribly wrong with you, it's just because there are. What I say about it is that you can't see the label from inside the bottle and so you create this dynamic in your marriage, and the purpose of coaching or counseling in that respect is to change the pattern from a destructive pattern to a self-reinforcing charm cycle. Right, it's where we're moving in an upward direction and a lot of times we can't see our own contribution to this pattern that we get stuck in. But if you have a neutral third party who is for your marriage, for the two of you, it's so very, very helpful. And to being able to bring out the. You know, this is, this is what I always do, this is my go-to move, right? This is my contribution to this, to this challenge that we're facing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. We've got a friend of ours that likes to tell the story about when he was, when he was, his kids were younger. One of his, one of his kids came down because his parents were fighting or kind of heard he was fighting and my buddy, ed, he's like well, I was just, I was just talking like I normally talk, I was just saying what I what always my go-to move right, this is how I communicate, this is who I am. And his five-year-old son came down and said dad, the way that you're talking is causing the kids to, is causing mom to cry and the kids to be scared. And it was like the kid was that mirror? Was that you?
Speaker 3:know that advocate in that one moment. He was the older one, so he was saying that the kids were his little. Right His little kids, the kids are scared and mom's crying and it's I mean I'm getting teared up thinking about it because we love this couple and they're so amazing, but I mean it, just it shocked him. He's like I don't want to be the person that makes my wife cry, causes the kids to be scared something I've got to change yeah, even though it's my default, this is how I grew up.
Speaker 3:I'm a Cleveland guy, you know. He's from Ohio and he's a tough guy. People are very predictable.
Speaker 1:It makes sense the way people show up in their marriage. But I always say adaptive then, like they learned it, it was important, it probably kept them alive and who they were in their experience growing up, right, but maladaptive. Now it's right. You're not fighting with you know, you're not protecting yourself from the forces that you had to protect yourself from back then. You're not protecting yourself from the forces that you had to protect yourself from back then. This is a new scenario. So, yes, it's beautiful that that five-year-old could be that mirror for him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm just glad. I mean he had the courage to go. Something's got to change. And we like to say you know, it's like when you think about your marriage and if you really believe the problem in your marriage is the person you're living with marriage, and if you really believe the problem in your marriage is the person you're living with, you really need to step back and go, just draw a circle around yourself and go how do I fix the person inside the circle? It doesn't mean that they're not a part of that problem, but if all eyes are on them, you know chances are what you're saying, that whole analogy of you know you're inside the bottle, you're inside this bottle and you don't see the contribution that you're making. So that's good, good.
Speaker 1:So good. Well, it has been so fun to talk to you guys. So much wisdom and all the things you're saying. I have one final question. This is what I ask all the guests who come on my podcast If you had the undivided attention of all the married couples in all the world for just a few minutes, what's the most important thing you could teach them about how their marriage can change the world?
Speaker 2:Ooh, that's a great question. Yeah, you know, I always like to ask couples like how would you describe the marriage of your parents? What words would you put? What would you say? And some would have good words. There's a lot, though, that would have negative words, and they list those words out and I go okay, now imagine yourself.
Speaker 2:Imagine 15, 20 years from now, somebody's asking your kids what marriage did your parents have and cause? I think all of us actually want to be able to pass on healthy relationships to the next generation. Right, so that's how we can best change the world. You think about it, the world gets changed in a family, and so it's like become the marriage you want to have. So, whatever words you really want to have I want to have a forgiving marriage, I want to have an intimate marriage, I want to have a happy marriage it's like, okay, well, what does it take to have those words? What does it take to develop those habits and principles that will give me the culture and the atmosphere that my kids, 15 to 20 years from now, would go? I want to have my parents' marriage. I want to be able to experience that and pass that on to the next generation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the multi-generational legacy is so important. Thank you guys so much again. Where can my listeners find you learn more about the work you're doing through family life and all the good things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you can go to. Familylifecom is where you can find out everything about family life. There's a ton of articles and podcasts and conferences. Weekendtoremembercom is where you can sign up for one of our marriage conferences. If you go to the Family Life podcast page and you just look up Married with Benefits there, that's where you'll find our seasons and Jen's on some of them. She makes appearances here and there and then we speak at the weekends to remember, so that's where you can find us.
Speaker 3:And Art of Marriagecom.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, art of Marriagecom, the new video series that just was released. So that's a that's a great one too. Just to be able to understand again what's that positive vision? Cause we believe that God created marriage and if he created marriage, like any artist, he has an intention behind it. So what was his intention for what it could look like and what it could be?
Speaker 3:And that's what the art of marriage is all about, and it's great too because of it has it's. It's like a um, it's like kind of like a little mini class at six sessions and it has workbooks and things like that. So that that's one and it's new. So we're we're pushing it, we're excited about it and we, brian, worked on it and created it, but we haven't led one yet, and so we're getting excited. We actually have led one, but it was the old version.
Speaker 3:We've led quite a few of those, but the new version we're getting a group together for in the fall. So we're so excited about that. So join us, have a look at it and see if it's something that you'd want to host in your church or your home. It's suitable for both of those venues or a weekend retreat. I mean, a lot of people use it many different ways, but we're getting ready to lead it through a small group. We're going to have it in our home, but we're going to do it through our church and so we'll have I don't know, six to 10 couples here for six weeks and walk through that material and use the workbooks and things like that and artofmarriagecom.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Well, thank you guys both so much and and we will see you soon. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thank you Bye-bye, bye-bye. 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, monicatanercom, 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.