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
3 Tips to Navigating Holiday Stress with Ease and Connection
Want to navigate this holiday season with ease and connection rather than stress and conflict?
Join Nate Bagley and I as we discuss the complicated dynamics of holiday traditions, family gatherings, and the financial strain that often accompanies this joyous time. We offer insights into recognizing stress indicators in ourselves and our relationships—like emotional reactivity and perfectionism—and provide you with practical strategies to shift from a season of obligation to one filled with genuine joy and happiness.
We talk about the importance of communication and planning to ease holiday tensions. Especially the importance of setting clear expectations for events, aligning on gift-giving preferences, and updating traditions to reflect shared family values. Nate and I swap personal stories and strategies on budgeting and creating thoughtful gift lists, emphasizing how these approaches can help maintain harmony. By focusing on what truly matters, we want to help you in transform holiday chaos into a time of meaningful connection with loved ones.
Finally, we bring in the transformative power of gratitude. Discover how a shift in perspective can turn holiday stress into moments of magic. We share heartfelt stories about our own experiences of staying positive amid daily challenges, illustrating how gratitude can be a powerful, cost-free tool to uplift your spirits.
Make sure you tune in and try these 3 tips for improving your connection with your Sweetheart this holiday season and let us know which ones worked best for you!
Hey, hey, everyone, welcome back to the Secrets of Happily Ever After. I'm your host, monica Tanner, and I'm super excited to be sitting down with my friend, nate Bagley, today, and we are gonna be talking about a topic that I know is kind of up front in everybody's mind, and that is how to navigate the stress of the holidays, maybe without killing your partner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wouldn't that be nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I feel like killing my partner. I'm like listen, buddy, just this will all work out better if you just do everything I tell you to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've. I've noticed I've just become a Scrooge lately. The holidays stress me out so much that I don't even look forward to them anymore. I just the Christmas tree comes up and the songs start playing and all I can think about is having my schedule eaten up by parties that I don't necessarily want to go to and buying obligatory gifts that I don't know, can't always afford or don't want to buy, and and just like. Instead of being the season of like, giving and family and togetherness, it feels like the season of stress and obligation and requirements, and and it can feel a little overwhelming. So you're talking to a Scrooge today. So let's let's find some ways to make me less Scroogey during the holiday season.
Speaker 1:Let's do, cause I imagine that there's a ton of people out there listening who feel the same way. They just don't admit they're like oh, you're speaking my language, nate.
Speaker 2:Yes, I hope so. I hope I'm not alone in this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Okay. Well, let's just talk about a few ways I mean I've done. Let's see, I think this is like our 23rd holiday season together.
Speaker 1:My husband but I feel like I've learned a few things, especially since here's a little tidbit about me I grew up in a Jewish household. We didn't even celebrate Christmas, so the holidays for us weren't even that big of a deal. I don't come from a big, close family, so there I mean Thanksgiving wasn't that big of a deal. We didn't do Christmas. So like after I got married I had to like learn all of that. Not, I didn't. It was like seriously drinking from a fire hose Cause I was like I don't even know what Christmas traditions I want to do. Like I don't even have any like background with that.
Speaker 1:And now we have this massive family that loves to get together and I don't necessarily always feel comfortable with that and in in a lot of these years I'm hosting, cause we have a home that's central to everybody and where my mother-in-law lives, so everybody comes to us and so a lot of you know I've had to work through a lot of what the heck am I doing and how do we do this in a way that's not like totally destructive to our relationship. So, yeah, I feel like I have a few things to share on this topic.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to hear them. Before we dive into what to do, do you think it would be beneficial to talk about how holiday stress can show up in your relationship? What to watch for.
Speaker 1:So good yes.
Speaker 2:I have a list of things that I think might be helpful, because this the the holidays, when things get stressful, when you get a little anxious, when you, when that amygdala, that uh fight or flight, that survival mechanism part of your brain activates um, physiological, physiologically, your prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for, like, planning and thinking ahead and also being empathetic and engaging in, like open dialogue and being creative, like all those things that we need to have access to to be our best selves during the holidays it shuts down. So when we get stressed, when we get stressed, the best part of our brain is no longer accessible and we turn into a Grinch and we're hard to get along with. And so I want to talk about some of the ways, some of the things we can look for in our bodies, in ourselves and in our relationships that can be warning signs that you might have some holiday stress creeping into your life that you need to manage. I'm just going to give like five or six quick examples, really, really fast with and hopefully it'll provide some context. So stress can affect you emotionally, Like you could be experiencing fear of conflict. Maybe there's some family members that you don't want to, that you don't want to see at a party or a boss that you're trying to avoid at a holiday party, that those emotional symptoms could be.
Speaker 2:Emotional reactivity You're getting really reactive to the people around you. Hypervigilance, which is kind of monitoring everybody's moods and behaviors and trying to make sure everybody's happy and holly, jolly and, in the holiday spirit, Guilt and shame for maybe not creating the experience that you want for your family. So those all kind of fall under the emotional symptoms. Stress can show up cognitively in your brain. So you could fall into the trap of catastrophic thinking or overthinking and ruminate. Ruminating like kind of hyper-focusing on a terrible possible outcome that hasn't happened yet. You could become really perfectionistic and need everything to just be perfect for you to be able to enjoy it. So that's the second one.
Speaker 1:You know, that shows up for me a lot.
Speaker 2:Tell me.
Speaker 1:Is like going over conversations in my head over and over and over again, like long after the conversation is over.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like talking on the phone with a sister-in-law or something we like planned an activity, and then I'm like get off the phone and I'm like wait a second. I said this thing and like I don't know if she took it the wrong way and maybe help with this and like that happens a lot when I'm stressed.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent, or you tell somebody no cause you can't make it to something and you're wondering if it's going to ruin the friendship, if they're going to be mad at you, if they're going to hold a grudge. There's so many opportunities for that rumination to show up during the holiday season, because it's just a hectic time and we're not always our best selves. The third way that stress shows up is in our behaviors. So we can become people pleasers and say yes to everything and then start to resent people for demanding too much of ourselves. We can become conflict avoidant. We can get over-involved in people's lives. We can withdraw and emotionally cut off from people because we just can't take any more stimulus or we're so afraid of letting people down that just creating distance is the only way we can manage that. Maybe you have that conversation with your sister-in-law and then you call, call your other, call a friend or somebody, and be like oh my gosh, this is what I said. Is everything going to be okay? Or do you think she'd be stupid if she'd be mad at me and get that validation? That's triangulation and there's a bunch more, but those are some things to pay attention to.
Speaker 2:There's physical symptoms of stress which could be anything from like headaches and stomach aches to muscle tension or fatigue. You can have a hard time sleeping, you could have changes in your appetite, you could be fidgeting all the time and then, lastly, there's relational symptoms. So you could experience enmeshment, which is like a lack of healthy boundaries. You could have a hard time setting and maintaining your boundaries. You could have a hard time setting and maintaining your boundaries. You could have a dependency on family members, so needing your family members to validate you and reassure you and tell you that everything's going to be okay and that you're loved. You could have an emotional role reversal.
Speaker 2:I've seen this. Or there's the role reversal which is like when kids start taking care of parents, they start parenting people. Or there's also that issue of like when you go back care of parents, they start parenting people. Or there's also that issue of like when you go back to your family, everybody reverts to the way they were when they were kids and you get treated. You start getting treated differently, like you're not an adult anymore. And then there's caretaking, which is like over-involvement in managing the emotional states of everybody. So you're so worried that there's going to be a fight that you're just like trying to monitor everything everybody's saying and doing to make sure that everything goes smoothly and you don't have a bad experience. So I know that was kind of long, but there are just so many different ways that stress can activate your brain and it can interfere with your ability to have a holly, jolly holiday season.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, let's talk about ways to mitigate that Cause. I know for me just in the simplest ways, like I get really snappy or, you know, kind of lose my temper. I feel like I'm the only one that's doing anything. Like you know, I I have a lot of those kind of emotional, physical, behavioral issues and it's crazy on me like I think I'm being totally normal and everyone else is like whoa, watch out for mom right yeah, I get grumpy and I withdraw.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I get. If somebody's like we should do a gift exchange, I I'm like, oh, I do not want to do this. Or if we have like six different family parties, I start to complain to my wife and I'm like do we really have to? You know, this is a lot.
Speaker 1:Well that's a good segue into number one, because I think one of the most important things you can do to kind of navigate this stress is to have open planning sessions, meaning that you set aside time before the busyness of the holidays and you discuss those types of things, especially traditions that are no longer serving you or that have like kind of done their time like parties. Like how many parties are we going to go to? You know what, what? What are the most important things and how do we make sure that we still have time for our family and each other? And then budgeting planning. You know how much money are we going to spend? How are we going to do all the gifts this year, so that we're not, you know, going into debt over this? Those types of discussions are so important and I think way too often we just barrel into the holidays and think, oh, it's fine, like we'll just we'll figure it out as we go and we don't intentionally make those plans so that everybody's on the same page.
Speaker 2:Yes, Planning is key. I got to know what's coming and and additionally, I think I think it's important to get into the weeds a little bit there, Like, not only what parties are we going to, but what's expected of us. Do we need to bring a dish? Do we need to dress up a certain way? Do we need to bring a gift? Do we need to find a babysitter? Those are all things that should be involved in this conversation and we, you need to figure out who's going to take care of those things right, who's going to be in charge of each of those things?
Speaker 1:right Like who's nothing.
Speaker 2:Nothing's worse than having a family party and you're supposed to bring a dish and you're an hour out and you're like what can I make in 15 minutes and still have time to get the kids ready, and it's it's a little bit of a nightmare.
Speaker 1:So, have time to get the kids ready and it's it's a little bit of a nightmare, so um disaster for sure. Yeah, so having those, uh those kind of delegated things like who's gonna, who's gonna find the babysitter, what do we need to wear, who's gonna make sure that everybody's clothes are clean, like those types of things, are really really important communication points. Yeah, in advance, right, far in advance. I love that.
Speaker 2:Tell me number two, your tip number two. Oh sorry, you looked like you had something else to add.
Speaker 1:Well, I, just before we leave, that I think planning for budgeting is really, really important. I think I've gotten myself in trouble way too many times where I'm just, like you know, start spending money for Christmas and I like to start early, so I don't, you know, have a panic at the end, and so then I've spent tons of money on gifts for the kids, like in increments throughout, and my husband's like why is our credit card bill so much? Or you know, we did not need to spend money on lights and Christmas cards and you know all the different things. So, making sure that you're kind of taking into account what is all of the outlay of money we're gonna have this season and how can we plan for that so that we don't hit that January like we're in debt, we're trying to pay all these bills and we're upset with each other and all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we save year round for Christmas. Like every month, we put a little bit of money aside for our Christmas presents at the end of the year. One of the things I like to do is keep a list of like a shared note with my wife of gift ideas for people that I know we're going to be getting gifts for throughout the year and then, like on black Friday, if I have that list, I can knock them all out when the deals are hot and we can just be done with shopping. I think you know, coming to an agreement on whether or not you're going to do neighbor gifts, like some people really love doing, that I always feel awkward because I don't like doing it, and then we get a gift and I'm like I don't have anything to give you and it feels there's always that awkwardness of expectation. Anyway, it's just man, I feel my, I feel my amygdala.
Speaker 1:No, I those are such good discussions and also like getting on the same page with gift giving for each other. Right, because you don't want to be in a position where, like, you've spent a bunch of money on a gift for your partner and they don't have anything for you because you weren't really doing gifts. Or you know, one of you has this idea to spend a bunch of money on a gift for your partner and they don't have anything for you because you weren't really doing gifts.
Speaker 1:Or you know, one of you has this idea to spend a bunch of money on kids gifts and the other one's like let's do an experience that costs a bunch of money, like a vacation, or you know. So, having those conversations every single year before the busyness of the and I know for me like we have older kids now, so when I was a young mom, we had all these traditions like the elf on the shelf and things like that, that took all this energy from me Right.
Speaker 1:And so at a certain point, when the kids are getting nothing out of this elf on the shelf tradition and I'm still, you know, breaking my back to make sure that every single day, the elf got moved in the middle of the night, you know, you know being able to like talk through that. Which traditions do we want to make sure we do this year? Which ones you know are? Is it time to retire or find new ones? You know all those types of things I think are. Just just don't miss out on your opportunity to connect by having those conversations and have a holiday. Months go smoother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a great place to start to have this conversation is to go through a core values activity. Figure out, like what are the things that are most important to you as individuals and as a family? If you want to learn more about that, feel free to reach out to me. I have some activities that you can go through. But it's like my wife and I did this recently.
Speaker 2:A couple of months ago, we figured out what our core values are, and one of our top shared values is connection. You know, gift giving didn't rank on there anywhere and it's all about you know. We decided that connection for us means sharing time with the people that we love and making memories, and for me that's. I would much rather hang out around a fire and just laugh and joke and talk, then get together and have all these like gift exchanges and activities and games and distractions, like I just want to. I just want to sit down and talk to people, I just want to be with people and um, and when you understand what your values are, you can plan your, your, your holiday activities around those values. I think a lot of the time when people feel dissatisfied with the holidays is because they're filling it with things that go against their values.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Totally so important, so important, okay, so, yeah. So I think it's really easy when you know the holidays get going and stressful. You know people they don't go to the gym as often, or you know they're going to skip their morning walk, or you know, because there's just so much to do. And I think that maintaining those routines that keep your sanity throughout the year are going to be even more important during the stressful holiday times. Like, don't omit those things that keep you sane. Make sure that you're still, you know, taking time in the morning for self-reflection, make sure you're getting to the gym, make sure you're still drinking enough water. You know, make sure that you're having your I would say your 20 minutes of daily connections with your spouse, like whether that means taking a drive and looking at Christmas lights and talking, you know, at the end of the day, or whatever it is that you do normally, just make sure that you don't stop doing it because you feel like it's too busy.
Speaker 2:Goats, my goats. I'm laughing as you say that because it's just. It feels so unrealistic in the phase of life I'm in right now.
Speaker 1:To keep your regular routines.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just, you know, we have a two-year-old and a four-year-old and I'm lucky if they sleep through the night. Right now we're just getting up a lot and, um, yeah, I just I empathize with people who hear that and go. I know it's important but it's really hard to do. Um, I find that the thing that I need most and maybe y'all can relate with me is when I start going to bed late. That's when all of my self-care stuff goes right into the garbage can, and so there is a temptation to stay up, to stay up late and wrap presents or take care of shopping or finish a project or talk to a friend. And if you're going to maintain your self-care, I think there's an element of discipline and saying no that you have to cultivate in your life so that you can get to bed at nine, 30 or 10 o'clock or whenever it is you get to bed, so that you can have a decent morning routine. That is something that I will try and focus on these next few weeks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I would say for you, Nate, in the phase of life that you're in like I wish somebody had sat me down and told me this when I had really young ones is just pick one or two things that help you feel like a human right. It doesn't have to be your entire self-care routine, but if that's, you know, taking 15 minutes to meditate in the morning, or you know spending one hour at the gym or whatever, just just pick one or two things that like make you feel like you've done a good job that day and just make sure you're doing that, Even if you know, even if you have to ask for help from your spouse or a neighbor or something like that, and just be like, hey, can you just take the kids for 15 minutes so I can have some quiet time by myself, or whatever you need to do. But I think that's so, so, so important, especially to mitigate the stress that comes in the holidays good advice.
Speaker 1:I don't have little ones anymore, I have big ones, and that's a different kind of stress it is a different kind of stress especially when the holidays come around, because the things that they want are much bigger.
Speaker 1:It's not like little uh you know poly pockets anymore on their christmas list, I mean they want the playstation 5 they want ski passes and they want, you know, a trip and they want to, you know, a big backpack for college, like like all these things that I'm like, oh, you guys are a car. These people, they're not like, you know, light on the bank account. They are very they're like very needy and wanty, even though they don't really need anything. But you want them to have a good Christmas and you want them to feel like my we have this joke my oldest um, you know. We asked him. He's now in college and out of the house and we asked him.
Speaker 2:You know how we did as parents and he's like I think you guys did a great job, except for maybe like gift giving and we're like what?
Speaker 1:like give an example. He's like I mean, I remember when I got, like you know, a mattress for my bed for Christmas, like that's. Like that's what he remembers, not any of the cool gifts or experiences, vacations, like things.
Speaker 2:Like he remembers when he got a mattress for Christmas and he just be like come on, buddy, I got some home movies to show you all the cool stuff that you got that you've forgotten about.
Speaker 1:Exactly that broke and you know. Yes, right, exactly so yep, I.
Speaker 2:That is why I just don't like. I love gift giving. I love it, especially when it's a gift that I think the person like some thought went into it some. But I just giving gifts for the sake of giving gifts. They just don't get appreciated, they just get, they don't get used, they don't get remembered and it just feels like such a consumeristic waste. Yeah Well, I'm done being a Scrooge. What's your next tip?
Speaker 1:I think my last tip would be just to really, really overdo gratitude Like think of every way humanly possible to show gratitude to your spouse, to your kids, to your family members, to your neighbors just, I mean, be obnoxious about showing gratitude, and I think that, for me, pulls me out of that Scrooge feeling Like why am I doing this Like everybody, like, instead of just focusing on poor me? You know I have to do all these things. I have to make everybody's dreams come true. If I focus on man my spouse really showed up for me today doing the dishes when I was exhausted, or my kids are being really nice to each other and they didn't fight over the car today, or man my neighbor showed up in a pinch, like those types of things, if you can just really really focus on reasons during, especially this season, you have to be grateful. I think that will really help navigate or mitigate the stress.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. I agree, it's about taking off your poop colored glasses and putting on your rose colored glasses. Yeah, good advice. I feel like I need to do that.
Speaker 1:It's not hard, it's free, like that's the cool thing.
Speaker 2:It's like there is no additional financial investment to find more gratitude.
Speaker 1:It's just literally a frame of mind and I've noticed it's kind of like a snowball. If I can find even the smallest reason to be grateful, it just like gains momentum and speed and just becomes so big Like the more I look for reasons to be grateful, the more I find things to be grateful for great for yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, because I think I'm coming off of a long, probably a too long time frame of being a bit of a curmudgeon and my days are often filled with hard news and bad news and disappointing news and frustrating news and everything from, like health issues to politics, to financial struggles, to you know, just issues that pop up out of nowhere, like last night, okay, monica, last night I took my wife to go see a movie.
Speaker 2:We finally, like got out when my mom came over after we got the kids to bed and she just hung out and stayed at home so we could go watch a movie. And I got distracted, pulling out of the garage and didn't wait for the garage to come all the way up and I backed into the garage door, bent our garage door and I don't know I'm gonna have to like spend all weekend trying to fix it because I just absentmindedly stopped paying attention, I got distracted and and went into autopilot and started backing out and like a chunk. And it's these little things that just build up and it's so easy to get caught up in the momentum of negativity and frustration and overwhelm. And you really, I think you really. I'm going to speak for myself, more now than ever in my life. Being grateful has to be an intentional choice.
Speaker 2:I think it came a lot easier for me. You know in my past and in these recent months and years it's just gotten more difficult. So appreciate you bringing that to my attention. I'm hoping other people here can relate to just the feeling of life feels a little relentless sometimes and that gratitude is free and it is a choice and we just got to consciously make that choice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and especially during the holidays when you've got we have so much to be grateful for the food, family, the friends, the love, the spirit of the season, the beauty of. You know I find myself when I'm cold. I have a hard time finding gratitude. Like I'm like what is this life? Why am I so cold? You know any, any type of discomfort like that it's hard for me to find gratitude. But there is so much beauty in the seasons and the, you know, the snow and just there's just so much to be grateful for. And I think I mean you know we could give suggestions for gratitude practices. But you guys, it's so easy, like find a journal or you know, just type in the notes of your phone.
Speaker 2:It's simple.
Speaker 1:It's not easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, right it's not always easy, when you're cold, to think I should be grateful, or when you're standing in line at walmart at 10 o'clock at night yeah because somebody forgot cranberry sauce for the next morning.
Speaker 2:It's not easy to be like I should be grateful. And when you're out shoveling a driveway or changing a poopy diaper, or you, your wife is stressed out, or your husband is stressed out because of a big party that's coming up and they're not prepared or they're. You're looking at the budget and you've already gone over budget and there's still three more parties to go to Like. Those are moments where it's not easy to be grateful, but it's simple you just gotta you gotta make the choice.
Speaker 1:It's simple. You just gotta you gotta make the choice. It is, it's a very small choice and if you can find the smallest thing in all of that to just be be thankful for, like I'm glad we have it. You know, I'm glad I have a car to get me to the store to get these things, I'm glad I have a credit card. I mean, like you know, there there are those silver linings. I mean, like you know, there are those silver linings. They can be difficult to find sometimes, but I promise your brain is really good at finding what you give it to look for. So if you're looking for the ways in which life is unfair and you can't yet make any progress because of all of these things, you're gonna find that it's going to be in abundance everywhere. But if you're looking for the littlest things to be grateful for, you will also find that.
Speaker 2:Nailed it.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, I think this has been a great episode. I'm excited to hear people's feedback on the three things. So let's just recap the three tips that we're giving people to kind of navigate holiday stress is number one plan, plan, plan plan. It's not rocket science but it does take some intentional effort. You've got to carve out the time, you've got to be willing to have those difficult conversations and be willing to execute on the plan. So planning, planning, planning. Number two is keep those sanity making routines right, like don't skip out.
Speaker 2:Take care of yourself.
Speaker 1:Yes, don't skip out on your workout. Remember to meditate, make sure that you're drinking enough water, all of those things that are super important. They get even more important when you're busy, so make sure you're taking care of yourself. And number three is gratitude. Find things to be grateful for. You don't have to make it, you know, complicated or, you know, intrusive in any way. Just if you're starting to feel yourself kind of bubble up with grumpiness, just say what do I have in this moment to be grateful for, and that will usually neutralize that explosion that's about to happen.
Speaker 2:Love it. Great tips Monica.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thanks for joining me, Nate. This was really fun.
Speaker 2:My pleasure.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, I hope we'll be seeing more of you, and good luck to everyone as you prepare for the holidays and making all of the magical memories with your family.
Speaker 2:Humbug.