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

How to Use Appreciation to Train Your Partner to Give You More of What You Want

• Monica Tanner - Marriage and Intimacy Coach for Christian Couples and Nate Bagley • Season 4 • Episode 308

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The episode explores effective strategies for couples to enhance their emotional connections through acknowledgment, making specific requests, and celebrating small progress in relationships. By emphasizing the importance of turning complaints into requests, recognizing positive behavior, and ignoring unhelpful dynamics, listeners are encouraged to build a healthier, more supportive partnership.

• Discussing the importance of vulnerability in relationships 
• Recapping previous episodes for context 
• Turning complaints into specific requests 
• Recognizing and celebrating small victories 
• Understanding the dynamics of behavioral reinforcement 
• Drawing parallels from animal training to relationship building 
• Emphasizing the need for appreciation over complaint 
• Advising on techniques to redirect unwanted behaviors 

Thank you for joining us! We would love to hear how you integrate recognizing progress in your relationship. Please remember to share your experiences and thoughts!

The book we refer to in this episode is called: What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage by Amy Sutherland

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Secrets of Happily Ever After podcast. I'm your host and my sassy co-host, nate, is back.

Speaker 2:

So sassy.

Speaker 1:

We have missed you, Nate, because there's been a couple episodes that you have not been a part of, but you're back.

Speaker 2:

How dare you? How dare you publish episodes without my presence?

Speaker 1:

I know, I know they were not nearly as awesome.

Speaker 2:

You know what? I'm just grateful that I am. I'm grateful to be your arm candy, your podcast ornamentation. The fact that you can hold it down and crank out awesome episodes without my presence makes me delighted. So I'm just happy to be here and add anything that I can to the conversation.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm happy to have you back, because we started like a trio of episodes. We were talking about three rules to kind of reignite the spark. So if you're kind of feeling like in a rut, we were going to give you kind of three rules. And so in the past couple of weeks we talked about Go back and listen to the episodes if you haven't. Yes.

Speaker 2:

The first thing we talked about was risking it for the biscuit, like you got to put your relationship on the line if you want it to get better. Second thing we talked about is you're not allowed to complain about not getting something. You didn't ask for Love. That Terry Real quote, and that was our last episode that we did together.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and you are going to try that. So did you make a few requests and how did that go?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've been getting a lot better at that. It's been really nice. I noticed here's one thing that I noticed when I don't get, when I didn't get what I wanted but didn't ask for and I mentally shifted to making the request instead of complaining, it often still came across as a complaint. Uh-oh, no, it's just like this is a good thing to learn for context, like if your partner does something and you say you know what next time, what I would really like is this it still feels like you let me down, you disappointed me.

Speaker 2:

So what I've learned to do is or what I'm learning to do and trying to be better at is thinking about situations where I might be disappointed in the future and trying really hard, because sometimes it's. I think it's just when you're busy, when life is hectic and chaotic, it's hard to think ahead and be like well, I'd be disappointed about this later, but it's a muscle that you've got to learn to flex, and so that's what I'm trying to do. I definitely have done a better job at making requests and it's gone a lot better and there's much less conflict and tension and defensiveness in my marriage as a result, and I just feel lighter and less grumpy, and I also recognize how much my complaining about not getting what I wanted but didn't ask for was kind of just really tearing down my wife and making me feel not good about myself and my relationship. So it's something I'm going to keep focusing on. I think this is like a really big thing for me right now, a big theme.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's awesome, so good to hear. And just for the listening audience, like I just want to raise the level a little bit. Like if you've been working on turning complaints into requests, I want you to focus on now really being behavioral and specific, because there's like different levels of requests. Like you can make a request like can you help me more around the house, which is not very specific, like that is a typical thing to come, come through on, right. But if you make it really specific, like on Tuesdays and Thursdays, can you load the dishwasher and bathe the kids, right, that is very behavioral and specific and something that your partner can be like. Absolutely I can do that or no, that's going to be hard for this reason or whatever. But when you're specific like that, you are helping your partner win and come through for you.

Speaker 2:

I would love your help cleaning the kitchen before we go to bed every night.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're on dish duty or you're on cleaning the counters or putting the food away or whatever. The more specific you can be, the easier it is for your partner to actually do the thing you're asking them to do.

Speaker 2:

Love it Cool. Oh, by the way, before we dive into today's topic, I wanted to do just one quick check-in how is your, your leg going on?

Speaker 1:

My knee, Well, um. So I had the MRI. It was a complete tear, and so that's unfortunate.

Speaker 2:

Tear of what.

Speaker 1:

My torment ACL. I knew it.

Speaker 2:

I know this, but our audience doesn't. So I'm trying to play. I'm trying to play stupid for them, I know, for your ACL it's for my ACL.

Speaker 1:

But here's the thing Like I knew it the moment it happened, I knew I tore my ACL and I went and I saw, like I knew it the moment it happened, I knew I tore my ACL and I went and I saw our friend who's the orthopedic surgeon and he looked at it and he's like it's not very swollen, it probably isn't, you know, a ligament, you're probably okay. I went and did the MRI and guess what is? A complete torn ligament.

Speaker 2:

I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1:

So, anyways, we are looking at skiing for you. No, no, no, yeah, no surfing in the summer for me you have to get surgery.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're looking at surgery mid February and then lots of rehab after that. Yeah, good luck.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Are you walking around with a giant like brace?

Speaker 1:

I'm not actually like. What's crazy is I feel it feels a little bit better every day. So my husband and I were in Arizona last weekend for the bootcamp, but I went on a four mile um hike with him to the hieroglyphs and it was like totally fine, amazing.

Speaker 1:

You're a testament of heroicism and pushing through Well um your trooper, your champ my surgeon did say that Tom Brady waited like three months or something to have his surgery. So I'm part of me is like I'm going to lose my nerve. I'm not going to want to go under the knife if I, just if it gets better. And he's like, no, you're too active for that.

Speaker 2:

I'm glad. I'm glad that you figured things out and that you got a path to get feeling better. I'm glad that you figured things out and that you got a path to get feeling better. Thank you, thank you?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, should we dive into today's topic? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the final of the three steps is you know, dare to rock the boat, risk it for the biscuit, be willing to risk it. Number two is ask for specifically what you want. More specific the better. Turn those complaints into requests. I promise you will never regret that. And then the third thing is so important is to recognize and acknowledge even the slightest bit of progress. So if you get 10% better than it was, you know right before you asked, then you are winning. Like, make sure that you are super, super grateful for whatever progress there is and you can talk about how to make more progress, but first acknowledge and be super excited about whatever you get. And Nate, like five episodes ago or something, recommended this book what Shamu Taught Me about life, love and marriage by Amy Sutherland, and I totally read it cover to cover, finished it last night just in time to record this episode and I thought it was good. It was a good recommendation.

Speaker 2:

I am excited to hear what you think about it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I wouldn't say it was like life changing. No it was an easy read and there was a lot of good information about. So she's a journalist. She's not like a marriage expert or anything like that, she's just a journalist that gets interested in topics and she got really kind of obsessed with animal training. So she would fly from New York, I think, somewhere on the East coast all the way to LA and she would watch these animal trainers exotic animal trainers.

Speaker 2:

San Diego right To like the San Diego zoo.

Speaker 1:

I think so. Yeah, she spent a long time there and she would watch these trainers how they would train these animals and she was kind of like so I went home and tried it on my human animals, right, her husband and her friends and things like that.

Speaker 2:

So it's just like a cute, like lots of stuff, if I can get an elephant to pee on command, or I can get a sugar glider to jump out of the tree and land on my finger, or I can get a sea lion to like do backflips. What could I get my partner to do if I used these same animal training principles that they use to get these animals to do these unbelievably cool, like things that you would never think an animal could do?

Speaker 1:

Totally, totally yeah. So the whole book is really anecdotal, like it's. It's fun stories about her, what she learned, you know, kind of shadowing these animal trainers and then her trying them out on the people in her life and yeah. So I think we start. Let's let's start just really generic and then we can talk about some of the principles she, she teaches.

Speaker 2:

I want to address one concern. Whenever I tell people about this book, the initial reaction is like you're training like you're, you're training your partner like an animal. That seems like really gross, it seems really manipulative, it seems really like I don't know. It just doesn't. It doesn't feel good, it feels exploitative. Maybe is a good word.

Speaker 1:

I'm like, of course you're training your partner.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so I just want to clarify what this book is about and what we're going to be talking about today, and really what it boils down to is incentives.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, what it boils down to is incentivizing your partner to treat you the way that you want to be treated and show up as their best self in the relationship, and you are doing this like. One of the principles that she hammers home in the book is that every interaction with an animal is a training interaction, whether you plan it to be or not. Like you are training, you're reinforcing a behavior. You're training that animal to either do or not do something, and so trainers have to be very, very conscientious when they enter a training session that they're not accidentally reinforcing a behavior they don't intend to reinforce. And human beings are the same way, whether to train our partner or not?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're doing it, You're doing it Like you're already doing this. All that this book is doing is bringing to the front of your consciousness, like what you are actually doing, and making you like there's my favorite Carl Jung quote, the father of modern day psychology. He says until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. And so we are all unconsciously training our partners and all this book is doing is making it conscious so that we can actually have choice in the matter and not just be like, oh, my partner never empties the dishwasher, or my partner always gets defensive, or my part, you know like we have all these complaints and a lot of times the complaints we are we're reinforcing on accident. So subconsciously that's my preface to this to anybody who's like, Ooh, this doesn't sound good. It's like, eh well, you're doing it already, so let's just talk about how to do it the right way and do it better.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so good. I appreciate, I appreciate the way you set that up, because we are, we're like, made for connection. We're walking around influencing each other all the time, like our kids, our spouses, like we're constantly reinforcing or unreinforcing behaviors that people are doing around us, so okay, now I'm curious to hear what you learned from this book, like when you dove in.

Speaker 2:

what parts stood out to you, what is, what are the things that if you had to distill in the couple of minutes that we have in our show today, uh, that you want people to take, walk away with?

Speaker 1:

Okay, well, I actually like um highlighted it, but we can go get a little bit more granular. But, um, so she says people ask me what the most important lessons I learned from the trainers and their animals, and she says to consider what you're reinforcing. So maybe we make these the bullet points of the episode consider what you're reinforcing. To ignore what you don't like, to use incompatible behaviors which I'm excited to talk about, so that's a really good one. And to know your species, know your spouse, like. That's a really like. We can underscore that with some Gottman. Um, really good, a really good list. One, two, three, four. Consider what you're reinforcing. Ignore what you don't like, use incompatible behaviors and know your species.

Speaker 2:

I love it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, she boiled it down really really well there.

Speaker 2:

So give me that list one more time, cause I'm going to refer to it throughout the rest of the interview.

Speaker 1:

Consider what you're reinforcing. Okay, I think we can even just like blurb it out even more. So, consider what you're reinforcing. So, so, just as Nate said, no matter what you are you're teaching, you're training your partner, whether you know it or not. So you know, if you're constantly going off on a long spiel about all the things they're doing to let it, to let you down in the relationship, you're training them to drown you out, to like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, if you quickly like point out things that they could do that would make your life better and they can win, like they can get some wins, you're training them that, like when you say something like man, I would love it if you would do the dishes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then you do it, and then they do it, and then you reinforce that behavior, which is what we're talking about today. Then you're training them that when you ask for something and they come through for you, that you are going to be grateful that you are going to make it.

Speaker 2:

Monica what if it's just their job, like you know? So what they emptied the dishwasher? You know what I do all day, every day. Do you know how much stuff I do that I never get any credit for? Why should I lay on praise and acknowledge them for emptying the dishwasher? Why should I like, if my partner watches the kids, to give me an hour alone so I can go spend time with my friends? Why should I lay on praise? Like you know, I watch the kids all the time so she can go out and hang out with her friends, and I never get a thank you. So why is this important? Why is it important to incentivize the behavior we want more of?

Speaker 1:

This is a very Terry, real answer I'm going to give you, and it's because you live with them. It's in your best interest, right? If they are doing something that you appreciate, even if it's their job.

Speaker 2:

They're engaging in the partnership.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, if they're doing something that makes your life better, you ought to acknowledge it, like get more of it.

Speaker 1:

The best way to get more of what you want is to recognize what you're already getting. The worst way to get more of what you want is to complain about what you're not getting right. So if your partner and she talks about this in this book actually, like when you start out training an animal, you're just watching it to see what it's already doing that you like and reinforcing that behavior right. So if your partner does the dishes and that's all they ever do to contribute to your family, then you should start by reinforcing that behavior if you want it to stay right and then you can start training and adding in new behaviors. But you should always try to reinforce the behaviors that you like and sometimes you can just like even be a detective, like if you're in a rut and you're like our marriage sucks, my partner sucks, you might just sit back and try to find like be a detective, like what can I find that my partner is actually doing to enrich my life in any way, shape or form? And then reinforce them like throw them a fish.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, even if it's something as simple as like, thank you for working hard at work so I don't have to Like maybe they're the major breadwinner and you have the life that you have, in large part because they go to work every day and they do their job, thank you. Thank you for doing that. I realize it's probably not always fun to do your job and we benefit a lot from the work that you put in and the salary that you bring home, and I just I appreciate that.

Speaker 1:

So important For me. I'm like thanks for driving, like when my husband is around so important for me. I'm like thanks for driving, like when my husband is around. I don't ever have to think about where we're going or how to get there or when to leave, like my husband's on it Right and I could. I take that for granted. So like, try to find things like oh, my husband always drives, my husband takes the trash out without being asked. Like my husband is, takes an interest in our children and their sports, whatever it is. Find it and reinforce it. That will not only be good for your partner, but it will be really good for you too.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, okay, what's our next step on the checklist?

Speaker 1:

Consider what you're reinforcing. Number two ignore what you don't like. So I loved the example she gave in the book. I thought it was awesome. So she talked about how her husband always loses his keys and he will like stomp around the house like looking for his keys. And this would I just related to this so much because if my husband was like looking for something frantically around the house, I would too. I would like stop what I'm doing.

Speaker 2:

You get sucked into the drama.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and then he's in a bad mood, he's taking it out on me and we're both like looking for the keys, right. And she's like, once I learned this, I just I just didn't do anything, like I would be doing the dishes and he would. I could hear him stomping around and he's looking for the keys and she's like I just kept doing the dishes and eventually she didn't go like oh, what's the big deal? What are you freaking out about? Yeah, don't freak out. Where's the place you had them? Yeah, she just didn't jump in at all, she just continued to do the dishes and eventually he called down I found them right, which always he solved the problem himself Totally.

Speaker 1:

And this would work brilliantly with your kids. Like young kids, when they start to get upset about something Like I noticed this when I was raising my children and they would start to fight and if I jumped in, inevitably I would like screw things up, like they would fight harder because they were trying to get me on their side and prove that they were right. But I noticed that if they would get into an argument or a fight and they were fighting about something and I would just stay out of it, those yells would turn into laughter and they would just solve it on their own because they didn't have to like, get mom on their side. So it works brilliant.

Speaker 2:

They never escalated into a hospital visit.

Speaker 1:

Right. So just ignore the behaviors you don't like. So if they're doing something you don't like, don't nag at them, don't jump in. Just ignore the behaviors you don't like and eventually I I promise they'll stop or they'll work.

Speaker 2:

I noticed um, I started doing this with my four-year-old this the like a month ago. When she screams, she's getting in a little bit of a screaming to get attention. She'll shriek. And I just started looking at her confused and saying I'm sorry, I don't understand you when you talk like that. And now, like I'll come home and she'll be screaming at my wife and then I'll say what's going on and she'll scream at me and I'm like I'm sorry, I don't understand, and I'll see her go and she'll take a big deep breath. It should be like my sister took my toy and I'm like, oh, that makes more sense. Yeah, I understand that, but I, yeah, I just stopped feeding the behavior I didn't want.

Speaker 1:

So yes, I was just about to say think about this in terms of the one we just talked about. What are you reinforcing? Right, think about it If every time your four-year-old screams at you and you get all huffy, puffy and like give them the attention, even if it's negative attention you're reinforcing that behavior. So make sure that you're reinforcing what you like and ignoring that. That's like a two-sided thing Ignore what you don't like.

Speaker 2:

Great.

Speaker 1:

Perfect, okay, so we knocked out the first two there Then using incompatible behaviors. Oh wait.

Speaker 2:

One last thing about ignoring what you don't like yeah, the reason so some people might think you should punish what you don't like, yeah, and that's. I just want to emphasize that that's. That's the default behavior most people go to is like kicking the dog when it, when it, you know, choose, choose up the newspaper or whatever, and when you punish the behavior one, all you're doing is teaching your partner to fear you and you get into what's what David Schnarch calls a marriage consisting of leftovers what David Schnarch calls a marriage consisting of leftovers. And he describes this idea that a lot of people think that their marriage is an overlap of, like, their shared interests and passions and goals and things like that. And he said it's really not. It's really like I take all of my things that I really like and I'm interested in, and then I have all this other stuff that I think is either gross or not worth my time, or disgusting or beneath me, things that are off limits, things that I'm sensitive to, things that I'm defensive about, and then my partner does the same thing, and then whatever's left after we rule out all the conversations we can't have and the things we can't engage in. That's what overlaps. And so he said most marriages actually consist especially in the sex department, but just in general they consist of leftovers.

Speaker 2:

And when you berate and punish your partner, your partner learns oh I just shouldn't do this, this is a place where I don't feel safe, this is a place where I can't succeed, this is a place where I'm a failure.

Speaker 2:

And so they're going to avoid that and they're going to avoid you. So the moment you get after your partner for folding the laundry the wrong way which has happened in my marriage, like I stopped folding the laundry and then we had a conversation and my wife learned to be grateful, even if I fold things not exactly the way she folds them, and I've had to learn similar lessons with her. But it's like, if you really want your partner, if you don't like a negative behavior, the best thing you can do is ignore it, because punishing it one is a reinforcement of the behavior, and if that's the only type of attention your partner gets from you, they'll keep doing it. And then number two in most cases what it does is it teaches the like. When you kick a dog enough times, it might obey you, but eventually it's going to bite back when it gets the opportunity, and what it does is it turns your partner into an enemy, and it won't lead to the type of relationship that you want.

Speaker 1:

And let me ask a question I'm just going to like it's like a rhetorical question, but one I want you to think about Do you really want to be intimate with a punishing partner? You've just been reprimanded or punished.

Speaker 2:

Is that someone that you really want to open up to and be intimate?

Speaker 1:

with Okay, now let's jump onto the third. The third point. Okay, so this one's kind of fun. This is um, using incompatible behaviors. I also loved the example that she gave. So she talked about when she was cooking dinner.

Speaker 1:

She'd be cooking dinner and her husband would kind of like hover over her, like like he was being kind of loving, right, but he'd like kind of snuggle her and like she'd be like, ah, get out, like like I'm trying to, like you know, turn the space exactly like I need, right, and so instead of just saying like back off, back off, like totally doing that, she would offer him an incompatible behavior, meaning like she would find something to where he couldn't do the thing that she was offering him and crowd her while she was cooking at the same time. So she's like and this goes, this actually uses both the last two. The last one is know your species, right, so she knows that he loves chips, right, he's like a. She's like he's a chip she said it really funny like chips are his love language or whatever, right? So she would put out chips and salsa on the other side of the Island.

Speaker 1:

So when she's cooking, her husband was still in there, he could still talk to her, but he was eating chips and salsa, so he couldn't crowd her. So that's an incompatible behavior, like you can't do both things at the same time. So, instead of punishing behavior that you don't like, look for an incompatible behavior, so something that you can offer that they can be doing, so that they can't they physically can't do the thing you don't want them to do.

Speaker 2:

I like that.

Speaker 1:

It's really good and it really ties into the know your species. The last one, which is know your partner, or know your child, right, like if your child gets really grumpy and like throws a fit at three o'clock every afternoon, they just fall apart and you know that they love Legos. Three o'clock would be a wonderful time to pull out a set of Legos and have like Lego time, because they're not going to like freak out and fall apart when they're doing something they really love to do. So you know your, you know your animal, know the animal that you're working with, things that they like, the things that they respond to, um, and then if you're noticing that they're doing something you don't like, instead of punishing or reinforcing the behavior that you don't like, see if you can find an incompatible behavior, something to redirect them so that they're not doing that thing that you don't like.

Speaker 2:

I love it.

Speaker 1:

Tricky but so awesome.

Speaker 2:

I really do. One of the things I love about this is it requires you to be a student of your partner. I think it's really easy to get complacent the longer you are with somebody and think you really know them and you really understand them. And relearning this principle today, being reminded of it, has brought back up some curiosity, and I hope listeners are feeling that same sense of curiosity. Like what is going on with my partner that I don't know. Like what do they really like? What do they dislike?

Speaker 2:

You know when are they most likely to be in a bad mood or a good mood? What is it? You know? When are they most likely to be flirty? When are they most likely to be excited to do something for me? Like I know that my wife, she, loves physical affection. And if I want to have a good evening after I get home from work, if the first thing I do is like put down my computer, take off my jacket, walk up to her and just like pull her in close and give her a long hug and like a passionate kiss, our evening is going to go so much better than if I walk in and go. Is dinner ready? Not good. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but it's really easy to get into that routine of just like walking in the door and you know she's busy doing something and I just start playing with the kids or get distracted or whatever, plop down on the couch and start scrolling on my phone. That's not going to lead to a really great evening. So yeah, becoming a student of your partner, really getting curious about what motivates them, what they like, what triggers their bad moods you know that's I think that's really valuable.

Speaker 1:

And that's a really good Gottman. We can bring in Gottman for a second because maps yeah, if you're really love mapping your partner and this should give you some motivation. Like just think of your and like your partner, is your your animal Like like I'll? I like to think of Ben as my animal, he's mine like totally my animal Right, and he's mine to train. And so just think like if, if there are things that are bothering me about things that he's doing or something like I better get busy me about things that he's doing or something like.

Speaker 1:

I better get busy love mapping him like, figuring out, like what makes him tick, what does he respond to, what does he really love, and, you know, start training him in a really great way. And I love, yeah, I love this. This, this four stack. Consider what you're reinforcing. Ignore what you don't like. Use incompatible behaviors to like, train the bad behaviors out of them or the behaviors you don't like, not the bad behaviors, but and then know them. Know them so that you can offer them alternatives to the behaviors that you don't like.

Speaker 2:

I love it. So, mission for today, I think a good takeaway is to really focus on think about what you're already getting and how can you really be generous with your praise this week? Yes, and instead of making this is what I will focus on, because I have a tendency to make a stink when something's happening and I don't like it. I'm going to focus really hard on just ignoring the things that I don't like this week.

Speaker 1:

Oh, good, good, good good.

Speaker 2:

Reinforce the positive and ignore the negative. Don't don't hyper-focus on it, which I it's easy to do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and honestly consider, consider timing. I think my challenge for those listening in in terms of what we're really talking about today is become like a detective and like sleuth around and find the things that your partner is doing that you appreciate, that you like the things that they're already doing, because that is the key that you can turn to get more of what you want. The best way to get more of what you want is to appreciate what you're already getting. So maybe even keep a notebook or just like really just be like over the top about pointing out and reinforcing what your partner is doing that you love.

Speaker 2:

Here's a fun little way to do this. So I used to do this 30-day challenge called the Epic Wives Experiment. I love it. I did it twice to do this 30-day challenge called the Epic Wives Experiment.

Speaker 2:

I love it. I did it twice. Yeah, you did. Do you remember what the first week was all about? It was about appreciation. Yeah, and the very first homework assignment was to get like a pad of sticky notes and every day write a little sticky note and just put it on your partner, your husband's or your partner's bathroom mirror.

Speaker 2:

And there were a lot of women who came in to this Epic Wives experiment and the idea behind it was like, if you're feeling burned out, overwhelmed, if you feel like you're in a loveless marriage, if you're feeling neglected, like two ships passing in the night, like come do this 30-day experiment and at the end you're going to have a partner who's more engaged, more helpful, more loving, more affectionate, more appreciative. And so that first week we're like appreciate your partner. And there were a lot of women who were burned out and they're like I'm already doing everything. I'm not going to do more. My partner's disengaged. I don't feel like I have much to be grateful for and every single time, without fail, if they would just lean into it and do it.

Speaker 2:

What we saw is immediately like by the end of the week, we had wives that were reaching out to us in tears and sending us like long paragraphs of how their partner bought them flowers for the first time in 10 years.

Speaker 2:

Or their partner, like, took care of this huge honeydew project that had been waiting on the honeydew list for months and months and he'd just been putting it off and putting it off. Or, like you know, he started coming home earlier from work or started showing initiative, cleaning, doing the dishes and cleaning the table. All these magical things started happening when their partner felt like they could succeed, when they felt useful, when they felt appreciated, when they felt like they were, their contributions mattered, and it felt initially like a bit of a burden and it felt a little annoying, but the magic set in after like three or four days of doing this consistently, like people rise to the occasion and yeah, so just if you want to try that little experiment, maybe if you don't want to do it verbally, write it down and leave it somewhere where they'll find it. But I have not seen many cases where this doesn't make a really positive shift in a relationship.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, good luck with this, and send us an email or hit us up on social media and let us know how this goes, because I want to know how it goes when you are looking for ways to appreciate your spouse. So, anyways, thanks so much, nate. I feel good about this, nate.

Speaker 2:

This has been awesome. I feel good about this episode. This made me feel positive. I'm feeling all the endorphins and the serotonin.

Speaker 1:

Well, I always appreciate your contributions to these episodes, so thank you so much for making time for it and we will see everybody next week.