Loving The Fight Marriage Podcast

Episode 155 | Who Goes First?

• Travis Rosinger and Dawn Rosinger

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Trust. Are you sure? Well, you've been hurt before, wronged before. If you make that move or take that step it could just backfire in your face and cause another traumatic wave of pain. Yet, with all the risks and all the not-so-distant memories of disappointment, trust is our best option. Our societies can't function without it and marriages are doomed to fail when it's not present. Okay, trust. I will. But then, who makes the first move? Who goes first?

Join hosts Travis and Dawn Rosinger as they talk through a real world scenario of how a brief moment without trust led to awkwardness and hesitation but quickly dissolved as one person went first by taking the next step. They also share personal insights on how trust has been built in their marriage. They talk about how being cautious with trust is wise but living without trust is impossible. If it's lost, it has to be rebuilt. It's time to trust again. It's time to go first!

Travis and Dawn Rosinger are the Loving The Fight Marriage Podcast Hosts and Authors of the books, Verbalosity - 7 Steps to a Verbally Generous and More Fulfilling Marriage and their newest book, Gripping -  What Matters Most | A Life and Relationships That Hold on to You

For more information about Travis and Dawn Rosinger go to Loving The Fight

Travis Rosinger:

Alright, we're gonna get this thing started. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, whatever time it is that you're listening to this podcast, we are just so glad that you are tuning in. My name is Travis and I am here with my wife, dawn, and we want to welcome you to the Loving the Fight Marriage Podcast.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yes, thank you for joining us today. Welcome back, we're so pumped to be with you today.

Travis Rosinger:

Man, so we're hoping that you guys had a great end to your summer. We did. It's been a really fun last couple of weeks. In fact, we have this thing that happens here in the state of Minnesota in the United States of America, and it's something that we call the Minnesota State Fair. It's epic.

Dawn Rosinger:

It's a huge state fair, something that we do every year. It's a tradition that we have. We go with our kids or grandkids now and we are just having a blast, but honestly, it's crazy large.

Travis Rosinger:

It's so big and it's always about 90 degrees.

Dawn Rosinger:

You walk about 20,000 steps, you eat all of your favorite foods all in one day and it's just mass chaos.

Travis Rosinger:

And the foods all have loads of sugar and lots of grease, but they really put a big smile on your face and in your stomach Like incredible food. But what the state fair is, it's also like the signaling of the end of summer and the beginning of fall. Yep.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yep, normally the last day of the state fair, the next day in Minnesota, most kids go back to school. So it's back to school time. The temperatures all of a sudden change. You go from summer to fall and boom like, here we go, and now we're gearing up for a good fall and going into winter. Hopefully, a small, short winter that's very mild, but you never know where to get.

Travis Rosinger:

We hope and pray. Yeah, you never know. But you're right. It went from like a 93 or 94 degree day to all of a sudden the next day it felt like it was like 70 degrees.

Dawn Rosinger:

It was.

Travis Rosinger:

It was a lot chillier, but so so much cooler, but we've been having a great time. We're hoping that you guys have had a good last couple of weeks. I know for us to just the to be able to be outside so much has been so invigorating this year and all the great weather, and now today we were on a walk. We literally pounded out 10 miles today.

Dawn Rosinger:

It was amazing. So good, beautiful weather.

Travis Rosinger:

Gorgeous 70s, but we saw some of our first trees changing color.

Dawn Rosinger:

I know, even some of the trees are slowly starting to lose a few leaves. I'm like what is happening?

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, not so quick, but not that fast, but we do like the colors, and there are more to come. Well, we had an experience, I think, about a week and a half ago. Don do you want to tell everybody what happened and kind of what popped in your mind as it happened?

Dawn Rosinger:

And it's funny, I'm telling you guys this story. This is actually where we got this podcast episode, just the theme, the concept for today's podcast. But and it typically comes from stories we are always looking for things in our day, in our week, in our life that can be like hey, how can this relate to marriage? And there's so many things that do.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and things that God is pointing out to us personally and just trying to teach us about life, but also about our own marriage, even yeah.

Dawn Rosinger:

It's funny when you open up your eyes and you open up your ears, there's things all around us. Well, a couple weeks ago, like two weeks ago actually, we had someone come to our house because they were interested in buying something from us.

Travis Rosinger:

Yes, and we. Part of it is because we had reached a limit. In fact, we were one over the limit. We had four of these things.

Dawn Rosinger:

Oh, yes, you know we talk about this a lot. We love scooters Scooters like not little scooters that use you through your feet, like moped scooters that have engines and they can drive fast. Well, that's just one of our summer hobbies that we thoroughly enjoy. Well, we had three scooters, and there was one that I had a. It was a Vespa. It was a 125 or 150. It went a lot faster than I wanted to go. It was blue, it wasn't super pretty, it was really comfortable. But I just was been looking for a new scooter, a new Vespa, and a couple of weeks ago one popped up on Facebook Marketplace.

Travis Rosinger:

It did. I think we talked about it on this podcast. I don't know if we did or not. It was so cool, such a gorgeous scooter.

Dawn Rosinger:

It's a beautiful red scooter and the price was phenomenal. We were the first ones to contact them. We went and looked at it and we bought it that same day. And so now, all of a sudden, we had four scooters. Well, we don't need four scooters, so we're like we are going to list my other blue scooter that I had, that I again it was, it was decent, but it wasn't what I wanted, and so we put it on Marketplace and I'm not kidding so many people just reached out to you right away.

Travis Rosinger:

I wanted this scooter 25, 30 people yeah Within just a few minutes.

Dawn Rosinger:

So like boom, it just lit up your phone.

Travis Rosinger:

And part of it it's because it's a metal scooter. It's a Vespa, right yeah, and so Vespa's are so nice, and yours in particular was kind of a loaded version, really comfortable, and came with a lot of bells and whistles.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yeah, it was a decent scooter. But so we had this gentleman reach out to us amongst many other people. But you put in there, the price was firm first come, first serve. So we're like, okay, whoever can come look at it first has dibs on the scooter. So we had a gentleman meet us here at our house at 5pm. He was actually here a lot earlier.

Travis Rosinger:

He was. We came home from work. He was very interested.

Dawn Rosinger:

And he had a truck. So we knew he's probably pretty serious. And you met him out in the driveway and you pulled our scooter out of the garage and you showed him our other couple of their scooters. You told them why we were selling this blue scooter. And nothing really wrong with it. It wasn't perfect, definitely had its blemishes, but we wanted to get rid of it just because I bought the new red Vespa.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and by the way, this guy was sharp, like he was nice young guy, awesome, easy to talk to, really enjoyed meeting him and connecting with him. So then I gave him the keys, he jumped on it, he fired it up and then he took it out for a drive. And I was so excited because you could tell he was pumped to drive this scooter and this sounds strange. But he left his truck.

Dawn Rosinger:

So I was like, well, you know he's going to come back Where's case you get a truck versus a scooter, right Right.

Travis Rosinger:

And he again was just so trustworthy and just seemed like a friendly, awesome guy, and so he took it out and he was gone for a little while not super long, but I think he got it up pretty fast and just had a chance to really try it out. Well, and he came back around the corner and pulled into the driveway and he just had a big smile on his face and he looked excited and he turned it off and he got off and you could tell At that moment he had made his decision. He wanted to buy your scooter down and I was so excited because we love scooters so much and just to be able to pass this one on to somebody else, to where they could really enjoy it. And we weren't selling it for very much Actually it was quite a low price and that's probably why 25, 30 people reached out to us, but it was really cool to have him test drive it and bring it back. And then he wanted it right Right away. He wanted to do the deal.

Dawn Rosinger:

He did. But there was a dilemma that came up. It's funny because I was watching you guys out the window. Again, it's a stranger coming to your house, even though he's a nice guy. You just never know what people have in their vehicle, but you have to always be aware. But I was watching him out the window and I'm like, okay, I think this deal is about to happen, I think there's going to be an exchange of money or something's going to happen. But then, all of a sudden, you walked into the house and I was like hey, what's up? Like why are you in the house? And you began to tell me this little dilemma that you guys were having in the driveway.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, it was like this awkward moment and it wasn't friction, it wasn't tension no, not at all. Again, he's super nice and I'm just smiling, I'm having a great time. But we were both like, oh, what are we going to do? He wants to buy my scooter, your scooter. I should say we want to sell it to him, but we didn't know how to make it happen.

Dawn Rosinger:

The actual deal, yeah, the deal itself, like how do you exchange the money, how do you put it in his vehicle, All that stuff, yeah so maybe you can take it away and tell everybody.

Travis Rosinger:

As I kind of unpacked it to you, I'm like what am I going to do?

Dawn Rosinger:

Well, you come into the house and you tell me, hey, he wants it, which was great. But then you said the only thing is he wants us to help lift it up into his truck, to make sure that we can get it up into his truck and that he can strap it down so he can drive away.

Travis Rosinger:

And that it would fit in his truck Because he had this big crazy, massive piece of metal in the middle of the back of his truck that was bolted in there.

Dawn Rosinger:

But the dilemma was is he hadn't shown you the cash, the money I mean. We said no, venmo, we wanted to make sure that he had cash. He hadn't shown you the cash, you guys hadn't technically talked about it, even though it said we weren't going to take any less. We didn't necessarily talk to him about the amount. And so you're like well, what if we get up in the truck? We lift it up in the truck and then he drives away.

Travis Rosinger:

Right, but then his dilemma when?

Dawn Rosinger:

I walked out of the drive. His dilemma was what if I give you this cash and we can't get it up into the truck? And you have my cash. So there was this huge imbalance like, okay, who goes first? Do we lift it up in the truck and risk that he could drive away with it, or does he give us cash and risk that we can't get it up in the truck and we just take his cash?

Travis Rosinger:

And the funny thing is, you're not really talking about risk. You're talking about something even more maybe important, right, because risk is all around us, but it really was coming down to this thing called trust.

Dawn Rosinger:

Trust Yep Exactly what it was, and it's like again.

Travis Rosinger:

It was just this awkward and we were all kind of laughing Because I pitched that to him. I said, okay, first of all, we might all three kill ourselves trying to lift this thing it's like 300 pounds into the back of your truck. And I said, but let's say we get it in there. And I said, but you haven't, we haven't done a deal, yet you haven't handed over the money.

Dawn Rosinger:

It wasn't a drug deal, it's a Vespa.

Travis Rosinger:

Right, but we hadn't decided even on a dollar amount. I was like, wait a second, you normally would give the money. If we're putting it in the back of your track, you'd normally give the money first.

Dawn Rosinger:

So I walk outside at that point and I introduce myself to this gentleman and I start bragging on the scooter. I'm like this is the most comfortable scooter because it was. It had a backrest, very nice scooter. And I'm like where do you live? Do you live by the lakes? Because you can drive around the lakes.

Dawn Rosinger:

And so I built this a little bit relationship with him in like two minutes and all of a sudden he looks at me and he goes into his truck and he pulls out this wad of cash and he just hands it right to me. So we built this little bit of relationship. The trust was built a little bit more. And I don't know, maybe because I walked out there he's like okay, there's two of you, and then we all three began to lift it up into the truck.

Travis Rosinger:

Or maybe you look more normal than I do One of the two, but the cash was in my pocket.

Dawn Rosinger:

I'm like well, he obviously trusts us. So we began to lift it up into the truck. We got it up there, you were nice, jumped up there, strapped it all in and he drove away with the scooter after we signed the title over and then we had the cash and it was a great deal. It did come down to trust who was going to make that first move. It was a risk. It was like the thing on each side One of you if you didn't trust the other one could rip the other person off it was a true dilemma, but who goes first when it comes to trust?

Dawn Rosinger:

who goes first and that's so important when it comes to marriage? That's why we got this podcast title from and, just thinking about it, trust is just a bedrock of marriage. It's so important. When it comes to trust. Who goes first? Do you go first or do I go first? Who?

Travis Rosinger:

goes first when it comes to trust. Yeah, and I think this experience we were super happy as he drove away because he was smiling, he was pumped, he got his new scooter, it got strapped into his truck. We didn't take him for anything and then he gave us the money and he was just fun to deal with. He was, he was great, great guy. But you're right, trust is just something here. We don't normally have to deal with that with strangers, Like who goes first?

Dawn Rosinger:

He doesn't know us.

Travis Rosinger:

We don't know him, but then you really do have that in marriage and trust is like it's the bedrock of any quality relationship. It is yeah, you've got to have trust. It's currency, it's how you survive day by day. So, author Stephen Covey, here's what he says about trust. He says trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships together. Wow, that's like eloquent. And he's right on the money it's the glue of life.

Travis Rosinger:

You can't do a business deal. You can't do a marriage without trust.

Dawn Rosinger:

So we know that trust is important, but in marriage who goes first? We need to trust, but who goes first? Ernest Hemingway said this the best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them, and I love that. That's just so basic, like absolutely the best way to try. Do you trust somebody? Just trust them and see if you can trust them. Right, yeah.

Travis Rosinger:

And I think where this is applyable to? Yeah, yeah, that's just so obvious. It slaps you in the face. You're like, okay, I gotta give you a shot. And like that guy did, you know one of us, we're gonna give in either way. We were gonna lift it in there. He just happened to go first. But yeah, that's just like so important to understand. Somebody's gotta go first.

Travis Rosinger:

And you know, trying to make up or, you know, and trying to in marriage, you know, when there's conflict, and making up and trying to get back on the right track, or maybe even trying to make decisions in the future and trusting each other and coming to a conclusion together, whatever that might be. Or maybe somebody makes a big mistake in marriage and trust is broken and then it has to be rebuilt, but then the other one ends up making a big mistake, right, yeah, and it could go back and forth. And that's why trust, man, it's priceless, invaluable. It's also super relevant because, let's face it, we've all had somebody in our life who broke their trust with us. And when that happens, you know whether it's someone you look up to. Maybe it's a peer, a good friend, or, you know, a parent, or it could be a spouse or whoever it is.

Travis Rosinger:

When that trust is broken, oh my gosh, it is so painful and difficult to overcome. So we have this tension in relationships. Trust is like the most valuable thing, one of the most important things in the relationship. But then we also know how painful it is when somebody that we do trust misuses that trust or abuses our trust, and so it's kind of a tug of war internally emotionally. But we know that it's the right path.

Dawn Rosinger:

As we're thinking through this topic of trust a little bit more and talking about this episode, I found this quote. It's anonymous, you know, I don't know who said it, but I just really appreciated what it said and it's this I trust you is a better compliment than I love you, because you may not always trust the person you love, but you can always love the person you trust. So trust again. It just talks about the importance of that. That's like a bedrock. It's a better compliment than I love you. At times it actually I feel like it means a little bit more. If I trust you, I love you.

Travis Rosinger:

Man. That's such a great angle, you know, in thinking about trust in a way that we are not typically wired to think about trust, just connecting that with love. And I, you know, as I kind of ponder trust and the importance of it, but that internal tension as a person who follows Jesus and that's what we wanna build our marriage on and have built our marriage on it's really good for us to say, okay, wait a second. What does the Bible say about trust? And we can't, we don't have the time in this episode to go over everything. But one verse really stood out to us as we thought about trust and kind of read through different parts of the Bible, and it's this Proverbs 31, 11, and it says this it says the heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain.

Travis Rosinger:

This passage is really important, first of all because it's the Proverbs 31 woman passage. I mean, there's so many cool things. If you're a lady out there and you've never heard of Proverbs 31, you've gotta read this. This is a passage that you wanna model your character in your life after. But what's so cool about what it's saying is the heart of her husband trusts in her, and I don't know if he's going first, don or he's going second.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, he's going first in this but the reality is she has won his trust or he has gone first, Right, yeah, but there's something powerful, something good taking place. But then look what the result is he will have no lack of gain. In other words, when we trust other people, especially someone that we love, and we trust them, look what happens in return it begins to fill us up and it begins to make our lives richer, our marriages healthier, stronger and marriages that just really become all that God wants them to be.

Dawn Rosinger:

So when we think about trust and honestly, in our society today, it's hard to trust people I feel like people are lacking trust. How do you build trust and, specifically, how do you build trust in your marriage? Well, we just wanna give you a few things, a few ways that you can build trust in your marriage. The first one is this keep your skin in the game. Vulnerability you have to be open, you have to be vulnerable, you have to expose yourself to your spouse in so many areas. Be vulnerable, make sure that your skin is in the game.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and the reason why that's good is because it says look, don, my wall is coming down right now and I trust you so much. I'm gonna let you into this inner, deep, painful or longing or whatever this emotion or thought is, don, I'm gonna let you into my inner world. And so that man that just says I went first, I'm vulnerable, I went first.

Dawn Rosinger:

Now let's put the scooter in the truck, you know, or whatever it is, I know the way that my personality works, that if I don't trust you I can't be vulnerable with you. I can't. I just know I will kind of just have the fight-or-flight mentality or I'll just be silent. I just won't open up if there's some type of trust that I don't have in you. So vulnerability is a huge one for me. The next one is this Watch what comes out of your mouth. Your words, again. They bring life or they bring death. What are you saying? What's coming out of your mouth? Are you encouraging and loving and building up your spouse? Are you tearing them down or being disrespectful? Your words are so important.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and when I think of words, I think of a sword. I don't know why. Like a sword is in the Old Testament, I believe it says you know, if you live by the sword, you'll die by the sword. And there's something you know incredible about words in terms of their power, like you just mentioned, Don. And so if you're constantly throwing horrible, evil words or, you know, just slicing up your spouse with those words, they're not going to trust you, they're going to run the other way. There's another piece to this kind of building trust in your marriage relationship, and I think a big one would be dependability. There's something remarkable about dependability. Why would we say that? Because when people know what they can expect of you, what happens, they trust you Right.

Dawn Rosinger:

That's what happens.

Travis Rosinger:

It's like I couldn't or wouldn't trust you if you were flaky Absolutely not If I was you were flaky, I would not trust you in any way.

Dawn Rosinger:

If you weren't dependable, if you didn't say hey, I'm going to be here at three o'clock, I pick you up, and you didn't show up, I'd be like I'm not trusting you, yeah, yeah, something about flaky people and I've been flaky in my life once or twice, you know a few times, so I'm not trying to put myself on a pedestal.

Travis Rosinger:

But flaky people, you can love them, they can be amazing. You just can't trust them, right?

Travis Rosinger:

No at all and I love what our former senior pastor, bob Merritt, once said. He said be boringly predictable. Right, and I love that phrase because it's dependability. Like Don, if I'm boringly predictable tomorrow, guess what? I might not be some movie star that's making a billion dollars on a movie, but I'm still going to be your husband tomorrow, the next day and the next day, with all my flaws and all my imperfections, but I'm still dependable and you can trust in that.

Travis Rosinger:

Beyond dependability, it's so important to be a person of love. I mean we could have said hey, just show civility and you're going to build trust which, by the way, civility does build trust. But I mean, think about it, love is way more powerful than civility. Being a person of love. See, love has civility built into it, and so when someone loves, they honor their spouse, they're gentle, they're kind and they're so pleasant to be around. And how does that not endure you to somebody? How does that not like grow your level of trust for them? I could think of. There's this one relative that you and I have and this person is always so loving and kind and affectionate and friendly and it's like, oh my gosh, I would trust that person anything. I mean like, come on, here's the keys to our house. You can have our Mercedes Benz if we had one we don't, but I drive a Honda, you know like, but they're just so incredible and why not be that in your marriage? Why not be that to your spouse? Be that person of love.

Dawn Rosinger:

Another way to build trust in your marriage is honesty, 100% honesty, that's on the little things and on the big things. Honestly, sometimes I feel like the little things are more important. If you are an exaggerator or someone who always says hey, instead of my, you know, my fish was five inches and you say your fish was 12 inches, I mean like no, like you are exaggerating. And you know me, I'm a numbers person, so I remember numbers. So if the numbers are a little bit different, I might call you out on it. Anyways. But even on the little things, be honest, because if I see or I hear or I recognize that maybe someone isn't honest in one area, I am not going to trust them. I won't. There'll be this natural guard that's up.

Dawn Rosinger:

So 100% honesty, especially with your spouse, even on the hard topics, when it's like hey, what do you think of this shirt? Please just be honest with me. I want to know, and I, every Sunday morning before we leave for church, I know we're kind of going through a closet and we're always like, hey, what do you think of this outfit? And I want your honesty If you don't like it, let me take it back. If I buy something and it looks horrible, let me take it back. But it's not just on your clothing, it's on the big things of life. I need you to be honest with me. As important as honesty is, so is this next thing your words match up with your actions. So what you say is what you do. Don't say one thing and do another. Make sure that matches up. I mean 100%. I know that kind of almost comes down to dependability, consistency a little bit, but your actions have to match up with your words.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, I think that's a little bit different, because I think this has a lot to do with credibility. I mean, after all, don, if I say I'm going to go here with my friends and then for the next three hours I'm actually somewhere completely different. With a group of people that aren't my friends, that you don't know, you're going to be like I don't know. This guy doesn't have any credibility, it doesn't have any integrity. Or I say hey, that extra $100 bill that we had left over from you know vacation, I went and deposited in the bank, but really it went in my back pocket, yeah, and I blew it on extra lunches, you know, at work or whatever. Man, that that is not cool and absolutely erodes trust in a marriage.

Travis Rosinger:

Man, something that is so vital and cannot be overstated If you want to build trust in your marriage. Here it is forgive, forgive, forgive. You see, you will never trust someone you aren't willing to forgive. I mean, think about it. In marriage there's a truckload of forgiveness that needs to keep coming back and forth between the husband and wife. For example, if I don't forgive my wife right now for this, later on she won't trust me and might not decide to forgive me.

Travis Rosinger:

And so why does this erode trust? Because when someone won't forgive you, it stings. It's like them slapping your hand as hard as they can every day. It's like you've done something wrong every day, and their unforgiveness it just reminds you that you shouldn't trust them. Isn't that strange? Yeah, they won't forgive you, but in return, it makes you just want to you know, not trust them. And here's why we're all human. So someone who won't forgive you is actually sending the message that they're perfect, and that's a lie. So that means they lack integrity and they're not trustworthy, and it's just this one big cyclical downward spiral. And so the only way to get out of that is to forgive, forgive, forgive.

Dawn Rosinger:

That's good, that's really good. We know that trust is the bedrock for marriage. But what if? What happens if that trust has been broken? And it's so important to think about that, the consequences of broken trust. And there's this quote. It's anonymous, but it says this trust takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to repair. If we would just remember that before we make a bad choice, a bad decision or maybe we're not honest with our spouse takes years. Trust takes years to build, but it's seconds to break. Man, that is just crazy the thought of that. And forever to repair.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, words, actions, thoughts, man everything that could destroy trust, it's worth thinking about. It's worth investing in your marriage. And really it comes down to this question who goes?

Dawn Rosinger:

first. Yeah, who goes first?

Travis Rosinger:

Just like the scooter guy who goes first in marriage? Yeah, is it the money or is it the truck? The reality is, here's the answer both Right, absolutely, we both done. I need to trust you, I need to go first and you need to go first Yep, both of us. And not relying and waiting for the other person. Just go first.

Dawn Rosinger:

And the best way to learn if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, so good, so good.

Dawn Rosinger:

Well, we just want to thank you guys for listening to this episode of the Love in the Fight Marriage Podcast. Remember, you can do it. You got this. Keep loving the fight. We'll see you next time.