Episode 170 | Three Key Ingredients for a Bad Marriage and Why You Should Care
Jan 25, 2024
Travis Rosinger and Dawn Rosinger
What happens when something goes bad? Well, if it's food, we often throw it away. Which makes sense if you don't want something bad in your stomach or mouth. But what about when something goes bad, and actually it get's better? Is that possible? Yes! There are many things that when they go bad, they not only get better, they become amazing!! Would it be great if that happened to your marriage? It can. There are three key ingredients that can deliver the right chemistry to your relationship giving you a chance to have a B.A.D. marriage that becomes a marriage that is better than you ever could have dreamed!!
Join hosts Travis and Dawn Rosinger as they share three important qualities that can truly take any marriage that is struggling and change the relational chemistry forever. Don't miss this episode where you will discover these qualities that will give you the right kind of bad marriage that you will love!!
What happens when something goes bad? Well, if it's food, we often throw it away. Which makes sense if you don't want something bad in your stomach or mouth. But what about when something goes bad, and actually it get's better? Is that possible? Yes! There are many things that when they go bad, they not only get better, they become amazing!! Would it be great if that happened to your marriage? It can. There are three key ingredients that can deliver the right chemistry to your relationship giving you a chance to have a B.A.D. marriage that becomes a marriage that is better than you ever could have dreamed!!
Join hosts Travis and Dawn Rosinger as they share three important qualities that can truly take any marriage that is struggling and change the relational chemistry forever. Don't miss this episode where you will discover these qualities that will give you the right kind of bad marriage that you will love!!
For more information about Travis and Dawn Rosinger go to Loving The Fight
Speaker 1:
There are a lot of things you could be doing right now, but you're not. You're listening. You chose to work on, you spend time thinking through what could make your marriage better and you chose to think about love. Whenever you get better, your marriage gets better. With that, I want to welcome you to the Love in the Fight Marriage Podcast. My name is Dawn and I'm sitting here with my husband and also my co-host, travis.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we're so glad that you guys are tuning in and it's just fun to be hanging out together again, dawn, and thinking about all those things that make up. What a great marriage really is yes absolutely and pulling Jesus into it, because he should be the center of every marriage.
Speaker 1:
You know what? It's funny just to sit here and think I feel like we just recorded a podcast last week, but there are so many things that have happened in between right now and our last podcast we recorded. Life just gets busier. It's good. It's just so many memories.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, like the two bowls of cereal we pulled last night and the toast that we ate with it, like a lot happened. But of course I think what you're talking about is I had a couple funerals over the last week and a half and, wow, it is really special to be able to be with people and to officiate the funeral of that person that they love, and I've just really been enjoying writing funeral messages that really celebrate the person but reflect in who God is. And of course, we're pastors. We don't just do funerals, we are also married and live life and play pickleball and eat too much chocolate or whatever.
Speaker 2:
But a lot going on, hasn't there been?
Speaker 1:
It's funny because, again I just think of, like you just said, that you're working on two funerals and people listening probably like, wow, like they probably never think about funerals, but that's part of what we do.
Speaker 1:
I know this. Last week we had a big campus leadership meeting and I got a chance to speak and share and encourage a lot of leaders at our campus. Who was just fun to connect with them, but just something random but fun to do. But a lot of people maybe their jobs are completely different. So you might be listening going, wow, like that's interesting, two different things. But it's just cool what we are able to do in our week and our job. But then last night you talked about two bowls of cereal. We each had a bowl. We did.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, not two each. Thanks for clarifying that.
Speaker 1:
It's. Last night was normally our date night and I think we came home from work and I sat on the couch and I grabbed a blanket real quick cause I was cold. I began to talk about my day and I was just tired. We were just looked at each other like we're kind of gassed right now, like let's just stay in for the night, eat cereal and peanut butter toast, so something quick and easy.
Speaker 1:
Oh love it, Watch a movie that we wanted to watch on Netflix and, honestly, just enjoy our evening, and it was great.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
It was something that we needed to do because we move a lot. So I woke up this morning feeling well rested, way above my alarm. Yeah, just a good morning.
Speaker 2:
And now tonight is date night. Right, I had that. You know, the fireplace is loaded with wood, tons of flames just flying out of there. It was awesome, but, yeah, it's so fun to just start a new day and be filled up, but it's been a great week and we're so glad that everybody's listening. Well, all right. Well, on with the episode. The title of this episode is three key ingredients for a bad marriage, and I like that title, but we actually had an alternate title that we came up with and it's why every couple needs a bad marriage.
Speaker 1:
You told me that title was like wait. Yeah, I don't know, that's a great, greatest thing. To probably not the right title.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, Even though it's true and you guys will be able to see that at the end of the episode why that might be true we're just going to go ahead and stick with three key ingredients for a bad marriage.
Speaker 1:
So you know we're going to just dig into that word bad. So when something is bad, it doesn't mean that it's no longer good. Sometimes something that has actually gotten bad gets better, and I can give you a great example of this. It's bread Like, if you think about bread yeast it has this single cell fungus in it, called saccharomyces serovici.
Speaker 2:
I had to. Google it, Say I'm not sure how to say that either. It's pretty scientific.
Speaker 1:
There's this yeast in it that it needs this fungus to make it just delicious. Or yogurt that has a lactate acid bacteria, Like it needs this bacteria. Or cheese Think of all that's in cheese Like there's something that's bad in all of these things but you have to have them in order to make these delicious food. I'll have chemical reactions. Those three things have these chemical reactions with this bacteria, this fungus, and you get the chemistry right and you end up with soft, fluffy bread that is delicious when served with hot slathered butter.
Speaker 2:
Oh my, I can so relate to what you're saying right there, Because growing up, my mom made homemade bread all the time and she would pull it out, slice it up and we would throw butter on there and it was just straight up heaven. Yeah, it was incredible, it was so, so good.
Speaker 1:
You know what I think of Brad. I think of Texas Roadhouse, I do. They have the most amazing rolls, those hot rolls. When you walk in with cinnamon butter, oh there you can. That's the reason we go to Texas Roadhouse.
Speaker 2:
That's the reason we go to the gym to work out, to get rid of all that. We, you know, ate at Texas Roadhouse, so we can go back and eat there again. Their rolls are amazing.
Speaker 1:
Well, kind of like bread. You know you have to have that bacteria in there, that yeast, that has to be a part of it. When you get the chemistry right for Greek yogurt as well like you have to have that bacteria it becomes creamy and delicious and can be filled with fruits and honey. But it's the chemistry. When the chemistry is right, you end up with a mountain of amazing food. Kind of like pizza, like you have to have that cheese. It goes bad. You have to add a bad ingredient in order for it to get better, so you can have this amazing pizza. Right now Our favorite pizza is mine personally Casey's pizza, which is just a gas station, but they have really good cheese.
Speaker 2:
I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1:
People laugh at me when I say that, but it's my favorite right now, oh it's exceptional.
Speaker 2:
But here's the funny thing I don't think you realize, don, but we have just endorsed like 80 different companies or restaurants or whatever. But I mean there's some of our favorites, right, yeah. But I think what we're getting at is when something is bad, it doesn't mean anything that it's no longer good. I mean, sometimes something has, you know, and that's gone bad, actually gets better, and that's why those are great examples, don. You know the cheese, the yogurt, the bread? Like, by the way, what's your favorite? If you had to pick your favorite out of those three, like, what's your top number one?
Speaker 1:
I honestly I'll have to say bread. I think I'm just a sucker for good bread. It never hurts my stomach, it just sits right in there. It doesn't give you any side effects from. You know like yogurt and cheese can sometimes do to your body. But man bread just is amazing.
Speaker 2:
Oh, it's so good. And I'm going to have to say yogurt. Although I love bread, it's definitely number two, but yogurt is just insane. As you know, I eat multiple dishes of yogurt a day.
Speaker 1:
And it's funny, Travis because you'll look at me and you're like we need to go to the grocery store, we're out of food. And I look at him like no, we have lots of food, it's because we're out of yogurt.
Speaker 2:
Out of yogurt.
Speaker 1:
Yes, you have to go to the store because you think we have no food, and I just think it's funny, it's an addiction.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and that's the thing. What's so cool about the foods that we just mentioned is taking place within them is kind of what you mentioned on a chemical reaction that allows a fermenting and aging or souring, and those methods that take place actually make those you know breads or foods better, and so like, for instance, some milk, when it goes bad in your fridge and it starts to curdle, well, it's actually halfway to becoming cheese. I mean, that's what cheese becomes.
Speaker 1:
We don't drink it, though. We throw it away.
Speaker 2:
We do I can't no-transcript. Yeah, I can't stand chewing my milk.
Speaker 1:
No, you don't.
Speaker 2:
I think I did that once when I was a kid. Through it up, I'm done with that.
Speaker 1:
Even if you try to put chocolate sauce in it to make it chocolate munk, no, it doesn't get rid of that sour taste.
Speaker 2:
Oh, I, totally it's horrible. Well then it'd be chocolate cottage cheese, that's what it would be. Well, hey, you and I were talking just a little bit of go down about this, how it doesn't just apply to food. I mean, when something goes bad, it can actually get better, and so you'd mentioned the lifting weight.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we're trying to get our arms a little bit in shapeful Not you, your arms, your body. But so, yeah, we want to lift weights. But what happens? When you lift the weight, you can actually rip your muscles first. You do and then you have to keep lifting and then eventually it repairs the muscle and builds them. It makes you stronger. But it's where it's. Something bad has to happen before it can become good.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, the muscle gets damaged.
Speaker 2:
It does yeah, and that damaging makes it better. And we just recently got a weight bench. We added it to our basement gym and we've been lifting weights a lot more lately. Well, all of that comes to a new passion that I have now that, at least, I think it's a passion. I'm kind of new into it.
Speaker 2:
I discovered this thing about two months ago a drink called kombucha, and somebody had given me a drink, a one. I believe. It was about seven years ago. They gave me a little sip of some kombucha that they had made at home and I just thought, man, this stuff's weird, I don't really like it. But about two months ago, for whatever reason, I bought one and I'm like I'm going to try this, and I liked it. I was like, whoa, wait a second, what is this? It tastes sour, but yet it's carbonated, but it's slightly sweet and it was just delicious. It's like a drink that we don't really have. That's a pop or something else. And so, as I started to buy more from the store and I go there on and off, and then it finally hit me, I'm like, wait a second. I've heard of people making this in their home, and so I started watching videos and reading up on it and I'm like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:
You did your research, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:
I can actually make this stuff in my own home and I love it. But then I get to control the flavor and I can add whatever it is and fuse it with strawberries or infuse it with maybe kiwis or carrots or whatever, because it can be savory or sweet, and so I very quickly realized that you have to have bottles to be able to make it in your home. But also it ferments. So you end up putting it in a big glass gallon jar and it ferments and really it's just sweet tea. That's all it is. It's sweet tea and you put this ugly, gross-looking kind of creature thing in there. It's called a scoby and it actually looks like an alien. It's like brown and stringy and gross and rubbery, and I put it in the jar and that's what starts the fermenting process.
Speaker 1:
I think we need to go back. I think you need to tell them what happened when your scoby arrived. I mean, you ordered the scoby on Amazon, amazon, yeah, and what happened?
Speaker 2:
I know, can you believe it? You can order this little alien scoby thing on Amazon.
Speaker 1:
This blob of something.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, to make the kombucha and the Amazon guy. He drops it off in our mailbox. He doesn't ring the front door, he doesn't drop it on the front door step, he just puts it in our mailbox and it's like 40 below zero.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it was really cold.
Speaker 2:
Really cold this last couple of weeks and the scoby is just a lump of bacteria and it can't get cold or it dies and it won't work.
Speaker 1:
It probably lasted one second, I know.
Speaker 2:
I know so anyway. So it's. Hopefully the scoby is going to be alive. I'm not sure, but anyway. And then the other thing is it takes time for the drink to get better. So sure it ferments, but it ferments over about seven days. Now the cool thing is I have my first batch. It's just one level above us. It's in my closet in the dark with a towel over it. It's fermenting. I can't wait. It's drinkable today, so I'm super super excited. So you guys probably have figured out. I'm dialed in.
Speaker 1:
Can't wait to make my own. Yeah, must admit I'm not a super big fan of it. You kept giving me sips of all the different flavors you tried. I'm like I'll stick with my diet Mondo.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, another endorsement, but anyway. So here's why I bring up the kombucha Because In our marriages we need to have a marriage that has the right bad chemistry to make it better, just like kombucha and yogurt and cheese and all that stuff milk. Here's the thing when we add the right things, we end up with a stronger marriage that can thrive daily and over a lifetime.
Speaker 1:
What does a word bad mean for us? Well, we're not saying to have a bad marriage where you're punching and you're kicking and you're screaming and hollering?
Speaker 2:
Not at all.
Speaker 1:
We're not talking about that type of bad marriage. What we're talking about is an acronym for three very important ingredients that create the right chemistry in a marriage. So if we break down the word bad, b for buoyancy, a for attitude and D for determination, let's look a little closer at this easily remembered recipe for a great relationship. So the B is for buoyancy. What does buoyancy mean? When we dig into this a little bit, it means it quickly bounced back to the surface, kind of when you know if you're boating and you have a little, even a bobber, you can pull it down, but it manages, bounces right back up. Right, there's buoyancy in this bobber.
Speaker 2:
And part of that, too, comes from when I was making kombucha and I thought of a bottle and you put it underwater. The bottle, just like you said, the bobber pops back up. Bottles bobbers yeah, they pop back up to the surface.
Speaker 1:
When you have buoyancy in your marriage, you don't say angry or bitter, but you're actually really quick to forgive. Again, something happens, kind of like that bobber goes under the water but boom, you pop right back up. If you have buoyancy in your marriage, you understand that evil is real and you fight back together against it, not against each other, but you fight against the evil. Matthew 5.23 says this. Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar First. Go and be reconciled to them, then come and offer your gift. What Jesus is saying here in Matthew is leave the gift at the altar and make it right, then go back and offer your worship. Jesus was saying don't worship me with unforgiveness or conflict in your heart.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think what he was trying to get at is have buoyancy in your relationships, like if you go to worship God and you think you're a strong Christian and you have a close relationship with God, and all of a sudden you're like, wait, I have something against my husband or I have something against my wife, stop your worship, because your worship is gonna be contaminated. Go and make it right and then go back to worship God. So I have that buoyancy of like, okay, something's not right and below the surface, now I'm gonna get back to where it needs to be.
Speaker 1:
I wish there was a little tool that could measure our buoyancy because, like, honestly think about, are you buoyant? Are you gonna pop right back up, or is it like a slow motion pop up or does it stay down for a really, really long time and then pop back up? What is your buoyancy in your marriage?
Speaker 2:
And that's what we need. And that's what's so cool about anything that has air in it and you try to hold it under the water. It's always pushing against you. It's always saying, nope, I'm gonna get back to the top of the water. And that's exactly the way our marriages need to be, where they're getting pushed down by the devil, they're getting pushed down by life or conflict or whatever it is, and we're like, no, we're gonna get back to the surface and we're gonna get some oxygen into our marriage. Again, we're talking about three key ingredients for a bad marriage, and B is for buoyancy. Now A is for attitude, and we all need life giving attitudes in marriage. But that's hard. That's hard, don, because you wake up with me some days and I'm a grump or I don't get the food when I need it, so I get to hangry or whatever it is, or maybe you come.
Speaker 1:
I'm definitely a time person and, like man and woman, we're over on our time. My attitude kind of adjusts.
Speaker 2:
Yes, yeah, or you come home from work, or maybe you're tired and you're frustrated, whatever that is, and sometimes in life it's just tough to have a good attitude. But we need to stop and say, okay, what are the right attitudes that we should all be having in marriage? And as we talked about it and thought about it, some of the ones that are really important is just being humble. Being humble in marriage is saying, look, I'm gonna accept your responsibility. I know I'm not perfect, I'm gonna work harder on myself. Or being positive is a great quality and not thinking that everything's gonna always be negative.
Speaker 2:
If your marriage is in a spiral down, start thinking positively. Or are grateful, like I'm grateful for my wife, or I'm grateful for my husband he went and mowed the lawn, or my wife made this amazing meal you know whatever that is. And kindness in marriage. Or being a good listener, always making sure that you're hearing and listening. And then even being a learner someone who learns from their spouse and that just criticizes them or judges them or, you know, always trying to coach them, but somebody who's like, wait, what can I learn from my spouse? And so those are some, you know, really great attitudes, but the A is for attitude, and obviously we would on to point you to the fruits of the spirit and glace in 522. Cause that really are, you know, is a great place to be able to find the right attitudes.
Speaker 1:
So we talked about having a bad marriage, B being buoyancy, A being attitude and D? D is for dawn. No, I'm just kidding, it is for dawn, but it is for determination. It's what some have called a pre-decision. Giving up is just not an option. You are determined, You're not going to give up in this moment. You're saying I won't walk away from important conversations, even when I don't think that it's important. But my spouse does. It says I won't give up on communication and get angry right away. I'm going to stick it out and be determined.
Speaker 1:
It's honestly playing the long game looking at marriage and life and playing the long game that you are married for life. You will be there from death to his part. You will be there till the end. And it's saying we won't run from conflict but towards conflict, so we can find solutions. Not looking for conflict but finding solutions to that conflict.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, Not name calling or all right, let's just get together so we can argue. But those solutions that you mentioned on and that's great because that really adds to the ability of the marriage to be able to handle it for the long haul but that commitment- there's this kind of a grumpy quote that we found, but honestly we kind of like it, so we're going to share it.
Speaker 1:
As by Robert Barrault, and it says the older I get, the less time I want to spend with the part of a human race that didn't marry me. I think that's great. I don't know how grumpy that is, but it's true. Like man, we just want to get a point in our marriage where we just really like hanging out, we like being together, and that's probably we want to make sure that we're the most important person in each other's lives, and so I appreciate that quote.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So do you have a bad marriage? I hope you do, we hope you do that you have these three letters, these qualities, in your marriage.
Speaker 1:
We need to have a marriage that has the right bad chemistry to make it better and when we add the right things, we end up with a stronger marriage that can actually thrive daily and over a lifetime. Again, the three ingredients to make a marriage better bad buoyancy, attitude and determination Like, honestly, those are three key ingredients for a bad marriage but really ultimately it's going to make it better. Kind of like that sourdough, like that, whatever that bacteria is that makes it sour, it actually makes the bread better.
Speaker 2:
Yes, and remember when you get better, your marriage gets better. When you work on you, you work on too. Well, hey everyone, we want to thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Loving the Fight Marriage Podcast.
Speaker 1:
Remember, you can do it. You got this. Keep loving the fight, we'll see you next time.