229. What Is The Temperature Of Your Marriage Right Now? The Relationship Checkup

Are you wondering what the temperature of your marriage is, or how your spouse feels about certain things? Does your spouse feel the same way about your marriage (or different aspects of your marriage) that you do?

In this episode, Nick and Amy share questions to rate your marriage and then discuss with your spouse to gauge the temperature of your marriage, and prompt great conversations. They also share the poll results from the questions they asked on social media about this topic.

This episode will truly help you marriage and prompt great conversations to talk about as a couple.

You can find the quiz in the Ultimate Intimacy App under "Resources and Articles" and "Coupons and Printable's."

If you haven't already, go check out the Ultimate Intimacy App in the app stores, or at ultimateintimacy.com to find "Ultimate Intimacy" in your marriage. It's FREE to download and so much fun! Find out why over 650,000 couples have downloaded the app and give it such high ratings and reviews!

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If you have any feedback, comments or topics you would like to hear on future episodes, reach out to us at amy@ultimateintimacy.com and let us know! We greatly appreciate your feedback and please leave us a review.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You are listening to the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast, where we discuss how to find ultimate intimacy in your relationship. We believe that, no matter how many years you've been married, you can achieve passion, romance, happiness and ultimate intimacy at any stage of your life. Join us as we talk to not only marriage experts, but couples just like yourself and people who are just flat out fun. The Ultimate Intimacy Podcast is for couples who have a good relationship but want to make it even better.

Speaker 3: 0:40

Welcome to the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast with Nick and Amy, and today's episode is what temperature is your marriage right now the relationship checkup. We thought this would be a really good thing to do because so many times often in our relationships we don't really know how things are going. We don't really know what the temperature of our relationship or marriage is. I remember asking Amy a little bit ago, saying, hey, if you were to rate our marriage on a scale of one to 10, how do you feel like things are right now? And she said, oh, seven. And I was like whoa, really Like what's going on.

Speaker 2: 1:20

Like because I thought you think a seven's bad.

Speaker 3: 1:23

No. But I was like, oh, I thought things were better, I thought seven was good, but what it did is prompted the discussion. And then she said, well, I feel like we're kind of lacking in this area. And I was like, oh, I had no idea. So prompted a great discussion and obviously we were able to talk about things and figure out, ok, how do we make things better in this particular area. So I think a lot of times we may just assume things are going good, but if, for example, if you answer an eight in one question and your spouse answers a four, you obviously know there's not a good balance there and something needs to be discussed.

Speaker 2: 1:59

So it's really hard to rate your marriage because you're like, well, what area am I reading it Like overall. So then I have to think about, ok, the sexual intimacy, the emotional intimacy, the fun, the friendship, the quality time, like when you think rate your marriage, I'm like I don't know how to rate each area, but like combining that that's a little trickier. So I think the whole purpose of this conversation is like it has to go deeper than what. Do you rate it right? Which is the point of it.

Speaker 3: 2:25

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:26

To talk about it right. So because I feel like you could be a two on the sexual intimacy level and a five on emotional intimacy, but you're really good at having fun dates, so maybe that could be an eight. So I don't know, it's hard. You almost have to like break that apart into different areas.

Speaker 3: 2:44

Yeah, and that's exactly what we're going to do in this podcast is we're going to go through. I think we have around 10 questions or so that we're going to go through. We're also going to have this available for download in the ultimate intimacy app under the printable section, so you can go download this. And what we do is we recommend that each one of you you and your spouse each take the quiz or answer the questions separately, and then you can get together and compare your answers. So again, if I'm saying, oh, I feel like we're an eight on this and Amy says, oh, we're a two, then you really know that you're at a balance and that's probably an area that you need to work on. I can talk about yeah, and the great thing about this is you can. Your marriage is probably always changing, with different things going on in life, and so you know you can do this now, and then you can do it again in a year or two years and constantly be seeing how your relationship is doing.

Speaker 2: 3:43

I feel like this should be a monthly.

Speaker 3: 3:45

Yeah, maybe even monthly, if you want right.

Speaker 2: 3:48

Maybe weekly. If you're struggling, you need to talk about things like weekly for a while and then when you start feel like your numbers are going up in your marriage, then it maybe turns monthly or I don't know. You know what I mean. Like it probably just depends on where your marriage is at, where your conversation is that and what you really need to focus on.

Speaker 3: 4:05

So yeah, bottom line. Like Amy said, this is just a great easy way for you to figure out where things are at in pretty much all aspects of your relationship.

Speaker 2: 4:15

And it helps. It helps talk, bring up some good conversations to have, because I feel like so much of marriage and like keeping things passionate and strong is like having those vulnerable conversations that you don't typically have and sometimes it's, yeah, you can go get on the app and and those are very helpful, you know, with the spiritual and financial and family and intimate and stuff. But these questions are a little bit different, which are really good for like a weekly or monthly marriage checkup at the beginning of the week to find out how, how can I just be a little bit better this week?

Speaker 3: 4:51

Yeah, and sometimes you don't know what to ask, right, so these questions can be a great thing, like sometimes I there's things that I would just never think of to ask Amy, but these questions are a great way to, I guess, ask the appropriate questions to really find out where things are at, so for sure. Well, we took a poll. Do you want to go through some of the what people said in regards to the poll and then we can jump into the questionnaire.

Speaker 2: 5:18

Yeah. So I kind of thought we were going more an intimate route, which is, I thought and I guess I was a little bit off on this podcast because we're not talking about intimate, we're talking about like everything right, yeah, all emotional and physical, but I said what is the temperature of your marriage?

Speaker 2: 5:34

right now? The relationship checkup is the next podcast episode, and so I asked what is the temperature of your relationship? 17% of our audience that took the poll said hot, 26% said cold, 41% said it's warm, could be getting hotter working on it, and 17% said it's so hot and cold, off and on.

Speaker 3: 6:02

Interesting.

Speaker 2: 6:03

And so, like we said, I'm like I don't know exactly, that's a pretty vague question, like they could have taken that a lot of different ways. But what I learned from that is that 17% of all the people that took this this was a pretty big poll Said their marriage was hot, which means their sexual, their emotional, everything is probably going super well.

Speaker 3: 6:24

Yep.

Speaker 2: 6:25

That's only 17%. 26% said cold, which means the relationship is not in a good place right now and they really need this podcast episode that's right.

Speaker 3: 6:37

So this is for. Yeah, exactly, this is for you.

Speaker 2: 6:40

The 41% said that said it's warm, could be getting hotter. We are working on it. That's awesome, cause if you add up the 41 and the 17, that means their marriage is either amazing or they're trying to get it to be amazing. And that's what matters is that we're trying to work on it constantly, right, cause nobody has a perfect marriage all the time yeah, even us. We have to constantly work on it. It takes a lot of work. And the last 17% said it's so hot and cold off and on, which is see, and I actually liked that answer Do you?

Speaker 3: 7:11

Because I think that's what a lot of times marriage is you have a rough, maybe a couple of days, and then you have a great couple of days or a week, and then some some wrench gets thrown into your relationship, like I think that's pretty normal for people, like yeah, something happens and so a wrench is thrown in your relationship, so for a couple of days your marriage maybe you're struggling or you have an argument and it's cold, but that doesn't mean your overall marriage is bad, yeah, so I think that's just typically how a lot of marriages are is is it's up and down, it's hot and cold, and that's kind of what's going on a lot.

Speaker 2: 7:46

And I think the goal that everyone has, though, is not to have those cold moments.

Speaker 3: 7:51

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:52

Like none of us want to have to be up and down. We want stability. We want stable emotional, we want stable sexual intimacy and, yeah, it can go down in temperature, like we're talking about right it's not like I don't think we ever want to feel like our temperature and our marriage is cold, like I think that's what everybody is trying to avoid is it could be mediocre once in a while and then hot, but I feel like we're trying to avoid the cold.

Speaker 3: 8:17

Maybe it goes from hot to warm and then trying to get it back to hot instead of hot to really cold.

Speaker 2: 8:22

And that's the point, like I think, if you, if you really take these questions and implement into them a weekly or a monthly marriage checkup or relationship checkup or marriage meeting, whatever you want to call it, I literally think this could take your marriage. If you're, if you're both caring about the answers and listening to the answers and implementing the answers of what your spouse says and genuinely caring about them, I feel like you could take a cold marriage and at least get it to the mediocre, the middle stage right To where.

Speaker 2: 8:54

Then you can start working on making it hot more often.

Speaker 3: 8:57

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 8:57

Because it's never always going to be hot. No, there's no marriage, that's always hot.

Speaker 3: 9:01

Agreed. So let's dive into the questions. Like, like we said, these are questions that you can go into the ultimate intimacy app under uh coupons and printables, and you'll be able to find that in there. We'll call it the what is your temperature, what is the temperature in your marriage? Uh quiz or questionnaire. So, starting out, question number one. Now you're going to rate these all on a scale of one to 10, one being the worst, 10 being the best. Right, it's question number one. How would you rate the overall quality of your communication and the ability to resolve conflicts with your spouse?

Speaker 2: 9:41

Would you rate the overall quality of your common? That's a good question.

Speaker 3: 9:46

Yeah, Because I think I like that. It's combined communication and resolving conflicts, because if you have good communication you're going to be able to resolve conflicts. If you have bad communication, oftentimes you're not going to be able to resolve conflict in an easier way.

Speaker 2: 10:01

Well, if you have it's, it's one thing to have good communication, but it's one thing to be able to talk about it. But I think the other half of it takes like resolving the conflict. You can be able to talk, and talk, and talk, but if you're not willing to listen and like have humility, that's not really going to resolve the problem by talking right.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Like there's like another big piece of that, like you have to Let your pride go and let your humility kick in and your forgiveness kick in if you want the communication to be healthy. Yep Right.

Speaker 3: 10:32

Yep. Next question, on a scale of one to 10, how emotionally connected do you feel to your spouse? Obviously, we talk about this all the time. You can't have that, typically have that physical or sexual connection till you're emotionally connected to your spouse. Question number three rate the level of trust and honesty in your relationship.

Speaker 2: 10:58

Zero to 10, rate it.

Speaker 3: 10:59

Zero one to 10, yep Four, zero to 10.

Speaker 2: 11:02

If you have different answers, well, the level of trust and honesty, if it's anything but a nine or 10, that's conversation needs to be had.

Speaker 3: 11:13

Yep On a scale of one to 10, how satisfied are you with the frequency and quality of your intimate moments? Talking about sexual intimacy and we recognize that this might be a question where a lot of couples might be off right- this is probably the one with the biggest gap for sure, exactly.

Speaker 2: 11:36

We're gonna talk about that gap in the next episode and what people are doing to help fix that gap.

Speaker 3: 11:42

Super important, exactly, exactly. Next question assess the level of shared interests or activities that you both enjoy On a scale of one to 10,. Do you have activities you like to do and shared interests that you like to do together? Are you very good at that or is that an issue in the relationship? Do you not have any joint interests? Rate the ability to express your needs and desires openly and comfortably with your spouse On a scale of one to 10,. Are you able to rate your ability to express your needs and desires openly and comfortably?

Speaker 2: 12:21

That one could be a pretty big gap too.

Speaker 3: 12:25

I agree.

Speaker 2: 12:25

Depending on. I mean, I think there's a lot of husbands that maybe don't feel like they need to express as much to their wife. Well, a lot of wives have said I'm the one that feels like I need that more emotional, that more communication, rather than my husband. So I just feel like this one could be like a husband might rate that higher than the wife. The wife might feel like she needs more right.

Speaker 3: 12:52

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 12:54

And if he genuinely cares about that answer, he's gonna be like how can I do a better job at listening to you or having more time to communicate?

Speaker 3: 13:01

Yep, yeah, exactly. Next question, on a scale of one to 10, how supported and understood do you feel by your spouse in times of stress or difficulty?

Speaker 2: 13:15

That's a good question.

Speaker 3: 13:17

Next question rate the level of romance and affection in your relationship. That kind of goes with intimacy moments, but I think romance is also important. Romance is different than the question that was asked earlier, absolutely different. Are you holding hands? Are you buying your spouse flowers? Are you being romantic like you were when you were dating?

Speaker 2: 13:40

And how does this husband feel like he's getting romance in the marriage, because our poll that said husbands wanna feel romance too, just in a different way is very important, right, Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 13:52

Next question how would you rate the level of teamwork and collaboration in managing Responsibilities?

Speaker 2: 14:00

Household responsibilities. Yeah, this could be household.

Speaker 3: 14:03

It could be, financial responsibilities could be. You know many different things, but how do you, how would you rate the level of your teamwork and how you collaborate, work together?

Speaker 2: 14:15

Most husbands are gonna be like we do great and the wives are gonna be like uh.

Speaker 3: 14:20

Exactly, but this like.

Speaker 2: 14:22

I said this is gonna prompt a great conversation.

Speaker 3: 14:25

And the final question overall, how satisfied are you with your marriage or your relationship?

Speaker 2: 14:31

Okay. This is why this question is important. This is the question Nick asked me out of the blue. And I said a seven. And he was this is where it gets tricky, because if you're gonna be vulnerable and honest and have good communication in your marriage, you've gotta be able to take honesty from your spouse. So I said a seven, I to me. I was like seven's pretty darn high for a marriage, like I thought that would be a super big compliment because our marriage isn't perfect, right. And he was like what? I'm not perfect. Well, it should be a ten, right.

Speaker 3: 15:05

Well, I wasn't saying that.

Speaker 2: 15:06

what I'm not perfect, I could tell you were a little offended that it was a seven.

Speaker 3: 15:10

I thought things were good yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:12

Yeah, he thought things were perfect. They're not. Things are like never. Like I said, if you're at eight or nine, or you do say ten in your marriage, congratulations. That's pretty amazing. If your spouse says five, or they say a four or a six, or I'm gonna give it a 6.5 or a, I mean you gotta, instead of freaking out about it and being offended by that, you gotta be like, oh my gosh, like what can I? We gotta fix this, instead of like turning it on you. It's not always your spouse's fault either. Maybe it's something that they're doing themselves and they're realizing. Maybe I'm not putting in the effort, or it's marriage takes two right. So even if your spouse says it's a five, or if it's a six or lower, it's not your fault.

Speaker 3: 15:58

Well, the great thing about it, too, is like, even if there are areas that you're struggling in, it can be turned around really quickly. And that's the point of this questionnaire is, if Amy, if I ask the question, and I said, okay, how satisfied. Well, let's rate the romance and affection in your relationship, and I said, oh, it's a ten for me, and Amy said it's a five, I immediately know what we need to talk about and I can With a simple discussion hey, why are you feeling that the romance in our relationship for you is a five? I felt like it was really good. Well, nick, I feel like it's a five because of this, this and this. Well, immediately, you know what how your spouse is feeling and what you can do to improve. So the one thing I like about these questions is it can probably produce a big change in your relationship fairly quickly.

Speaker 2: 16:54

For sure, so it's not like.

Speaker 2: 16:57

If you let it, though, yeah if you allow it to do so, you've got to be willing to make a change and, like we asked couples after we took the survey, I'm not going to read them because there were so many negative ones and I don't want this to be negative. A lot of people are struggling, right. I asked them why they felt they rated it that way and because of this, this, this, this, this and like. 90% of the answers were negative. But you, you can. It doesn't get fixed, Like the marriage doesn't get better, unless you're you're determined to make it better. Right, like, just communicating about these things is not going to fix your marriage unless you genuinely are going to put the effort in to fix those things.

Speaker 3: 17:40

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 17:41

Right. Taking a relationship checkup questionnaire is only going to fix your marriage if you're willing to improve those areas.

Speaker 3: 17:48

Yeah, look at this quiz as, whatever the results are. Is not that, oh, we suck in this area? Look at it as oh, here's how we can improve in this area.

Speaker 2: 17:58

And then you have to put the effort in.

Speaker 3: 17:59

And then put forth that effort. So, all said and done when you're done with the quiz. If you score between 10 and 50, obviously this range suggests that there are issues within the relationship that need to be addressed to improve the relationship. If you score 51 to 70, it shows that there are areas that need improvement, probably be focusing on communication, intimacy, working together to resolve problems. If you score 71 to 80, this is a pretty good score, indicating that you have a reasonably healthy relationship. If you score 81 to 90, this is an excellent score, suggesting that you have, overall, a pretty great relationship. And obviously, if you score 91 to 100, you're perfect. I don't know that anyone's going to score 91 to 100. But that's kind of the rating scale and, like we said, we'll have this information in the app as well.

Speaker 2: 18:58

If you scored a 91 to 100, you contact us.

Speaker 3: 19:03

And you can help us with our marriage.

Speaker 2: 19:06

You come be on our podcast. That's right and you can have an entire episode dedicated to getting your marriage to a 9-10.

Speaker 3: 19:14

Exactly Love it, right, yeah, like seriously like reach out to us.

Speaker 2: 19:18

We want to know what you're doing to get it that high, to get your levels that high Like that's what people come for. Right Is to help get their marriage better.

Speaker 3: 19:27

So Well, the whole reason Amy and I do this podcast is to share things that we've done in our relationship and say, hey, this has worked for us, right, this has helped our relationship and made it better. As we've said often before, we had a really, really rough stretch in our relationship for a long time and we've been through a lot of very, very difficult and hard times. But we've implemented a lot of things that have made our relationship and marriage a lot better. And that's the whole point of this podcast is to share, hey, here's some of the things that worked for us. Maybe it can work for you and maybe some of the things don't work for you, but that's the whole purpose of our podcast and why we do what we do.

Speaker 2: 20:11

And if we sound like we have a great marriage, we do, but it's far from perfect and it takes a lot of effort and we've been through, like Nick said, some real stuff where we had to do a total like mind shift, change right and put in like way more effort and a lot of healing and I think you have to go through hell to know what heaven might look like. Agreed.

Speaker 3: 20:33

And we've been through hell and so the sweetness of having good things and things get better and having a good relationship is just that much better.

Speaker 3: 20:45

And again, that's why we are doing what we're doing and sharing is because we know there are a lot of couples that have been through what we've been through or way worse, or currently going through what we've been through, and we want you to know that there's hope that you really can turn around your relationship, because when you have a great marriage and things are going good, there truly is nothing better in life Like I couldn't imagine being happier when things are going well on all levels in the relationship, and so there is hope you can get your relationship there, no matter where you're at in life and where you're at in your relationship, as long as both of you have those same goals.

Speaker 2: 21:34

Absolutely. I want to just share a couple of the positive answers from people, what they're doing to keep their they marked hot on the survey and I just wanted to share what their answers were. Is that good? One lady said we pray together, communicate and we keep the bedroom fun. That's what keeps our marriage hot.

Speaker 3: 21:54

I like that. If you did those three things, those three things overall, you'd probably have a pretty dang good marriage, if you pray together for each other, communicate, keep the bedroom fun. Just that simple.

Speaker 2: 22:07

Yep. The next person said we've spent the last two years rebuilding our marriage and learning to be emotionally connected. We've been married 21 years.

Speaker 2: 22:16

Sounds like, sounds like us, yeah, you go through stuff, you figure out what you've done wrong. You realize I love you so much. Let's have an amazing marriage and then you fix it. Let's really. It takes both people doing that, though. Another person said we communicate often and honestly about what is working in our relationship, what is not working and why. I like that they're talking about. Communicate often and honestly, like what we just said, like this only works if you're being honest and you're willing to take honest answers and honest feedback from your spouse, because if you take that personal and you're not willing to accept that, maybe you need to change. Your relationship doesn't get better, for sure.

Speaker 2: 23:00

Right, that's pride. Okay, let's see, our relationship is hot because we keep each other a high priority and she put a flame, or he someone, because we prioritize each other and that simple is simple, but it's hard at the same time.

Speaker 2: 23:21

It's hard. Those phones are addicting, tv movies, getting tired kids like it's hard to keep your marriage priority. I'm not going to lie, it's hard. Another, this was from a husband. He said hot, we make intimacy an absolutely must. We try to have sex daily, whoa, but minimally five times a week. Wow, need him on our podcast, that's right. How do you do that we might be having them as a a guest soon.

Speaker 3: 23:51

How did it? How to be intimate five times a week?

Speaker 2: 23:54

I don't know. That doesn't sound like yeah, okay. Anyways, that sounds like a lot. Let's see Another one. I need to be vulnerable and communicate how I feel and need, when I need help with housework and other stuff. So admitting that you need to do better at communicating is awesome. Our marriage was called, but we have been working on it so hard. A weekend away really helped us too. Yeah, I agree, that was so important.

Speaker 3: 24:27

But sometimes it just takes some time to get away, even if it's for 24 hours, and just really focus on each other and have that connection.

Speaker 2: 24:35

Yep, let's see, I'm trying to stick to this. The positive ones. There's a lot of negative. Our, let's see, hot and cold, trying every trick in the book. Lots of foreplay can really help Communication. Yep, that's, I'm going to stop there Talking. There's a lot there about just trying to stay connected and not distracted. I think that's like number one is not being too distracted.

Speaker 3: 25:10

Yeah, agreed.

Speaker 2: 25:12

So, anyways, I hope this checkup really helps. It was a really good conversation for us. It got. It got us led us into other conversations about different areas, and I think I think this is a basic checkup. We also have a deeper checkup in the resources too, don't we?

Speaker 3: 25:26

Yeah, and it's real simple. It'll literally take you like five minutes to do, but then it can create a, like we said, a great conversation. So, like we said, take it individually, get together, compare your answers and let it prompt great conversations, and we hope this has a great impact on the temperature of your merge and heating it up.