Hey Julia Woods
Join me, Julia Woods, a couples coach and wife of over 3 decades, as I share some of my client's stories and my own so that you can be encouraged, inspired, and gain new results in your marriage.
Hey Julia Woods
From Outburts to Peace How We Saved Our Marriage
Julia welcomes Josh and Heather, a couple who have transformed their 23-year marriage through coaching and attending Breakthrough couples retreats over the past five years.
• Heather has gone from weekly angry outbursts to zero, while Josh has reduced his interrupting by 40%
• Their relationship once featured little communication, with Heather's outbursts driven by feelings of "not being enough"
• Josh describes how his need to control conversations stemmed from fear of abandonment and loneliness
• The couple experienced an "atomic bomb" moment when Josh's infidelity was revealed, forcing them to choose between real change or separation
• Heather learned to recognize her "impaired thinking" patterns and voice her needs instead of shutting down
• Josh discovered that what he thought was love (based on childhood observations) wasn't actually healthy connection
• Both emphasize that working on their individual relationships with themselves was crucial to healing their marriage
• They now describe their marriage as "exciting not dreaded" and find joy in the work of relationship
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Welcome to hey Julia Woods podcast. I'm your host, Julia Woods, founder of Beautiful Outcome, a coaching company focused on helping couples learn to see and understand each other, even in the most difficult conversations. On my podcast, I will share with you the real and raw of the messiness and amazingness of marriage. I'll share with you aspects of my relationship and the couples I coach in a way that you can see yourself and find the tools that you need to build the marriage you long for.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of hey, julia Woods. I am so excited about the results this couple is getting. I cannot wait for you to hear what's happening in their relationship. Today I am with Josh and Heather. Welcome, guys, thank you. Josh and Heather came to start working with me about four or five years ago. They started with coaching and now they have been consistently annually coming to Breakthrough my couple's retreat and in that time they are getting significant results, which we're going to talk about in a minute. Before we do that, let me add a little context. They've been married for 23 years, have three kids that range from 11 to 19. And they live in Houston, texas. I think you guys born and raised in Texas, right, both of you.
Speaker 3:Well Heather was born in Vegas.
Speaker 2:Okay, vegas girl turned Texan. So, josh and Heather, thank you guys for being here and being willing to share your lives with us. Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so pre-recording. We were talking about some of the results and here we go, this work and attending Breakthrough. She has gone from having weekly outbursts in her communication with Josh to zero outbursts, which is super exciting. And Josh has the infamous challenge that man I think every spouse that I work with has this challenge Maybe it's just the ones who are most like me and that is interrupting in conversations, interrupting your spouse in the conversations and you're interrupting. Heather has decreased by 40%, which is a major, major shift. So that's pretty exciting, guys Like, let's talk about it. Let's talk about what was it like Each of you I want each of you to share. What was it like, heather? What was when you were outbursts, having outbursts every week? And Josh, what was it like for you when you were interrupting all the time? What was that producing in your relationship?
Speaker 3:Go ahead.
Speaker 4:Hey well, it was very lonely, the outbursts I could talk to myself and just go through, not wanting to be this person and not wanting to have this ugliness come out of me, while completely just being an angry mess. It was not nice to be in that position, just very ugly and sad, just being in the position of yelling, occasionally slamming things. Um, it was not who I wanted to be, it's not. It was a person I didn't recognize.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, what do you think? What was taking you there? What, what do you think you were angry about?
Speaker 4:you there? What do you think you were angry about? Oh, at the time I felt like I was angry about everything just not being heard or not enough. All the lies that we tell ourselves.
Speaker 2:All the lies that we tell ourselves Not smart enough, not pretty enough, not skinny enough, not just not enough. Yeah, yeah, so your own relationship with yourself. You were angry that you felt not enough. What was? Happening in the relationship that was bringing you to feel you weren't enough, Like what kind of what was happening in the conversations that would bring you to burst of anger, the outburst of anger in our conversations.
Speaker 4:Well, we didn't really have too many conversations at the time, but what we did have, they were not good.
Speaker 2:What is not good. I think so many couples would say that but what is not good?
Speaker 4:Um, from wanting to do like Josh, wanting to do things that I didn't like to do or didn't want to do. As far as a social gatherings, um, of course, I always would shy away from them. I'm not feeling enough. A lot of the conversations that we did have were things that I may not want to do or like to do, or about things that other people, about things that other people were wanting.
Speaker 2:And I wasn't there. So you felt that other people wanted things from you that you didn't want to give. Correct yeah, and you didn't. Did you just go along and appease, or did you like would the angry outburst actually work to get you to not go to the social gathering, or like what would the outcome be?
Speaker 4:Outbursts, I think, would definitely allow me not to be able to go, and I felt at the time like, okay, I got my point across. This is not what I want.
Speaker 2:However, it was not getting my point across and ultimately led just to deeper disconnection, deeper anger of the house taking care of the kids which, um, yeah, just oh, man, that ache, I feel it, I feel it in my own, like it resonates deeply with my own struggles, um, in just not owning my voice, and then the despair of trying to have my voice, but then the voice that I had led to loneliness, and then that loneliness just felt like more of the same, like I don't matter, I'm not, I'm not good, and this isn't what you said. For me, it was I'm not worthy of love, and so, no matter how hard I keep trying to get the love I want, I seem to keep pushing it further away. Any of that resonate?
Speaker 4:Definitely resonates Pushing further away.
Speaker 3:Good. I feel like it led to total. What I would describe in our marriage at that point was total chaos how so, josh?
Speaker 3:so, as I look back and and look at these events, like it started, right, let's go back. We can go back 15 years, even 10 years. It started with, like I'm not, I want to go to that. You know, we, as I, as I replay these environments or these things that happen, you know she would quote, unquote, get her point across, right, but shut down and burst. And then I was. For me, it was like, well, she said, okay, I'm just gonna go do this thing. But then these things grew, right, and as these things grew, an ego grew or an excuse grew, and then it just created more disconnect. And that disconnect every, when I look back now, every event, whether it was a micro event, something small or a massive, like I'm gonna go do this for two days, right, or I'm gonna everything led to a decision that led to more chaos, to prove to me like I am, I'm enough, I'm doing all I can do. And then the lies grew in my head, which calls it was just this chaotic pattern that grew to an atomic bomb.
Speaker 2:What was the atomic bomb?
Speaker 3:Oh gosh, that would have been on December 23rd, three, four years ago. It would have been uncovering infidelity and all of, I would say, everything that led up to that was the atomic bomb like that. That morning on her birthday or that night, actually, I was at a, I was at a bar. Like this would had grown to a point where, okay, I was at a bar, I was at a, football players or whatever it was was just always something going on and in my mind it could be justified with a business meeting, like I was raising capital or private equity or doing deals or and it was always with events or people. And then that grew into all of the disruptive things that you could possibly do in a marriage. I mean, we can go into detail if you want, but I don't know if that's necessary. And then one night I come home, smash drunk, hanging out with some football players at a bar drinking and smoking cigars. My kid broke his arm. I wasn't there for that. I said, oh, I'll be home on my way. And two hours later I still wasn't on my way. She handled that at the hospital. Three hours later, 12 hours later, 12 hours later, okay, so um, and then it went into uh, passed drunk, wake up in the morning I had plans to do what I needed to do to get her birthday cake and go meet a customer at a shop and all kinds of stuff and none of that that was the atomic bomb. None of that worked out. Like there was no me going to get a birthday cake.
Speaker 3:Heather had found out everything two days before Christmas, on her 40th birthday, and at that point you know I'm not big on hypnotism, but in your mind you know some of the people I know they want to get hypnotized so they give into it, right. But there's a traumatic event, there's something that happens in the brain that wants to shift, shift. I think it's that. What's that? Saying people change when their current reality is worse than change. And at that point it was. She spoke up and basically said it's all of that, or me, or we got problems and we need to work on this, and are you going to own up to it? And that's that was the change. That was the atomic bomb, but everything prior to that, the, an outburst, and then a party, and then this, an event, and I'm not going to go, and I'm going to go. And then it grew in this ego. This monster grew and excuses grew, and then I was. I was right, no matter what.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's powerful. So, josh, we discussed at the beginning that your interrupting dropped by 40%, and what we looked at with Heather is that her relationship with herself was what was driving her angry outburst, her sense of not being enough. What do you think was driving your interrupting?
Speaker 3:do you think was driving your interrupting? So you know we touched on this. I'm not narcissism, right, still learning but going deep into that or going deep into the control of a conversation. Right when, when, in a business like when you, when you think about focusing on a room or dominating a room or controlling a room, you control the conversation, you get to control the room, you get to be that person right and so bringing that that aspect home with me to my marriage and just consistently interrupting.
Speaker 3:So she would start saying something, I would shut it down, I would say it and if I controlled the situation, I could control the environment, I could quote unquote, control her, but it wasn't looking back now, it wasn't controlling her. This is something we've learned over the years is that she was just shutting down, so she's in control of herself. But for me I could control that situation almost like in business or in a meeting or a room, and it would be a constant interrupt. But that wasn't just for the communication side. That interruption would go into me being the, the fix-it guy or me being the problem solver, any, anything that happened. I was going to interrupt, get to the bottom line and move right past it, and if it didn't, well then I'm just going to move past it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, um, you know, control is an interesting thing and there is a saying that there's a pain in our past, we're trying to control in our future and it's creating chaos in our present, and one of the biggest ways it creates chaos is we're trying to control this present moment and trying to control something, whether it's shutting down, angry outbursts, you know, interrupting, those are all forms of control, but they're driven by fear, right? Because when we're, we have a fear of something that drives us to anxiety, which leads to control, which then leads to rage, when what we're trying to control isn't being controlled. So what do you think in that interrupting, josh? That is the fear underneath it. What is the fear that drives you wanting to control the conversation with Heather?
Speaker 3:you wanting to control the conversation with Heather. So we're at year three or four with you at least, and what I've learned and what I found is that and it wasn't until this last breakthrough, after really digging in normally I have micro breakthroughs, and this one was big and Heather had micros but and big one one. But I found that I had, I thought, the fear of failure initially. Was it like I can't fail? But when I dug really deep, um, when I really looked into it, after really learning, it's the fear of being alone, my fear of loneliness. And then it started backing all the way up, going to my childhood and, I think, when I realized that I could be way off. But that fear of being alone would led me to wanting to control every conversation. And if I controlled the narrative, the conversation, the people, if I controlled the environment, if I walked into a room and controlled everything in that room, I wasn't alone, I was. I was the most present person, in control of everything, not realizing that we have control of nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But looking back, I think our generation as a whole, we did everything alone. Growing up our parents would be like go get your bike, go outside, come home when the porch light comes on, when the sun comes. So we had to go figure it out on our own. We had every single thing go play. What the hell does play mean? At six I'm going to go ride my bike by myself. So everything was alone to a point that subconsciously for me at least I couldn't. I didn't realize I couldn't handle being alone, but I had to be the biggest ego-driven, in-control person there was, even in my marriage against Heather, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, fear of abandonment is the overarching biggest human fear. We all, deep down, have that fear of being abandoned, because we are relational creatures. We're wired for relationship. Intuitively we know that we're wired for relationship. And, as a kid, when we are abandoned, as our caregivers are humans and they've got their things going on and there's different ways that we feel alone with them. Some can be extreme, some can be smaller, to learn that, oh no, it's my performance, because, a child, when something isn't going right, it's a natural, innate thing to make it about us. It's our fault, I'm the one causing this. So when abandonment happens, whether it's with our siblings or parents or whatever friends, we innately begin to believe it's based on our performance or lack of performance. And so we come up with these adaptive coping skills that are you know, controlling the conversation, in whatever form that is, whether it's interrupting or storming out or blowing up, or you know telling somebody they're wrong or that. We all have our own strategies. But a lot, if you really dig it down, it's usually our fear of abandonment and the coping strategies we learned to face that fear when we were young.
Speaker 2:But the beauty of it is, once we get familiar with it, we actually can begin to shift to the gift side of fear, because fear is a gift. It's not a problem, it's a gift. It wants to take us to wisdom. It wants to take us to, you know, vulnerability and honesty. That wisdom comes through as you guys think about what's been happening for you over the years that are creating these incredible results. What are some what? What shifted, like what? Obviously, there was the big blow up. There was the atomic bomb, as you say, and so it was. Either we're going to do the work or we're not going to do the work and in the marriage, but what is the work been for you guys? Like what, if you could bring it into today's world? Um, you're still human, you still have the fear of abandonment. So what does it look like now? Is there a recent conflict that you had where this came up as a temptation, but you worked through it differently? What does that look like?
Speaker 3:You want to go.
Speaker 4:I'm easy on this.
Speaker 3:Go ahead.
Speaker 4:Okay, well, I will say, very recently there was a thing that we were talking about and he had mentioned if it's not important enough for me to come back to, is it important enough? And so he wanted to go on from there and just keep continuing the conversation, and that's where I had asked if we could just pause there for a minute and just kind of dig a little bit deeper into that, because, of course, my auto thought there is oh, I'm not good enough, I'm not important enough, I'm not. And so it was like okay, we're going to address this now.
Speaker 4:So, for context, you were wanting to have a conversation, heather, and, and ask Josh if, help me understand if, if it's not important enough to address now or tell me again, sorry I got lost if it's not important enough for me to come back to, so if he has a thought that's happening for him, and if it's not important enough for him to come back to, is it important enough to have a discussion? Is it important, um?
Speaker 3:yeah. So like I'll give an example. Let's say we're driving. My biggest thing is, if I'm driving, it's a lot of thing happened in the truck. Obviously it's texas, we drive everywhere is like she'll say something or we'll do something and I'll go to want to talk about it, but the complete conversation, like how to give myself the generous listen, isn't the time when I'm driving. That's what we're realizing a of.
Speaker 3:It is like I've got 50 distractions going on when I'm driving and I can't be present for her. But in my head, is this learning now after years? Like, is this a repeating conversation? Is this an outside of like her? You know me driving and her telling me to slow down or how to drive or whatever this right Like, but is this an outside of like her? You know me driving and her telling me to slow down or how to drive or whatever this right like. But is this something in my head when we do sit down for talk time, is it the conversation I really want to have, or is the? Or is this the old habit? Is this me going back to mr fix it right then? Is it an important conversation enough to take the special time with her to actually talk about big things that matter, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Okay, so just for listeners. So I think I know what you mean by talk time. Talk time is what we call couples connection, where you weekly have a time at least a week you set aside a time to have real honest tension conversations, talk about where the tension's at in the relationship. Is that what you mean by talk time?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And how often do you guys do that?
Speaker 3:It depends. Sometimes we may go a month without talk time. I, I still am driven. This is, this is crazy. What I realized is that even as a kid, when, when my parents right, it's, it's everything we learn, and Heather's like, oh, let's schedule some talk time, I'm like did I do something wrong? What's wrong? What happened? And I immediately go to like what the hell did I do? Versus the opportunity to actually take this time. So, yes, when we do schedule or when we do have talk time, or when we're sitting and we'll have coffee in the morning or on the back porch or whatever, we have a little bit of special time for. Is that conversation, the talk time, a reoccurring one that I want to spend that nap?
Speaker 2:Right, okay, good, makes sense. And so, in essence, heather, that's when he was saying, like is this important enough to come back to at talk time.
Speaker 4:Correct.
Speaker 2:Okay, good, sorry, I'm caught up now. Sorry.
Speaker 4:So that was a tension, because he was asking if it was important enough to come back to and you wanted to talk about it right then well, he was just saying whatever conversation he thinks about throughout the days, um, because we were, we were looking at the root cause of our disconnection, and so he was trying to think about, well, his times of disconnection, if it was anything important enough to come back to. And so, before going on, I wanted to address the fact of what he finds important, and we didn't actually get through the conversation as something else had come up. Um, but for me, when I recognized that, okay, I'm going into this impaired mode of thinking and just okay, I'm not enough, I'm not important, can we address this question now? You know, and here's my questions. You know, what is? What do you mean by important? You know, because our ideas of important are going to be something very different.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:So, like my mind goes to, if I'm a person that speeds all the time, right, and she's bringing up speeding and I'm just using a very simple term right, and we have attention about my driving and doing 10 over, 15 over, versus another conversation, is that conversation, is that speeding conversation and trying to decide when, when there's talk time, is that attention to bring up, or do we have a bigger conversation to have? That's what I mean by important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, great. So, heather, you said you noticed you were going to the impaired thinking. How did you notice that?
Speaker 4:my thoughts, just thinking, okay, when he said important, is it important enough to come back to? And when I think about, you know, is something that keeps happening, you know, important enough to come back to? Well, if it's something that keeps happening, it may not necessarily be something that's important, but it is something that's causing tension, right, so that it that needs to be addressed, or I would like it to be addressed, and so it may not be even a matter of importance, but just something that I notice is happening. And so my impaired thinking there was okay, I'm not feeling like I'm important if I can't talk about something. And then I begin to, you know, the automatic of want to shut down, of you know, oh, I don't want to feel that uncomfortableness of not being important. And so that's what I could feel and I brought forward to him to be able to say, okay, let's talk about this.
Speaker 2:Okay, good, all right, good. So what I hear you saying is that in the past you would have gone to the impaired thinking of, okay, I'm not enough, I'm not important, and you would have just shut down. This time you recognize the thinking and realized that wasn't taking you where you wanted to go. So instead you confessed to Josh, hey, I'm telling myself I'm not important. This feels important to me. Can we talk about it? Is that kind of what you're saying happened?
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 2:That is a powerful shift, and it's amazing that angry outbursts are just usually when we haven't been willing to have our voice. But having our voice is just simply being honest about what I'm telling myself most of the time. Yeah, that's good, josh, did you find yourself wanting to interrupt her in that conversation?
Speaker 3:No, actually no, I liked listening because it allowed me to. I actually got to process how she is interpreting what I mean as important. Yes, five years ago I'd have been like, what the hell do you mean? It's not important to me, so it doesn't matter. And then that would have controlled the situation to get her to shut down, to end the conversation, to go on about something else. I mean, I can see the pattern five years ago and I'm like, oh, wow, but I'm going to go back to childhood watching what my parents did. Growing up was, effectively, I'm never going to be like that, but I was being like that.
Speaker 2:I I'm never going to be like that, but I was being like that. Well, interrupting is, uh, you know, it's pretty one-on-one for us when it's it's a very common strategy, right, and it's it's getting to that fear underneath it. What am I afraid of in this moment, right? And when I can get honest about the fear and confess the fear, I can actually start asking questions that help me face the fear and realize the fear isn't I'm not going. I can choose to be alone in this conversation by interrupting it and controlling it, or I can choose to be present in this conversation and connect with this other human being who's very much like me and all of a sudden I'm no longer afraid, I'm alone. I actually feel more deeply connected, simply because I was willing to be present with what's there, rather than fearing like, oh, if they're upset, it must be about me, it must be.
Speaker 2:I did something wrong, I'm going to be abandoned because I keep doing the wrong thing. Their opportunity is just simply to be present. So that's a big shift, josh. To go from this would have been a conversation. You interrupted her and sounds like you just shut the conversation down by taking it in the direction you wanted to go. So what shifted for you to want to listen?
Speaker 3:Oh, that opens up a whole box there. So you know, when I first started, when we first started working with you and we went through the actual coaching program, I, prior to that, what I identified as love and connecting was what I saw growing up, which was you eat, you fight, you make up, you have sex, you watch TV, you eat, you fight and you just repeat this process. But then going through, going through the coaching, it, coaching it was wow. I don't even really know what love is in a sense of what my spouse sees love as right, like. What does she see? And what did I know love was? And realizing I didn't know what love was like. I knew that's what love was, but that wasn't what love does, right, right. So opening up that year process and then realizing that that connection and being able to look at her or being able to talk felt so much softer, it felt so nice. It's almost like you know I had, and I'm sure we have people that are spiritual or believe in God or don't, whatever they want, but there's a, there's a higher power out there, there's a, something that can't be explained and one time we were coming back prior to your program, we had gone. I'm going to tantrum real quick. We had gone to some counseling and we would leave counseling more confused than anything. It wasn't like maybe there's a purpose for it, but the purpose wasn't going to help where we were at.
Speaker 3:And then, um, I'm driving down the road 45 North Houston speed limits what? 75, 80. I mean it's 65, but we you know anyways. And all of a sudden I start shaking and I couldn't like, I'm like I don't know why you love me, like what is that Right? And I, I saw that everything went black. I couldn't even pull over.
Speaker 3:I'm driving and I saw my path of of where my marriage should go with my family and life. And then I saw where I was at and a path of destruction and lies and deceit and where it was headed. And I got to touch that and it was almost like a drug, like I knew when I touched that you're not going to take that away from me. And that feeling inside of that peacefulness, I call it the Holy Spirit, right Touched. But that I knew is what I wanted. And then, when I actually started participating in being vulnerable and realizing the love and the communication and the connection, that connection that I feel when I actually take the time was the connection I felt when I got to touch whatever it is I got to touch while I was driving, so going into, what made me want to do more of that was that feeling of giving it the chance to understand what that feeling was and learning, relearning, or actually learning what love is.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, and how? What would you say?
Speaker 3:love is say love is. Now love is. I would say love is really wanting to be present, like it's going to open up another box, but being present and being there for my family not for me being there for god and really providing not just money or a house, but actually the, the nourishment for the soul, like really really just coming together, um, and that's something how every day I got to work on well, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:The journey of life is to become love, right? Yeah, love is, love is sacrificial, and not in a doormat kind of a way, but in a genuine joy kind of a way, like I don't have time for a conversation, but there's nothing more important to me than this conversation, that sacrificial love that is, it's powerful.
Speaker 3:Heather really showed me, heather really showed me when she the forgiveness, the relentless pursuit, even after everything, of like okay, let's, let's do this together. That was love. Like okay, she can forgive me and she can still communicate and connect with me. Oh, my goodness, this is what love is. Even the family, her family, my in-laws. And when everybody knew everything, it was still like okay, let's talk. It wasn't a shut out, shut the doors. It wasn't like a medieval time of you're kicked out of the castle and never come back type deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, as you guys think about these results of Heather, you owning your voice and not shutting down and bursting out in anger, and Josh, you not you having a significant decrease in interrupting, what difference is it making Like what is? How is life different day by day with those two new results?
Speaker 4:with those two new results. Life is definitely different day by day. It's exciting and not dreaded. I'm continuously learning more about myself to be able to get results for myself and the marriage, just learning more, leaning into those tensions. It's not so like I said, it's not a dread, it's not like oh, here we go again and you know it's exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's that is powerful, because you know that is the common thing, that, as humans, when the tension shows up, it's like, oh, no, here we go. Oh, and many couples, a common phrase I hear is it's like oh, no, is this going to be the fight that ends it all? Like there's that fear of cause. The fights are getting bigger and, you know, more challenging and so, um, it's pretty powerful to move from dread to excitement. That's big. And you said, for listeners, I want to press a little further into that, just real quick. I know we're at time, but you went from. We discussed at the beginning that it's your relationship with yourself. That was what needed to be worked on, and now you just said that you're learning a lot more about yourself. So can you connect the dots between like? Did you not care about like? Were you not learning about yourself in the past? What does it mean to learn about yourself?
Speaker 4:I definitely was not learning about myself, about myself, and now it's taking the time to focus on my feelings and my thoughts, what I'm thinking about and where that's taking me, and like journaling, there's so much over the past years. You know I'm very close to God and I know who he says I am, but I did not know who I was for me and the rest of the world, whether it be my husband, my friends, my family, complete strangers. I felt at one time I was lost and it was like, oh, who is this person? But sitting with myself and being able to go through what I'm feeling and voice that and get that out, instead of holding it in and letting those negative thoughts run the show, I'm able to come out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Gaining our voice starts with us giving ourself a voice in our own way, whatever that is, whether it's journaling or, you know, talking it out or whatever. But if we don't know ourself, if we aren't listening to ourself, no one else is going to listen to us. Powerful Josh, what about you? What difference is it making in you guys' life day to day, as you both are seeing this growth?
Speaker 3:I would say life is just better, right. So I go back, I'm going to go to you. Know how somebody comes to you and they say well, marriage is work right.
Speaker 3:And you hear it in their tone and they're just almost disappointed. They're almost. What we've all been taught is that you got to put into work. It's going to be monotonous, it's going to be dull, it gets old and going through everything. Now marriage is work, but it's fun. So the difference it's made for me is it's fun and it's really amazing to connect. Like everything that we get to do is I'm gonna I'm gonna use that word you used to gift and a chance to grow stronger and connect more and go, go, do fun. Things like sure, marriage can be work. Yeah, that work can be fun yeah right.
Speaker 3:So for us it's changed everything every, I mean everything, from, you know, dinners to sex to even, you know, having a drink or something, or anything we do is just it's a good time together versus the work. Um, that's, that's the difference for us. For me, that's what it is. I think that everything that I've been taught about marriage was wrong.
Speaker 2:So grateful for your willingness to open up and share. I think there is a lot of powerful similarities in every human if they want to listen and consider how they work to control the narrative, out of fear of being abandoned, out of fear of being alone. And so grateful for you guys and any last thing either of you feels you want to share. I do.
Speaker 3:I've used this twice since the last breakthrough, you know, when we were sitting there and you had mentioned something, that if we don't work on ourselves now and somebody gets divorced, another person ends up with the same person. There's no difference, right? So two of my friends they they're going through some problems and I I actually told them that like, listen, you can get divorced but you're still the same person that's taking those issues to another person now. That's new. And to look at fixing, quote, unquote fixing, look at focusing on you and developing you in that marriage first. Then you get the chance to decide do we want to be together or not, and at that point that's okay. That's something that I've realized. Like, for us, I'm not looking at a point like we don't want to be together. It's amazing together. But when you said that this last breakthrough and I've taken that it has fundamentally changed the outlook I see on divorces now and friends that have issues, and it's 100% accurate that you have to do that first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the relationship we have with ourselves sets the tone for every other relationship that we have. So everywhere I go, there I am, and so if it's not working in this relationship, it's probably going to eventually pop up in the next relationship, because it's me, it's my own relationship with myself that is inviting me to grow. So thank you, guys, and thank you to those of you that joined us in listening. I'd love to hear what you're taking away, if you'll share in the comments below, and if this made a difference for you, would you give it a rate? It give it five stars and share it with a friend. Thank you so much.