Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
98. Q&A (Rebuilding Trust, Forgiveness, Newlywed Rhythms, Mens' Greatest Struggle, Advent and Traditions)
Episode Summary:
In this special Q&A episode, the Vallottons tackle some of your most heartfelt and practical questions about trust, forgiveness, marriage, and family life. Whether you're looking for ways to rebuild trust, navigate the early months of marriage, or create meaningful family traditions, this episode has something for everyone.
What’s Covered in Today’s Episode:
- How is trust practically built when it’s been broken?
- Steps to rebuild trust through accountability, transparency, and consistent actions over time.
- The importance of small, intentional efforts in repairing relational safety.
- What happens if I forgive but cannot forget?
- Understanding forgiveness as a journey and why forgetting isn’t required.
- Rebuilding trust is a process that requires seeing repeated success in that area of previous failure and also taking the risk to trust again.
- How do my wife of 2 months and I better create routine in the craziness of life?
- Ideas for setting rhythms and routines to strengthen your marriage.
- Carving out time for intentional connection as newlyweds before the demands of life and family make it harder to prioritize.
- What’s the most repetitive struggle you usually see with men?
- Insights into common patterns, such as passivity and disconnection.
- Encouragement and strategies to move past these struggles inside connection with other men through BraveCo.
- How do you celebrate Advent with your kids?
- Creative and meaningful ways to engage children during the Advent season.
- Balancing faith, fun, and family in holiday traditions.
- Discovering Christmas: A 25 Day Advent Devotional with Activities for Kids
- Can you share creative family rhythms and traditions that shape family culture?
- How intentional practices can strengthen bonds and pass on values.
- Examples of daily, weekly, and seasonal traditions to cultivate connection.
Patreon
If you've enjoyed this podcast, would you consider financially supporting the show? Every donation, big and small, helps the Vallottons continue to prioritize making this content for you. Click this link to support! Thank you!
For information on the Marriage Intensive and other resources, go to jasonandlaurenvallotton.com !
Connect with Lauren:
Instagram
Facebook
Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org
We're the valetins and we are passionate about people.
Speaker 1:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.
Speaker 2:But that's not always what comes easiest.
Speaker 1:We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.
Speaker 2:So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
Speaker 1:Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Valetins. We are excited to be with you today. We sure are Happy December Coming off of a really good Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2:We did have a great Thanksgiving this year, Hosted a bunch of people at our house, all of our family, our daughter-in-law's family, Jason's siblings and parents and we had a really good time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was great. We even went up and cut a beautiful Christmas tree.
Speaker 2:We did Two beautiful Christmas trees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's our favorite thing to do. Had a little fiasco up there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe we'll talk about that in a little bit you want to yeah All right, Guys, today. Today we are going to answer some of your questions. We haven't done this in a while, but every now and then we like to know what you guys want to talk about, and today we've got. We'll see how many we can get through. We've got a good handful of questions. Are you ready to dive right in?
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's dive.
Speaker 2:Hey, you know what? Before we dive in, I do want to mention that, as we are heading towards the new year, you guys should keep your eye on jasonandlaurenvaletoncom for opportunities and resources for you in the new year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got another marriage intensive coming up. We are excited about 2025. So stay posted. That's just a heads up, but for today we're going to do Q&A. Let's do it, babe. All right, I'll ask the first question, okay. Okay, somebody wrote in and said how is trust practically built when it's been broken, and what happens if I can forgive, but I can't forget?
Speaker 1:It's such a great question. It is a great question and we've talked about this a lot before. So we always say trust is not built by the absence of mistakes, but by how a mess gets cleaned up.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And all of us are going to make mistakes in life, but part of rebuilding trust is going. What actually led to me breaking trust? Yeah, what's the root of the problem here? And if someone let's just use pornography for an example Okay, because it's easy, if you catch your spouse looking at pornography, or they come and they, you know, confess I've been looking at pornography, but they don't actually go. Here's what's driving it. And maybe they don't know, right? So if they don't know, then they would need to go to counseling or something that helps them get to the bottom of. This is what is happening in my life, right, and then go through the process of healing that, and so that builds a lot of trust, right. I've helped a lot of guys who've struggled, who have a sex addiction, and they go through therapy the Transformation Center, a really great sexual addiction course.
Speaker 1:For example they go nine months in that course, through there. Every single week they're showing up, they're going to their counselor, they're going through the process, they're explaining what's happening inside of them, they're taking their spouse on and through the process with them a bit of it and their behavior is changing. Not only are they not looking at porn, but they're learning how to open up and emotionally connect, and right Builds a lot of trust. So that's part of cleaning up a mess and I think a lot of times we say sorry, we even change behavior a bit, we do behavior modification. But if you don't know why it started or where it came from or why you messed up, then oftentimes you don't rebuild that trust. Um, the other thing I will say, babe, is that we see this a lot in our marriage intensive, where someone has made a big mess. They've even done their best to clean up the mess, maybe even for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But because the other person doesn't know how to work through pain or how to mourn, then it's often one person can get caught stuck back in the past because they simply don't know how to process what happened to them. So that is also an option where you say, like I really forgive you, but I don't know how to like, I don't necessarily know how to trust you and I also don't know how to get out of pain.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so you know we've talked a lot about how to process pain on our podcast before. I can't remember where that one is, but people can go back and search. But that's a big piece of it too is is learning how to mourn and learning how to process some of the pain so that you know if somebody really is genuine in their, in their process, that you can break, break through all that pain and and and hurt that you're dealing with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because, um, you know, trust can be broken in a moment but it takes actually time typically to rebuild trust. So that can be kind of devastating. Obviously, when trust is broken it's devastating. You start questioning lots of things and I think if you're in a situation where trust has been broken, I think just kind of settling into the reality, like, okay, this is going to be a little bit of a journey, Like you're not going to feel instantly like you trust somebody again when trust has been broken, and like what you said, it's built in in how trust is rebuilt, in how you clean up the mess.
Speaker 2:We'll often say trust is built through repeated success. So you're looking for success in repeated success in the area where there's previously been failure. But the also the reality of of rebuilding trust sometimes is like there's a there's a lot of risk into entrusting again and anytime we give any part of our heart to somebody, we're risking, we're taking a risk in trusting that person. But I think that if you're seeing a commitment to change and if you're seeing repeated successes, then ultimately we have to be able to take the risk of trusting again and I think it just bears saying that you don't necessarily have to feel like you trust somebody in order to risk trusting them again. That's, that's the, that's the risk of love.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had Carl and Laura Lentz on our podcast, and one of the things that I loved that he said was I put evidence out every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that episode's coming out next week. Yeah, it's gonna be so good.
Speaker 1:You guys are gonna love it. You're gonna love it. But he talked about putting evidence out every single day for my wife that I am and I would say I do the same thing right, like, and you do the same thing. I'm a trustworthy person. Yeah, I'm connected, I'm open, I'm asking for input. That's right Showing up, so I love it. Um, you want me to read the next one? Okay, how can me and my wife of two months better create a routine in the craziness of life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, life is wild and it's only going to get wilder.
Speaker 1:Two months in baby.
Speaker 2:Congrats y'all. Yeah, I think that the first thing that's really important to do is to determine what actually creates connection for you guys. Like what? Because routine for the sake of routine is good. I mean you might get you might get a lot done, you know, if you've got a solid routine and you can get really efficient together, like you could be good teammates, but you could do that with somebody at work. So the real question here is here is I think the real question here is discovering how do we discover what creates connection for us inside the midst of busyness which is life, and that's a little bit of a journey.
Speaker 2:Obviously it's unique and those are great questions to ask each other in the initial, you know, in those early years of marriage, um, asking lots of great questions to get to know your spouse in the area of, like, what makes you feel really connected when we spend time together? What kind of time makes you feel really connected? What creates intimacy between us? What do we, you know, are? Are you a morning person? Am I a morning person, like if I was married to?
Speaker 2:go ahead somebody besides jay. Well, let me say it this way jay doesn't drink coffee I don't. I drink tea he drinks tea, but not religiously like I drink coffee. Coffee is part of my ritual in the morning and it's a ritual that I enjoy alone.
Speaker 1:I'm not addicted, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:I'd rather have a partner in my addiction, because if it was up to me like a beautiful, connected routine for me would be that if we both got up early and we both made our coffee and we both sat in quiet or in conversation and enjoyed our coffee together.
Speaker 2:That would be like dreamy for me. Now that's, that's not my marriage, because my husband doesn't drink coffee and he doesn't like to get up a moment earlier than he has to. So instead, you know that's not part of our routine, that's part of my routine, and what I've discovered is I'll actually do a better job connecting with Jay in the morning, a better job connecting with Jay in the morning if I get up before everybody else, enjoy my coffee ritual alone and feel like I get a little bit of alone time before the kids wake up If I do that. So that actually the reason I'm saying this is that is a routine for me that facilitates connection in my family and it has nothing to do really with Jay at all. So I think what's important is we have to go on that journey of discovering in those early years of marriage what are the things that help us actually connect.
Speaker 1:Um, I'll add some things to this, practical things, because I really think that couples should have a shared calendar that they're working from and that gets them on the same page, Even before kids. I think it's good, for there's a lot of men that that don't use calendars. They don't use any type of planner. It's hard to be very efficient and to create rhythm in your life if you don't use something like that and Lauren would vouch that I am one of the last men on this planet that you would expect uses a calendar.
Speaker 1:But I learned I did. I learned a long time ago. My dad told me hey, you got to start working from a calendar. You're forgetting things, you're missing things. And now I do it and I have a to-do calendar as well. This helps you to practically synchronize your schedules. It helps you to be a great partner and a great teammate.
Speaker 1:I also think coming home and figuring out, you know, talking through what you guys expect, who's who is in charge of thinking through dinner and who's in charge of thinking through the to-dos, who's in charge of who's who is in charge of thinking through dinner and who's in charge of thinking through the to-dos, who's in charge of, you know, thinking through the outside work and the inside work. It's all that kind of stuff helps to create rhythm and connection and that's all stuff that you're figuring out the first, you know couple of years of marriage. But you know figuring out the first couple of years of marriage. But Lauren and I have, if you look at our life now, I can predict what she's going to do at five o'clock. I can predict what our Saturday is going to be like. I can predict what she's thinking.
Speaker 1:I can predict, just by walking in the house and looking around, what she's going to clean up or not clean up, based upon the years of being with her. It makes me a good partner because if I can predict that now, I can go do that ahead of time and so being able to talk through what do you want your space to feel like, what do you want your Sundays to feel like? What do you want your where do you want to invest your time, effort and energy and then start building into those things? So we spend quite a bit of time investing into friendships and so, you know, we build I don't know once or twice a month with with some other couples, and we spend lots of time when the kids go down, you know, making sure that the house is picked up and all that kind of stuff is a rhythm.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We live inside of a rhythm, but it started with us having our own rhythms, and if you don't have your own rhythm, it's a little bit hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's like you get your own rhythm and your own schedule and then blend those together and then start to decide where do I want to invest my, our extra time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, one other thing that I would highly highly recommend is um that while you are newly married and don't have children assuming that's the case that you would actually carve time out each week, that is, for date time and connection time like intentional. Be intentional about setting time aside and be intentional about some of the routines in your day to facilitate connection, that it becomes a part of your habit and your rhythm so that when children come you already have something built in. I will say this Jay and I, when we got married, we had three kids from Jason's first marriage. So from the get-go we were trying to navigate connection in the middle of children. And you don't know what you don't know.
Speaker 2:But I know now that couples who start out without children there's a luxury in that and you don't know it. This is the thing when you're newly married you can kind of orbit around each other and do your day, and when there's not a lot of demand or pressure on you when you're at home, then you can kind of just go where the wind takes you and there's a luxury in that and you should enjoy that season. But my advice to married couples without children, newly married couples, is hey, even though you quote get to be together all the time and you don't have a lot of your routine, so that when children come, you're not having to flex a new muscle.
Speaker 2:You already have it built in, because it takes a lot more work to be intentional once you have children.
Speaker 1:It's true.
Speaker 2:That's my best advice.
Speaker 1:Okay, ready for the next question, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, um, jay, what is the most repetitive struggle that you see men come to you with?
Speaker 1:It's a great question. I think the probably the most repetitive thing that men come with is, um, I think, passivity. They don't know how to get going in life. I mean, I could think of like porn and all those things, but like, when I actually really boil it down, a lot of men, because they were never taught, no one really ever poured into them, a ton of men, are lonely, they don't have a lot of friends. So it's this, this, all of that culminates into like I don't really know how to take action in my life. Um, I, I don't feel successful. Um, yeah, I don't feel like I'm going anywhere, and so I would say that that's probably the biggest, the biggest thing that stems. You know what comes from. That is a bunch of pain and insecurity in medicating. You know all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:So to me, that's why I mean, that is why I do Braveco, that's why you could like, literally, you could go to bravecoorg right now, sign up and jump in one of our courses and go through that for free, so we have those options available for guys, that's really good, but yeah, I think most men didn't get initiated, most men didn't have anyone pour into them, and so they're really struggling and suffering. Yeah, and we've got to change that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so for those guys out there, I mean grab the guys around you, start a. So for those guys out there, I mean grab the guys around you, you know, start a group. It doesn't even have to be a Braveco group, but it can be. We have curriculum for guys and it's been the most transforming thing that I've seen in my life.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 2:And tons of men's lives is watching them go through our 12-week courses and other guys lead them through it 12 week courses and other guys lead them through it and what's wild to me is how how many men you've seen come into Braveco having struggled with the same thing almost their entire life, feeling like this is just something that I'm going to have to deal with, or I don't even know what the problem is anymore. It's just so deep in there that I don't even know what it is. It's just a part of me and within a matter of weeks, everything turns around, and I think that is the power of journeying with my friends. And, um, how, how often do you run with people who are struggling with the same thing as you? Well, it's not super helpful. It feels like you've got company, which is nice, but you actually have to like, yeah, the secret sauce is really running with other people who are passionate about the same thing that you are.
Speaker 1:All right, babe. Next question y'all Um, um. How do you celebrate advent with your kids?
Speaker 2:oh, such a sweet question, because yesterday was the first day of advent babe, did you celebrate advent in your family?
Speaker 2:yes, yes, we did so. I grew up catholic and in the catholic church advent is a really central part of the Christmas season in the Catholic church, like it is what mass is about, and so I grew up with a real reverence for God. I didn't love growing up Catholic, but I have, like very vivid, very fond memories of being in mass at Christmas time. It just felt holy. I know now it's the presence of God, but then I didn't. I just knew that I loved how I felt, you know, and so I have always loved Advent.
Speaker 2:We had the Advent wreath on the kitchen table and every Sunday you light a candle and, yeah, my mom was pretty intentional about Advent. So when the littles were little, so when we first got married, we had the bigger kids and some of those Christmas traditions we weaved in some new traditions and we enjoyed some traditions that you guys had always had together, um, but as our littles have gotten a bit older, um, we've kind of decided on some traditions that we want to implement early, and one of those has been celebrating Advent. So, like when Edie was two, my best friend gave us this really beautiful like wooden Advent calendar and these little tiny drawers, and every day Edie would run over and she'd wake up in the morning and run over to the advent calendar and open up the drawer for whatever day it was, and I miss that little too.
Speaker 1:I know it's so cute.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it was a treat, like a little chocolate or a jelly bean, and sometimes it was a clue and it would lead her to like somewhere in the house where I had hidden a little gift or whatever, and really when she was little like that, for me the goal was just to create a sense of anticipation in her about Christmas time, teaching her that it's a season to anticipate the coming of Jesus and to be thankful and a season of generosity and all of those things. And she loved it. She ate it up. But Liam was too small until this year. So this year Liam gets to join in the fun. So every morning they get to do the advent calendar and they have to switch off days of who's going to open the drawer, of course, and if it's a treat, then whoever opens it actually gives the gift of the treat to the other sibling. If it's a clue and they have to run around the house and find it, then they get to look at the clue together and kind of solve the puzzle together and share whatever present it is that they discover. So that's going to be really fun. But this year we actually decided beyond the Advent calendar.
Speaker 2:I actually had the thought earlier in the fall, I want to use this Advent season as a way to introduce doing devos together as a family, because we haven't, although we pray together before meals and we talk about the Lord together and we'll read you know the kids have a couple of different children's Bibles that we that Edie especially really likes to read we haven't ever done devotionals as a family and I'd like to get into that, the habit of doing that. So I thought let's, let's do, uh, an Advent devotional to kind of introduce the concept. So I found this really sweet book. I just found it on Amazon, but I did a little research earlier this fall to ask people like what you know, are there any great Advent devotionals for kids out there? And people had great recommendations.
Speaker 2:Um, maybe I'll link a few, cause it's not too late to start, but the book that I ended up buying was just off Amazon. It's called Discovering Christmas a 25 day Advent devotional with activities for kids. I like it because Liam at two it's not too long for him to stay engaged and there's little question prompts that go along with the topic of the day. There's a couple of verses to read and then there's a fun activity for your family to do.
Speaker 2:Um, centered around the focus, so oh well, last night was hilarious, so it was like we did the first night of the devotional or whatever. I get like one sentence in.
Speaker 1:Well, they were all excited to read the book. Yeah, they're excited to read the book.
Speaker 2:They don't know really what a devotional is, so they're probably thinking that it's some like story. So I open up the devotional and I'm like you know, luke, chapter one in the Bible says dot, dot, dot. And I get like halfway through the sentence and Edie's like I hate this book, this is stupid. And she tries to get up and run away. We're like, oh no, girl, that's not how this is going. This run away. We're like, oh no, girl, that's not how this is going. This is family devotional time. You can sit on down, sit on down, settle in.
Speaker 1:So we had to give her a little pep talk. She recognized right away.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, this is not a story book.
Speaker 1:This is not where I thought it was going.
Speaker 2:But it was cute because I got through the passage the first day. The subject was hope and I read a little bit about hope and then I read a couple of verses and then it asked you some questions and, um, and by the time I got to the questions, she wanted to be a part of it, she wanted to engage with it and she's excited about making tea together and you know the doing, the little activity or whatever that it prompted us to do so. Anyways, that's our little Advent bit. I can't say that we're like years and years into deep Advent traditions, but I'm loving where we're going and it feels like a beautiful way to be intentional at Christmas time with the kids. I also was able I had a moment with Edie today where I reminded her you know, today's Liam's day to open up the Advent calendar and what's really important is we remember whether you like what's inside or not isn't the point.
Speaker 2:And what's really important is we remember whether you like what's inside or not, isn't the point. Like, we, at Christmas time, get to enjoy receiving and giving good gifts, and so practicing thankfulness regardless is you know, she's four, right, so we're teaching those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Okay, Uh. Next question kind of along the same lines Can you share creative family rhythms and traditions that shape family culture?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I mean, we're working on that with this kind of stuff, and maybe we have some other stuff to input, but obviously the main one that we have participated in forever is going to church on Sunday with our kids. And, um, as they get older, you know it gets it can get more challenging, because sometimes the kids don't want to go to church or want to go to youth group, and that was never a um in my family growing up. That was never an option. Whether or not we went to church, whether or not I enjoyed it, my dad used to tell me all the time you can make anything fun, and we did the same thing for our kids. Our kids didn't want to go to church sometimes, and that's just the way it is. We couldn't make them love it, but that's what we were going to do.
Speaker 1:We were going to go, and I think that that's really important. That's not a given for a lot of families going to go, and so and I think that that's really important, that's not a given for a lot of families, but that consistent um, you know, going to, to commune with God and to be with others is really really important. Um, so, other family traditions, Uh, so yeah, we do, of course, the Thanksgiving and Christmas. We just started the Advent stuff like we talked about. But, babe, do we have any other family traditions?
Speaker 2:Well, I think rhythms is one thing, right, traditions is another. So rhythms I like, I like, how you said, church, because that is part of our weekly rhythm, that feels really central Dinner together in the evenings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we always do dinner.
Speaker 2:Even with our big. I mean, we do dinner together every night, yeah, most every night. Uh, I think you know the kids can expect that on the weekends we have rhythms of family time connection. We do something fun together, um, so those kinds of things are rhythms that are kind of built around. Okay, yeah, there's like a mix of work and play and togetherness, and sometimes we have babies, babysitters, but here's the points in the day in the week where we're together and we're doing this together.
Speaker 2:Tradition wise, I feel like seasonally we have traditions, which I think is actually awesome because it creates some expectation of something to come. It helps the family kind of focus on something exciting. Obviously, christmas time is an easy time to implement tradition, but, yeah, going out into the woods and chopping down our Christmas tree and making it a big picnic bonfire lunch with all of our extended family Well, all the kids and grandma and papa and all of that those kinds of things end up being like really fun traditions for our family. I'm thinking of things like it just feels like every season we have something like that right, like in the summertime we do. We have a lot of traditions around 4th of July and going to the rodeo and doing um fun things, summertime things together, the fall.
Speaker 2:Similarly, it's like we're going to go to the farm, we're going to go to the pumpkin patch, we're going to do you know, we're going to, we're going to celebrate this season together. And I think for me, like I don't know mom's out there, I'm not sure if you can relate, but sometimes I feel this pressure to um create experiences for my family, so that so that I can help create fun memories. And although I think that's a great goal, we also are really working hard to do real life. And so for me, kind of lowering the stakes a little bit and just creating a few fun things every season that we all get to look forward to, that we all can connect around and making those things, that we can orbit around some of our other family too, that's always a win.
Speaker 1:Well, I think tradition, though, is like routine, is what makes everyday life feel safe and secure and predictable and awesome, and tradition is part of what makes family like you look back when you're older and you go. Oh man, yeah I'm missing out on x, y or z, so for instance we. We've started to do the destruction derby at fourth of july with our family and our kids. I grew up doing the destruction derby yeah, every fourth of july and we looked forward to that.
Speaker 1:So much watching cars smash into each other and and so, um, you know, or we do Japino for Christmas every year, and even the, you know, even the people in my family that don't like the, don't like crab, which is what Japino it's like a fish stew.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they love that. We do that tradition. It's something that we've looked forward to forever, since I was a little boy and um, so, anyways, I just I do. I like the idea of creating these traditions that we all look forward to. That, um, you know, make you feel like you're missing out if you have to work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I know that's how it is when our big kids are get older, right? Everybody has their own schedules and there's a little mix of mourning and celebrating because it feels hard. It feels a little hard when people have other obligations, but it's fun when even the big kids feel a sense of wanting to return back to the thing that we do together.
Speaker 1:It's special. Yeah, it's true. Well, y'all, that's it for this week's questions. Hopefully y'all enjoyed it and hopefully you had a great Thanksgiving as well. And if not, maybe you need to throw in a new tradition. Yeah, All right you guys have a great week. We will see you next week. We will see you next week.