Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
We’re the Vallottons, and we’re passionate about people! Every human was created for fulfilling connections in relationship and family, but it’s not always what comes easiest! We know this because of our wide range of personal experiences as well as years of working with people. 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.
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Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
125. From Chaos to Clarity: How Couples Get Their Marriage Back on Track
If your marriage feels chaotic, disconnected, or directionless… you’re not alone. In this episode, Jason and Lauren tackle what it looks like when couples are stuck in survival mode—no calendar, no plan, and no unity—and how to get back on the same team.
Jay’s been walking with several couples who feel overwhelmed and out of sync, and in this candid conversation, the Vallottons offer a lifeline of practical tools and fresh perspective to help you move from chaos to clarity.
In this episode, they unpack:
- Why chaos is a symptom, not the root issue
- How to create an ecosystem for your marriage that you’re leading—not one that’s leading you
- The power of living from a shared calendar and shared priorities
- Why independent goals can still flow from a shared vision
- What it takes to build peace, productivity, and purpose in your everyday rhythms
Key questions to ask together:
- What season are we in right now?
- What are our top three shared goals?
- Are we moving toward those goals—together?
🎯 Practical Challenge: Try this for one week
- Set a Sunday night “calendar + priority” meeting
- Write down your top 3 shared goals
- Name one pain point and commit to addressing it with compassion
Don’t let the chaos run the show. Step into leadership together—one week, one goal, one shared step at a time.
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For information on the Marriage Intensive and other resources, go to jasonandlaurenvallotton.com !
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We're the valetates. And we are passionate about people, 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. It's great to be with you guys.
Speaker 2:It sure is. We were just talking. I sure hope you guys enjoyed last week's episode with Dr Henry Cloud. It actually felt kind of surreal having him on the podcast, because I don't think there is a book or an author that we recommend more frequently than the Boundaries books.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's such a beast.
Speaker 2:He's such a legend.
Speaker 1:And that conversation with him was so fun.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was a really fun, great guy. Yeah, yeah, I hope to do some more stuff with him. I hope so too.
Speaker 2:Hopefully you guys like that. But today we're kind of back to some of our content that you would expect from us. We are going to have a conversation about a conversation in the context of marriage. That's kind of been on Jay's heart and mind, so I'm going to let him kind of tell you briefly like what we're going to unpack with you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been coaching a lot of couples, and this last In marriage with you today. Yeah, I've been coaching a lot of couples in marriage two years and I've been seeing a pattern over and over and over again and I'm sure as long as people are getting married and growing families and having babies and doing all that stuff, this will be the theme forever. But really it's how do we create an ecosystem in a life where we're leading it and it's not leading us where? Where? I mean when you really think about it. What we all want is a life that we enjoy living in, a life that feels productive, feels purposeful, but also feels peaceful, like the three Ps.
Speaker 2:Say that again.
Speaker 1:Um productive, purposeful and peaceful. Love it, and I really to me, when we start to look at anything outside of those things, starts to get into a life that we resent, that we don't like, that it's chaotic and it's not about the challenging things that you're in. So a life that's purposeful, productive and peaceful doesn't mean that there's not challenges.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:To me, it's all about how you're establishing your relationships, where you're investing your time and are you together in what you're doing, and so kind of the common denominator that I'm seeing with couples is there's not enough unity and organization and shared focus and teamwork and agreed upon goals, and therefore we're living in this world where we're fighting each other and and fighting the seasons that we're in.
Speaker 2:Can I give an example? It makes me think about how I feel like a lot of couples run in parallel lanes in life and I think what's been helpful for us is, you know, we might be in a season where you are actually the one bringing home. You have a W-2. Like, you get paid to do a job. We work on lots of projects together, but you get paid to do a job, but we share a vision for the fact that you have a W-2. That's not a separate lane that you run in. And I think a lot of couples whether it's regarding work or family or what the kids are up to, or you know projects around the house or projects in life, or you know creative thing, creative out whatever it is we tend to couples often tend to run in their own lane, and so I think what we're talking about is creating vision, investing your time, doing it together, having vision for your collective time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And not thinking about it so much, as each person in the marriage is running in a separate lane and you don't share a vision for that thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the areas that you're really, really strong at and have helped us so much in our marriage and family is. You very much think about the whole picture and I can get hyper-focused on like an individual thing, an individual target. You really bring so much harmony in by going hold on. I feel like I'm going this way and you're going this way, or I don't feel like we have a plan for this thing over here.
Speaker 1:Our kids are running us over, or if we don't take a look at our finances like babe, where are we going to end up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I will say so, I don't know. I think sometimes you always say that the female is like the heartbeat of the home and I think that's largely true. Obviously, if there was a big problem with dad, like we'd all be feeling it. But I think there's a stereotypical gifting inside of a woman to kind of keep the temperature and part of seeing the whole. So you know, we work together to kind of discover the areas in our marriage where we need attention. But, like you're saying, that can often, it can often be felt before it can actually be seen.
Speaker 2:It can be felt, and so a lot of couples operate in what feels like chaos and sometimes people can't actually articulate like what is the problem actually actually, because they can't quite put it into words. It just feels chaotic, yeah, it doesn't feel like we're on the same team, it doesn't feel like we're connected and I think what we want to do in this conversation is kind of break that down and go. What is that felt chaos? So when I raise my flag and I'm like I'm feeling chaos, it's because I do keep the whole in mind and I'm taking the temperature of the household and the family and I'm raising a flag when something feels off or off kilter or you know, unbalanced, and so we give our attention to those areas when that happens.
Speaker 2:So yeah, maybe we kind of have to break down like what is the chaos.
Speaker 1:I think it's not being on the same team.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. The chaos is you're doing one thing, I'm doing the other thing and we don't have a real plan. You have some goals, I have some goals, and those goals could literally be like I don't want to be in pain or I don't want to. I mean, we create goals all kinds of different ways, but we really have to get on the same team, and we've talked about this so much in our podcast, so I won't like hammer, I won't kick this dead. Yes, but if you don't have, if you guys are connected, the easiest way to build that connection in my mind, the starting point is turning towards one another. So you can literally go through our podcast episodes Turning towards, turning towards one another. So you could literally go through our podcast episodes and turning towards one another and start there, right, like we have to. I call it throwing the ball back and forth. We have to have enough connection that you and I are doing a great job just passing the ball back and forth to one another, and if you can't do that, then everything else in your marriage is going to feel chaotic, everything Right, because you're my enemy, I'm your point of pain. Once we get past that and I see a lot of couples get past that, where, where they're, they're somewhat connected, you know, nor average, but the challenge becomes that they don't have any shared way of communicating what it is that their season's about and what their main priorities are. So to me that's. The next step is we have to have an agreed upon way that we communicate regularly about what our shared goals are, and are we hitting those? I'll give an example, and we've talked a lot about this. But every season isn't the same and if you're not careful, what felt successful last season, you'll stay on it too long and you won't transition into the new thing.
Speaker 1:I spent a lot of time in the beginning of building BraveCo, focusing on BraveCo, of course, putting lots of time, effort, energy in it. Well, we shifted seasons when your mom got sick and Edie started to get really dysregulated and I realized quickly for me, I realized, oh, if I keep the same goals that I've been having, just to be really clear, we were going to do three events in Florida a year and a half ago. We were going to do three one-day events and then do this massive 3,000-person event, and I quickly realized actually we started to schedule them. I told my team like I don't actually think this is going to work, not because the events aren't going to work, but because my marriage doesn't have the bandwidth for me to be gone, uh, two weekends in a row, and and and. So to me I started to realize like, okay, I have to do enough to keep Brave Code going and enough to keep Jason Vallotton Ministries going, while focusing the bulk of my time, effort and energy on our family.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And recently I've come back to you and said hey, we created an expectation for me the last year and a half that I think I might need to relook at, and I don't know if you remember this conversation, but I started to go like I don't know that I can spend large portions of my morning at home instead of thinking about work.
Speaker 2:Like.
Speaker 1:I need permission to change what you're expecting me to do in the morning and just having the conversation. It wasn't like I went and changed, like now I go to work every day at 6 am, but I needed to start to have the conversation with you Like, okay, our priorities are switching again.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm back to focusing on Brave Go.
Speaker 2:You needed to ramp up work stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I need to ramp up work stuff and need less, so anyways.
Speaker 2:Well, and in that conversation you know we talked okay, do I need to change my workout time? Do you need to? You know, do you need to plan on not coming home before a certain time in the evening? You know it was about communicating the expectation and actually what we, what we discovered, is we didn't actually change a lot about our schedule. It was more so the internal expectation, so it changed the level of pressure you're feeling inside of the dynamic. You knew you had a lot more permission to prioritize growing and building with work, but we didn't change a lot about our schedule.
Speaker 1:Yes, the big thing to me is we have we have a agreement that every single week we're we're going to be talking about our weekly schedule and we do that. We have a shared calendar. So if, if you're, if you're married and you don't have a shared calendar, it's a big oversight. You don't have to do everything like Lauren and I to have a successful life. I'm sure there's lots of people.
Speaker 2:I'm sure people have ideas out there for us that would probably improve our reality.
Speaker 1:If you're living in a marriage that feels chaotic and you're living in an ecosystem that feels chaotic, the next step, once you get some connection, is you have to create a schedule that you're working from, Because it takes time in order to build an ecosystem that you love. You have to be the owner of your time and deciding where you're investing that precious time, effort and energy in order to get that return.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because the reality is you can say all day long what your priorities are, but how you spend your time actually defines what your priorities are. So when you have a shared calendar and you see your time on paper, you'll realize real quick whether you're actually prioritizing the things that matter most to you or the things that match your season, and if you are on the same page as one another.
Speaker 1:The best way to breed chaos is to live every single day not sure of what's going to happen or how much is going to be required of you in every single area. And so if you want to really get a firm grip on as much as possible in your life, because there's so much that's out of your control you at least need to know where you're going to invest the bulk of your time as a married couple and as a family. And so, um, then to me is okay, we have a shared calendar. Ours is a Google calendar. Your color on my calendar is yellow. I know anything on my calendar that's yellow is is yours, and we've uh, you know, we've gone through and went. Okay, I can help here, I can't help here. This is where the kids are blah, blah, blah. But to me, the next thing is what are our biggest pain points and what would get us the furthest?
Speaker 2:right now.
Speaker 1:So that could be as simple as wow, our finances are crushing us. Three years ago, our house was burning down with financial like, uh, strain, strain. We were so strapped it was crazy yeah and so everything went to.
Speaker 1:How do I, how do I personally turn us around and and get us back to in the black instead of constantly in the red? And and what? What that did was now I'm leading two groups a week. Now I'm doing extra marriage coaching. Now I'm doing extra individual coaching and you're helping to support that. So you're going hey, let's do podcast episodes, let's work on spinning up this thing, let's do some advertising. So all of our time, effort and energy went to that goal. What that did was it bought us a ton of bandwidth and got us out of the red.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So we've since grown a little bit past that. We're not in the red anymore, we have a little bit of extra margin and our focus is changing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But together what happens is we as a couple start to go this, like everything else in our life, pretty decent we're we're on fire here financially, or other couples I'm working with, is everything's pretty decent except for um. We have this cycle that happens when we argue.
Speaker 1:It gets volatile and it's like, okay, prioritize one hour a week and $150 that you're going to go together to a counseling appointment to work on that and then prioritize. You know 30 more minutes twice a week that you're going to check in on each other and go through the. You know, do your homework. That, to me, is how you start to conquer those priorities and go. What's the biggest piece? How do we get our?
Speaker 1:For another one, I'll just give another example is it's the kids. The kids need more connection from mom and dad than what they're actually giving right now. Well, you can go and build a million dollar business or a $5 billion business, but if you, if your home life is chaotic, it doesn't really matter. You should be using the time, effort, energy, resources that your business is creating for you through finances to help solve this problem over here. Or I'll give you another example If mom's overwhelmed because there's too much cleaning and folding and laundry to do and you're running a really successful business, hire that work out to create a bunch of peace and margin for her that she can then invest somewhere else. It's about really looking at your ecosystem and what would create a bunch of margin and what is keeping you from really enjoying your world and focusing in on it.
Speaker 2:That's huge. Assessing your inflow and outflow as a couple is really, really critical. And you know what's crazy is we see this all the time is, you know people love to win. We like to win where we know we can win. Right, we've got our energy, we spend time in the areas where we know we can win, because human nature is we want to, we want to win.
Speaker 2:So you, you might, you might find a dynamic in a couple quite often where, okay, the husband is successful in business and mom is crushing it at home, raising kids and um, and then, because of the season of the family, she's overwhelmed or one of the children has, you know, a great need in a certain season, right, maybe when your kids goes through something hard, or you're, uh, you know you're starting school, things ramp up, it gets busy and full, and you realize, okay, he's, he wins at work, I win at home, but somehow we're in a season that feels like chaos right now is to just press in harder where you know you can win inside of chaos. So the husband, although things are feeling chaotic at home, presses in even harder at work and you're like, no, no, no, no. That's not where we need your energy right now. We need it over here, whether you're actually giving it physically or you're buying it with money or time. So we have to not subconsciously go to our comfort zones inside of chaos.
Speaker 1:We have to be willing to confront the actual problem and do something different where are we at, what are our goals, when are we trying to get to and what do we need to do today to get us there? And what do we need to do a year from now and what do we need to do? Right, and you're constantly. I mean, if people thought a bit more about their, their home life as a, in the same way that they run a business, now you have to be more emotionally connected, all those things, but you would you have to manage your marriage. Now you have to be more emotionally connected and all those things, but you would you have to manage your marriage and you have to manage the ecosystem. I should say you got to manage the ecosystem, um, really, really well.
Speaker 1:So to me, the last piece of this is make the target really simple. So, if finances is, if our world feels chaotic because we weren't connected, now we're connected. We weren't investing our time, effort, energy, resources where we should have. Okay, now we're both agreeing like we have to make $1,000 more a month. We just have to do that. It's causing so much stress. Okay, great. Now we have to create a way to make this target very simple.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what's the first thing that we're going to do and we're going to check in on every single week from here. What's the first idea For some couples, again like that, are disconnected. If you're disconnected and your first thing is we have to get connected, the simplest thing is turn towards one another Three to five times a day. Send the message to your spouse, set reminders that says I care for you, I love you, I'm thankful for you, I really appreciate you. You're going to send that in multiple different ways. That's what you're doing for a week. That's your clear target. That's what you're doing for two weeks until you get connected. If it's finances are a struggle, then what you're doing is you're making it really simple. Okay, this week, this first week, I'm either going to brainstorm. When we were in financial trouble, the first thing I did is brainstorm with my mom and dad and my friend you know.
Speaker 1:Chris Lamb, ted Thompson, hey guys, this is where I'm at. What do you guys think? Come look at our finances, come look at our bills. Okay, great, I just want to make sure that I have a really good grip on it. What I'm seeing is what you're seeing. And then what's the very first thing? My dad and I both agreed I should do some more coaching.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Was the easiest way that I could bring in X amount of dollars and close that gap. Cool, I can't live here forever.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:But it's the very first thing I'm doing. As the season shifts, you start to go okay, what's the next thing? People make the target very unclear. They just they go like well, we have. Actually. I should say this If you put too many targets up there, you won't hit any of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, true.
Speaker 1:So you have to think about like most of life is building skill sets and then executing that skill set. So you're not going to see change a lot for like a little bit. You need a little bit of time. You're trying to create that habit. So it's back to like what is the most there. You may have four targets. What's the first one? And then just hit that one really, really, really well and then move to the next one.
Speaker 1:If your kids are out of, if you're like man, these tantrums are crushing us, like I get home and my wife's stressed out because of tantrum Cool. If you, if that's the biggest challenge in your marriage, then who's the expert in that area? And you're starting to go. When this happens in the day, right when I, when I get to this spot in the day and my child melts down, I don't have a tool or a plan for that Great. Then that's the target. It becomes I need a plan for my child throwing themselves on the ground or talking back rude, okay, cool. You start to research that. That becomes your whole target, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then now all we're focusing on is executing. I'm preparing myself for it, I'm executing and then I'm troubleshooting how is that going. You may do that for two weeks as a couple and talk through it, what you don't. You don't want to create three or four or five different targets that then you don't get good at any of it right and you're back to the same spot, absolutely. So it's good, yeah, getting building a life that is has a beautiful rhythm to it, where you're navigating through challenging things with peace, with purpose, you know, and working together as a team is, to me, is a, it's a skill set, and if couples would really stop and just go, okay, I want to implement some of this. I want to get on the same calendar, I want to have the same priorities. I want to make sure that we're going the same way. You'll find that your life will scale exponentially.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You'll tackle those big pain points. You may have three or four really big pain points right now. Great Over the next year. You'll tackle most of those if you're really intentionally taking them on one by one by one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good, really good. Well, hey, we have a practical challenge for you this week. We want you to do a couple of things for us. If you're married and you want to take on this challenge, do it.
Speaker 2:We want you to have a Sunday night calendar and priority meeting where you are naming your season, you're listing the top two, maybe three priorities that are in this season, and you check out your calendar and you assess how are we carving out time and energy to meet to address some of these priorities and then write down maybe two or three shared goals and wrap your heads around how you are being a team as you go after these goals this week and then maybe even name one pain point and commit to addressing it with one another in compassion. And here's the thing Do that for the week. And then maybe even name one pain point and commit to addressing it with one another in compassion. And here's the thing do that for the week, see how your teamwork feels and let us know how it goes. We'd actually love to hear how it goes for you. It's awesome, all right, you can email us statesmatesbabies at gmailcom or connect with us on social media. We would love to hear about how this goes.
Speaker 1:Guys, thank you so much for hanging out with us. We will see you next week.