058 - Love In The Chaos: Strategies For Keeping Your Marriage Intact Amid Parenthood with Robert and Sharla Snow

In this special Valentine's Day episode, we are treated to an insightful discussion with Dr. Robert and Sharla Snow, a dynamic husband-and-wife duo whose expertise in science, art, and the human experience has been dedicated to enriching marriages. With a combined passion for understanding the intricacies of relationships, they offer valuable insights on maintaining a strong and enduring bond amid the challenges of parenthood—a topic highly requested by their audience.

Drawing from their extensive experience and unique blend of disciplines including neuroscience, neurolinguistic programming, and hypnotherapy, Dr. Robert and Sharla provide practical strategies for nurturing love amidst the chaos of raising children.

About our guests:
Dr. Robert and Sharla Snow are a husband and wife team with over 31 years of marriage experience. They blend neuroscience, NLP, and their personal journey to help couples unlock the secrets to a happy marriage. Robert holds a doctorate in Physical Therapy from USC, while Sharla is skilled in NLP, Hypnosis, and Time Line Therapy®. They also integrate Gottman Couples Therapy principles into their coaching. Their mission stems from their own struggles and triumphs, driving them to empower couples globally with tools for lasting love.

Learn more about their approach and how they can help you! 
Listen to their podcast, Master Your Marriage.
Follow them on social media: @masteryourmarriage

⭐ Get our book The Discerning Parent's Guide to Toddler Behavior: From Power Struggles to Connection is now on Amazon. Click here to learn more about Dr. Victoria Nolasco's books.

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The Discerning Parenting Podcast is a free informational resource for parents. As a valued listener, you acknowledge that any information you get from this podcast is for your general guidance only, and ​​must never be considered a substitute for the advice provided by a doctor, therapist, or other qualified medical professionals who know your child specifically. Read our full disclaimer policy here.

Transcript

 How you disagree is how your relationship goes. So if you disagree with rocks and rocks and clubs, you're going to have a rocky, you're going to have a rocky and bruised relationship. If you disagree kindly and learn that skill, your relationship will be a lot softer.

 Are there days you feel you've had it with the sleepless nights, the temper tantrums, the constant fatigue of trying to keep up with an active baby? Does it feel like you're always working so hard as a parent, trying to do everything for your kids and family, and yet it never feels enough? We get it. You love your child more than anything, and yet parenting is also exhausting and challenging.

Especially when you're bombarded with criticism and pressure to be the perfect parent. Which, spoiler alert, does not exist. That's why we created Discerning Parenting, the podcast that helps you cut through the noise and focus on what truly matters in your parenting journey. This podcast is jam packed with valuable insights and practical tips specifically tailored for parents of kids age 5 and below.

So join us and discover how you can use the combined power of science, knowing your child, and your own intuition in making the best parenting decisions for you and your family.  

 Today, on Valentine's Day, I'm so happy to welcome to our show Drs. Robert and Sharla Snow. They have a combined passion for science, art, and the human experience, and they've dedicated their lives to helping couples unlock the secrets to a happy and lasting marriage. And we're talking about a topic that Has been much requested.

So many of you have requested for this topic. Love in the chaos strategies for keeping your marriage intact amid parenthood. And I'm so happy to be able to invite Drs. Robert and Sharda today. They're a husband and wife team with over 31 years of growing together and they've honed their approach to marriage coaching.

And they combine neuroscience, neurolinguistic programming, and their wealth of personal experience. So, Dr. Robert is a doctor of physical therapy from the University of Southern California, and both Drs. Robert and Sharla are practitioners of neuro linguistic programming,  and they're also hypnotherapists, just like I also practice hypnotherapy as one of the integrative healing modalities that I practice.

So, they're also parents to four children, and they also have experience with many of the struggles that many other parents go through, and they have, they're on a journey to discover the keys to a lifelong joyful union that fueled their mission to transform relationships around the globe. So, welcome to our show, and it's so great to have you here.

Oh, it's our pleasure. Thank you so much for having us. It's wonderful to be with you. Yes, thank you. Dr. Snow, can you describe some of the common challenges that couples face with balancing parenthood and their relationship?  Oh my goodness. So many things, so many things. You know, I think especially with, with parenthood and Charlotte will bail me out on with some really good stories here, but with parenthood, there's just.

You know, I think maybe, maybe I'll just step back a little bit and just talk about sort of the phases of marriage in general. And, and when we, when you first get married, it's, it's that love and infatuation and, and, and sometimes that the love and this infatuation sort of override common sense. And there's things about our partner or soon to be partner that, that maybe would have brought a red flag, but didn't.

But we're in love and we figured that we can change that. And, and then, you know, and then there's the passion and the sex and all that stuff that, that fixes most problems that you have, even though you have some, some, you know, some nice argument. We call it the love without really knowing each other phase.

Yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, and then kids come in, right? And, and that's, and that's where the challenge really begins. And, dr. Gottman who you know, we've done Dr. Gottman, Gottman Institute training and they did some research where they found that, was it 69%?  69 percent of couples have, report marriage dissatisfaction or relationship dissatisfaction within the first three years after having children.

And, and while that's a, you know, sort of a scary statistic, what we like to focus on is what happened to the other percent who didn't? have marriage dissatisfaction, and what, how are they successful? Because we really believe that if you can model success, if someone can do it, anyone can do it. And so let's find the tools and the techniques of the people who are really good at it.

And then, you know, what can we do to to be successful in and face these challenges together. Yeah. And you know, when we were first married, we came, both of us came from divorced homes. So that's part of how we ended up doing the work that we're, that we do and why we're so passionate about it because Robert's mom was married four times.

So he had you know, several father figures come and go through the house and a lot of abandonment wounds because of that. My parents were, it was a lot of chaos from very early on. They did end up divorcing when I was 10. Before that there was just, there wasn't great co regulation with my parents.

There was a lot of chaos. And so statistically, as you look at our odds for making it in our own relationship, there's some research on that. Dr. Paul Amato did some research and, you know, it varies a little bit depending on the research that you look at. But in his research, they found that when so in my case as a, as a, as a mother of my children, right?

So with my mom being. With my parents being divorced, if Robert had not had his experience, just me alone, our risk still of divorcing was about 69 percent. Where the man, like in Robert's case, if he's also comes from a divorced home, his odds of divorcing in his adulthood is about 40 percent. But when you combine together both husband and wife coming from before, coming from divorced homes are odds of making it like our it's, it's 189 percent  more likely that we would have divorced based on our backgrounds.

You have beaten the odds and you are right, right. And that's like our message. You know, if we can do it, anyone can do it. And, and odds are just odds, right? They're, they're generally for those who don't know the skills of how to create a successful relationship. But if you know the tools, you have the tools, you know what it takes.

It's really actually beautiful because that's what we love. The got why we love the Gottman research is because it's not a coin flip. It's not a matter of odds. It's not a matter of chance. You can create a successful relationship and it's, we know that based on the research. Because we measure things, because we have a recipe, we know how to change those odds and how to have a happy, healthy union.

Wow. So what strategies do you recommend so that couples can go past those odds, maintain their romantic relationship amidst the chaos of parenting? So I wanted to, you know, I felt like I maybe got off topic on your question a little bit, but I wanted to give you some background. But, but that's where, that's where it really gets difficult, right?

You, you know. Maybe one or both of you're still working and then you add children into the mix and then you add these stressors and and then We start to get a little bit distracted, right? And probably one of the hot topics that we have Just in our social media and we talk about on the podcast sometimes is like who comes first the children or the relationship?

And and that becomes a real problem because nobody's saying it's not a good thing to put your children in first place right, but If you're children and you have, and we have four, imagine if we had spent time putting our children first and we've got one left at home our other ones are out of the house.

What would be left of our relationship if all of our focus was on the children, right? And so the challenge, just as you asked, is how can we rekindle, how can we stoke that fire of our relationship?  remain strong and continue to build this bond between us. And, and that almost gets to the crux of, of what we want to do.

But I will say the, the key really there is rituals. And Charlotte, what is your favorite ritual that we, Okay. Well, before we do that, Oh, no, I love talking about rituals. I want to get to that. Okay. But Just, just backing up just a little bit, I introduced who, we talked about Gottman, but I think I need to take just a quick second and introduce who that is for your audience.

So Dr. John Gottman and his wife, Julie Gottman, they they started doing marriage, marriage research 40, 50 years ago. And what they did is they brought couples together, they would observe the couples having three different conversations. The first conversation. They would have them just talk about their day, how things were going for 15 minutes.

Then they would have them have a conversation about a conflict, talk about any problem in your relationship, try to solve it in the next 15 minutes. The third conversation, they would have them talk about something in the future, like planning a future vacation, also for 15 minutes. Then they did this over and over and over, brought these couples back.

Three years later, six years later, every three years, up to 20 years. And they did this with thousands and thousands and thousands of couples. And they started to collect this data and what they got, they got to a point where they were able to predict the longevity of a relationship with up to 94 percent accuracy.

They could predict which couples would stay together, which couples would end up being divorced. How amazing is that to think that with over 90 percent accuracy, we could look at a couple and go, yes, this couple is going to make it and here's why. And that's more than, let's say, whether they came from divorced homes.

So it had nothing to do with the background. It was how they had conversations with each other. Exactly. That is quite an eye opener. Exactly. And he was, he wanted to do the the longevity of the research because, well, obviously to see who would divorce, but also because he wanted to watch them throughout these different transitions of life.

 So how did they handle parenting? How did they handle Jobs, how did they handle moving and relocation and retirement? Because life is full of these transitions. And the key, what they found through all of that is that the key to transitions and smoothing out the hard times, because we're all going to have hard times, the key is friendship.

That was the key. You know, the divorce prediction really came around how the couple would argue. They would look at very specific features of an argument and be able to tell that they had these features in the way that they did conflict, and those were predictive of divorce. But what really smoothed out these transitions, like parenthood, was whether or not they stayed good friends.

 And that's, that's pretty, pretty beautiful, right? Like, how do we just remain friends? Really good friends, as Robert said. By putting our relationship in first place, right, children are right there one, you know, position number two or one and a half, right, because we're never going to obviously neglect our children.

But when we focus on our friendship you know, we get to give our kids such a gift. And you know, we, we just recorded a podcast that's on our show that's coming out. Soon, and we talked about co regulation and the importance of co regulation, and I'm sure you've probably done topics on this on your show and With children, they don't have the ability to self regulate yet They learn to they learn to self regulate through us through borrowing from our nervous system But if we're if we have a home environment that is chaotic where there's a lot of conflict where there's a lot of fighting They don't get to learn those skills.

And so as they grow up, they have a harder time in their relationship. They don't learn how to self regulate for later in life. So I think, you know, everything we're going to share and talk to you about today, it's useful because it really is a gift. Your children are learning these relationship skills from you.

They're learning self regulation from you. They're learning emotional intelligence from you. And it comes down to how can we become really good friends as a couple.  Wow. So  when you look at it that way, it's not really a choice, your partner or your kids, but one of the best ways that you can be good parents to your kids is by taking care of your relationship with your partner or spouse.

Nailed it. Exactly. That's so perfect. Yeah. Yeah. There, and there's just a minimum amount of time it takes to dedicate to your relationship to ensure that your relationship isn't deteriorating. You know, it doesn't take a lot. We always like to say it's the small things that we do often that creates this great, beautiful  friendship and this long lasting relationship.

 Now I think. Go ahead. Yep. Yeah. No. No, I was just going to say that, one of the biggest concerns that the parents listening to the show really bring to us is also about their relationship with their spouse. And, well, when I do parent coaching, and I'm not expert, I'm not an expert in the marital relationship, so I'm wondering that you are here, I would love to ask some of the most common and most pressing questions.

Yeah, so one of the first questions that I would like to ask, and this is a very, very common question that I get, how do we handle disagreements about parenting? Oh, I love this question. We have a really good story to go with this. Because, listen, you talked about the 69 first  of conflict, because this is  the key.

By the way, I love the dynamic between the two of you.  So here's the thing that your listeners will just, so I want to start with my favorite quote. How you disagree is how your relationship goes. So if you disagree with rocks and rocks and clubs, you're going to have a rocky, you're going to have a rocky and bruised relationship. If you disagree kindly and learn that skill, your relationship will be a lot softer.  Next.  So it's not about never disagreeing because sometimes they get worried. I don't agree with my spouse. Are we supposed to agree on everything? So thank you for bringing that up. It's not that you don't disagree, but how you do it and how you handle it.

Yeah. And here's the stat that's going to, and it, it blows my mind almost every time I say it. And this is based on Gottman's research as well. 69 percent of problems in your relationship are perpetual. Which means you'll never solve them. You'll only manage them. So it's not about agreeing completely or even solving problems.

It's about how do we. understand our partner's point of view, dig down and figure out why, what, what the value is behind that issue. And Sharla, did it, you know, do you want to tell a story about shoveling the snow? Yeah. Yeah. That's our favorites. Ironically, parenting is one of, has been one of our Primary, perpetual problems in our marriage.

So if your listeners are listening going, Oh my gosh, we disagree about parenting. Well, guess what? We're the marriage coaches and we disagree about parenting. So it's totally okay. It's again, how you do it. What Gottman found is that as long as you're doing it with five to one ratio of positivity to negativity, and you're avoiding the four horsemen, which we can talk about later, a little more criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling, as long as you're doing that, it's okay to have these disagreements.

So we moved from California to a place where, to Utah, where it snows, and we have this. We had this one, this is not that long ago, but we've had this one perpetual disagreement about who does snow shoveling in the house. And he grew up in a place that it snowed. And as a little boy, a little, little boy, it was his job to go out there every morning and make sure that the family could walk up to the front door and get the mailman could get to the front door.

And so his job as a little boy was to shovel. And so when we move to Utah, he's This is our son's job. This isn't my job anymore. This is our son's job. And me as the mom, I think, from being from California, that's so cruel. His fingers are going to get numb out there in the cold and they're going to fall off from frostbite.

I can't send my little boy out into the snow to shovel the driveway. So we're arguing about this, right? And.  And, and so yes, we, we argue about parenting, but what it takes is really figuring out, and this is the secret, regardless of what parenting your,  audience is,  is arguing about, is, as Robert said, learning what is really important to the individual about that disagreement.

Because it doesn't matter if we're arguing about parenting or money or chores.  There is always, if you can imagine, you know, maybe Robert has his fist up and I have my fist up and we're fighting about snow shoveling, but that's what we're fighting about, but we were banging our fists against each other, fighting snow, snow shoveling and who and when and how.

But within that fist, if we could open up our fists, there's a core value. There's a dream. There's a belief. There's a purpose. But the problem is that couples aren't talking about that. They're talking about the snow shoveling and when the snow shoveling is happening and whether it's done by nine o'clock a.

m. or or noon. Right. And so there's some questions that we can ask each other to keep the conversation positive, to avoid that defensiveness and learn. Because. We, what we don't want to do with these disagreements is we, we don't want them to become so gridlocked that we shut down and stop talking about them.

That's never good. That's when a conflict has gone to the point where it's now unhealthy. We want to continue to be able to still talk and to dialogue about it. So some questions that I could ask Robert and he could ask me about snow shoveling is tell me why this is so important to you. So if I asked Robert, tell me why this is so important to you that Dallin shoveled the snow.

Instead of saying, you're such a mean father, I can't believe you would make our little boy go out there in the cold. Like, tell me what is so important to you about this. He can wear gloves. His hands will stay warm. Okay, but tell me, tell me what is so important to you about that. So. Part of it is understanding that you have some responsibility around the house.

The other part of it is developing good work ethic. The other part of it is, you know, participating and helping. I'm out shoveling a driveway. He could be out shoveling a walkway. So these are all just, just parts of, and, and those are deeply held beliefs with me, right? With the way that I was raised, that it's important to, to help out.

It's important to learn good work ethic, important to, you know, be a part of the family when we're doing things that are, you know, for me, that was important for her, not as important. She's like, whatever, people are wearing winter shoes. They can walk through the snow, it's okay.  So another really good question you can ask each other, whatever your conflict is, is, is there a story behind this for you?

So I shared that already, right? Robert grew up. As a little boy, you know, having to shovel the snow, but asking each other, not just one direction, not just one sided, we'd ask each other, is there a story behind this conflict for you? You can ask, are there any core beliefs or ethics or values that are part of this strongly held position that you have?

You can ask, what's your dream here? What's your ideal dream here? You could say Is there a deeper purpose for this? You could say, you know, what, what do you need? What do you need? So just having a conversation to open up the fist, all of a sudden we go from shut down, gridlocked, resentful, angry, bitter, to compassionate and understanding.

And I can look at Robert's story and go, he was a little boy. I can see where he's coming from. I can see his position. And here's the secret. Understanding has to always precede any sort of solution, resolution, or any sort of management of that problem. If he doesn't understand my position and I don't understand his position, we're not ready to negotiate.

 It's something that needs both partners to be working this out. Yes. What if one partner feels that they're alone in this and the other partner isn't willing to talk or isn't willing to have the same conversation? By the way, that's an amazing conversation that you just demonstrated and I'm sure we all learn a lot from it.

And those are really insightful questions to ask. If there are some people who may be in a situation where they've tried having similar conversations and the other partner refuses to engage in that way or insists on, let's say criticism or saying something hurtful, what can they do and where do they draw the line between maybe having a conversation that they may still be able to resolve versus, Thinking that maybe this might be a dead end, trying to resolve it in this way.

That's a, I mean, that's a great question because we have had we call it gridlocked problems. Yeah.  And it took us a while to get to the point where we could start to have those conversations. Just like you mentioned, there was one again, it's always about parenting with us where like, I felt that my opinion wasn't being heard.

This is earlier on in our relationship. And it, it took a while for me to even want to talk about it because I was like, well, you know, I'm just going to get the same answer. So, you know, what am I going to do? I think part of it is realizing that in a relationship. Everybody's opinion matters, and if you're not willing to consider or even accept influence from your partner, and this, this is a, this is a big issue.

Not always men more than women, but generally speaking, men, have difficulty accepting influence from their wives. Like, well, you know, I made the decision, this is the way it's going to be, kind of a thing. But, but I think you have to grow, and, and that's the part about marriage, marriage is this, And when we talk about marriage, we talk about long term committed relationships and the one where you have a piece of paper, right?

This is a, this is a growing machine, right? It is going to grow you up from being immature, two little kids who are driven by lust into, you know, adults that think about, think about something other than themselves. Like Dr. Jordan Peterson gives a quote where he says you're never truly going to grow up until you have children because until you figure out that something is more important than you, that's the point when you're really going to grow up.

And so, I sort of love that quote, but in the relationship. You know, in the world of growing up as a relationship, if you're struggling in your relationship, if your listeners are struggling in your relationship and one or more of them, you know, feels like they're not being heard, that's the opportunity to try and be heard.

And probably one of the best ways is, is to, you know, address this disagreement or this difficult conversation is there's some skills. One of the skills really is called the soft startup. So, instead of coming in hot, Yeah, I can say, you know, Charlotte, look, I know this is a difficult topic for us to talk about.

And I really feel like that my opinion's not maybe being heard. Do you think, you know, do you think that we could talk a little bit about why it's important to me? I don't know. Yeah.  Soften starts. So what they found is that 96 percent of the conversations that start harshly never get turned around.

So that, that's a really great tip to come in gently, softly, with any time we're going to bring up an issue.  Because if we come in with criticism, we come in with contempt, we come in with defensiveness, that conversation is never going to get turned around. 96 percent of the time it's just going to end just as badly as it started.

And, and I love what Robert said about people growing machines. You know, I, I think to go back to your question a little bit more.  There's, there's two thoughts that I have. The first one is what Robert said is that your relationship is there to grow you up, you know, and, and it is your spouse is your reflection.

And sometimes that the hardest reflection to look at.  And so what role am I playing in this as I'm looking into him as this mirror, we use the, we use the analogy of the refiner's fire quite a lot, which comes from the Bible, of course, which just, you know, talks about how you, you melt down metal, gold, silver, whatever.

And. When you melt it down, the dross, the impurities rise to the surface, and you have to remove those impurities to be able to reshape the metal. And relationships do that to us. We're, we're not perfect. And we, we have these, these disagreements for a reason. And that reason There's a purpose for the conflict, and that purpose is to sharpen us, to sharpen this stone, to  sharpen our love for each other, to sharpen our understanding for each other.

So when you start to shift into thinking about conflict as having a purpose and having value, then we get to see this is an opportunity for us to grow. So I think having that mindset is really important and also secondarily to that is we can't grow at the same rate, and we can't force someone to grow at the same rate that we are.

That's manipulation, that's not going to work, and so it requires a lot of grace, a lot of,  Compassion a lot of goodwill to allow the other person to grow at their pace. And you will, as long as you keep coming back together to have these conversations. Some of them are going to be ugly and messy and you're going to have to repair and process a lot of regrettable incidents, but you'll get better and better and better as you go.

 And if you still are struggling, then maybe reach out and get some help with a, you know, maybe a coach or a therapist. Ah, that's true. Another common question that I get is how can I communicate to my spouse that I need more help without starting a conflict. I think a lot of the tips that you've shared will already help with that, as well as  having an equitable distribution of duties as parents or in the household.

And I even  hear comments like, I feel like I have a teenage son instead of a husband.  Yeah. Yeah. I  think everyone's felt that way at some point or another.  Have you felt that way?  Once or twice. Yeah. Once or twice. Yeah. You know, again, soft start, soft start, soft start, you know, come in with, I feel, and then what about, what do you feel this thing about?

And this is what I need. So, again, gentle, gentle, gentle, because. There's no point in having this conversation if I'm going to come in and say, You're a 12 year old. What is wrong with you? Can't you pick up your socks? This is the third day in a row I've had to tell you about your socks on the floor.

That's not going to work, right? Do you want to be heard or not is the question. Because if you want to be heard, then come in soft. Because that's the way to actually be heard. We think sometimes coming in loud is what's going to work. It doesn't. They just shut down right away. Yeah, I think about, you know, I have a picture in my mind just about that question that you asked, you know, and I remember the days.

We had three littles at home. It's hard. Yeah, you know, and I'd come back from, I'd come home from work and Charlotte would be maybe still in the same pajamas that she was in when You know, when I left and, you know, one of the kids wondered, like, let's just add, let's, let's add some color to this. One of the kids, two of the kids are sick.

And so now only, not only is that she's the cafeteria, she's delivering food. She's, you know, using the thermometer and giving kids medication. But she's got another one who wants to watch cartoons and, and play. And so, and she's harried. And, you know, and, and the guy, like, so, like, I'll come home. And, of course, these roles can switch.

It doesn't matter. You know, I'll come home and I've had maybe a stressful day too, and I just want to, you know, I just want to relax and she is out of her mind and, and, you know, and wants more help. And how does she ask for that? Right. And I think it's, I think it's part of it is, you know, if we can, if we can cultivate appreciation in everything that our spouse does.

I mean, everything. If, if we come home and Sharla says to me, and this is hypothetical, I don't think this has ever happened. She's like, you know, you know, I really appreciate that you work so hard and go to work and and that you come home and that you help out with the kids.  Whether I have helped out with the kids or not, she just told me she appreciates when I do that.

Right? And I'm like, Oh, yeah, she does. Like, what can I do to help the kids? You know, because, because I like, we all like having our ego stroke. We like to feel appreciated. And if I come home and I see that she is, she's spun up and I'll say, look, baby, like, why don't you take a second to sit on the couch?

Like, I get it. It's been a rough day. It doesn't matter how my day's been.  But if, if we cultivate this, this attitude of positive perspective in our relationship, where we're looking for the good. Rather than looking for what's wrong. If I come home and I look for the good, instead of like, geez, the house isn't, like, you want to start a fight, and your wife has two sick kids at home, you come home and say, boy, the house is a mess.

Like, you might as well just go back to work, dude. Because that, that's not going to work. Right? So that was, that was the negative side. Like, I'd just look for what was wrong, because I'm in a bad mood, which is, go back to co regulation. Right? But, but if I come home and I say, I appreciate you, man. You are, like, nurse nightingale, and you're still beautiful.

She's like, how can I be beautiful? I'm in a messy bun and still wearing my sweats. Like, I know, but, but I love you just the same. Right? That's going to, now I've come in soft.  I've demonstrated appreciation. So for these couples where one is listening, one is not, right? I think me and you, I don't, I don't know how to walk back this.

I don't know how to come back from this. I feel like we're at this place where we don't talk, right? Start by working on the positive perspective. Start by showing appreciation to your partner. Right? That, so that alone will start to melt the ice a little bit. So, think about it even, since you brought up hypnosis earlier, think about it just from hypnotic language.

From the perspective of when I say, it's hypnotic to even say to your partner these acts, these, these words of, of admiration, appreciation, and they then, it becomes a suggestion to them and their unconscious mind to actually be more of those things. So when I say to Robert, you treat me so good, you're so good to me.

Well, hello, not only am I appreciating him, I'm suggesting that he do more of that. So if you want to get more help in your relationship, start using more suggestive, appreciative language and they will rise to it. So yeah, we, we suggest with all of our coaching clients, we actually give them like these text reminders at first to do two appreciations a day, just do two appreciations a day, find two things.

And what will happen is you'll find what you're seeking. You'll find what you're seeking. So if you're looking for what's going wrong, you'll find it. But if you're looking for what's going right, you'll find that too. And when you're searching for two things that are going right, All of a sudden it snowballs and you find more and more that's going right.

 That is so beautiful.  You mentioned a while ago you were going to talk about the four horsemen. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yes. So what Gottman's found out is that the predictors for divorce all came down to how a couple disagrees with each other. So number one, the, the ones that ended up divorced had a 0.82, one ratio of positivity to negativity.

So in every conflict conversation, this is not during regular times, but when they were arguing, they were 0.8 positive to one.  But the masters, they were five positive to one negative. So more than five times more positive in those conversations. So you do that  with down regulating all of that negativity as much as possible.

So you're doing repair early in the conversation. Like you say things like, you know, oh, You know what? I came off a little bit strong. I was a little bit harsh. Let me try again. Or, you know what? I didn't mean that. Let me back up and start over. Or, hey, this is kind of escalating. Can we try again? So doing repair early in the conversation, but also weaving in appreciation and gratitude and trying to be positive as much as possible.

He also found that there was For specific traits, because he was curious, like, what if something like anger, is anger predictive of divorce? Turned out it wasn't actually, but there were four things that were predictive and they were. Well criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. And oftentimes.

How you disagree is how you saw your parents disagree. So back to that, you know,  that percentage, right? When, if you grew up in a tumultuous household with, with lots of criticism or contempt, then that's what you're going to bring. That'll be your specific flavor, you know, your favorite weapon to wield in the middle of a, you know, in the middle of.

In the middle of any type of conflict, you know so criticism, right? It's, it's this, you're attacking their character. Why are you doing this? You should have done that. Why statements, you statements, beware of you statements. Whenever you're, whenever you use you, it's going to turn someone's defense mechanisms on because you're accusing them of something.

It's a criticism. you's and should's, those are all forms of criticism. Now interestingly, the masters, the criticism wasn't zero, but it was far, far less than it was in the disasters group. So the masters, the ones that made it, the disasters ended up divorce contempt. Contempt needs to be as close to zero as you can get.

Contempt is the number one predictor of all the things for divorce. And contempt is. I'm so much better than you.  You're beneath me. I don't even need to have this conversation. What is wrong with you? Because you wouldn't understand it. Right. It's thinking and acting as though you're superior to your partner.

You see this a lot You know, sometimes, you know, originally I did coaching just women and sometimes very highly successful, very driven professional women. And there was a lot of contempt sometimes because they were maybe making more money than their spouse. And so contempt would really come into play.

And I happen to be an expert in contempt.  Because. Contempt was my  favorite tool, my favorite weapon of choice when we first got married. And it was because that's how I saw my mom talk to my dad, talked down to him, talked to him like he was so much beneath her. And it was a way to control and to manipulate and to get what I want done.

And so it was, it was how I was, how I behaved when we first got married. And what we realize now is that not only does it predict divorce and is the number one predictor of divorce, it actually predicts illness. And they found in research, there was some secondary research to the Gottman Research where it was a husband and wife team and he was an immunologist and she was a therapist and he was studying the The, all the lab work and what they found is that it depletes the immune system.

So every contemptuous thing that a person hears depletes the immune system and actually predicts the number of illnesses that person will have in the upcoming year. Yeah. That's contempt. That's, that's brutal. And so if you feel in your relationship that you're better than your spouse, like let's check in, let's check in and, and see if we can start to eliminate that.

The other two, you know, defensiveness. Right, which is always like, well, why are you picking on me? It's not my fault. Like, I don't understand what the problem is here, right? And, and while that seems like you're really just fending off all this contempt and criticism, it's, it's, it's actually one of the other predictors.

That's one of the other four horsemen. Defensiveness can also coming back with a bigger cannonball  than the one you got, right? So if you hit me hard, I'm going to hit you back. So it's, it's the defense, it's the innocent victim or it's the. I'm going to hit you back with a hundred pound cannonball. It's usually the innocent victim that comes up with a bigger club and then they feel justified.

Like she said this about me and then, you know, now I'm going to drop this one on you. And then the last one, which is really. And, and these are not as much gender specific. I don't want to take big brushes and just paint them. But the last one was, is stonewalling of the four horsemen that the Gottman identified and stonewalling really is and more male than female on this one  whereas criticism contempt tend to be more female than male.

Women tend to use their words, guys tend to be, you know, I don't know, not physical in that sense, but stonewalling is when. My, I'm in a relationship with her and she's telling me about how I never help with, help out with the kids for the 150, 000th time and she's going on and on and on about it.

And I'm just, I'm just, I've tuned out. She's, I'm there, physically present, mentally not, and I've tuned out. And she's like, you know, the kids and there's this and you should help out more. And I'm just like, man, my brain is somewhere else. And I'm just, I'm not saying anything. I'm just completely ignoring that while she's just ranting, going like, man, is she going to have a heart attack?

Like, wow, man, look that, that vessel on her forehead's really big. I think it's going to burst. Like,  so I'm still focused on her, but I'm just, I'm stonewalling and I'm not going to give her anything back. Right. So I'm just shutting down. I'm shutting down. I'm not part of this conversation. And, you know, and then it, and one of the, one of the ways that maybe your listeners might notice if you're stonewalling is if you're in the middle of one of these disagreements and you're trying to, you, you, what happens with stonewalling is you say, like, I'm just trying to remain calm here.

Just trying to remain calm. If you hear the words, did you hear a thing that I said? That meant, that meant that they realized that you weren't listening and that you're probably stonewalling in that situation. Now Engage, soft startup, right? And, and how do we, you know, how do we avoid the first, the, so contempt really is just appreciation, right?

Is an antidote. Like if you can show appreciation to your partner you'll start to see them as contributing, right? So that's one of the antidotes for criticism. Defensiveness, right? You can just, you can take responsibility. My favorite part in defensiveness is like, look, yeah, I can see how I played a part in this. 

I really do. Like, I understand that, you know, maybe it doesn't matter if it's 60 like, you have to own your crap. You have to say like, you know what, I was a part of that. I, maybe because I was stonewalling, I wasn't listening to what you asked me to do, and now this created a fight. Like, so, I have to, I have to own my part of that position.

And then stonewalling really is just like asking for a break, which was In, in my world, one of the hardest things to do. So stonewalling, the interesting, really cool thing about stonewalling as we found in the research is that it was 80 percent men who did the stonewalling and they always started stonewalling the second their heart rate hit 100 beats per minute.

Yeah, they got flooded. So what was happening is they were becoming emotionally flooded. And I think probably the reason why it's more of a male thing is that men are generally more physical. And it's a way, it's not a great coping mechanism, but it is a coping mechanism, mechanism to ensure that they aren't getting physical because now they're in fight or flight.

And the last thing we want is a man who's in fight. in this position, right, with his heart rate over 100 beats per minute, so he shuts down. So the key with stonewalling is learning when your heart rate is getting to that edge and making sure you're de escalating, de escalating, de escalating the conversation with more positivity before you get there.

But if you get there, you have to take a break because nothing good is going to come from that conversation at that point. So we talk a lot about adult timeouts and it's okay. And You know, because Robert had these abandonment wounds when we first got married, this was something that we made a huge mistake on early in our relationship because he, his opinion was if, if we stop this argument, I'm abandoning my relationship.

And so we would stay in the fight and it would just get brutal and nothing would get solved. And so now we're huge. You know, believers that you have to take a break because you're just going to damage things if you keep going. And a break needs to be at least 30 minutes because your stress hormones have to come down.

Your adrenaline needs to come down. And when you take a break, you can't be focusing on your comeback. You can't be focusing on that, that next job you're going to go in there and take. You have to go do something that's actually going to bring your heart rate down. And we're poor.  As individuals and humans we're really not great at, at, at figuring out where our heart rate is.

And some of the research with that Gottman did, they asked them when they got flooded and their heart rate's up over 150, 160 beats a minute. And they're like, okay, so what I want you to do is tell me when you think that you're, when you're back down below a hundred. And, and I don't know, 90% of the time they were all wrong.

It was still about 120 beats a minute. So one of the things we actually do with our, with our clients, we do it in in our retreats as well. 'cause it's kind of fun. We have a bunch of pulse oximeters.  We have everybody wear a pulse oximeter while they're having this difficult conversation just to watch, just so they can be self aware of where their heart rate is.

And, and just taking that break, taking that break in order to bring you down. There's another thing, there's lots of stuff that happens when your heart rate gets that high. Like, you know, there's  A, you know, blood pressure. We go into fight or flight, pupils dilate, right, or pupils constrict because we're trying to pull in information, blood flow comes about, you know, out from the extremities, blood pressure comes up.

So we have all of these different things that happen automatically, but there's another thing that we have, which is called auditory exclusion. And it's the thing that they train first responders to kind of work through, which is we stop hearing, right? We stop hearing because we're focused on the threat in front of us.

This is a survival mechanism. So it doesn't, we stop listening. Right? We stop listening. I can't take in any new information, whether she's got a good point or not. Right? And because I can't hear, I raise my voice. And then she can't hear, she's flattered, she raised her voice. So now we're raising our voice.

We're just, I might as well yell at the wall because she can't hear me and I'm not doing any good and for all the feedback that's given me and then, you know, next thing you know, somebody's going to say something hurtful that might come through and,  and taking a break is so huge. Just pause, like this, this argument is going to be there.

in 30 minutes. It'll still be there, trust me. Just take, take a minute. So just really briefly to repeat the antidotes for the four horsemen. So the antidotes meaning what you do instead. So instead of criticism, you're going to do a gentle start. I feel about what I need. For contempt. The antidote is two appreciations a day.

Start doing those appreciation, appreciation, appreciation, because contempt doesn't come off just in the words we say, it comes off in our body language. And 93 percent of what we're communicating to our partner has nothing to do with the words that we say. It's our tonality and our body language. So if you  It's going to come off, even if you're not saying the words, it's going to come off in your body language and your energy.

So you have to start actually believing that your partner is amazing and wonderful and magnificent and all of these things. You have to start appreciating defensiveness. The antidote for defensiveness is taking responsibility. And then the antidote for. Stonewalling is taking a break. Wow. So many pearls of wisdom there.

And I know that everybody listening appreciates all that you have shared. Now, what are the signs that you notice in couples that are possibly warning signs or red flag signs that they may need something beyond these strategies? But they already need to seek professional help, whether from a marriage counselor or to reach out to a professional snake you.

Yeah. Well, certainly one of the things that we usually say is that, you know, the work that we do is, is really for, good people, like good men, good women that are trying, you know, to do a good job. Certainly, if anyone is in a situation where there is any kind of. violence or abuse of any kind, then definitely go seek out because any of the tips that we've shared would not apply, right?

We need to go get some professional help and get out of that situation, you know, and then secondarily. I think a lot of us just even though we could be doing the best we can, we maybe we, we have backgrounds like, like Robert and I had, you know, we had these family origin or family of origins that were really challenging and we didn't know what we didn't know.

And that's the thing, none of us know what we don't know, and so I might need to skill up a little bit and assuming I'm in a good relationship with a good person and we just lack the skills, let's go, let's go get some new tools, let's skill up, let's go model excellence and You know, you may or may not need extra help.

You might be willing, if your spouse is willing, to sit down and do a course together, do, read books together. We, we did this event, this workshop last month and this couple came up to us afterwards and they said, we've made it a goal in our, in our marriage that every single month we're going to find, either read a book together or we're going to find an event like yours.

So we can come and attend on a monthly basis to keep our relationship strong. So they created that as a ritual in their relationship. And there's you, you know what? You may not need somebody. You might be able to just do that. Go find events that are in your local area and just start learning and applying these new skills. 

If that's not working, then reach out to us or reach out to a therapist or reach, reach out to a professional to help you learn how to do conflict.  How to do conflict in a way that is positive. That's going to be really important. And then beyond that, it's learning the skills of friendship, which really come down to how can I appreciate more?

How can I, how can I turn towards my partner more?  How can I show more fondness and admiration and how can we stay experts in each other's lives? How can we remain, really knowing each other and putting that time into staying experts in each other's lives? To me, that's what friendship is all about.  So I don't know if I answered your question.

I think it's, it's individual, but, but if you're, if you need to skill up.  Reach out. Yeah. And I've had a lot of clients tell me that they listen to our trainings together with their spouses. They listen to the podcast. So I'm sure they would also want to listen to your podcast together with their spouses.

Could you tell us about your podcast and more about your work? I think podcasts are amazing. It's such an amazing, there's such great information out there for people that you can learn so much today. All the information you need is out there and you can learn it while you're driving in your car. You can  probably the best stuff out there.

You have a lot of people tell us the same where they write to us and they say our marriage is so much better. Our relationship is so much better. And all we've done is we've just started listening to your podcast together. So that's a great way to skill up. So our podcast is called Master Your Marriage.

And again, as Robert said earlier, it's not just for marriage, married, married people. It's for anyone in emotionally committed relationships or who wants to be in an emotionally committed relationship, or who's been in one and maybe it didn't work out and they want to do better next time. And you can find us on all the different platforms that are out there.

And we're very active on Instagram as well. That's kind of our main social media place. So we post every day on Instagram under master your marriage.  Wow, thank you. And where can they go if they would like to find out more about your work and working with you? So the, the website also is sort of the same thing.

It's master your marriage podcast.com. So www master your marriage podcast.com. There's opportunities to, you know, get a free assessment. You know, you can have a conversation with us and just see if it's a good fit or maybe even. And sometimes when we do those assessments, people, we just say, Hey, look, there's some tools out there.

Like maybe just do this download and try working on that. And usually we start with appreciation actually.  Oh, that's wonderful. Are these things that, let's say it's only one spouse who is interested in doing it right now. Is it something that they can do or do they have to wait for the other spouse to be ready? 

Yeah. What do you think, Shirley? It's, that's tricky. That, I will tell you, that is very, very tricky.  But all you can do, you can't force someone to change. All you can do is work on yourself. But what I find is that when you do work on yourself, you get, it does change the entire dynamic in the relationship. 

You know, there's a pattern that's going on in the relationship. And if you can step out of that pattern, the pattern starts to change. So I would say, yes, you can absolutely start by. Absolutely. Absolutely. by working just on yourself. Again, it's looking back into that mirror. If our spouse is that reflection, that hardest reflection to look at is ourself.

There's a lot of good you can do by working just on yourself. That said, the paradox is that You know, to really,  really get the best results, of course, you know, it takes two people who are willing to do whatever it takes to make that for sure work. And so, you know, it's a little bit of a paradox, but I'd say that absolutely working on yourself is a great place to start.

You know, we started I remember there was a story about a young newlywed couple in the, in the young man reached out to us. He reached out to me and he said like, I don't know what's going on. Like I, she wants to, she, I think she wants a divorce and you know, I've only been married a couple of years, you know, with one baby or something.

And it's like, I, I just don't even know what I can do or what's going on. I don't know if I can change your mind. And, and our advice and my advice back then was, you know, You need to become the best person that you can be, because likely, that's the person that she wanted to marry, was the best person that you are, and if you'll start becoming a better person, right, learning some skills, learning how to manage conflict, learning how to manage your temper, learning how to show appreciation  things will turn around well, and so they're, they're still married.

We, we talked to him every once in a while. They're still married and going on and his wife still comes up, talks to me and says like, thank you so much for what you said to him. I'm like, I don't even really know, you know, it wasn't that much, but it was really just become a better version of yourself. So, and we get a lot of people that reach out to us who are like, I, I, you know, I don't know what to do.

and it's funny because it usually was six years. Most people, most people live unhappily for six years before they actually seek help. And  you know, our goal, our goal, especially through podcasts, this is great information that you can get from a lot of resources. Like you don't need to wait six years.

Like, you know, if we get you sooner, teach you a couple skills, like, you know, maybe your relationship could be that much happier. Yeah. So thank you for sharing these ideas and these stories, and I love how they're backed by evidence and research. Any last words that you, that you'd like to share? Well, I've had this thought all, all throughout the episode today that I never said.

So I'll share it now. So thank you.  There's this quote and it had to do with a question you asked way early on, but it's a quote from Brene Brown. And she said, show me a woman who can sit with a man. in real vulnerability, who's really struggling. And I'll show you a woman who has done a lot of work.

And then she said, show me a man who can sit with his, with a woman who's just had a day, just had just so overwhelmed with all the jobs of being a mom. And just, she's just so overwhelmed. Show me a man who can sit with a woman who has just had it with her day. And listen to her. And I'll show you a man who has done a lot of work.

So  be there for each other.  Take care of each other. Treat each other well. Listen to one another and be each other's ally. That's my final thoughts. Thank you so much for talking about love amidst the chaos in parenting. And in fact, we talked about more than just parenting, but really the entire married life.

So we'll link to Drs. Robert and Charlotte Snow in the show notes where you can listen to their podcast and where you can learn more about them. And head over also to our website discerningparenting. com where you can download parenting toolkits as well as listen to our other episodes. And we also have several articles that You can share also with your spouse and other members of the family as ways to start up the conversations as well.

 📍 So, thank you. Thank you for the bottom of my heart. Whether you're listening to this on Valentine's Day or at any time, I know these are timeless principles that will guide us. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having us.