Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Mike Howard talking ....
Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Episode 35: Stacey Upton: Navigating the Spiritual Journey of Marriage: Connections, Growth, and Future Generations
Marriage as a spiritual journey, the unique bond of limbic resonance, and the complexities of modern parenting—these are just some of the topics that Stacey Upton and I explore in this thought-provoking episode of the "Unpacked and Naked Podcast." As a producer and co-host of the "Broken Tiles" podcast, Stacey brings a wealth of insight to our conversation, drawing from her own long-term relationship with her husband, Brian. Together, we dissect the profound connections that couples can build through shared experiences and mutual growth, and how these connections can create a nurturing environment for their children.
The conversation takes a reflective turn as we examine the evolving perceptions of marriage and the cultural shifts affecting younger generations. We tackle questions about the declining marriage rates and rising divorce rates, comparing these trends with our own experiences. By exploring the broader principles of marriage beyond legal obligations, we highlight how enduring partnerships are often enriched by embracing community and balancing self-care, especially for women and mothers. Our dialogue underscores the importance of understanding these dynamics and the spiritual principles that can guide us through the challenges of modern relationships.
As we wrap up, we celebrate the openness of today’s younger generations and their willingness to engage in dialogues about topics once shrouded in taboo. From discussing diversity and sexuality to reflecting on personal growth within relationships, our discussion offers a hopeful perspective on the future of human connection. We invite you to listen in as we share personal anecdotes and insights, bringing a fresh and hopeful lens to the journey of evolving relationships across generations.
Are we recording? Yes, we're recording. We're recording. I'm doing it really weird and slow and wrong. Welcome to the Unpacked and Naked Podcast. I'm your host, michael Howard.
Speaker 2:I have the wonderful privilege of sitting with Mrs Stacey Upton, my podcast producer, bride best friend, girlfriend, all of the above, all the things, yeah, thanks, it's fun to be here, yeah.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for coming. So I just want to open up a little bit for who we are. I met you because of Brian. I started doing your hair, we've had a couple conversations and, for the audience, I just want them to know, kind of, how fresh of a conversation this is.
Speaker 1:We don't know each other well but there's a certain affinity that I have towards you and Brian just because of the place I was in in my life when I met Brian and who you are and it's really rare to see a duplicate couple sitting out there. And you know Brian hasn't told me all the story, but it's pretty apparent that you guys have been through things. Yes, you love each other deeply and I don't know that I've met somebody who was I don't even know how the right words to put it the kindness that flows from him when he talks about you and just the security in the relationship. Yet the privacy like you. Just you guys got a thing and you know it's fun to see relationships that have been around as long as yours has, just like Kim's and mine's has. So you know, I've just been curious about you and I figured hey why not stick a microphone in front of you?
Speaker 1:But this is a little bit old hat for.
Speaker 1:Stacey, Um, her, her and Brian have a a podcast called broken tiles, which has been fun, I've been listening to, I've listened to three or four of them and, and, um, you know it kind of resides in this topic of marriage which we can get to late, later, but I've listened to three or four of them and it kind of resides in this topic of marriage which we can get to later, but I really wanted to have my audience get to know you. And so, who are you? What do you do? Yikes, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you first of all. That was a really lovely introduction and, I guess, kind of unexpected. But also at the same time you mentioned you have an affinity for Brian and I and I would say it's mutual, because there's just lots of similarities. And you speak about your wife in a very loving way too. I've never met her, I just hear little bits and pieces, and the same with your children, which are now adults. I shouldn't use the word children. Yeah, never met her. I just hear little bits and pieces, and the same with your children, which are now adults. I shouldn't use the word children.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, there's some kind of a connection lots of similarities which is, I feel like it's rare to come across other individuals where you have that feeling with. Before I talk about myself, I just I'm reminded of a concept. Oh, I don't know if I shared this on our podcast once or not, but I read a book recently about um living to 100 and, uh, the author kept saying she was interviewing elderly people and she kept having this feeling of, she said she felt like she was falling and just like enraptured with the storytelling of her subjects and she just didn't understand it. She thought is there something wrong with me? Like what's happening here? I'm just losing myself.
Speaker 2:And then she came across a couple of psychiatrists who were doing research on something that they coined limbic resonance. And limbic resonance is that experience when you are with somebody and it's like you feel really seen and there's a connection and you just have an experience that isn't like other experiences and it's also described. This is how I came acquainted with it, because a neighbor was reading this and she loves Brian's magazine, which is called Vibes, and she underlined it and earmarked it and left it at the door for us. But the psychiatrist said most people think of this as a vibe. When you have a good vibe from somebody, that's what that experience is, and so there must be some of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know it's again.
Speaker 1:You know, as we kind of merge into the later topic, I think the thing that I noticed with Kim and I is that we just get each other, but the purposefulness that we had to subscribe to to get to that spot is intuitive.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of not fair to assume that other people could do what we've done. Sure, so it's not unattainable. It's just that whatever deep needs, whether it's early childhood trauma, like whatever the motivating factor was, we just happened to match motivations and the growth that comes from having a relationship that lasts long term, that those motivations get validated. They actually come to life, they become real for others to observe. You get to operate in the principles that those motivations led you to. I tell my kids it's like you have an unfair advantage, unfair disadvantage, and that you've seen something that's rare, and it's not just two people that are married, that have been married for 33 years. It's two people that have loved each other deeply the whole time, that have chosen to grow together, chosen to go through all the hard things and embrace them and embrace the whole thing, and so the limbic.
Speaker 1:What was it called Resonance? Limbic resonance.
Speaker 2:It's like your brains are matching. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know it's. You know, kim and I did counseling for lots of couples. You know, kim and I did counseling for lots of couples. You know, the last 10 years really more the last five years we stopped doing counseling together, mostly because it was like it's just too much, like we're thinking all the same things and it's like too much coming out.
Speaker 2:Oh, I see what you mean Overwhelming for the couple, overwhelming.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, it's just. You know, having us both in the room used to be fun because we'd bounce off each other, but then it's just we're so similar. Yeah, you know, we would get just funny little details about our life. But you know, for you, you are actually in the mental health.
Speaker 2:Well, I have a master's in social work, okay, and I worked for many years as a health educator with the healthcare system and now I manage a health education department. But I am always sort of orbiting the world of mental health because when it comes to health education, really what I specialize in is behavior change, and behavior change is impacted by one's mental health, mental wellness, sense of capacity, your agency, and all of that is very much intertwined. And when I started with my education, I didn't go to school until I was almost 40. It was when our oldest child was approaching her senior year of high school. I'm like, oh, you mean, I'm not going to be a stay-at-home mom forever. And I wasn't a stay-at-home mom the whole time. It was sort of an off and on thing, but it hit me like a truck that I wasn't going to have this forever. I realized, oh, I guess I need to find something for me. So I went to school and I really didn't have anything behind me because I dropped out of my first semester that I went to college.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, so you actually had to do the whole six years yeah.
Speaker 2:And I just knocked it out.
Speaker 1:That's so great. Yeah, no, well, yeah, we're just down the four and a half and just went.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I just went and I still had two younger kids, so it was rough because I wanted to be there for all of their games and, you know, be present and do my work and I am very much a recovering perfectionist and I was not recovering at that point. So I it was so important to me to get really good grades and just understand every concept and I pushed myself really hard, but I loved every minute of it. I enjoyed what I was learning. It was fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I, you know. Let's just say I've received family pressure, pressure from friends, you know, to go back to school Again. The prospect was a six-year prospect plus your hours. Yes, and I'm like there's no way I'm going to ruin a decade of my life to get to a spot of things I've already done.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't recommend it.
Speaker 1:No, well it just. You know, with Kim's health, all that kind of stuff, there just wasn't a way to manage the moments, you know, because that was a half a million dollar or more prospect which is not recoverable. You know income-wise. You know I always admire people who take up the flag at that point. You know income wise, so you know it's, I always admire people who take up the flag at that point. You know, in life it's not easy, it's worked out well and I don't.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say, like I said, I wouldn't recommend it. It's not for everyone and I don't know that an education and a master's degree in particular is is the right path for a lot of people, just because of the way our world is set up there. I don't. It's almost like diminishing returns. People aren't making probably what they should make for the investment of education and that whole system is a disaster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did. I mean, I have boys, so as you have one, correct?
Speaker 2:One boy boy, two girls, yeah, so we both have three kids there.
Speaker 1:There's some more mental math and there's the uh garbage can getting getting slammed against the window. Yes, you know, in our little studio here at the at the shop. So, um, you know again for our audience a little bit more. First time coming, was it exciting to come into the shop. Yeah, it's a really cool shop, the new hairdresser syndrome. When I finally opened my clientele up, which is kind of.
Speaker 1:when you came back it was new to me to start taking all that in again. It's funny. I don't know how many of the old podcasts you've listened to, but I've had. A couple of clients have been with me forever that have talked about what a nightmarish scenario it is to show up at Michael Howard's salon the first time you know because of the rumor mongering that was going on about me that I was cutting everybody's hair off to pixies back then, but uh, you know certainly the same rumors.
Speaker 2:Don't live anymore, but but no, and I wasn't around back then, so I had none of that fear. It was a fine experience for me, yeah.
Speaker 1:It was all, all the all the Brian's circle growing up. It was all the people who went to high school with that. They lived in fear of sitting in my chair. So I mean all of them.
Speaker 2:they just were so attached to their long hair, it's like well, it's a thing, it's like uh, I don't know, it's a possession that, like, identifies people. Yeah, it's and I have never thought of it that way.
Speaker 1:I'm yeah, it's been strange to me. You know cause. I'm finally just honest about it. But we all hate ourselves when we look in the mirror, like like it's, and you know people wonder why. I don't necessarily like being a hairdresser. I'm like I'm dealing with people's hate of themselves, like every single hour I'm there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not just hair.
Speaker 1:No, they just loathe what they're looking at. I have to fix that and somehow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they show you a picture and they want to look like that when they're all done.
Speaker 1:That's not possible and those pictures involve a lot more plastic surgery. It was always weird to me being with my personality, that I was in this business. I just everybody thinks I'm a contractor, still contracting. No, you're a cop. No, I did train to be a cop, at least, yeah, but now I'm a hairdresser, like, oh really, everyone thought that about you. Good, that's what I've been practicing for 40 years now.
Speaker 2:That's the plan.
Speaker 1:That is the plan. So again, you have three kids.
Speaker 2:They're all grown now. They're all grown up Oldest. I keep forgetting. I always shave off a year or two, but I think the oldest is 33 and then 27 and 26.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, and this is almost 27. Yeah, so we're in the same range. I just got one south of you, 24, oldest one, 29.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, right in the same range. It's a tough time period as a parent in many ways, way more than I ever thought it would be. I thought I'd be done with the parenting part by now. Not really. Yeah, it's different.
Speaker 1:You know, as I've been sharing on the podcast, as I've been disconnecting myself from these identities, right Like Michael as the parent, you know Michael as the husband not that I've you know you're not disconnecting from that, but but this idea that I can get my um identity from who they're turning out to be. Oh yes, I know what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't want to say it in a creepy way, but watching other people still, oh, my kids turned out good and it's like, yeah, they're supposed to Like, that's our job.
Speaker 1:And the rest is up to them, and they turned out good because of their choices.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Like really, as a parent of kids this age, really stopping myself from trying to find meaning of their life turning out well, when that's just who they are.
Speaker 2:It's who they are, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a weird thing to let go of because you want to go. Yeah, look at my kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're great humans, that's part of what I think makes this part of parenting hard, this stage of parenting hard, is it's important. So we did our work is done, like the hard work is already done and that really ended when they're probably 12.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, because then they just tune you out. I hate to tell you parents, but they stop listening at eight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's probably true.
Speaker 1:They're just being nice if they're still listening to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they haven't developed the hormones to really be difficult.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a. You know, I didn't believe that. When I heard it from my friends who were psychologists at the time, we were like, yeah, they really stopped listening between eight and 12 and and everything else is just them being polite with you, cause they've heard it all already a hundred times, that they're not stupid.
Speaker 2:And you may not remember. You've said it a million times, but you have. Yeah, and they've heard it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I concur with it. It's very strange to be this age, and they come in and out of your life. They call you if they need money or money. Yeah, that's pretty much it or something's kind of up and they're maybe wondering whether you might have some advice. Maybe, Maybe yeah, yeah, but mostly they just want to be heard. Yeah, remaining quiet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that that's a challenge for many people to just listen and maybe provide some affirmation. Just listen and maybe provide some affirmation and the kind of I guess guidance is the best word I can think of that doesn't sound like you're giving them guidance. It's like you're in the bowling alley where they have the bumper guards up. That's really kind of all you're doing, and even that is a very limited extent because it's all their choice. They are adults and they're going to do what they're going to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I've with my own sons and you know my people have heard this before. You know, at this point they come to me for advice and it's like I really don't have any for you, because at your age I'm on my second kid, like like.
Speaker 1:My experience is so different than yours, you know, because you have different freedoms than I ever had. You know, I had more responsibilities to something bigger, which was Kim and I, which you know which is really part of why I wanted to bring you on was to talk about marriage and this reality that there was this other principle that Kim and I got to assign ourselves to. That was just bigger than us. Yes, we're quote unquote married. There's a license that said those things but, the spiritual principle is so much bigger.
Speaker 1:Having to re-relate that in a culture where I don't even know that, there's a high percentage of kids their age that even value marriage itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're right. I think the rates of marriage have gone down dramatically and the rates of divorce have increased. I mean, I think I want to say it's like a 50-50 prospect for a marriage to stay whole at this point in time, and it might even be less than that. I can't remember. Brian always knows that statistic right off the top of his head.
Speaker 1:That's a weird one because, at least when we were growing up, it was our parents that were getting divorced. And so they shot the divorce rate from 30% to 50% because they got divorced two or three times. So the percentage doesn't live in reality. I mean, the reality was with me growing up. There was one intact family out of all the families that we had, so that's a very unique moment. You know that from the time I was probably seven or eight, the divorces began to happen.
Speaker 2:Are you saying divorces within your extended family or just like your neighborhood people you knew everywhere? I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1:Like nobody was staying married and you know the intact families were protecting themselves from what was going on. Yes, culturally Right.
Speaker 1:And you know, whatever cultural revolution the 60s brought on, that freedom to divorce not being, you know, assigned to marriage, but the utilization of marriage, yes, you know how our kids are seeing that behavior in. Who is our parents or grandparents, yeah, and having us and I, you know many, if not most, of my friends have remained married, which is also very strange, that in my friendship group there's very few divorces and so we all got married young, which is all really weird, you know, because you know right out of college, that is very weird, you know.
Speaker 1:Kim and I were married when we were 18 and 21. Yeah, we had lived life enough to realize that, you know, we were our people and that was our thing. But, like marriage itself, got disconnected in a strange way from the prospect. But marriage itself got disconnected in a strange way from the prospect, I would say, because of our parents a little bit.
Speaker 1:Not assigning blame, but just that is the factor, with the generations behind it going fuck it, I'm out, we'll do it when it's time, I guess when we have kids and the millennials that I know got married very late compared to how to think about it. Our generation of children, gen Z, they're very slow and low and really working on themselves. But again, away from this identity that is in this bigger prospect, which I'll throw some things out principally, is something different even than the way we would talk about marriage, that marriage itself is meant to embody it, the way that we utilize it. The pastor or the ward of the court says here you go, yes, here's your license. You've now got to split everything when you're done. That's kind of the legal aspect of it.
Speaker 1:But the reality is that I think marriage is a far bigger principle.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I absolutely agree with you, and I'm not certain that everybody fully realizes that. Or perhaps they buy into it early on or think they understand it, but then when the rubber meets the road and it gets really hard, that understanding just kind of goes away, because what it really takes is, um, uh, the word coming to my mind is selflessness, but I don't know that that's the right word.
Speaker 1:I'm going to use some yucky ones, okay, and we're going to kind of meander through it I'm going to get a little scriptural right now, because this is where it gets weird is if we're in the concept of God. The construct that was played out in Judeo-Christian Muslim tradition and again in most traditions, whether they're tribal or not, this idea that we belong together. Right, there's witnesses that have acknowledged that reality, that you are now a unit.
Speaker 1:You're not individual the same way that you once were. You belong to a clan. This is the people observing. Yes, what has just transpired?
Speaker 1:There's this spiritual principle that lives there, at least in the scripture, of the three utilities of love. You know this deep feeling of admiration, agape love, which supposedly only flows from God. But I think that when we have children we get a really good view of how God sees us. We have children, we get a really good view of how God sees us. But he calls us His bride. That we are in fact, he is married to us and we are married to each other, that we're in a long-term maternal prospect of some sort, and it lives in the confines of the human relationship that we're calling marriage. But the principle is bigger than that and I believe that a Christian who is doing their due diligence, removing the patriarchy that's been applied to the scripture about submissive principles like this, is the humblest and both largest act of mutual submission.
Speaker 1:And that is really, if you're going to get into histrionics about the Bible, paul, who wrote the most about marriage, who wrote most of the epistles, all the letters to these churches that were flailing, that he had made, he's the one who steeped himself in the principle but he got stoned. They tried to stone him to death for what he was saying, which was, in essence, you guys are equals, but you're not equal because you're going to serve each other, and love is a demonstration of these actions. The first Corinthians 13 thing it's patient, it's kind, it's not self-seeking, it doesn't keep track of what's right and wrong. They're all action items and then everything behind it's all fruit from those action items. And I use this word my wife hates this word now just because of how it's been utilized in the church.
Speaker 1:But I would love to get your early thoughts, just even about the word submission and how much that makes you cringe, except for the reality that I look at you and Brian and I recognize very early on that you are both mutually submitted people, that you have assigned yourself to each other to serve each other in a way that best suits the other person. And it's like that dynamic is the hardest thing to get across to your point. When you're doing pre-marriage counseling. It's like your life is not your own anymore and your job from this point out is not to make the other person happy. That's not the goal. No, it's to help them.
Speaker 1:It's help create a space where the person that you see they truly are can become that thing and that's absolutely to me the beauty of submitting yourself to a larger principle, like love and the dynamics of love, but marriage being the bigger prospect now. Yeah, yeah, the love is in there, but love is not enough.
Speaker 2:No, that's not the whole story and it's interesting. So the thoughts I was having listening to you when you first talked about God taking us as his bride. I immediately thought about how, oh, that's so interesting because at many traditional church weddings I don't know if this is happening as much as it used to, but the love, honor and obey vows you take, this is being said in a way that I yeah, very icky.
Speaker 2:I stopped doing that 50 years ago, brian and I both said we're going to write our own vows, because we are not saying that. We were also very young. We were what? 22, 23, something like that. We were also quite young, so definitely didn't have the understanding that I do now. I still have a lot more to learn and figure out, learn and figure out. But I think, um, and then I was listening and I really appreciated your description of being submissive to each other and I was very surprised by that, because normally I'd be like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. But in this context of thinking about it as as marriage, you know, I said the word selfless and then I said I don't know that that's the right word. I think you're more right, more in the direction that I was trying to go, and I hadn't fully thought of it in that way, but I think Brian and I have thought about it similarly, so he may have shared this with you before.
Speaker 2:No, I want to hear you he says and I very much agree with him, and he sometimes figures out things way sooner than I do, but he tells this story and he tells our kids and anybody who's willing to listen he loves to talk that before he met Stacy, um, it was all a hundred percent Brian. Everything he did in his life was to serve him and give him pleasure and just just take care of Brian. And then he met Stacy, and then it became, uh, 49% Brian and 51% Stacy and he realized, uh, everything I do is going to be more about her than it is about me. And then the kids came along and his percentage got less, and and you know all of us.
Speaker 2:We took up the bulk of Brian's percentage and he still lives in that and he loves it. It gives him great joy to be just. I don't know, maybe he's like 5% Brian now I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, I think, if you allow yourself to be in these processes sorry about all the noise people, I got the bad setup today when we allow ourselves to live in the principles that exist without us, they just are. Yeah, is, and you know, in full disclosure Stacey and I were talking about, you know, prospects that we're seeing with this generation behind us, that they don't have the same things available to them, whether they're friend relationships, let alone these big concepts. You know where you get into marriage and how they've been disparaged and kind of pushed out of the vernacular because they're doing the love thing. But when, again, we submit and just allow the principle to be and to exist in that thing you know I've explained it this way with forgiveness too, I cannot forgive somebody else for what they've done to me. That's actually happened and that hurts.
Speaker 1:I can live in forgiveness that exists. It's like they're just things that are and you have to position yourself to be in the flow of what that principle is, not do the thing. You can't get grateful. You have to have agency to experience truly being grateful. You know, knowing that I made the best choice I could, given the position we were in, and so this is what I did and gratefulness flows from that. That's really what I've learned the last two years, even though I was a fairly grateful person before that, but not realizing oh like, without agency, you don't get this next thing. And more and more it's come to me, and again, I cringe when I say it because I've pushed these words out of my vernacular. Because of that, oh the more I'm submitted to the process and submitted to the idea of the principle. All these things flow from the principle. They don't flow necessarily from my behavior. It flows more from my posture to be willing to be in it.
Speaker 2:But you have to behave a particular way to be in that posture yeah it sounds a little bit like what you're saying are some concepts from mindfulness where you're really letting go of control and allowing yourself to be and with positive regard about uh, your situation, who you're with. It's kind of like um, I don't know if I can make another analogy at least the way you're with it's kind of like I don't know if I can make another analogy At least the way you're describing this reminds me of that concept in mindfulness Our job. This is how I see our job as human beings. I could be totally wrong and you might completely not agree with me, but I feel really strongly like we are here to evolve and grow in many different ways and I think we do that best in relationship with others.
Speaker 2:Human beings were made to live in community and it's interesting that Human beings were made to live in community. And it's interesting that Americans, an American value, is individualism, rugged individualism. We don't need anybody at all. That's not how we were made to survive even. We need other people, people, and we have this desire to have control over everything, over I don't know how much money we make, the house we live in, the neighborhood we live in, what kind of car we drive, all of these things. We very often feel like they symbolize our success, and the truth is that is not the case at all.
Speaker 2:How does your heart feel? You know, who are you in relationship with that you truly know and you understand and you work to support them, and they in turn, do that for you, and that can be in a marriage, but it could also be with your children, it could be with your friends, it could be with your parents, it could be anybody that you communicate with. What do you do when you're with that person? Do you give them your full attention? Are you present? Are you fully present? There's a lot that I think we can learn from the concept of letting go of what we feel like we need to be in control of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know why this popped up, but I first of all, I couldn't agree with you more. You articulated it well. Yes, I concur, thank you. These are the things, thank you.
Speaker 2:These are the things.
Speaker 1:This is where I think the word is misused. Right, we get married to an idea. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think that, as you were explaining I didn't have words for it earlier I was thinking about what are the contrast points in our culture right now, where we utilize this word as though it's something, but we, we fractionalize it at the same time. It's like we reduce it down to like well, I'm married to this idea, so therefore I'll succeed, therefore I'll be valued, I'll get the money, I'll get the market response. Mr market, the cocaine adult, schizophrenic, you know, alcoholic, who's abusive to everybody, you know, if Mr Market likes me, then how I was married to this idea works for me, right, but it ends up leaving everybody behind in that process. And at least you know. I want to kind of stick with this idea of this vapid individualism, because I want to be very clear to everybody who's listening that one of the main reasons why I started podcasting is that what America's done, not just to the church, but this idea of the rugged individual, america has done not just to the church, but this idea of the rugged individual has done more to destroy humanity and even the ability to become more human, to your point that we really do need others to become who we're meant to be.
Speaker 1:And I don't know if you ever listened to Richard Rohr. He's a Franciscan. Yeah, I love, love that guy.
Speaker 1:But I haven't listened, I've read yeah, he's, he's just a dynamic human. But you know I love how he puts this, that that, yes, individual success is fantastic, but if you're going to influence others, you will always suffer. You will always suffer. You know, like, suffering is the prospect and it's not whether you're going to suffer, it's what you're going to suffer for is the decision you make in your agency. You know it's purposing yourself to suffer for the right reasons, because that is really the message of the gospel. You know that what Jesus did is suffer for the right reasons, because that is really the message of the gospel, that what Jesus did is suffer for us. And so it's just. There's a lot wrapped into that and I don't necessarily want to go down the Christian rabbit hole that way, as much as it is that the reason I believe the way I believe is for what Jesus suffered in the name of love.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You know in this way for humanity, whoever Jesus was you know, it's so you know, can I add something?
Speaker 2:So we're talking about the, the necessity for our own fulfill, fulfillment and growth, to be in community with others, and the concept of submission to our partner, our marriage partner. But I think it's also very important to not be to self-deny our own needs to self-deny our own needs.
Speaker 2:So I think what I mean by that is should there be something that you are, some area in your life, in your mental constructs, I don't know whatever it might be that there's a lot of room for growth and without that growth you are unable to be in a healthy relationship with other people. The idea of not caring for yourself, taking care of others first I think I'm sensitive to this because women and mothers in general have this expectation that this is what we're meant to do and while it is loving and it is lovely, if we are not whole, we're actually not fully present for others and could be creating suffering as opposed to what we're hoping to do. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, because let's sit here, because this is kind of what I was hoping for is that there are these deep prospects, right, so we talked about suffering in a general way, but the right kind of suffering. And so, again, on my end, this is something my wife has been working on me for 33 years, and so where I got trapped in the way that I think about all of this, you know, whether it's marriage or whatever, and serving other people, you know I served to the point of suffering like that. That was just, you know, I was attached to the idea that suffering just is the prospect. So, suffer well, do well, suffer well. And so to your point, um, as a man who has taken that position right of you know, for lots of health reasons, with my wife, you know, I was doing the cooking, doing the cleaning, doing the grocery, shopping, all the games, all the work invisible load.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's it that just exists.
Speaker 1:And you know, I still leave my socks at the front door, you know you're human, I don't want to pretend like I know where my keys are or anything like that. I'm still a man, but having put myself in the position physically of what is the dominant reality for any stay-at-home, mom, coupled with the fact that I have 70 other wives.
Speaker 2:Yes, you do, and they expect you to make them look like supermodels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just that. So I've lived in a woman's world in a very unique way, so I know, exactly what you're saying. It's like, yes, I know those ladies and I've been that lady. I tried to be that lady and it's hard and the details. I mean it's you know, we just had our cleaner come last night and my wife is still cleaning afterwards because she's seeing things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what about the cleaning before the cleaner comes?
Speaker 1:That's correct, you know, it's just all the stuff, like all the stuff that I choose to ignore. Yeah, you know, and I don't know if that's genetics or just you know whatever Different ways of thinking, I don't know.
Speaker 1:But just certain realities, like most women I know, are cleaning around the cleaning and cleaning more after the cleaning's done. It's like I don't know if you can get that cleaner. The varnish is worn off that, oh my gosh, it's not going to get shiny, but again we're in this term. Right, you're submitted to this process. Yeah, you're now serving. You know, and that's these are acts of service, right, that that we do these. These are the things that make marriage work.
Speaker 2:Yeah and acts of service.
Speaker 1:That's my love language, so it really works for me and it works for brian yeah, I'll tell you, whenever I'm doing any work around the house, some good business comes my direction.
Speaker 1:Men pay attention. Yes, you know, like, be handy and you will get the handy thing back. So it's you know. Again I'm looking back, you know I've got couples flashing in my head, the marriage classes I've taught at church, these things are so talked to death on my side. It's hard to be intimate this way, to really talk about it working. You know, like, because in my counseling situations it's always pre what's actually going to happen, or post it's failing. That's when it sits with me. So I don't. I don't didn't often get the in-betweens those lived in classes how to do the thing better. Oh sure, you're trying to describe the principles the way that I've tried to now, like no, this is just bigger than anybody in the room. Like we can have 50 couples in this room thinking that we're all talking about the same thing. But what's your motivation point? Is it just for you guys, or is it to live in the flow of the thing that just is? You know, because that flows better than anything that we can create. You know, because it's just bigger.
Speaker 2:That flow, I think, is very unfamiliar for many people. It's a big concept and, you know, brian and I married young and I did not have an example of a stale, stable marriage. He did in his parents, and thank goodness for that, because I probably would have left a few times, because that was what I knew. Um, it wasn't until I was older that I really better understood the flow that you're describing. This bigger thing, it, it.
Speaker 2:It was I don't know how many years in maybe 10, 10 years, 15 years that I really got the understanding of the bigger picture of what marriage is and I really decided that, like, I had this realization and I don't know what prompted it, I'm sure, whatever I was going through in my life, I had some growth happen and I just had this realization that, ugh, it's not about me, it's not about getting the kids to and from school. There's something much bigger going on here and I get to do it with these people that I just adore and I'm not going to allow myself to develop resentment over silly things that you know what. All I have to do is have a conversation and say, hey, I feel hurt by the fact that I don't know, whatever, you didn't see something that needed to be done, and and then I didn't say anything about it. Instead, I just decided to get mad at you and have you play the guessing game of what I might be mad at. It happens a lot.
Speaker 1:Well, that's. Most marriages, yeah. And it's just dynamic between men and women too.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely Men just want sex and food, like it's pretty simple. They'll do what it takes to get to that spot and I don't think it's Neanderthal behavior. I, I don't think it's Neanderthal behavior. I think it's beautiful, you know. But you know, the awareness of the other person on the other side of the room is, you know, when I'm with men, that's, you know, like, do you actually know what your wife likes? Do you even know her eye color? Yeah, you know, like I understand that you're working, you're doing these things, but do you see her? That's the hardest question to come to. Do you see who she is as a person?
Speaker 2:Are you in the way of?
Speaker 1:her hopes and dreams. Are you value-added or value-taken? What's the economic prospect there? What's what's the accountability there? That this thing we're trying to call a unit is it if it doesn't understand itself, or at least understand the person that's sitting across from them?
Speaker 2:Exactly, and and what they need. What is their love language, Like I referred to earlier, what fills their cup? What I don't know? There's so so many ways to think about it. Um, I had something else pop into my head I was going to mention, and now it escaped me. Hmm, yeah, Not coming back.
Speaker 1:It'll probably come back. You can interrupt me, I'd love to hear it. So again, watching you, Brian. Again, they're just glances, there's no there, there, it's not as though we've spent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know we haven't spent a lot of time together. No, no, no.
Speaker 1:I just you know I, just you know me. I'm just watching everything.
Speaker 2:You are an observer.
Speaker 1:Seeing dynamics, using a lot of words to distract everybody, to pretend like I'm not watching everything. Yeah, but for you guys, it doesn't have to be for anybody else. I can recommend to every couple don't just pick up something because it works for somebody else, that's not the point. Right For you guys. You said it was about 10 years in where it hit you. Did it hit Brian close to that same time?
Speaker 2:Oh no, he was. He was all in from the beginning.
Speaker 2:Even the way we met he was. He was just all in and I was like whatever, um, but he and he will be the first to admit this I'm not saying something that he would be mortified about. He had a lot of growing up to do and so we had some hard times really. Based on that earlier, and that's really just about controlling your emotions so, like one time he got mad. I don't even remember what it was about. Nobody remembers what it was about. He was mad about something. He wasn't mad at me or at the kids, he was mad at his situation.
Speaker 2:And he hit the wall and he put like he dented the wall and he hurt his hand and afterwards he was just like what am I doing?
Speaker 2:This is not okay, I don't want my kids to. That was like, oh, I need to do some. Growing up here and we all experience that we all have, I think, reigning in one's emotions as part of growing up. Developing some an example or not create an icky feeling situation for people that you love and care about, those kinds of things start changing. So you know he was all in from the beginning and yet there were still trials and tribulations that everybody experiences.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like to express, especially with the people that I'm counseling when we get to this pocket of conversation, that I had this really weird unfair advantage, and that is my wife got really ill and might have died, and it was a couple times like it was hard, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the choices that were in front of me were there was no other choice. Like I couldn't, I would have had to abandon all principle of who I had put myself to be, and so I had to abandon any idea of who I was to just do the thing which was remain married, you know, remain the good dad. Do, do the things that both of us might have done if we could do them together. And why I say that's an unfair advantage is that all I had to do was do it. You know, I didn't have to be counterbalanced by my wife because she was ill at the time. So the privilege of living in both sides of the principle, like like I'm I, you know there would be two people here I get the growth of both doing both the things you know to Lord over people with content of like. Here's what I know it's like. Well, that's not a fun way to get to know these things.
Speaker 2:No, but it also was your, so you speak of God. I term it as the universe. Yeah, yeah, I term it as the universe. Sort of what the universe handed to you is this, mike, is the area you maybe could grow from, and so it was handed to you. And maybe for your wife, as frightening as that is, what did she learn from her experience in allowing you to take over and her to focus on her health and recovery? I mean, there's so many beautiful things that can come out of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so we have that advantage.
Speaker 2:That's my point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is, we've seen it stripped down to nothing. Yeah, with potentially nothing as the prospect, no matter what you did Right, and with that choice which really isn't a choice, it's just something you're going to do or not do. That's the choice. Yeah, choosing to do those things, I got to experience a really dynamic thing that has paid dividends for years.
Speaker 1:And you know, I'll never forget at least the point in our marriage I think it was 2003, which Kim was sick about three years at that point and we were doing our one trip alone a year which was you know, two days, two days, one night, going to Sonoma mission in, and us, us both just crying Cause like I wouldn't have changed a thing, like I don't want my wife to be sick, but who we are as people now, who I was before that, that forced to grow up Like there's no timetable, you're either going to do it or you're not, the dinner's not going to cook itself Like just the realities that there's a timetable for everything, everything has to be organized. You got it, someone's got to do the stuff. I'm on board. I would never get those moments up, yet it's at the expense of my wife to even think that. Which is just like it's all conflict.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but both of us just like we, just like who we are now. But the tragedy of what it took to get to, yes, which was a question I was going to ask 10 minutes ago, but but like? Which is a question I was going to ask 10 minutes ago? But like was that understanding that I think both you and Brian have about this thing? You know, you have this sold out kid who just loves his girl yeah, had to grow up.
Speaker 1:Right, Brian and I are not dissimilar, as you have figured out in our conversations. There's just the thing about us that once we go, it's like it's going, like there's nothing going to be in the way. That's my girl, it's going, but had to grow up. Did you find that that scaled over years? Or was there a pivot point in your relationship where you know we could say it's Brian punching the wall where it was lights on all of a sudden and then all the radical growth? No, I think it was over time.
Speaker 2:It was over time and we both grew at different times, and so what that meant, I think, looking back on it, I think it would have been easy, like in my time period of growth, I could have looked at him and thought he's not evolving, what am I doing with this guy?
Speaker 2:And ended it. But I didn't, because I knew we'd been together for so long and Brian has a heart of gold and the way he thinks is something I truly love and I just kind of felt like that that doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter. And then he has had periods where he grows way more than I do in certain areas and he could have had the same thought and he didn't. It sounds like you're asking if there is a time where we both maybe even acknowledge to each other this is it we're going to, regardless, we're doing this. I don't recall we ever did that, but I will say my son and his wife have had that. They had a moment where they talked about it and just decided we're in this, we are in this together, regardless of what happens, and I think that's beautiful and I'd like to think that maybe the example of Brian and I being so committed to each other helped support that mindset, but I don't know, like you were saying, they are their own people.
Speaker 1:They're their own people the decisions they make. I want to talk about transparency, but not yet, because I want to kind of sit in this space a little bit because I think we're speaking to the generations behind us now. You know this reality. Yeah, you know that that, and maybe to the generations north of us or our generation, but you said something that's really scary. What's that and that is. We grew at different times.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I've been watching. I'm watching young people, I'm watching 45-year-olds talking about growth, right as though it's some mindset with patterns, and all of a sudden you can just get to be grown up and I think about the growth I've been through in the last two years. Dealing with my sobriety issue. We're going to call that thing. You know, it really didn't have to do with alcohol, except that I was numbing myself to having to grow more.
Speaker 2:That was the thing, right, I was doing my thing.
Speaker 1:The voices are coming at me. The alcohol shut me down. There's my betrayal Right. The fully involved dad husband now was disconnecting from the realities that he made. So that's where my damage was done in my drinking.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That being said, I can't really look to a time before that where I wasn't also disconnecting because I needed to get sober from meaning, not from using alcohol. It's like this idea that there's deeper meaning.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Having this deep relationship that I have with my spouse, my children wondering what everybody else's problem is.
Speaker 1:Just invest. You guys stupid, just do that. You know everybody else's problem is Just invest in it. Make you guys stupid. Just do that. You know like they're watching me kill myself doing it. So I guess my question to you is like realistic timetables. You know these realities that I've grown tremendously in two years it's been radical, it hurts. Certainly wouldn't judge my wife at this point for having put up with the shit that she had to put up with me for seven years drinking, but there are these cycles that happen For us. It was 10 years into our marriage where she got sick. She's growing as a human because she's suffering, personally Suffering also because she can't be the person she purposed herself to be as a mom, as a husband, body failing her, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're good, I'm on this growth cycle in that time to become monster man who can do it all, yeah, and bring home the bacon, whatever other ego prospects are in there. Are there ways that you can re-relate the pattern that I'm kind of insinuating that I've had, where it's like, yeah, I mean you just grow at different times and sometimes it's together and that's wonderful and you get to talk all about it. But I can't tell you how many times I've quietly grown without my wife.
Speaker 2:And she has grown without you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what that is all about is the fact that we are individuals. You know we're individuals and we have I kind of feel like everybody has their own things that they have to overcome. Um, we I remember early on in, uh, my social work career before I was in health education, I took a training about being a community health worker and they had us do this exercise, where I'll just distill it Um, the way they uh described how everybody is different is that we all have this black box in our brain and that black box is sort of what spits out our perspectives and how we think and what we say. Well, what goes into that black box is what creates the output. Right, so we all have different inputs.
Speaker 2:We grow up in different homes. All have different inputs. We grow up in different homes. We have different families who may have different cultural backgrounds, religions, maybe different social economic levels. We may be living in different neighborhoods. So all of these things are what create our perspective. You know, even beyond childhood, even in the moment, the environment that you're in in the moment, if you remember the book we talked about by Sapolsky about not having being able to make conscious choices- no, free will yeah.
Speaker 2:So all of these things are our inputs and shape who we are in this very moment and that is why we may grow at different rates, because we go into this marriage as individuals, with all of these varying inputs.
Speaker 1:It makes sense if you think about it in that way.
Speaker 2:Into a black box and then we join these black boxes together in some way, and there's no way. There may be times where oops, our growth is together, but it makes perfect sense that it's not going to be the same for each individual.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm really glad you put it that way, because that is such a helpful visual.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Black boxes are meant to survive an airplane crash.
Speaker 2:Exactly Anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1:And yeah, you know, if the inputs are off, you know it's going to tell a story.
Speaker 2:It's going to change our perspectives. We have to put effort If we want to see things in a different way. We have to want to, we have to be willing to make that change.
Speaker 1:We have to be willing to make that change. Yeah, that actually rattled me a little bit on that one. I have understood input-output, but the realities that are just so hardwired. Yes, you know the Sapolsky thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh man, there's no free will. I know that's a trip. There's agency but not free will. Let's, as we get to close here, because I know you've got to go talk a little bit about transparency and the flow of that. We've both been married long enough that there's lots of jokes we can tell. You know that we're comfortable now in our marriage. Sure, you know, nobody's going anywhere. Exactly, you know, kim and I can walk by the beach now and admire the surroundings. Yes, yes, yes, there's a comfort level that just comes with time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But transparency is a different prospect, you know. Am I still willing to be known? Yeah, and getting back into this whole macro principle of marriage, am I willing to be known and seen and love the way that the person? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that is ever-evolving. So Brian and I have been married the same length of time as you and your wife and I'm still growing in my ability to be vulnerable with him. I mean, it was a big week for us in that area just this week and it's good. It's hard, but it's really about trust and, like I had a conversation with my therapist, I'm like why did it take me 33 years to trust this man who I I trust implicitly, but trust him enough with this, this most raw, scared part of me?
Speaker 1:this most raw, scared part of me. Yeah, and and again, contrast generations right, and hopefully this is too touchy a topic. You know we're so hyper-sexualized now and it's weird to watch our kids fully talk about all the shit that we never talked and be vulnerable in that way. And you know it can feel inappropriate or whatever else, but just the realities now that we've been married a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know that it's interesting how sexuality really plays into that. But then again we're getting into that big macro concept of marriage yeah of like there's a vulnerability that is so sexual, even though sex may not be involved. Exactly it's the same thing. You know, it's the prep before, it's the yes, the emotional, yeah, the emotional prep.
Speaker 2:It's more than just the however many minutes it takes in the moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know we brought up so many big things and clearly we have to close this out, but it's not as simple as it looks and it's not as bad as it seems.
Speaker 2:No, and I will say I have hope for the generations behind us. I do too, because the fact that they're not as awkward and uncomfortable about topics like sex and diversity, sexuality I don't know, all kinds of things that I can't even think about right now. It's not coming to my mind, but there's an openness that we didn't necessarily experience.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah. It's just that that cultural conservatism that is trying to reestablish itself, it's like that's not really. You know. Look, fiscally conservative, I get it, but it's just that not talking about something doesn't make the thing go away, exactly.
Speaker 2:I think there's enough young people right now that believe it's okay to talk about what's real and not hide things.
Speaker 1:I agree. That's what's been so great about having our kids and doing the things that we're doing, that they've opened up conversations that I never imagined and they trust us, and that's so weird.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:It's so weird.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:Stacey, I love you.
Speaker 2:You're awesome to sit with.
Speaker 1:I'm just glad that you took the time to do this. Hopefully we'll be able to pick up again. Thank, you. All you other folks, I love you too. Hope this was helpful for you.
Speaker 2:Have a good day you too. That was fun.