The Loving Truth

What Your Priorities Say About Your Marriage

• Sharon Pope • Episode 175

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I know it’s easy to get caught up in life and forget to prioritize your marriage.

But the truth is, nothing thrives when you turn your back on it.

We’ll invest in Botox, hair appointments, and our businesses—but expect our marriages to somehow take care of themselves.

A healthy, connected relationship takes time, attention, and consistent effort.

It’s not about perfection; it’s about showing up and learning the skills that help you grow together.

If you want your marriage to feel good again, it has to make the list of what truly matters.

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Loving Truth Podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence, and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host, relationship expert, and certified Master Life Coach, Sharon Pope.

SPEAKER_02:

Hello, loves. This is Sharon Pope, and this is The Loving Truth. Today we're going to be talking about priorities. Priorities as it relates to your marriage. Now, this is something that I think we need to be able to speak openly about. And it might feel like a bit of tough love, but I like to think of it as the loving truth. I'm going to tell you the truth today, but I'm also going to do it in the most loving way possible. So sometimes people will ask me before they join my program the decision. They'll ask me about what's the success rate in your program. And we will always tell them, a hundred percent. Now that doesn't mean that the choice they make is easy or comfortable, but it means they have peace with their decision and they're equipped to be able to navigate that decision, whether that's to stay and create a marriage that feels really good, or that's to lovingly release the relationship. But here's the honest truth: a lot of people don't show up consistently for themselves. And I wish that that wasn't the case. But it is. Or they have an excuse and they believe their excuse. Like it's summer, or it's the holidays, or I'm just really busy right now. And those things can be true. It can be summer and it can be the holidays, and you can be really busy. And the challenges in your marriage are really freaking important to figure out. Because two things can be true at once. They might start off really strong and motivated, where for the first four to six weeks inside the program, they are doing all the things and they're doing them really well. And then an excuse comes in, or they get busy, or they get distracted, and they get focused somewhere else. And these are honestly, they're the same people who they might make a New Year's resolution, but by mid-February, they're back to eating Cheetos, right? So the singular difference between people who create change in their marriages or come to clarity or finally start moving through the divorce that they have been putting off, the difference between those people who get the results and those that don't doesn't come down to my program. It doesn't because my program works. Like it works. It comes down to how they show up. And like most things, my program, but life itself, you're going to get out of it what you put into it. And more and more we want the easy path more than we want what's worth wanting. And I'm telling you, having a happy marriage is worth wanting. But we give up because we don't think it's possible. We've been trying and our our efforts haven't worked right away because we want the quick, easy fix. We want it to be fast. And because it hasn't been fast or it hasn't been easy, we think it's not possible. But that's not necessarily true. It might just be that it a happy, loving, connected relationship in your current marriage is absolutely possible when given the right environment, when given the right tools that are applied consistently, because I've seen it happen so many times. And sometimes the right answer is that this relationship cannot evolve beyond where it is today, and that the right answer is to end it and do so in the most loving and peaceful way possible. And that's okay too. So my team and I talk about this all the time because it really does just come back down to priorities. And people, generally speaking, don't prioritize their marriage. Right? When you think about what's on your daily priority list, where's your marriage? And I wish that were different because if that were different, if people consistently prioritize their marriages, we would not have the struggles in our marriage that we do with anywhere between a 50 and 73% divorce rate. And then there's a ton of people that are struggling that remain in their marriages. Two-thirds of the time, women wouldn't be asking for a divorce. After 20, 30, or 40 years of marriage, they're asking for a divorce. That's not because women want to go through a divorce. There's no woman on the planet that wants to go through a divorce. Nobody actually wants to do that. Because walking through a divorce is one of the most stressful, brutal experiences you can have in your entire life. And yet we don't prioritize our marriages. And then we get upset or surprised when they're not doing very well. When they're not thriving, which is interesting, right? You would never ignore your child and expect your child to thrive. You never not show up for work and think you're getting a promotion. You wouldn't buy a house plant, never water it, never give it any sun, but assume it's gonna keep growing. Like we understand this in every other area of our lives. But for some reason, when it comes to our marriages, we feel that we are entitled to having a good marriage without any investment in it. And I think if we're really honest with ourselves, it comes down to that. That sense of I'm entitled to having a good marriage because we think it's our birthright, or because other people have it that we should be able to have it. But other people have millions of dollars, and not everyone has millions of dollars. It comes down to our priorities, and then it comes down to our choices. So I'm gonna give you an example. So I will often talk to other entrepreneurs, and especially when they're female, I love talking to other female entrepreneurs. And when I go get a facial, um, there's a woman who does my facial and she owns the med spa, and she's a great lady. Uh, and she's kind of a badass. She's like in her 30s, and her business is doing millions. I mean, she's got a great business. Um, and so I was talking to her last time I was in, and I said, so how's your business? How are things going? Have things dropped off at all? I mean, the economy is is struggling a bit. What are you seeing? And I was talking to her about it, and she's like, No, my business is great, it's the same. If anything, it's a little up. And I'm like, wow, that's fantastic and fascinating. Right? Because all right, this one might sting, ladies. Stay with me. We will prioritize our Botox, our Juvederm, our lip fillers, our weight loss injections, our facials. We will prioritize those things higher than we will our marriages. Fascinating, right? I have a really good friend, she owns a hair salon, and I said, How's your business? What's going on? Um and she told me uh that that people are they're still getting their hair cut and colored. Right? Like some of her product sales are down, like the shampoos and stuff like that. But when it comes to people getting their hair done, economy or not. Like they're going to get their hair done. They're gonna get their hair colored, they're going to have hair extensions, they're going to do the things that they feel make them look pretty and feel pretty. And my friends, there's nothing wrong with that. But when we prioritize that and we don't prioritize our marriage, that's where I'm saying there's a problem. Because then we feel really good about how we look, but we don't feel really good in our lives and how we're moving through our lives. Because when your marriage sucks, so many other aspects of your life also start to suck. Isn't that true? And so we've got to start paying more attention to our marriages. I once had a coach, and he was um he was a pretty in-your face kind of guy. And he was telling us about an experience that he had with his coach. And his coach had asked him, What are the priorities in your life? And he said, Well, absolutely, my family, my wife, my kids, my family, my home, that is number one priority. And then my business. And he said, and his coach said to him, That's great. Let me see your bank statement and your calendar. And the reason he asked for that is he said, if those things are a priority to you, then it will be very obvious as I look at your bank statement and I look at your daily calendar, where your priorities lie. Because that's where you're making your choices in how to spend the one thing that we don't have more of, which is time and money. Right? And so that's why he was asking those questions. So when you look at where do you spend your money, where do you spend your time, those are the things that you're prioritizing. And if your marriage isn't one of them, and you still think you should have a great marriage, there's probably a little entitlement there and not enough investment. And so we've got to have honest conversations about where your priorities are. I think you can have a great marriage. I don't think anyone can have a great marriage, but I think that you got to give yourself a fighting chance to have a great marriage. And I think it's possible, right? Like if someone is genuinely unhealthy, like let's say they're drinking themselves to death, you're not gonna have a healthy marriage with them. Okay, so I'm not saying that universally, but I'm saying, like, if you are showing up consistently for your marriage and you have tools to be able to understand what your needs are and your spouse's needs, when you have tools to be able to argue productively and repair after an argument, because you're going to have disagreements. How you can come back to one another, how to have difficult conversations, how to communicate more directly, how to set healthy boundaries. When you have those tools, you can create health in a relationship. But you've got to prioritize getting equipped with those things because they were never just like downloaded from the universe to us, sadly. I wish that were true. And so, look, if it's if your marriage is not important to you, I think you should just tell yourself the truth about that. Because sometimes people are like, Sharon, I don't want to invest in my marriage because my marriage isn't important to me anymore. Okay, well, then we know how this story ends. There's no happy ending to an unhappy journey. So maybe it's time to tell yourself the truth about that and then be able to start taking steps towards freeing both of you. Because if your marriage is not important to you, I promise you your spouse feels that. And your kids feel it too, and they're learning from that. And the things that are not important to us are never going to feel good. So we've got to just own that. And I think that, you know, when we are taking our last breath, I don't think we're gonna be thinking about Botox. I think we're gonna be thinking about did I have a loving life? Did I love and was I loved? I think our relationships are going to be what matters at the end of our days. And not some of the other things that we are prioritizing much higher today. So, look, do the Botox, do all the things that make you feel pretty. I want you to feel pretty. But if you also want to feel good in your marriage, invest in that too. Until next time, take really good care.

SPEAKER_01:

If you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage, and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a truth and clarity session with a member of my team. On the call, we'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage. Go to ClarityformyMarriage.com to fill out an application now. That's Clarityformy Marriage.com.