While the focus should ideally be on fostering a healthy and supportive relationship, it is essential to recognize potential pitfalls that could harm a marriage. Here are ten behaviors or actions, that if unchecked, could have detrimental effects on a marriage.
While the focus should ideally be on fostering a healthy and supportive relationship, it is essential to recognize potential pitfalls that could harm a marriage. Here are ten behaviors or actions, that if unchecked, could have detrimental effects on a marriage.
Welcome to the Love Works podcast. My name is Chris Duncan, and my wife, jennifer and I are marriage coaches and ministers in our local church. We've been married for over 20 years and have six wonderful children. Over the years, we've experienced infertility, miscarriages, become parents, had career changes, fostered children and adopted triplets, which, among many other life experiences, have helped to shape us, our marriage and our family. We hope to share some of the things we've learned to help others with their journey to have a successful marriage and a strong family. I'll keep in a focus on our faith as a guide. Thanks for listening and, as always, remember Love Works, so let's get to work. Alright, welcome back to the Love Works podcast. My name is Chris Duncan and I'm here with my splendiferous wife, jennifer.
Speaker 2:Duncan, we had to break out the source for that one.
Speaker 1:I actually did. Whoever's listening, go ahead and look up the dictionary and if you are still listening thank you so much.
Speaker 1:We appreciate everybody that's been hanging in there with us while we get the Love Works podcast up and running. We are on episode number nine. Cannot believe it. Holy moly, it's moving so quickly. But again, thank you so much for joining us. We have an absolute blast doing this. So just a reminder if you are new, newly listening with us, we'll be releasing episodes biweekly. They're generally released on Sunday morning. So please subscribe on whatever your favorite podcast listening avenue is, whether it be Apple Music, Spotify, Google, wherever it is, we're on all of them. So thank you again for listening and subscribing, but please like, comment or rate and share, because that really helps us get out there. And actually I was looking at the statistics on our last episode that we released and on Apple podcasts. Our last episode was consumed 128%. So what that means is everybody that listened to it on Apple listened to the entire episode, and some of them listened to it multiple times.
Speaker 2:That was us.
Speaker 1:Yes, Thank you. Mom Appreciate that.
Speaker 2:We just leave it on repeat? No, not really. I cannot listen to these.
Speaker 1:Jen's never listened to one of our episodes. Even when I'm editing, she's like turn that off. I can't listen to myself. They're amazing, babe. So if you are out there and you have any questions or topics that you'd like us to discuss, please let us know. There's several ways you can reach out. You can direct messages on social media, at our LoveWorks Podcasts Facebook or Instagram pages. You can text us or call us at 747-322-1089. If you do call, no one's going to answer. You can just leave a message and we will check that. Or you can email us at LoveWorksPodcasts at gmailcom. All right, Jen, what do we got going on?
Speaker 2:We're going to go into our what's that segment for our new listeners who don't know. Our what's that segment gives you a little snapshot of the Dunkin' Household during the week, some of the funny things our kids do and say, and we came up with the title from our smallest Dunkin'. He's 16 months old now, but when he first started talking, everything was what's that, what's that, what's that, what's that? He would point at everything and ask what's that? So we're going to do our what's that, what's that, chris.
Speaker 1:All right. So mine actually got a little bit before we started recording today. I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram and something popped up, a reel popped up. I forget the title of it, but it was talking about. Basically, kids can name anything, and that first one was this uncle, a little video, and he said that his niece called an aquarium a water zoo. And his face you can see. He's like thinking about that. He's like that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2:How do we have to come up with a new word? It's pretty easy, I know.
Speaker 1:Then this this mom said that her daughter calls tears panic water and she's like, isn't that the perfect thing for tears? And so I started to think about some things that our kids say, and every one of them have said this, and it started with Boston, and I'm sure Asher, once he fully starts talking, he's going to say the same thing All of our kids again. Boston started this and I now Jen and I, do the same thing. But shorts are long sleeve pants.
Speaker 2:That just sounds right now. We don't call anything shorts, it's all, get your long sleeve pants on.
Speaker 1:So yeah, if the boys would. They're a little there to go out and it's hot and Bob's like where's my long sleeve pants? So now in the Duncan house, shorts are long sleeve pants.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Mine is something that happened last night, cause it was really cute. Not funny, but cute, well, yeah. So my husband has been gone a lot this week and the girls have been sleeping in the room with me, and so they were getting all ready for bed and each one of them had taken a pair of Chris's shoes and like put them by their little cots that they had set up on the floor and I'm like, why do you guys have all these shoes out here? They're like, oh, so we feel closer to daddy, since he's not here tonight. So I'm like, okay, that's cute. So we go to bed.
Speaker 2:I wake up in the morning, I look over and each of the girls has one of his shoes and in their bed with them and they're like curled up, like holding it, like it's like their teddy bear or something. It was so gross and so cute at the same time. I'm like I don't even want to think about what's on those shoes, but it was cute too. It was the thought that counted. So I did snap some photos and I will share those on our Instagram just so you can see how cute it was. But that's my what's that for this week.
Speaker 1:And I wear a size 13,. So my shoes are large. They're as big as they are. I don't know how they fit in the car. So, yes, they're hugging them and it looks like they're hugging a giant shoe teddy bear. So it was super cute. Jen sent that to me this morning. It made me feel even worse for being gone.
Speaker 2:So make Don't do it again.
Speaker 1:I think Jen told them to do that snap a photo so I would think twice about leaving for any church events or work things.
Speaker 2:Gonna go in one of our 10 things on this episode though.
Speaker 1:All right, well, Jen just alluded to it. Our episode today is gonna be a little bit different and probably a little bit quicker. But we were kind of bouncing ideas off of each other about the episode we wanna do tonight and I just thought you know what? Let's go with 10 things to ruin your relationship. So most of the time we try to be positive and talk about all the positive, but if you are just like you know what, I wanna ruin my relationship.
Speaker 2:I wanna give you some tips.
Speaker 1:I want to just mess this thing up. We're about to give you 10 things. So here's 10 behaviors or actions that, if unchecked, could have detrimental effects on your relationship, your marriage, whatever stage of that relationship you're in, will have detrimental effects on it. Number one lack of communication. We've talked about communication, I think, on all nine of our episodes.
Speaker 1:I think it's always gonna be number one it will always be a part of our episodes, I think because in a relationship, in a marriage, communication is so key. Ineffective communication or a complete breakdown in communication can lead to misunderstandings, resentment and a sense of emotional distance. And sometimes, have you ever met that couple that one of them thinks they communicate, but they talk? They talk a lot, but they don't communicate. Because once the other person in the relationship starts talking, they're talking over them, they're objecting to what they're saying, they're answering the question, they're finishing the sentence. That's not communication.
Speaker 2:Or they're just not listening at all. They've checked out, They've said what they needed to say and then they checked out.
Speaker 1:Totally. That is not communication. If you are that person in your relationship and you can't sit there with your mouth shut and just listen, you need to do that because a lack of communication is the number one thing that will ruin your relationship if you can't do it. So if you have that problem, please, please, work on it, listen, understand, tell them this is what I'm hearing, so they know, hey, I'm listening. Because if not, if unchecked, it will have detrimental effects.
Speaker 2:And if this is the issue in your marriage, it's so critical to fix it because it'll lead to probably all these other nine things that we're gonna list right here it is important that you fix the communication first before you do anything else.
Speaker 2:You've gotta be able to communicate effectively, efficiently, with your spouse. It's so important. Number two is neglecting emotional intimacy. Ignoring the emotional needs of your partner or neglecting to express affection can result in a diminished sense of connection and closeness. I think sometimes I see this more and I know I'm kind of rough on us ladies, but I see this more with women. Sometimes I feel like we kind of feel like men don't have an emotional capacity right. We don't have feelings.
Speaker 2:Yes, see, they don't have feelings. We can say and do whatever we want to them, but as soon as they respond, we're just like oh my gosh, I can't believe you would say that. To me it's so important to listen to yourself. Not just listen to yourself to hear yourself, but to hear how you are talking to your spouse, to hear how they are receiving it. Watch your spouse when you say things. Watch their reaction. Is it defensive? Is it dismissive? What is it that they're getting from you? And this kind of leads back to communication. Right, but it's the emotional part of it. You have to be able to emotionally connect with your spouse. Your spouse has emotional needs.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't matter if they're male or female. It's important to validate them. And for men, it's important to validate your spouse's emotional needs as well, because sometimes I think men get freaked out by women's emotional needs right. It's just like oh my God that's too much.
Speaker 2:I don't know what to do with that right. So it's important that we, even when it's uncomfortable to validate them, and listen to them and realize you know what I need to meet that need. Even if it doesn't make sense to me, I need to meet that. I need to make sure that I'm filling that portion of my spouse's needs effectively.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I'm gonna tell them myself the other. This happened recently. Just a few days ago, jen asked me she's like are you upset with me?
Speaker 1:And I said, no, she's like I didn't do anything that upset you or anything over the past week or so. And I was like, no, and she's like, well, you've been kind of rude, you've been kind of short with me, and I didn't even realize it. And so I had to apologize. I had to say I'm sorry, I know you didn't do anything. It had been a hectic week for both of us. I was away for work and just different things. But that doesn't give me the right to just ignore or neglect her emotions. And so I had to apologize and there was anything that she had done, but I had to. I could have got mad. I was like what are you talking about? But I didn't. I stopped and I was like you know what? I'm sorry, I didn't realize. I did that. Please forgive me.
Speaker 1:And men, we have to do that sometimes because we do tend I'll hop on the men for a second we do tend to not be as aware of the emotional feelings and we need to be more aware, and I'm working on that. We've been married 22 years, or soon to be 22 years. All right, three, holy moly. I forgot the age of one of our kids and I forgot what anniversary is coming up. We've been married 22 years in June, 23 years and that's still something that I have to be aware of and work on. So, all right, number three and some of you are going to be like duh hello, but I'm just going to throw it out there for you you want to ruin your relationship.
Speaker 1:You want to ruin your marriage, infidelity, engaging in extramarital affairs undermines trust and can irreparably damage the foundation of a marriage, the foundation of your relationship, and rebuilding trust after infidelity is a significant challenge. It can happen, it can be rebuilt, but is a significant challenge. Don't do it. And obviously we always instantly think about the physical act of cheating, but I want to talk about the emotional act of cheating as well. Those of us that work outside the home and we're in contact with the opposite sex on a constant basis. Maybe you work in an office environment and there's somebody there of the opposite sex, a young lady. It's always the single people, the single young guy, the single young lady that are marriage experts. They've never been married. Your parents probably had a terrible marriage, but if you're Of course, the ones that have been divorced several times.
Speaker 1:Exactly, they're going to give you all the tips. They're going to give you all the tips. And if you're having problems and you're going to work and you're talking to somebody, stop. You need to stop, number one, doing that, because if you're sharing what the problem is in your relationship, in your marriage with somebody that can't help change it, then you're just gossiping. So that was free, but don't you have to be careful of those connections that you make with people at work? Work with them a lot, right, 40 hours at least. If you're working full times, at least 40 hours a week, five days a week, we're there, we're around them.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying don't talk to people, don't talk to people of the opposite sex, but you need to be careful of the, how familiar you get with them and sometimes people and I'll just talk from a man's perspective. If we go back to the emotional needs not being met at home, let's say a wife is always berating a husband, belittling him, emasculating him, and he goes to work and there's a female there that shows him kindness and tells him how great he is. It doesn't matter what she looks like. There's a me connection made there because he needs that and he's not getting at home, he's getting at work and a relationship will begin and you can cheat emotionally on your spouse that way and you need to be very, very careful of that. So if you're having any problems at home, you need to talk to somebody. You need to talk to a professional.
Speaker 1:If you do talk to your pastor, talk to whomever does the marriage counseling at your church. You need to get help. Don't take it to work and don't take it to your family. I'll throw that in for free too, because I can. Let's say, we have a problem at home and I take it to my brother or my sister and I share it with them, and then Jen and I make up and we're good. My brother and sister, they still have to carry that burden. They didn't make up. They didn't see that we forgave each other, we repented and made everything. They still got to carry that weight. So just don't do it.
Speaker 2:Same thing with online. I mean a lot of us are at home and work at home. Do our school at home. Everything's online nowadays. It's crazy. Be careful about who you're accepting as friends.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:It can be a very slippery slope going down different paths.
Speaker 1:I've seen so many recent, I don't know why Old boyfriends, old girlfriends that come up from your child are like hey.
Speaker 2:People like getting caught up in that.
Speaker 2:I don't know the fantasy of being with that person and it's not real. It's not real. You've got to be very careful, especially if everything is not perfect in your. But even if it is honestly, even if it is in your marriage, sometimes that feels good. Oh, someone's paying me attention. You got to be careful with that. Be careful of your online activity as well. Number four is financial disharmony. Failing to communicate openly about finances, overspending or even keeping financial secrets can lead to stress, disagreements and long-term financial instability. These seem so simple, but why are they so common?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're prevalent.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's so crazy.
Speaker 1:These are the top things that cause divorce and cause problems.
Speaker 2:These are the top issues and you would think we would all be like, no, I'm never going to do that. We do. We've got to be careful. Money should be an open book your finances should be an open book.
Speaker 2:Either of the spouses should be able to look at something at any time. They should know what's going on with the money. It shouldn't be his responsibility or her responsibility. It's a joint responsibility and you've got to be honest with each other and you've got to be honest with yourself. If you're the one that overspends, hello, that's me, raise my hand. You've got to be careful and you've got to be open. When your spouse is like, hey, we need to save this or we need to do this, let's be open to those conversations because money problems in a marriage, money problems in your life it's going to ruin your relationship. It's going to be detrimental. You may be able to stay together A lot of these things, you can stay together but you're not going to have the fulfillment of the best marriage that you could possibly have if there's constant money problems, there's constant financial disharmony in your marriage.
Speaker 1:There's probably somebody listening right now is like I'm not checking in when I spend money. I'm not saying that every cent that you spend you got to go get permission. We're not talking about that. I do think that there should be a dollar amount that you should set that you're not going to go over without consulting with your spouse. If I come rolling up with a brand new car and I've not said anything, that could be a problem. Maybe not if you got the money and all that stuff, maybe not. I do think that should be an understanding and you should have those conversations. Like Jen said, it should be known to everyone. You shouldn't get to the point where, all of a sudden, you're losing stuff and it's a surprise to someone in the relationship, like, oh yeah, we're broke, like what?
Speaker 1:Oh man? So again 10 things If you want to ruin your relationship. That was number four, financial disharmony. Number five we've talked about this and kind of talked around it a little bit. Number five if you want to blow up your relationship, be disrespectful to each other, disrespect one another, disregarding or belittling your partner. Talk about her cooking, talk about his lack of being handy. Put them down in front of people, call them names, disrespect them. You want to ruin your relationship? Go ahead and do that. You might say, oh, that's a pet name. No, a pet name is baby Dummy, not a pet name Stupid, not a pet name.
Speaker 1:Okay, I don't care if you say with a cute voice it ain't right, don't do it, do not disrespect one another. It would create unhealthy power dynamic within the relationship because a lot of times one person is going to shrink away because of that and now you have this domineering crazy person. It can be on either side too. I've seen on either side the wife being disrespectful and I've seen the husband on the flip side be disrespectful and you can just see it makes it uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:I wrote that's around, but you just see that man or woman just almost physically shrinking and it's so sad. Number five it could be number one, but none of these are perfectly in line and there's other things, but these are the 10 that we picked out. But number five disrespect each other. You want to ruin that relationship? Go for it.
Speaker 2:Number six is refusing to compromise. Stubbornly sticking to one's own desires without considering the needs and preferences of the partner can lead to resentment and lack of cooperation and decision making. It's so important that we compromise with one another. We're not gonna agree 100% on everything. Yeah, and that's okay. Yeah, it's completely fine.
Speaker 1:Disagreeing is also okay. Yes, there's a right way to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think we've kind of gone into that a little bit in some of our episodes. But really you have to be willing to meet, you have to be willing to give and take and it can't only be one partner that's always the one that's compromising, because then that will build resentment, that will build distrust, because you know that your opinions and your thoughts, they're not gonna be taken seriously, they're not even gonna matter to your spouse. How do you feel loved, how do you feel seen, if you know that what you think and what you believe, your spouse doesn't care? So it's so important that with the compromise that we work to meet each other's needs. Also, with compromise, we really have to think about it sometimes, because there's some things that you know your spouse maybe they can't compromise on. It's just something in them. Be willing to go a little bit extra sometimes, be willing to be like. You know what I really feel strongly about this. But I understand why, where you're coming from.
Speaker 2:And even though I feel strongly, as long as it's not, like you know, a life in death situation.
Speaker 2:We're not talking about anything crazy, but be willing to do that for your spouse, be willing to love them enough to say you know what I see? This is really important to you, so let's meet here. Here's what I can do, and that's gonna open up such a much better path for you guys to move forward than just being like nope, I can't do that. We're never gonna agree on this. You know there's an impasse there, and how are you gonna solve that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's huge. And, like Jen said, if one person in the relationship just dominates everything, they're selfish and they're not even considering the other person.
Speaker 2:That's not love.
Speaker 1:That's not love.
Speaker 2:That's not showing love.
Speaker 1:That is not love. Love works right and working. Part of that working is compromising. Number seven this is well, part of it is one of the things. When we meet with couples and we do marriage coaching, we let them know that anything they tell us in our session is between us. It doesn't leave from us. I do take notes sometimes, I put it on my iPad and I have it locked and the notes are locked and all that kind of stuff. But if anyone brings up physical abuse that is not kept between us, I let them know right away that we'll be shared with the proper authorities so we can get that taken care of.
Speaker 1:It is never hear me, men and women, it is never okay to physically harm one another. It is never okay to hit one another. It is never okay. And part of that abuse we generally think about physical abuse, but going to the disrespect to that goes into emotional abuse. It's never okay to emotionally abuse one another. To be right to scream, to yell at. That's never okay. And if you find, if you're listening right now and you're in that situation, whether you're the perpetrator or you're the one that is being abused either physically or emotionally, you need to seek help right now and if you are not strong enough to reach out to the proper authorities yourself, please go to your pastor, go to Counselor.
Speaker 1:Counselor, go to somebody that can and will help you with that, because you don't need to go through another day facing that. And I understand that there's challenges in relationships, but there it's never, ever, ever, ever, ever okay to get emotionally or physically abusive.
Speaker 2:So true. I think it's so odd to me sometimes that as parents we can teach our kids this right. We can tell them it's not okay to hit your sister or your brother, it's not okay to ever put your hands on someone, it's not okay. But then we allow it in our homes, we allow it with our spouses. It's never okay, Whether it's your children, whether it's yourself. It's never okay. Don't allow it to happen. Stop it now. The next one we're gonna go into is withholding affection Consistently, withholding physical or emotional affection can create a sense of emotional isolation and attachment. It weakens the marital bond. If you don't have that connection with your spouse, you will seek it out other places and all these kind of intertwined. It's really crazy. But we're affectionate beings. Even some of us who maybe are less, maybe physically affectionate, we still want that and crave that affection. And if we're not getting it or giving it, there's gonna be a real big disconnect in our marriage. We're not gonna feel close to our spouse.
Speaker 2:We're not gonna feel loved, they're not gonna feel loved and it's gonna cause disharmony in your marriage and it will weaken and eventually ruin your relationship.
Speaker 1:And I'm gonna tell them myself again I feel like being open and honest tonight.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, chris is gonna share. This is Chris sharing time.
Speaker 1:I don't come from a highly physically affectionate family, so that's something that I didn't really experience a lot of as a child and so I struggle with that as an adult. So I struggled with that in my marriage too, and so in my phone it still pops up on my phone. Years ago I set a reminder for myself and it goes off a couple of times a day and it says show love. And so when I would get that, I'd go down If I was at home and I find Jen and I hug her and tell her I love her. I find the boys, I find the girls, and that was just a reminder to me that I need to show that affection, I need to show that physical touch, and over the years I've gotten a lot better, but there are still times that I need that reminder.
Speaker 1:So I've not removed it from my phone and I never will. It will always come up every single day, twice a day, and so if you're there, you're just like I'm just not a huggy person. Well, you need to. Your spouse needs that, your kids need that. So if you need a set of reminder in your phone, please do. It will help and it will prompt you, but don't just dismiss it. Make sure you follow it Click, so it helps you out.
Speaker 1:So.
Speaker 2:So true, and some people might think like, oh well, that's ridiculous. Why should he have to do that to tell someone you love him? He loves enough that he's doing extra steps to make sure that he's giving what needs to be gotten. So it's so important that we work on this right. Whatever our deficiencies are, we all come with them. Everyone comes with a deficiency. Everyone comes with things in their past or whatever. That it might not be emotional, it might be something else. Work on it. It's okay to admit this is my deficiency, but here's what I'm gonna do to get better. Here's what I'm gonna do to overcome that.
Speaker 1:I think that's the key thing. Like Jen said, we all have deficiency, we all have areas that we can work on. Number one admit it. Number two work on it.
Speaker 2:Address it. Yep, don't just let it, don't just be like oh, this is me, yeah, that's a cop out. That is a cop out.
Speaker 1:That's lazy.
Speaker 2:That's lazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so true. Number nine this is a big one and I don't think people talk about it enough before they start having children. So if you are in a coaching session with us pre-marital coaching we will talk about this. You wanna ruin your relationship?
Speaker 1:Parenting conflicts, Disagreements about parenting styles, citing with the kids against your spouse talking about your spouse being the mean one and you being the fun one. Go ahead. You wanna cause some tension? You wanna cause negativity in the family? You wanna cause some negative impact in the family unit? Go ahead, have some parenting conflicts. Now, there's gonna be some things that you disagree on with parenting style. No doubt that's gonna come up. I handle things a little differently than Jen does. Just because we're male and female, right, we handle things differently. But before we jump right into that, we're gonna talk about it. We've already had these conversations before, but sometimes, as our kids get older, new things come up. Right, we've not dealt with it yet and we're like okay, what do you wanna do? How do you handle this? And she might have an opinion like now, I think we need to do this. It's like well, I think that's too, and so we what? We had that conversation.
Speaker 2:Like go get back to the compromise, Exactly we compromise and then we address it.
Speaker 1:We don't go in and say okay, I gotta do this because your mom told me to or and another thing it's kind of old school, I guess you would see, like old TV shows just wait till your dad gets home and he's gonna whip you. The disciplining shouldn't be just on one person, and I'm not just talking about corporal punishment paddling on the bottom, but what I'm talking about, any type of discipline. If you do time out, you take a way screen, whatever that is, don't always lay it on just the one parent. So they're the always a bad guy and you're always going. You wanna cause that conflict. They might act like they're okay with it, but they're not, because they're always the one that's having to do that. It's gonna be an issue.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be an issue, and not only will this ruin your relationship with your spouse, it'll ruin your relationship with your kids and it just the whole family. It will just mess up the dynamic that you have as a family. It's super important that we are very careful about how our kids are viewing us. Not that we're gonna be secretive or hiding things from our kids or whatever, but they shouldn't see us disagreeing with one another in front of them. Right, we can have discussions, but if there's something that we need to talk about, if there's something that we need to address that we don't agree on about a situation that involves our children, we do that in private first. We hash it on in private, okay.
Speaker 2:Here's why I think this most of the time, my husband will be like well, I think you're being a little too soft and most of the time I am so I have to be like okay, and it'll be like you're gonna be too hard and some of my kids I'm gonna tell them myself some of my kids I'm very soft on and others I'm like oh no, oh no, oh no. It's just the different temperament of your children and you know what they can handle and you know what's in them and some of my kids need a little bit more correction than others. I won't say any names, but it's funny, but it's important. You've got to make sure that you guys are together on these things and you make it right before you get in front of your children, before you set that correction or discipline or even guidelines for your family. Get together on it and if you can't get help.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:There's nothing wrong with seeking out somebody's opinion. If you guys can't meet in the middle, then get someone else involved, not your mom or your dad or your brother or your sister. Get a professional. Get there's family therapy, there's all these different things. There's books, there's I mean, how many other podcasts? There's all these things where you can go for information. And it doesn't mean you're gonna agree on everything everyone tells you, but it does help you kind of think outside of what you've always known, what you've always thought that you would do. So very important. If you can't come to agreement, get a third party involved.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's me, that's you. You're number 10.
Speaker 2:I'm number 10, I'm finishing it up. Neglecting self-care, ignoring personal well-being or allowing individual stressors to overwhelm the marriage can result in burnout and strain the relationship. So true, you see, sometimes people and maybe they're sickly or something and they just don't care anymore. And I'm not blaming anyone, because being sick is rough, absolutely it is tough, but you have to care enough about yourself and about your spouse to try to be the best version of yourself. That's super important that we are taking care of ourselves. We're not allowing ourselves to be so stressed and depleted that we have nothing left to give to our husband or wife. We've got to make sure that we're minimizing the stresses. However, we can exercise prayer, meditation, whatever that is, so that you have some left in the tank for your spouse.
Speaker 1:Totally, and we understand there are some sicknesses, some elements that are debilitating right, but there's some people that will take a sickness and make it debilitating and in and of itself it's not but they allow that to take over them. Or they allow their not inability but they're disregard for working out or eating healthy or whatever, just basically like throwing up their hands and walking away. I'm a little overweight, so I'm not like running five Ks daily. I'm not at the peak of it.
Speaker 2:You're an appellate on dad.
Speaker 1:come on I am appellate on dad on Facebook. I do have appellate on, though I have written no, this year you're in C-skimmy, chris, we're doing it.
Speaker 1:But so I'm not casting stones and I understand we talk about this. There's different times in your life that it's crazier than others. We understand that by just neglecting we all know what neglecting is you can look in the mirror and be like I'm neglecting myself. You always go out. You know, wife, if you go out and you don't care what you look like, you are all unkept and frumpy and all just look a mess. Come on, step up your game, husband. If you go out, don't care. You got a ripped T-shirt. Hey, if you're working, I understand that, but just every day you go out you don't comb your hair. You don't care, come on, you don't show your spouse that you care. They were attracted to you for a reason, right, and now that you got them, don't just be like, all right, cool, I'm gonna let it go.
Speaker 2:Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Trick.
Speaker 1:So we've talked about and kind of joked a little bit, because it is tough, like no one wants to say, hey, go ruin your relationship and that's not where. Look of it. Right, we're trying to help people, but you need to be careful because these things can and will ruin your relationship. So it's crucial to address these potential issues if you are facing any of them and proactively seeking open communication and, in some of them, professional help. If you need it, please get it and a commitment to mutual growth. Identify them. If you're both struggling with different things, just say hey, I'm sorry, I'm gonna work on this. All right, let's do this. We're in this together. Love works. Let's get to work. Let's work on it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the beauty of marriage, right? It's two people that can come together and help each other.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And if you're not helping each other, then you're destroying each other.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And so it's important that we remember that If you're spouse, if you're not there for your spouse, if you're not actively working on your relationship, then you're actively working to destroy your relationship.
Speaker 1:That's true, so true, all right. So thank you so much for listening. And at this point in our podcast, we always like to put a biblical perspective on it. And so Ephesians 5 and 21,. We generally go to Ephesians 5, 22, where it talks about wives honoring their husband or obeying their husband. But right before that, ephesians 21, and this is New King James Version says submitting to one another in the fear of God, husband and wife submitting to one another. Don't just jump over to verse number 22,. There's verses before that and it starts with Paul talking about submitting to one another. And so that's so key. You wanna make sure that you don't fall into these pitfalls. I'm sorry you're laughing right now, trying to be super serious, but we have Frenchies and in the background one of them is, I think, eating their foot off there, like, oh, it's so hard. So I apologize if you hear it. All right, that was a random commercial. Let me get back to the serious part, but biblically, Well, if you want a Frenchie, we have some available.
Speaker 2:Please message us.
Speaker 1:You can have one, I promise you.
Speaker 2:I promise.
Speaker 1:I'll give it to you, but submit to one another. You can overcome all these things. You can overcome so much in a marriage if you just submit one to another. And we think of submissions sometimes in our society at least, as negative. It's not, especially not in a marriage. It's showing that love. It's working on that love.
Speaker 1:So again, thank you so much for joining us on the LoveWorks podcast. We truly appreciate everybody that's tuning in. Throughout the world we're. It's amazing when I'm looking at the statistics and where everybody's listening. We're being listened to on so many different continents and it's really awesome to see. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Please like, share and rate, and at this point I just like to close this episode in prayer. So, dear Lord, we thank you for the opportunity again just to share our heart, to share a little bit of inside I guess you call it that we've learned over these past 22 years and, lord, I pray that it helps somebody. I know it helps us. We even have we're spoken to ourselves tonight in this episode and, lord, so we thank you for that wisdom that you've given us, lord, for this tonight. Lord, I pray right now for each and every person that's going to listen to this episode, whether it be tomorrow or in six months or a year. Whenever they do, I pray the Lord that it bless them, that you bless their relationship, you bless their marriage. Lord, we thank you and we praise you In Jesus' name. We pray amen. Always remember love works, so let's get to work.