Marriage Health with James & Teri Craft
With backgrounds in therapy and coaching, James and Teri Craft help your marriage through issues with communication, intimacy, conflict, or if you're just fighting to fall back in love with your partner. Aside from their certifications, the reason why James and Teri are so passionate about helping your marriage through challenges is because they've walked through the hardest things in their marriage and they wouldn't have made it if it weren't for help.
If you are fighting for your marriage, don’t face this fight alone.
Marriage Health with James & Teri Craft
Couples Who Make it Have THIS (One Habit of HAPPY Marriages)
Unlock the full potential of your marriage as James and Teri Craft, seasoned guides in the realm of relationship growth, join us to share their insights on nurturing a lifelong partnership. Imagine your marriage as a musical instrument, with each mistake a note that, rather than signaling defeat, harmonizes into a symphony of deeper understanding. In this episode, we uncover the importance of a growth mindset, drawing from personal stories and the Crafts' expertise to demonstrate how embracing the learning curve can transform your relationship, helping you and your spouse to rediscover dreams that may have been buried under the weight of daily distractions.
As we journey beyond the initial bliss of the honeymoon, the reality of maintaining that connection often fades into the background. This conversation tackles the drift that can occur even in the best of marriages, as we get caught up in the rhythm of our busy lives. By highlighting the Gottmans' four horsemen, the episode serves as a beacon of hope, proving that with dedicated effort and a growth mindset, the initial spark of love and excitement is not only recoverable but can be fanned into an enduring flame.
Lastly, we take a personal turn, exploring the Immunity to Change method and how it profoundly influenced my own role as a parent. Just as marriage requires adaptation, so does parenting, and through my own experience, we examine the value of mapping out goals, understanding competing commitments, and overcoming deep-seated assumptions. This episode isn't just a conversation; it's an invitation to grow alongside your partner, to become co-architects of a marriage that, like a diamond, only grows more valuable under pressure. James and Teri Craft are not just sharing advice; they're offering a roadmap to a marriage that thrives.
If you feel like you might need coaching our counseling, please visit https://www.livelifeunplugged.org/contact
50% of marriage is in and divorce these days.
Teri Craft:There's one common trait that you'll see in every thriving marriage.
Producer:Your relationship is unlike any other relationship in the world simply because you are completely unique from any other person in the world. Your experiences, your unique wiring, your trauma. You are so much more than in any gram number. Your partner is also unlike anyone else in the world. So, with two absolutely unique human beings coming together, could there possibly be one common trait, a habit, one telltale sign that shows whether you and your partner will make it or not? James and Teri are certified in coaching and counseling, so they're not allowed to tell you that. The answer to this question is yes. They've got specific rules they need to follow, but I'm just a voiceover person and I'm allowed to tell you the part that counselors and coaches can't say out loud person, and I'm allowed to tell you the part that counselors and coaches can't say out loud. Yes, there is a way of knowing if a couple is going to make it, and this video is going to show you what it is.
Producer:50% of marriages end in divorce. This is how you tell if you're going to make it or not. It's called a growth mindset. It sounds simple, but these two words mean something completely different from what you might think. It's hard to understand what a growth mindset. It sounds simple, but these two words mean something completely different from what you might think. It's hard to understand what a growth mindset means for your marriage unless you have help. These are the crafts, james and Teri. They don't know how the internet works, anything about YouTube, tiktok or social media, and that's okay, because they know a bit about something else Marriage. In fact, they've helped some of the most influential couples in the world, and they've also helped couples going through the hardest situations imaginable. The reason why James and Teri are able to help couples go through really hard things is because they've been through it themselves and they came through the other side. The greatest marriage podcast ever Marriage Health, with James and Teri Craft.
Teri Craft:I taught piano for many years. The one thing that made any of my students excel was that they were not afraid to make a mistake, and it's like you know, sometimes you just make mistakes. When I had a student who'd come and just be like, oops, you know, like, but they were so just wholehearted in the process. Otherwise, the few mistakes were just a part of their growing experience, as opposed to holding back because they were afraid to make the mistake. And so then usually my students, full of fear, would make more mistakes, and then not only would they make more mistakes but they'd be harder on themselves about it, and it became a much more stifling experience in the growth process as opposed to just being like here. You know what. I'm doing the best I can, showing up, I'm going to play it, and if I make a mistake it's okay. And so the barrier is always going to be the fear. We just have to understand it, let it inform us, realize that we have power over that in so many ways, and then take some risks.
Producer:In case you can't tell, Teri is not talking about piano lessons anymore. She's describing a growth mindset. When you combine a growth mindset with a few tools that we'll show you later in this episode, you'll see change in your life in ways you might have given up on years ago. With a growth mindset, dreams that you gave up on, hopes that felt permanently out of reach, suddenly within reach.
James Craft:You might be thinking well, what impact does this have on my relationship with my spouse? And you are just pulled and distracted with so many responsibilities, with kids and careers and everything else and you stop growing in your relationship with your spouse. I'll just tell you what's gonna happen you'll be one degree off one degree. And if you're one degree off in your marriage here today and you take that out ten years from now, where will you be compared to today? It's like I'm I'm going to go to London and I and I live in New York city and I want to take a ship and I want to get on a big old ship and I just want to take my time to get over there. But you know, the captain is one degree off from the chart that he needs to have to get to London. And all of a sudden we wake up the final day and we see land and it's Portugal rather than London. That's not what I signed up for and so many people.
James Craft:They go down the path in their marriage and they in 10 years and 15 years, which are pretty pivotal times in a couple's life, is 10 to 15 years because they're over the honeymoon stage and they're starting to have kids and the busyness and careers, and all of a sudden they get down 10, 15 years and they look at each other like gosh. I don't really know you. I feel like we're roommates. We're just so distant from each other. What happened to the love and the passion that we had with each other? What happened to the excitement we had in our relationship and what happened to the dreams that we had? You know we had them. It was there at one time. You stop growing and you start to focus only on the busyness of life and you're one degree off and you end up in a whole nother world. Is that what you want? I don't really believe. It is because you're watching this video for a reason and you're curious. You just want that love and that passion, that excitement that you once had in your marriage.
James Craft:I remember those days. You know where you're just in love and everything is about the other person, the one you love, your spouse. It's like gosh. You think about them all the time and they like flowers. You get flowers, you write notes and you do these special things.
James Craft:You walk by and you take your hand and you kind of just go over their shoulders and you just remind them that they're your number one, and all of a sudden you find yourself doing that less and less the more you become busy and responsible for other things. All of a sudden we're like how do we get back to that place? We want to go back there, james, I want to experience that in my relationship again. You can't step back and say you know what, I don't want to do the work. If that's the case, then you'll never be satisfied and what will happen is that you'll end your relationship, you'll go to another one and you'll end that one and it'll just become repetitive, because you don't want to initiate a growth model in your life, a growth mindset, so that you continue to grow to become the better you. And when you become the better you, your marriage becomes a better marriage.
Teri Craft:Maybe you're listening today and you're like today's the day, like day one. The biggest barrier there is always going to be fear. We have to back up a little bit and realize that the fear is sort of to be expected when we're starting anything new. So bring it on. I'm going to unpack this for you and I'm going to give you a powerful tool that's going to transform your relationship. We're giving away all of our good stuff. I guess you weren't kidding.
Producer:Before. Teri gives us a tool that helps us start having a growth mindset. It's important for us to have some context first. The divorce rate is 50% for a reason. Getting on the wrong track in your marriage is very easy, but there are actually four early signs that let you know when you're heading toward divorce.
James Craft:The Gottmans came up with the four horsemen.
The Gottmans:Well, hear me. Is this a good distance from the microphone. In this culture, women have done traditionally for a zillion years and the Gottmans.
James Craft:They did a study, they built a home where they filmed couples in the home, so that was kind of the lab.
The Gottmans:Owned couples in the home, so that was kind of the lab. It was just to see whether there was any predictability in relationships.
James Craft:If we weren't telling people and the conflict, the resolution, so on and so forth. And they came up with these four horsemen to define when a marriage starts going downhill. And if these four horsemen are present within a marriage, they say that it's a step towards destruction of the marriage if not there. And so these four things, are critical.
The Gottmans:A lot of people think that sustaining a good relationship takes huge effort. When somebody made a little tiny bid for connection, for example, there was a big window in this apartment Looking out the window and saying, oh my god, there's a beautiful bird in the tree what does your partner do? Does your partner either turn against you stop interrupting me, I'm trying to read Ignore you completely, which is silence or look out the window too and say, huh, cool, that's all it took the Govans when they came up with these four horsemen.
James Craft:These four horsemen show up when a growth mindset is absent or it leaves, and it's important for you to realize, as I'm going to read these here, that you kind of just kind of understand where you are and maybe you don't have any of them in your relationship, but maybe you have one or two or all four. And if you have all four, you know this is the great thing is, I believe that God can bring healing to any relationship if you're willing. But the four horsemen are these First one is criticism verbally attacking personality or the character of your spouse. Ok, criticism, you're just critical and you're just ripping into your spouse and that criticism is just tearing down. You know anything and everything about that person.
James Craft:The second horseman is this contempt, attacking sense of self with an intent to insult or abuse of that person. And I can see this is an area that these first two were really prevalent in our marriage that I had contempt towards my wife, even though she didn't deserve it or do anything to earn that. I just found myself without myself growing moving forward. I found myself in this place of having contempt towards my wife and others in my life. Okay, the third horseman that they define here is defensiveness, and this is victimizing yourself to ward off a perceived attack and reverse the blame. Okay, and a lot of that is, you can see a lot of gaslighting taking place in that and real defensiveness, so that you just keep pushing everything off and deflecting to everybody else, especially your spouse. And then the fourth horseman is stonewalling withdrawing to avoid conflict and convey disapproval, distance and separation, and you just shut down. And you shut down and there's no connection with you, just put a big old wall up and there's no emotional connection, there's no physical connection, there's nothing, nothing there. And so you have to ask yourself you know, when you're not growing, you're not in a growth mindset, and you, and then the four horsemen show up and they want to take residency in your life you from criticism, contempt, uh, defensiveness and stonewalling.
James Craft:What happens is that when those things take place, there's a deep, deep, deep dislike or a even a hatred towards your spouse and I. I see that all the time and all of a sudden you find yourself like I don't want anything to do with them. They disgust me. Well then, at that place, you guys are in a really volatile time of your life and you're feeling very hopeless. And where you're at, if we shift gears and we open ourselves up to a potential and a curious mindset of I'm going to go into a growth mindset. I want to grow. I don't want to stay with the four horsemen, I want to put them on a leave and say, leave me, I'm going to move into some new area of my life, you can actually grow, your heart can be renewed, your mind can be cleared and you can have a new connection with your spouse.
James Craft:I promise you that if you give everything to it, can you mid-course correction, can you do it and see a miracle take place so that you guys reignite on the same journey going to the same destination. Can you do it? You can, but you have to make a mid-course correction and you have to change behaviors, commitments and desires of saying, hey, we're going to redirect our way so that we can reignite again and come back to that first love that we had with one another. And I'm not saying that everybody makes it, I'm not. I'm not going to say that. But I'm telling you, if you have two willing parties to go forward and you're able to work through that and you're willing to grow yourself. I'm telling you good things can come out of that for your marriage today.
Producer:In the last episode we had the Dr Jenna Mountain blow our minds by helping us understand breakdowns in our sex lives with our spouse. Go watch that episode if you haven't seen it yet. But while recording, jenna said something that shocked most of us and it didn't make it into the final video. Are you saying that couples that experience big problems and then work through those problems are happier from your point of view than couples that experience big problems and then work through those problems? Are happier from your point of view than couples?
Dr. Jenna Mountain:that never experience big problems. Yeah, those couples who really go all chips in to fix it. Their marriages are more glorious and beautiful and intimate and astonishing than any average couple with a really great marriage. Yeah, Because they do. They get forced into work by the pain and the not giving up. It's because we don't choose hard work unless we're forced to.
The Gottmans:That's right, that's right.
Dr. Jenna Mountain:I don't know a young married couple who opts into doing the level of work that my sexual pain and affair cases do.
Producer:No matter what problems you have faced in your marriage, even extremely hard ones like infidelity, couples that decide to step up and to do the work together arrive at a happier marriage than couples who never experience those big issues at all and never have a reason to work on their marriage. That's why what Teri is about to break down is so absolutely critical for you in your marriage, and so, without further ado, we'll stop interrupting Teri and let her teach us this powerful tool.
Teri Craft:I am so excited. Let's get into it. You are going to smash through barriers that you've had for years with this tool. In the book Immunity to Change great book, there is a tool called a change map. It's a tool that I use personally and it's one that I love to explore with clients as well.
Teri Craft:You know, we might have a really specific goal, a change goal that we really want to see happen. We probably have more than one, by the way. What this does is it brings something that is unconscious, meaning. Like, I know I have a change goal, but for some reason I can't seem to get past the barrier and it just feels elusive to me. We basically start with what's the goal, what's your change goal? If I was looking you in the eye, right across from the table from me, I'd ask you what feels hard, what do you want to change? And I want you to think about it. What feels hard and what do you want to change? Whether it's just, you know, I want to eat healthy. I want to show up differently in this relationship. I want to not be a snowplow parent, whatever it might be, or even to the point of, you know, I'm working through an addiction. Okay, so I'm going to give a personal example and I just did this change map recently in my life and my change goal was I wanted to stop overstepping in my kid's life. Now, when I say kids, two of our three daughters are sort of you know, in that early young adult and one of them's graduating from high school into college age. So it's a new territory for me, but I tend to overstep. So my change goal, the first step, is to define my change goal.
Teri Craft:The second thing, number two, is I have to be honest with what am I actually doing. So I may have a change goal, but like, if I'm going to really want to change something, I'm going to have to get honest with what is really happening. So what's really happening? I'm overstepping, I'm I'm I'm kind of going in there and maybe getting in between them and them getting hurt maybe for a decision that they're making. I'm using sort of my energy to keep them safe and then fill in the blank. So that's what I'm really doing, even though I don't want to do that. My change goal would be not to do that. But if I'm going to be honest, there are times that I'm overstepping.
Teri Craft:And then the third thing is is that? What is the competing commitment? What's the commitment that I'm making so that I don't have to feel the fear of them potentially getting hurt or having pain or not being happy. Again, I'm an Enneagram seven. That means we like things happy. So my commitment is I will do whatever it takes for them not to feel pain or to be in struggle. So my commitment is to that, even though my change goal might be to not overstep my commitment because of my fear, which is I don't want them to be afraid. I don't. I don't want them to be in pain. I don't want them to be in pain. I don't want them to fail. I it's hard to hold, so hard for me as a parent to watch my kid fail. So because of that fear, then I'm committing to doing whatever I can to not see them fail. So it's a competing commitment against my goal. So that, again, our third step is figuring out what our competing commitment would be.
Teri Craft:The fourth step is I have to kind of sit back from it and understand what's my big assumption. What is it that I'm believing deep down inside? If I'm going to be completely honest, my big assumption regarding my change goal is that if I don't jump in and control things with my kids, then it's me who feels pain, and at the end of the day, that's maybe sobering and embarrassing and hard. But if I'm going to change, I have to go there, I have to be vulnerable. So I don't want to feel pain in my own life from watching my kids fail. So that's why I'm making a competing commitment to doing whatever it takes for them not to fail. So how do I change that then? And I have to realize that you know what?
Teri Craft:There's some things that I've gone through in my childhood and my teens, my young adult, even in my adult life, that it's like I just don't like to feel pain. So I have created a system of commitments so that I don't ever have to feel that again. Well, that's wonderful, except if I want to change, if I want to start with number one, which is my goal stop overstepping when you've got pre-adult children, because they need to grow up. But I'm actually number two really doing that. That's what I'm really doing. I'm really overstepping. I got to get clear. Number three, with the competing commitment yeah, I'm committed not to see them fail, because it hurts. And why Number four? Because, at the end of the day. I don't want to feel pain.
Teri Craft:So that was super illuminating to me because it brought out the barrier. It brought out the fear and my sort of belief system around this component of change so that when I feel compelled to get in in front of my almost adult child and some situation that could potentially be difficult, I have to back up and go wait a second. This is me just not wanting me to feel pain and I have to be honest and go wait. That's not my change goal. My change goal is to walk alongside of them and not to overstep, but step with them. Then they grow and I grow and that's a growth mindset.
Teri Craft:The best way to do a change map is with someone. I've obviously can run through a change map on my own, but I love it when I can kind of work through this map and talk with somebody about that. Maybe they give me some feedback and we can discuss that and I think it just also offers some accountability. So my encouragement is bring along somebody with you, change together, be a great source of accountability. And maybe there's a place in there where you can't quite put your finger on why or what the fears are, why I'm having such a barrier to change and that's where sometimes we have to do a little more digging. And you know that's always going to be when you might need a little bit more support.
Producer:Sometimes the biggest thing holding us back isn't necessarily fear, trauma or abuse. Sometimes it's just life. We can get so busy doing things, making sure everyone else is taken care of, it's easy to put ourselves last.
James Craft:Baseball, soccer practices, basketball, and you're just consumed with your kids. You're working 50 hours a week, you're having to do the yard work, keep up the house. You're just tapped out and you just can't give one more ounce of energy. Well, I'm going to ask the question then okay, what do you want to thrive in your life? Something has to give. If I'm going to give 100% of my time to all these other things but I'm not going to give any time for my personal growth, then what gives One you you give. Then You're going to have to forfeit your growth, your dreams. You're going to have to forfeit your marriage growing. You're thinking I don't know if our marriage can get any worse, but we want something different and we want something new. We want something alive. We want something that we go back to, that, that at that, that first love with one another and that, that spark that we had. We want to go back there.
James Craft:We all loved those first days when we were in a relationship, the butterflies you had in your chest. I remember those great days in high school when my wife Teri would write me a note and she would slip it in the slot of my locker and I would open it up and I would be just like oh, that's a letter from my wife. You know my girlfriend at the time and through life circumstances, challenges and disappointments, we had to choose to go on a growth pattern and a growth mindset in our lives. I'll tell you this, Teri when I go on a solo trip, she slips a card in my luggage and I have to find it. But when I find it, it sends those same butterflies in my luggage and I have to find it. But when I find it, it sends those same butterflies in my belly. And it's because we have this deep excitement and love for each other that's been developed through fire and has now developed this beautiful jewel, like a diamond, that has come out of hard work and discovery.
James Craft:And when I bring home flowers for her, you know it's not just to ask for forgiveness, it's to be able to show my expression of love for her. And she gets all, she gets giddy. But I can tell you this it wasn't always like that. It was like hell on earth for a while in our lives and we had to fight for this. But when we chose to fight for it, the outcome was fruitful.
James Craft:The outcome was now it's 32 years of marriage and the outcome is man, we're going all the way. There is not another person in this world that I ever want to spend another day with more than you, and that is a passion, deep passion in my heart. And if you want that today, that's why we are here, that's why we show up. We wake up every day because we wanna help other people like you reach out to us. We have a link in the description. You can click on that and you can connect with us directly and we're gonna protect and cover you, but we want to help you and come alongside of you on your journey of healing and discover what God's best is for you today.
Producer:Marriage Health with James and Teri Craft. If you feel like you need someone to come alongside you, a coach or a counselor, reach out to us. The link is in the description.
