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
Transform Your Marriage: The Power of Healthy Boundaries
Can healthy boundaries truly transform your marriage? Find out how setting clear limits can lead to mutual respect, personal autonomy, and long-term happiness. Join us as we explore the intricacies of creating balanced relationships with James and Teri Craft, seasoned relationship counselors who bring a wealth of experience and real-life examples to the conversation.
In relationships where boundaries are blurred or non-existent, individual identities can get lost, leading to an overwhelming dynamic for one partner. We discuss the importance of external boundaries to protect oneself from verbal abuse and emotional projection. Learn how confronting fears of rejection and conflict can pave the way for healthier interactions and mutual respect. Through personal anecdotes and practical advice, James and Teri guide listeners on the path to establishing these essential boundaries.
Misconceptions about boundaries often paint them as punitive rather than protective. This episode tackles these myths head-on, emphasizing that boundaries are vital for self-respect and mutual understanding. We highlight the emotional resistance that can arise and the perseverance needed to maintain them. With humor and heartfelt stories, we illustrate how standing firm on your limits can lead to a more supportive and fulfilling partnership. Empower yourself to articulate your needs clearly and ensure that personal boundaries are honored for the health of your relationship.
If you feel like you might need coaching our counseling, please visit https://www.livelifeunplugged.org/contact
If you love someone, does that mean that you should have no boundaries with that person?
Speaker 2:If you love your spouse, you will have boundaries with them. If you care about your relationship, you will have boundaries. If you want to have a healthy marriage and grow old with the person that you're with, you will have boundaries.
Speaker 3:The number one reason why you do not have boundaries in your life is because you have trauma.
Speaker 1:If you're terrified of what would happen if you were to tell your spouse no, to stand up for yourself, to hold a boundary. You are sacrificing more of yourself than you can afford to lose and it's a matter of time until you've got nothing left to give. What you need, and what your relationship needs, is for you to start saying no. Those two letters can feel impossible to say unless you have help. These are the crafts, james and Terry. 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 Terry 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 Terry Craft. Can you guys talk about pushback you've seen from couples over the years when it comes to boundaries?
Speaker 3:Well, the pushback that I've ever, ever seen, the only pushback I've ever seen is probably the same what you're going to say right now.
Speaker 2:And let's say at the same time Okay, ready.
Speaker 3:It's typically men who are saying their wife has boundaries now and they get pissed off at it.
Speaker 2:You said it, not me.
Speaker 3:That's what they say.
Speaker 2:But that was what I was going to say. Yeah, I think it's anybody in a relationship who who didn't have boundaries before, and then now someone's and the other person's getting healthier and they discover what boundaries are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you have a relationship where there are no boundaries basically there's just extremes. So that means I'm feeling like I'm completely always fixated on making everything about helping someone else right, I don't know how they're going to react to a specific situation. Or when I say something, I never know exactly what I'm going to get. You're experiencing someone who doesn't have a grasp or a handle over the way that they're responding to life.
Speaker 2:You might be sitting here listening to this and realizing I'm experiencing that from my partner If I'm really quiet and I sit back and I realize there's very little of my life that I actually make decisions. It could be what you purchase at the grocery store, what you do for fun activities, how your family spends vacations, what your career looks like. I mean, there may be multiple places where you're finding out that you really, truly have very little say over. We should all be willing to say, hey, let's go to the place you love to eat for dinner on Friday night, or vice versa. Our partner would say the same thing hey, you know, we've been doing my jam for a while, let's do yours. It's very different when I get decades into a relationship and I'm sitting there going. I actually haven't voiced my opinion in 20 years, and why can't I say this is not okay, why?
Speaker 3:When a couple has lived some years in their marriage where there's no boundaries, they're jumping into each other's messes and they're kind of enmeshed with one another and they're not distinguished as individuals. It's messy, it's absolutely messy, and then all of a sudden one of them goes to therapy and they start to realize, wait a second, I'm completely enmeshed with my wife or my husband. They start to pull away and say, wait a second, I'm done being responsible for my spouse's destructive behaviors. That could be destructive behavior of what the words would be, spoken, actions being lived out or even coping mechanisms, and behavior that would be destructive to themselves and their marriage, their family and so on.
Speaker 1:If this is feeling relatable at all. It's going to be okay. There is a way forward. You have the power to set boundaries.
Speaker 3:A great example of an external boundary in your communication is this let's just say, one spouse is just feeling out of control, feeling like they just are failing or they're being rejected by their boss or their peers, or they just feel like they're not doing well and they start to project onto you. They're out of control, they're saying things that are really bad, biting, belittling, they're cursing at you and it can be very traumatic to you. It can be very traumatic to anybody. This is where an external boundary comes in is when you step back and you stand tall, not in defiance but in confidence, and say hold on a second, I don't want to be spoken to like that. And so if you want to talk like that, you know what you're gonna have to do it somewhere else because I'm not gonna allow you to speak to me that way.
Speaker 3:If you want to communicate with me, then we can talk as two adults, but I am not the child. If you're able to stand tall with confidence and be able to speak truth and say hold on a second, I don't want you to speak to me that way. Hey, that felt very shameful. You know what. That was very hurtful. The way you spoke to me that way or what you said was very demeaning to me and it didn't feel good and I'm going to ask you that you would step back. If you need to take some time, that's fine, or if you need to go and connect with somebody else, deal with what you need to deal with, but I want to be a partner to you when you're able to meet me together as an adult and we're eye to eye, we're peers in this and we can walk forward together.
Speaker 1:I know what you're thinking Whoa, I could never do that. Or I tried that and it made things worse.
Speaker 3:What you might be thinking here today. Well, james, I tried that and it didn't go well. I stood up for myself and my spouse land blasted me and made me pay the price for saying that. Well, yes, I understand and I hear you and I see you, and that's a problem that probably connects to a deep trauma wound in your life. But it doesn't mean that we can't work towards that healthy perspective or boundary in your life.
Speaker 3:In a marriage, if someone is being abusive I'm going to say that word they're being abusive with their words and their actions towards you and you look at them and say you know what? I can't meet you and I love the words spoken that way because it's truth I can't meet you in that place. My body, my mind, my heart can't do it any longer. I can't meet you in that destructive place. And so, until you are able to come to me with respect and kindness, it doesn't mean that we can't deal with very difficult situations. It doesn't even mean that we can't deal with your fear, your anger or your disappointments. But I can't do it. If you come to me in a destructive way that's tearing me down, I can't do it, and you stand tall in that and be able to speak to them with truth and kindness.
Speaker 1:If you're struggling with this, that's okay For most people working to start holding boundaries. It's a process, not in overnight change.
Speaker 2:The first thing I usually ask my clients to do is go back and observe your environment. Where are you experiencing some of those things where you know that you should be doing something, you know that you should be responding in a healthy way, but you're not? It could be something very little, like I said, like not using your voice for little things around the house or ways that we interact, could be all the way up to there's something terribly wrong in my relationship and I know there might be lying going on, or I know there might be behavior behind the scenes that's happening and I just am too afraid to confront it. So very little things all the way up to very big things. But at the end of the day, I'm still experiencing in my body. I'm experiencing the tension point of knowing that I should be doing something, I should be saying something, but I'm not.
Speaker 2:And listen. In my own life this was hard for me. I had a really hard time doing that. I think I did a really good job in certain areas. You know, somebody said or did something to my child. I mean, are you kidding me, right? I, you know, go into mama bear. But when it came to certain relational aspects, I had a really hard time tolerating rejection. I had a really hard time experiencing someone else not being okay with me or someone being angry, and that was really hard for me to tolerate. So I just did whatever I could to make sure that those around me didn't get angry or didn't experience rejection toward me. And listen, you might be experiencing this. You're afraid to say something, and I want there to be change. Really, honestly, everybody struggles in this area to a degree. We all do Things that you've experienced that have told you yeah, don't use your voice that way or don't have a boundary there, because if you do, then you're going to experience rejection pain. It could even be abuse from the past.
Speaker 3:The number one reason why you do not have boundaries in your life is because you have trauma. This is critical because in that fear it will drive us to make decisions so that we're pleasing the other person rather than respecting ourselves. Let me say that one more time because it's important for you to hear that You'll start to make decisions to please your partner rather than to respect yourself. And if it's an abusive situation where maybe shame or belittling or degrading or just biting kind of language that will be allowed in the relationship, and you will do anything in your life, anything you can, so that you prevent yourself from experiencing that trauma again, so you will allow other people to have control over you and have no boundaries, so that you'll never experience that trauma again.
Speaker 1:Beyond confronting our trauma, in order to get to the point where we can communicate and hold boundaries, a huge paradigm shift needs to happen. We need to stop feeling responsible for our partner and start feeling responsible for ourself.
Speaker 3:How many people do you feel responsible for? If your answer is more than one, then you have an issue with boundaries In your marriage. You feel completely responsible for your spouse and I want to distinguish the difference between two terms okay, responsible for and responsible to. I'm called to be responsible for me. Okay, my actions, my responses, how I interact and how I don't interact, and so on and so forth. I'm responsible for myself. I can't be responsible for other people. But when I try to control my wife and I try to make her say things and manipulate gaslight, so on and so forth, and I'm trying to be responsible for her so that she says the right thing, or the right thing for what I want to hear or others want to hear, you know that is not healthy in that marriage the right thing for what I want to hear or others want to hear. You know that is not healthy in that marriage. But I need to shift and say I'm responsible to my wife, okay, as she's responsible for herself.
Speaker 2:I had to learn the difference between a boundary and also just telling somebody to do something Like I can't say to you, you have to do X, Y, Z. A boundary is basically me saying you can do what you need or want to do, but if you want to be in a relationship with me, that's not going to cut it, that's not gonna be okay. So if I have a spouse who repeatedly, emotionally, is abusing me maybe that's through sarcasm, could be aggression, it could be a rage and anger I just keep saying stop, you have to change your ways. You are out of control. You need to go to counseling, all of those things. Right, Okay, that's a request. You know you need to go to counseling or pointing out an observation. You're doing this.
Speaker 2:A boundary says when you talk to me that way, that's hurtful and it's excruciating and I'm not going to put myself in that situation any longer. Or when you do that, I'm going to have to have a boundary and I'm not going to continue to communicate when you are communicating that way Until you can bring it back down to normal types of communication. I'm not going to be a part of that. So a boundary is about who I am in this situation.
Speaker 3:We hear boundaries and we think of a punishment. You're being punished, you're going to be put in the penalty box. Actually, boundaries are for you that you're putting up and then I have to respect those boundaries. That makes sense. So it's not me being put in the penalty box, it's just for me to have clarification how you're going to operate and I have to respect those boundaries of yours so that we can have connection with one another. I'm not being penalized and put in the penalty box. But if I'm insecure and I'm focused on me, all I see is a penalty box. I'm being put out there. I don't get to be a part of what you're doing or who you are and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and podcasts and YouTube channels where therapists and coaches give relationship advice. It's hard to not think, yeah, I can't do that. They give advice expecting us to be perfect In a fight. No one is perfect or human. Sometimes we might say the wrong things before we learn to say some of the right things. So, okay, switching gears, Are you guys doing okay?
Speaker 3:No, you know, I'm going to put a boundary up to that.
Speaker 1:I don't really want to switch gears.
Speaker 3:Just getting to know us a little too much. I think we need to be careful.
Speaker 2:You won't really know us until I cuss you out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not until you cuss me out, then I cuss you out. Yeah, not until you cuss me out, then you'll find out. The real Terry, the Italian Terry, comes out.
Speaker 1:How frequently will you get cussed out?
Speaker 3:I actually don't cuss at him.
Speaker 2:That just cleared my throat. No, I just will say I'll say cuss words, Wait a second, I say cuss words in your general vicinity and I only have to say it at you, if you don't. They're reserved for those moments Because I married an eight and so sometimes he puffs up and I'm just like there's no other way but just to pop him back frequently. I don't know. I mean, you know I'm not really a horrible cusser, but you know I'm not afraid to cuss anymore. We never cuss in our house for years.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:But there was oppression there too.
Speaker 3:No, there was. We had a hard time saying s*** at d***. It was hard. It was hard. Nancy had to work with him for like four years. She had to beat the crap out of me for saying just the word ass or something, man.
Speaker 2:He couldn't do it like in his group for like years. I could not cuss. She's like James, you can't even cuss.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sorry, I had to do it Just to talk about you. Sorry, I'm just giving you a lot of clips today. Oh, but the question you asked, a question we never answered. That it's pretty much every week.
Speaker 2:No, it's not. Well then, don't act like that, I don't have to do it. I usually don't have people come into my office and go hey, I'm having this fabulous time in my relationship, everything's perfect. We're struggling with boundaries. Most of the time I have people come into my office and they say hey, I'm struggling with boundaries because I'm hurting. So then they open my office and it's like hey, we're having a lot of trouble and most of those things we can point back to boundaries, because in the initial establishing of the relationship there wasn't really sort of an understanding of where I end and you begin and where you end and I begin, and we just sort of clumped together like this big ball of spaghetti, and then we end up wanting to have autonomy and it's like what are you doing? The spaghetti has worked. I like the spaghetti the way it is. It's worked for me and I'm sitting back going. Maybe it doesn't for me anymore.
Speaker 2:What if we got curious and we were able to think about what we both are responsible for and what we're responsible to? We're responsible for ourselves and we're responsible to each other. And what if we could establish something more healthy that actually puts both of us in a place where we both feel seen and heard. What if, at first, if you enter a relationship with no boundaries and then you start having boundaries, oh yeah, it feels really hard at first. Most people aren't going to like that. They're going to be like wait a second. This isn't the way I like it, because I've had control. But if we can hang in there and we can both be curious and do the work that we need to do to have a healthy relationship, what we find it's happy, it's peaceful, I'm seen and heard and you're seen and heard. And what does that do? At the end of the day? It moves me toward the love of my life instead of feeling isolated and unloved. A boundary really needs to be looked at, as it's my communication of what I feel is an appropriate way to treat me At the end of the day.
Speaker 2:If I want to be in a healthy relationship and I'm working toward that and my spouse and my partner are, you know we're trying to do that then I have to communicate that. So it needs to be clear. A really really good guideline for this is that if I'm going to want change of any kind, that needs to be communicated when I maybe start to step back from that. If I say, hey, you know what, I don't like it when, and then fill in the blank, or it feels uncomfortable when, or I don't wanna be a part of this. Right, I have to be able to communicate that I don't want to spend money without having a budget anymore. I don't like it when I'm communicated to in that way and I want to put a boundary up. You know I'm going to remove myself from the situation when that's happening and I need you to understand why when that's happening and I need you to understand why. So I need to communicate it.
Speaker 2:If we want to have healthy boundaries, you've got to communicate them. It helps us to step outside of the situation and make the person who is in the situation that is kind of stepping over the line and doing things that are not okay, it helps us to step away from that and they need to be responsible for themselves now. So if that means that I have to say, hey, you now are responsible for the dinner, if you don't like it the way I make it, then you know what. Here's all the ingredients. More power to you.
Speaker 2:Or if we're not gonna be able to communicate in a way that feels as if I'm being respected, then I'm not going to be a part of this communication and I'll see you in 30 minutes. I'll see you in an hour. If we can try to do this again, we'll try it again. But we're not going to do this cycle of me feeling as if I'm powerless and mistreated. I'm going to remove myself from that. That's my choice, that's my power. You can do whatever you want, but if you want to have a relationship with me, then this is how I'm asking for you to show up.
Speaker 3:You are going to be faced with the realities of hard things in life. What are you going to do with them? Are you going to allow them to control you or are you going to control them?
Speaker 1:or are you going to control them?
