Episode 29: The One for Anyone on the Chaotic Joy Ride that Comes After "I Do", Guest Hosted by Kevin & Kyle (The Husbands)

We're stripping away the Instagram filters and diving headfirst into what marriage ACTUALLY looks like when the wedding photos are collecting dust and someone's leaving whiskers in the sink. This episode of The Real Mom Hub brings together two couples who are knee-deep in marriage and parenthood (and probably a pile of laundry) to spill the tea on what happens when those romantic vows meet the reality of joint bank accounts and arguing about whose turn it is to clean the bathroom. Spoiler alert: nobody's marriage looks like The Notebook, and we actually like it that way.

Main Topics & Discussion

The Foundation of Marriage (Or: Who Are You and What Have You Done With My Spouse?)

Remember that person you married? Plot twist: they're now a completely different human. We chat all about the identity crisis that is long-term commitment. From "I'll love you forever exactly as you are" to "WHO KEEPS LEAVING THE LIGHTS ON?!"—we cover it all. One husband confessed he'd barely recognize his five-years-ago self, admitting, "I'm a different person now... I have so many different values and priorities, and half of that's kids." The other half? Probably learning to tolerate your spouse's inability to load the dishwasher correctly.

Communication Breakthroughs (Or: How to Fight Without Someone Sleeping on the Couch)

Want to know the secret to staying married? Turns out fighting BETTER, not less. We spill the beans on embarrassingly bad early arguments (2 drinks in and suddenly everyone's a dramatic defense attorney) and how they learned to decode each other's conflict styles. One wife termed it "emotional sobriety" -- making sure you're in a calm state for tough convos. Most shocking revelation? That whole "never go to bed angry" advice your great-aunt gave you at your wedding? Complete and utter bullfish. Sometimes sleeping on it is exactly what your petty argument about who forgot to buy milk needs. You're welcome.

Life With Two Kids vs. One (Or: Goodbye Sanity, Hello Chaos)

You thought one kid was a game-changer? Laughs in two under five. Our brave parent-warriors break down the hilarious reality check that is adding a second tiny dictator to your household. The biggest revelation? Learning to give "less fishes" about basically everything. Clean floors? Nope. Bathroom privacy? A distant memory. Yet somehow, these sleep-deprived couples report their marriages are STRONGER in the chaos. Stockholm syndrome? Perhaps. But we're here for it. Thank you for being a part of the Real Mom Hub!

Host & Show Info

Hosted by: Cally & Emily O’Leary

About the Hosts: We’re real moms and real sisters. We may look and sound alike, but our motherhood journeys are uniquely ours. We all do Motherhood differently, and thank goodness for that. Let’s learn and grow together.

Podcast Website: https://therealmomhub.com/

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Transcript

(...)

i'm recording my warm ups

i can tell

(...)

what are you doing up here i'm drinking my beer i was gonna have some personal time here because kyle is peeing for what seems like five minutes right?

yeah i just double checked that too that was shocking all right continue excuse

me i don't want to continue uh

those oh yeah man you gotta get the headphones

(...)

hey listeners this is asmr tonight i have my cashew nut clusters from costco

this

is the sound of

every doorknob in my house yes

i'm glad you're here with us today as we go and explore the universe of becoming a mom

how do i make this bigger that's what she said it

just looks terrible um

they start out with like oh what was how's your day how's

your week hey boss let's start different because we're not them what you're drinking

do it it's like i was saying when i went into the mall just kidding they don't have malls anymore i shop on facebook marketplace and you better bet your bottom dollar i'm getting every deal i can find

(...)

oh that's so interesting since you're talking about deals

deals deals

that was better i hit the baseline that

i actually yeah you're such a nerd

anyway should we start

yeah what are we i guess we're talking about marriage today marriage is what brings us together together

is that how he says it i think been in it since i've seen that movie

let's let's start over did it land and

(...)

shopping at target

gonna ease into this one just a little bit i'm gonna ask the question of hey do we want to loop emily and calen on this conversation or is this just between you and i

i think maybe we we suss out what marriage means to us and then we can bring them in

oh

did marriage mean to me

marriage uh is a partnership um

going through life together and it's

a commitment to each other it's saying that hey this is you are the you are the person the human that i want to be with for the rest of my life and i want you to commit the same way to me and we're gonna go do this thing and we're gonna(...) we're gonna make uh make some fireworks shine bright like a diamond you know i'm saying

(...)

that's

don't know like on a it's

kind of strange because you're asking me this question that i have to think back like who i was five years ago you know like marriage like i'm a different person now i i bet if i met myself five years ago i wouldn't i don't want to say i wouldn't recognize the guy that i am now but i just do things so differently in life and i have so many different values and priorities and half of that's kids and then half of it's like i gotta prioritize

you know and that's just not that's not single life that's not dating life like you get to kind of do things by your own code

for the most part i didn't even think this far ahead but at that marriage question i think actually ties into parenthood which is like it's hard to think back to who you used to be to think about the answer

and to be to be perfectly clear i do find myself strongly feeling that i am way better today than i would have ever been if i was trying to get this far on my own

i

like it and i'm not even saying i'm doing it right i'm just saying like that that's just what the journey does you know makes me

(...)

how long i've been married five years okay

gonna spin this back to you before you loop in anybody else to this conversation because i need to hear

you were married what was marriage to you pre-marriage world i

like the question i should have asked this um it is hard to remember i think

don't remember what i thought about marriage but i knew when i met emily there was a feeling that was like i don't want to go through life without this person so i think that is that is strong in my mind so it's not so much like because i think when you when you're growing up and maybe you're talking about marriage

don't have

lot of exposure to like relationships and then i think you get you know into after high school

maybe even after college if you're going to college and you're just getting exposed to more relationships different personalities together not together

i think yeah i looked at

early on i was like oh you just get married that's what you do and then i think it was like(...) oh

can't not be with this person i'm gonna lock it down is the second thought

(...) oh you just hit you just hit the dice on the head right

there hit both dice snake eyes on me on the snake head yeah so i think that was

the overwhelming thought which is like i don't want to not be with this person

i don't not want to not be with this person should we loop in our friends

now so my my final question

on that did you feel that fairy tale feeling because what you just described is like what you would read i feel like in like a perfect romance world of like i saw the person and i knew i had to be with them and i'm definitely in agreement like there was a very clear point in time i would say probably fairly early on in the relationship between cal and i after we got more serious we were like friends for six months before we started dating but the(...) it there there was like a pretty stark shift in my mind of like we're going through hard times but(...) yo i can tell this this perfect person

anyway did you feel that like right out of the gate or are you saying like ah we got to know each other and then like yep switch flipped i felt it

i felt it when she made me feel uncomfortable

yeah emily does that to a lot of she does she has the hard questions

but

it comes from a place of like genuine curiosity and in my scenario i felt love i just felt loved from her and i think it was that those two things coupled together feeling being uncomfortable

and knowing that this person loved me was like oh

want to grow together i think that that's part of being uncomfortable is like getting through that so yeah i would say that's it for me

we call our friends i think that is a great way to start this thing and i hope they can pick up right where we've left off

yeah

can you hear me

yeah you're way too loud yeah i can't help it emily we've been vibing with some pretty chill

okay like i'm not shouting no one's shouting in here i heard you kicked cali out though so is that chill we're

gonna do asmr what

is asmr that's where i'm gonna

i'm gonna get a bag of chips and kevin's gonna get a bag of chips

(...)

what wait

(...)

they're just trying to get under my skin

and this is what you get when you invite us onto the podcast

i can't right now so

fellas ladies

(...)

kevin i were talking about marriage

we do and

i went shopping at target today and i got the cream so we were talking about marriage and what it what we thought it meant to us before we were married

oh wow and

and kevin actually brought in something good which i didn't even intend to do but he said that

changed so much right since he got married and it's hard to recollect that time before marriage and i think there's a comparison to having kids and not having kids like it's hard to remember a time when you didn't or who you were when you didn't have kids

do you feel that way kyle or kevin just feels that way i need some clarification no

no no no so it just like to be clear we're not different people we're just saying like who i am today right now with where my priorities are

is so different from where my priorities would have been

had cal and i not been marriaged i just like i told kyle like if that person saw who i was today there's a chance that he might not recognize the person but i think it's all for like all these amazing awesome i am a better person i'm better where i am today and i truly believe that

oh like

years ago before we were married

wow thanks kes

really beautiful

here's

who i am now versus like who i was before i got married

hey i used to like be that stock individual that used to play video games and like binge out on junk food and you know it am i saying it's a terrible life absolutely not but i feel like i'm a stronger individual now because i don't have all those tendencies anymore yeah yeah snaps for kevin and i love cowl so much does anybody know that oh okay wow kevin um

real question that kyle asked

i hope this is not a problem of me leaning into the microphone sometimes to

well i prefer you stay like an equal distance away from it

all right absolutely oh okay so really what kyle asked is he said what was your thought of what marriage is before you got married

should

we kick this thing off with some theme music do you

guys learn practicing oh

kevin's just dancing

so what i was saying is the last time i went to target i'm really going to spend 10 dollars but you know what happened i spent 180 how about that hey that's a pretty good target thank you good deal on diapers

thank you

(...)

so thanks for joining us today right cabin and cal i have a question for you both together what's the biggest shift from having one kid to having two kids

you give a lot less fishes

(...)

about what about about

the things you used to give a fish about like let me jump in here(...) is the house as clean absolutely not do we sweep the floors every single night no we're probably lucky if we do it twice a week um the the reality is like do we take our shoes off every time we come in and out of the house no did we do that before we had one kid no we keep trying absolutely if we think about it but the thing is is we're so much less consistent because we have two kids instead of just one

okay i was thinking about like eating habits or like just things that i used to stress about with charlie or like his first experience is like doing things if nora i'm like oh yeah that happened

so i'll i'll throw this back to you in the form of a question uh

wait where i'm not done with your question

oh i'm not done either i'm just asking this question of(...) how often is heering content and totally ready to play by himself

he's honestly he's getting there it doesn't last very long but it's like pretty good these days

i'm gonna cut you off real quick here out of respect of time uh yeah so you take that and you divide that by about four(...) that number you're left with is the time you get to maybe escape to the bathroom

(...)

but you better be done within 30 seconds otherwise one of them are gonna come walking in to

say yeah i was gonna say that's your first mistake is like thinking you're gonna go by yourself yeah

at three kids i don't think that there's even a prayer on this planet i'm gonna be able to even walk out of a room without someone following me which is fantastic to think about and also a little bit suffocating

i

circle so i actually think our marriage has improved but i with two yes but i think that's just because we've been married longer yeah okay what what's better

i

it's it feels more selfish saying you take two kids i'm gonna take none versus like when you just had one it's like can you take charlie right now i need some time for myself so it's like that time gets a little bit more scarce and i think cal and i have actually been better about trying to identify when the other person needs it and then that's a good skill to take it versus before we had to ask the other person when we just had one kid it was like can you take charlie to the store

and i think just our communication has gotten so much better

(...)

which it maybe had to or maybe that's being married longer i don't know

are there things like behaviors or practices that you attribute that growth to

think we've gotten a lot more intentional and this might just be lifestyle and just kind of where we're at in terms of age years together and what we want to see for our future but we've been doing a lot more goal setting intentional goal setting and like not just like let's do it and then let's leave it we constantly are coming back to it

also think we're less stressed in some ways because we give less fishes i'm going to circle back to that because i think like maybe it's just me now that i'm saying it out loud i think there's like more laughter and just like kind of rolling with the punches versus like obsessing over this one human

okay kevin do you want to go back to your question or should i actually let you host

here's the issue with me hosting is we we as in cal wrote out the questions that we bring together and cal took them downstairs so

they don't have the questions in front of

me i left them on the desk

she can hold them up to the screen she

loves me so much oh wow oh man

advice did you receive on your wedding night that's still true today

wedding night i know that's what i said kevin was so

intent on night being part of it like

i think by the time we got to the night part of the wedding which let's just classify that as like you know dinnertime and after

(...) the wedding celebration there's always whenever you go to a wedding celebration it's like the couple has to awkwardly sit in front of everybody that comes through incitement their own little two cents of information on how to have a successful marriage whether that's like the

no no we didn't we totally canceled that part of ours

yeah i did too i

don't actually remember like did we get any advice kyle or did i just black it out i don't know

i don't remember a lot of

okay this is that was a terrible question i'm sorry would you do that now i'm like

i really i really don't remember

all right now that we've rewound i'm gonna ask my question again what habits pre-kids have you continued

you know what i think i did just remember i think the most poignant one was like never go to bed angry with each other that's what kevin said which i actually kind of think is bullshit actually and then that's what i said and it took me years to get to that realization that that's bullshit bullfish sorry bullfish and

it took being married to kyle for several years for me to realize that that advice is actually bullfish okay

this is funny

kev fully deflated i don't remember this advice

well i got a lot like it just came in a lot of forms i think it's just like not the boomer general who are the ones before the boomers like older people just love to be like never go about angry and i'm like um what because for example like kyle you and i have done a lot of work on our communication styles and our processing styles are so different so for the first however many years of our marriage i like to go like hot and heavy i'm not conflict-averse as long as we're there for you know resolution and then i want resolution right away i'm like let's go in say what you got to say problem solve get to a solution done

just to clarify hot and heavy for kind of the rest of the world and how they process yeah it's not a good thing in this situation it's like you just you kind of get all out on the table i guess yeah

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i was homeschooled till high school i don't know what to tell you just clarify so i got some weird tendencies

double autondras going all the time you know what hey

hey explain it hey listen listen i've been diving into childhood development recently and those were some really formative years okay so that i was homeschooled no excuses all right anyways that's how i prefer to handle arguments complex tension relationships and then you're you know you're done you sort it all out kyle takes a long time to process which meant for a while i would just like fillet him with all of my arguments immediately right like i would technically win the argument and he'd just be sitting there like what what ton of bricks just hit me but then he'd go to sleep and then you'd wake up and he'd actually have some really thoughtful response to the problem as a whole and basically in one sentence he'd say something really meaningful that would just you know like totally wreck the foundation of the argument i'd been building over dinner the night before

(...)

so if he had not gone to bed in this example stood on it become more thoughtful showing up the next day if you didn't have that processing time

mean we we're still not in a better place(...) versus sometimes i do go to bed a little annoyed it doesn't happen that often because we're pretty good at fighting now but once i realize he actually needs time and space well then i don't get my resolution so that i'm still kind of simmering when we go to bed and i think that's okay it's all just a balance that's why i think that advice is absolute bullfish i

wonder if that advice is actually like don't acknowledge your feelings and

go to sleep that's actually what i read when i hear that yeah

yeah

is funny because this just came up for kevin and i when he brought that up and i was like yeah i've gotten really good at going to bed angry it's

like

what's up

this was yeah that's

40 minutes ago kevin yeah yeah cal so what's up like do you often go to bed angry

no i don't but i used to never be able to like i used to like follow that advice and then it was never like it literally took me to there it took me therapy and my therapist saying 11 p.m is usually the worst time to have an argument for me to be like oh yeah oh that's actually great advice like i'm not rational my thoughts are not rational no so like sometimes we still do fight it out but like i can much more easily say i just need to go to sleep also maybe that's one of those things of having two kids where i'm like actually just need to sleep more than like winning this argument right now

oh i learned this recently and i loved it let me think about actually regurgitating this phrase successfully uh i was listening to an interview and now i can't remember this guy just wrote a book he's a lawyer down in texas he writes a lot about communications um and i i think basically what he said was

(...)

if you are entering a conflict with someone and you care about this relationship even a little bit(...) if this person matters to you and your only goal is to win you've already lost the argument um just like it's just food for thought sticking with me the last two weeks so

that mean you fold

yeah it means you actually just you just roll over yeah

well okay so along that line though like in my defense i guess on the more serious arguments or issues yes i think everything you all have shared is very valid and you don't necessarily have to go to bed without being mad at each other but in my world like it was a you know if i get fired up at cal because um she has requested that the house get cleaned before we go to bed and all i wanted to do is sit on the couch and just like from the day you know i've gotten mad about it cal and i have gotten into plenty arguments about it but i also like i don't know i'm like quick to just be like you know what does this actually like matter right now does it am i going to care about this exact moment and the feelings i have right now five days from now yes or no and if the answer is no which typically on stuff that's like what i just described of like i'm mad because my wife wants me to clean the house then you just move on you go to bed not mad at each other because then that doesn't doesn't build up over time into something bigger i guess

for you that's an part of you

yeah that's really nice kevin i really don't think most people have access to those kinds of skills

i know i don't know how you do that he does he'll be like so mad and i'll just like go to sleep and be fine

wow asleep but cal gets pissed at me because i can close my eyes and be asleep in 30 seconds yeah it takes me minimal effort to fall asleep yeah it's incredible um wow

i want both of you to shout out your word at the same time

oh okay okay okay not emily oh wait sorry you and it's cal and cub i just got excited i want to participate yes you want us to do it

you're into yeah i'm sorry i thought i thought kyle was throwing this to cal and all

three of you yeah okay so you're all gonna shout it out

the first word that comes to mind when you think about having three kids one two three go chaos

(...)

and yet raise your hand if you want three kids

(...)

for all the sisters out there ultimately the goal

raising your hands right

now i don't know how to spell emily's word so i can't count um okay kev went to money cal went to chaos

sounds like two kids and emily went to first

cave cave talks couldn't get past a physical reaction yeah she went to the cerebral court my yeah my brain was cut off from the rest of me

kev why'd you go to money first

(...)

this is typically where my head goes when i think about kids mainly because we have a pretty wait wait sorry sorry when we think about like a new baby like the thing that has sat with me since charlie was we we did everything natural we went the cleanest route possible in the hospital

cleanest route and nothing was clean about it

we were allowed to have guests come in i think i went out and got all of our food outside of like the complimentary warm meals that cal got for being in a bed and the bill that came back completely blew my mind on top of like we had arguably awesome insurance and it's still it floored me so like that stuck with me of like you know you kyle you could have called it two kids if i didn't have two kids at this point i probably would have been like oh man adding another one like that's like how far i'm seeing right now it's just like okay we got to gear up for that and then plan for what comes after you know

so then why do you want three

do i want three because when i look later on in life in a big old macro sense i see the cal's family and the connection that a larger family unit has um or their family unit specifically and it's just something like to me that connection is more valuable than anything else and i think that's what i want to chase in the long term so it's like you asked me what's your first thought great i just took care of like the immediate in my mind but like you give me what's my fifth tenth thought like yeah i'll get around to this whole beautiful experience of

(...)

you know family is is what i have committed to and it's it's a huge value item for both both of us so and you know what if we're in a position where we have two kids and that's where we're at like it's still going to be beautiful

it in in our goal is i believe four at this point gal has not told me that it's different so um but like that's the end goal is is having that units that like we are there to take care of each other a new experience life together

i like want to ask why the rest of you want more than two kids but are we supposed to be talking more about marriage

i think i think we can get we can get back on track to the marriage okay

it's like how are you two gonna approach this thing because i would say having kids is probably the most stressful thing that a marriage can go through

okay i mean there are a lot of

mean to have no kids to having kids you're responsible for yeah no

i actually agree i think that's giant

well

fair two people coming together maybe not perfectly but like you then have to support teach provide for care like all of those things coming together for two people that are not the same person

the

wild part though kyle

(...)

is that there are so many people that do it solo

oh my gosh that blows my mind totally blows my mind

time i think about exactly what you just said kyle and then i'd like expand out to that thought of but there are some people that do this on their own that it's just

don't know puts things into perspective i've got a i've got a question kyle if you could quickly um put on your noise canceling headphones and not listen to emily's answer here i'd be curious on your separate answers

the world of a marriage and for the listeners kyle just took his headphones off he doesn't know what's going on right now in the world of marriage do you and kyle have non-negotiables for each other and how did you come to like this living life together and realizing like what a non-negotiable is and for example in our world for kyle and i a non-negotiable is that the kitchen will be clean every single night without fail you do not go to bed without a clean kitchen(...) no like

that's a non-negotiable for me that you do because i desire it

and i would not have done it if i was living single most likely

let me think about that i'm sure we do and actually that's a great question for us to ask each other i'm curious what he says um when i heard non-negotiables i thought something much bigger than that frankly yeah i mean like yeah things for us i think are like trust is huge um i think another one is trusting the other person to behave at face value we're not trying to make each other guess our thoughts like that's huge we're not trying to we're not trying to make each other guess where we're at what we want we we really make an effort to hand the other one the keys to the kingdom really and just say i'm feeling x y and z about this if you could specifically do these things it would help me feel better

so you've learned working together like keeping it all out in the open and not not keeping things to yourself

yeah just very upfront what's funny is the non-negotiables that we've really honed over the course of our seven years of marriage before it we had a kitchen i mean having the kitchen clean before i went to bed was one of them and now we always finish cleaning the kitchen in the morning because the baby's room is right off the kitchen i mean the non-negotiables i would say have shifted quite a lot in parenthood yep so now i want to hear his answer

so it real quick question would you say that it within marriage is very much you and him working for each other and then now that kiren's in the picture does kiren in some ways dictate

my god(...) 100 was it brook yeah brook was on recently she was like it's like a cult you you have the baby your firstborn's a cult it's the cult of the baby the firstborn comes out and we're all worshiping the baby and like what does the baby need and like we all monitor our behaviors and you know make changes surrounding this tiny being

you know you can see your face right now but i can't hear you and she's like what the hell is she spewing right now

i'm just like that really resonated i was like oh yeah i called to the baby 100 absolutely like

i feel like emily's allowed to listen but she has to mute herself so kyle can talk i won't say anything yeah

so i'm sorry kyle

yeah i think you should mute yourself

did you hear okay okay muting okay hey kyle yes what what are your non-negotiables

that you and emily have for each other and what have you learned to be a non-negotiable in your relationship marriage thinking about successful marriage

for example i gave this example to emily a non-negotiable for kale and i is the kitchen has to be clean without fail every single night before bed you

i and is this this is these are ones that emily has for me or that we have for each no it's

just both like both ways it's your relationship like we're talking about a successful happy relationship and how do you get there because clearly there has to be some things learned that you do for the other person

i think leaving whiskers in the sink

(...)

don't do it thank you thank you for saying that kevin's looking sheepish

not i'm sitting here smiling don't be putting thoughts images kevin's business are

growing wider by the second listen um whatever

been more comfortable in my life i

think honestly i think rules of engagement which we already talked about but i think early on yeah knowing that i take a long time to process and also just like evening conversations are

a good time to argue i think that's a

maybe not a non-negotiable but i think we try to adhere to that one as much as possible kitchen we've given up on the kitchen used to be used to give a fish don't the way that emily's face was looking as i had my headphones off i was like

(...)

i know i know i should have made her mute her face not negotiable

i

guess a non-negotiable for me would be like don't like here's an example if she stubs your toe don't be like oh is your foot okay like don't ask about pain she put in a very specific way where it's really better if i immediately like look the other way or just run so

really okay but you don't have to list all of them kyle and for the sake of time i i think i what i was going for with that question is just you don't like my answer that's fine no i do i appreciate them i think it was more or less identifying that like there is intentionality between both parties of the relationship to look out for not only each other but also like things that are identifying things that that you know you go out of your way to get done

think something that too alludes to both of you are you as like a partnership kyle you were starting to go down this list of like here's the things like maybe daily weekly they come up where you at least have to think about it once and emily complimented that by instantly going to like here's the macro of how we operate together in a non-negotiable way and it's like you got got the individual like the independent ideas versus the macro and like working together i think that that leads to a big old compliment and you know what that's a great point and thinking about the littles or kyle isn't thinking about the macro i think that it's just strengths and weaknesses

well and i was going to ask i hadn't written it down because he wasn't quite sure how to say it i'm just gonna say it i was mostly gonna ask kyle how he's so lovingly and selflessly

more princess tendencies in their marriage

what a great lead-in i really appreciate how you phrased that thoughtful true question but

but now after kyle said that i'm like okay maybe kyle does all those minor like the them not minor like you do the small everyday things and i know emily does some too but maybe emily is more in charge of the macro

i

mean they definitely feed each other because if i didn't do

micro the macro would not be seen through all the anger that caused by not performing the micro so the macro

wouldn't be there okay again to be clear emily pointed out right out of the gate the moment i asked the question she was like you just gave me a very specific answer for examples but where my brain went too instantly was what's the non-negotiable in our relationship it's trust it's keeping things out in the open it's not holding back from each other and i think that happens on a daily that's that's individual items it's just not specifically saying i bring emily coffee every single morning

he did for years i was gonna child oh and then it stopped well he does sometimes now the kid in the morning yeah i'll take it good trade-off it's a really good trade-off

think that is true i think that i do think about these bigger things more frequently and i also know

a kid has made us realize that kyle has not previously really thought about the future much like his brain is not trained on future it's trained on present which is so funny i i didn't know that really until we had a kid and then i'm thinking well okay all these things need to happen like all these you know five-year ten and we have made annual goals and kind of check-ins for like almost our whole marriage and we'll do five-year and ten-year but his brain does not immediately go to well what needs to happen if i want my future to look like this hmm what's also really funny though is that i mean certain things that need to happen for me like i need the bathroom to be clean once a week minimum or i like lose it i'm not asking him to clean the bathroom i think he's done it twice our whole marriage i just but now it mean it took him a few years to notice that and now the things that used to be asked twitchy for him that were my tendencies my needs for around the house for the small things the small details i think honestly some of them bother him more than me now since how would you say that's true no no no before cure anything like i think i i can't have clutter on my horizontal surfaces just from my brain space now i think that bugs kyle more than me even

come upstairs from working and the house is a little bit of a disaster i

here's my take which is i feel like over the years i've adopted the things that i think are important to you

also have become important to me truly because i i think they're important to you oh and now when i see things that aren't in alignment with that vision i think it's hard for me to hold on to that knowing that it might also be bothering you more

i never knew that that's really kind just just

not with the bathroom ever yeah i don't care about the bathroom

(...) no but it took you five years of being married to meet a notice that it happened like like i remember the first time i don't care about the bathroom well no i remember the first time you said wow you clean the bathroom thank you so much and i was like happens every week buddy like i literally don't think you noticed like you knew the difference hey

i have another question here

do you find balance in your marriage

that's a broad one can you add a little context

yeah so you know sometimes things are unbalanced and that's like where there's a weight on this scale that tilts one way or the other

no he's not going to give you any more context

i think we're unbalanced i think we're unbalanced right now

i agree kyle i want to hear why you think that

well i think we've

to a pattern where the where kieran goes down and i feel like the house kind of has to shut down just to like we don't want to wake them up i don't know that's not fun nobody wants it no we can do to have that not happen sign me up so that's just like quiet lights are dimmed we're getting tired

yeah so i think we've lost that time when we connect and i've started like a new job and so we don't have days together so i think we're unbalanced right now but i think we're also getting to the point where we feel that unbalanced and we want to get it back

new because we had so much time that we were either in yeah either in balance or(...) right near balance

our previous life

we had the ability to craft it to what we needed or wanted so that's so funny because you're talking about these again kevin to your point you're talking about well the house shuts down so our alone time is just like not really and when you said imbalanced my brain went of course were imbalanced and again it was this big stuff like wow kyle's grinding so hard he's shifting industries he not only is he doing a new job and he's in training but he's

new skills as a single breadwinner in this house right now that's our ultimate goal which is a whole new level of stress and responsibility that neither of us were anticipating when we went into this marriage and i'm like not working and i've traditionally always loved work so i'm feeling imbalanced and not in a groove yet in my day and then he comes home and the house is totally imbalanced like i'm like thinking about these bigger things where i'm like it's not equal like it used to be and it's okay if it's not equal it's just different but where's the balance on different in our roles so it's yeah i went straight to macro and kyle's like how are we spending our evenings it's a good balance because both matters they both feed into each other

well so since you guys have like what is it eight nine years of experience here

(...) it'll be our ninth wedding anniversary august

yes you've been together let's just call it a decade and plus yeah in that so there's a lot of change that's very very recent right now and i think it's there's going to be a lot of growing pains probably within like the short term but you guys were arguably for cal and i like a prime uh couple of we didn't really know what the secret sauce was but we knew like hey we want to chase connection like what you and kyle have and so i guess i'll throw this question back to balance being more of a concept of

and knowing what's needed for your relationship whether that's what's needed specifically for the other person just what's needed collectively as a whole like what exercises things um

what what did you do

what is the secret sauce he's asking yeah i'm glad you

bring this up because actually i'm gonna push back on all of emily's non-negotiables being macro because is a non-neg i guess that's a given but i feel like that's the foundation is a non-negotiable negotiable also a foundation for a no

i

mean it can be yeah

i would argue it's a staple because it comes up probably pretty darn frequently if it's big enough to be a non-negotiable okay

we probably named it we probably called it more of a value in the beginning of our marriage yeah then and not i don't i actually think(...) non-negotiable is pretty constrictive language for me i think everything in marriage is a negotiation i agree amily i support you so probably we would have been talking about it more in terms of values just

so then spin the word to value like where where and how did you get to that point and i know like yeah when you sign up for marriage like you clearly have had these conversations ahead of time but you learn things after you get married that just like continue to evolve and develop a relationship and maybe it's just outside looking in like what advice do you give people on how to continue to pursue that so you're pursuing it not only for the other person but for you as a collective heavy hitter

calves yeah i yeah i think back to our marriage prep maybe not a lot throughout my day today but from this question for sure just i think

(...)

sitting with each other knowing other people are intentionally sitting with each other and talking about the exact same questions(...) um and i think not being i think it can be uncomfortable to kind of have a formulaic like oh let's sit down and review these questions together there's a couple but um it really takes the emotion out of it and it's just it poses a question and then the two people kind of say their piece about what they think it is and um you can watch other couples fighting or not fighting um but yeah i think that was huge where i think both of us i wasn't very good at this in the beginning but maybe are able to remove the emotion a little bit from our

oh oh we worked on this a lot i just forgot we worked a lot on um only tackling hard issues when we were emotionally sober so we would say like i'm actually not emotionally sober right now if it was a tough call in the beginning i

don't remember that but i love it

yeah that's we did um meaning like i'm really tired or i'm really stressed and it has nothing to do with you or i'm stressed and it does have something to do

right yeah or i can't tell would be how i

was feeling(...) or like some of the most ridiculous arguments we've ever had we were drinking like not even necessarily drunk like two drinks and just obnoxious behavior just because the emotions spike so yeah we i think

a lot of work to make sure that we were approaching from a calm state we worked a lot on tone of voice specifically for me and we all knew it's okay yeah

(...)

yeah like we honestly nitpicked on those years we would have arguments and we would always do a post-mortem hey i didn't like how you showed up that way or i didn't like how i showed up or hey thinking back on this if a similar thing arises in the future you're actually going to be much more effective at persuading me or communicating with me if you do it this way or when you said this i totally shut down if you ever use that phrase again you can expect similar results we did a lot of that

yeah and i think i brought into the relationship when i heard no i would shut down

fully completely

shut down and then to learn that no is actually hey let's just talk more about this because maybe i'm not communicating it well enough or something's not completely aligning or it is just a no and but i'm not understanding so i think

(...)

making sure we were on the same page with how we communicate around conflict i think was huge

and no is often a fun word for me because i hear no and i'm like oh oh no no okay let me actually like it's fun for me it like gets me energized and it's never been a shutdown for me so it took me years to actually hear kyle when he was saying that to me a and then b actually believe him because i just couldn't comprehend it yeah

that's tough i don't throw the question back and you guys because you got married had a kid bought a house like you did yeah a lot of growing up

in like five minutes

and i don't think we would have a kid right now if you didn't have a kid before us because we're too sheepish so how have you totally maybe what we were just talking about

i think your relationship is beautiful

yeah thanks we learned so much from you guys yeah

well we're just like still in survival mode but like we figured it out

feel like we're like treading out of survival mode a little bit and able to start doing more of this which i don't know why how when

did you smell

(...)

survival mode ish leaving like there's obviously is a point where you could see like oh we were and you're still in it but you're kind of like moving treading water out of it like does anything

i wonder if it's when i stopped working full time

i'd say that's a good turning point i

i don't think it's because i was working less i actually think that created more conflict because it wasn't balanced

like we had to figure out relationship stuff because

roles were so different all of a sudden

there's just like so much to navigate with who does what and how do we thrive and like we'd made a choice to start thriving instead of surviving

does just seem like a much more joyful life for you too the past yeah almost two years and when you were working full time you literally had the same job in different schools so yes it actually was equal in maybe in so many ways yeah and we didn't

even like need to talk about it that much because you could say like oh this happened oh yeah you know like you didn't even have to explain what happened in your day

yeah what we had to be careful of was not saying yeah but i had that same situation but worse

right like yeah i thought that was bad you did yes yeah that's true

oh you had a student tell you that your one piece of music was bad today well i had a student tell me our whole concert was trashed we had to really

we've navigated um like how cal is describing the blitz i think it just was we we had

we grew into this place where we were just surviving and it took a while for that glacier i think to kind of melt and figure itself out and then i mean amongst all of that like we had job changes lifestyle changes um that kind of aided towards having a healthier communication between the two of us but it does boil down to communication and it's a i think cal and i just i really in the last two years have doubled down triple down on figuring out how to communicate for the other person not just for our relationship but it's like okay what do i mean to do to be there for cali

and amidst the survival like we chose to make those changes because we had relationships like you guys like mom and dad where you know we we could identify like we want more so what do we do and obviously like our jobs were part of it and yeah

so it wasn't just your kids and i never knew that it was

no it's outside influence

you guys i have two percent left on my phone

and with that i have made it through three out of the 12 questions

(...)

guys this was fun

i learned some things about my husband's yeah i

think i processed through our marriage even a little bit

good team okay boys we'll let you wrap up how fun was this thanks everybody love you all love you bye

takeaways

dude emily still scares me a little bit same

whatever i got that off my chest i feel better now you know that's whatever um i'm not scared of anybody that's good me neither she's intimidating in all the good ways um she really is i love you and i respect the dick inside of you

i such a big topic to come to the table today which one marriage just marriage like what was marriage what is marriage to you how do you do marriage successfully and i'm thinking to myself how how do we stay authentic to who we are individually in this conversation while also making it applicable to all of the people that are going to take a listen to this conversation

well i think you can like even you take the word marriage out of it and you just say relationship yeah where i think a lot of why we've been successful is the communication piece and

think kind of growing out of i have to be right like i there i don't remember the exact situation but i think early on

we were living together you know she would leave the light on and it would drive me crazy like it would drive me crazy and i don't even remember how i approached it with her

you know there are those things where it's like maybe you tell someone something that you either you do want or you don't want so many times where then when they do it it feels like a personal attack and you get emotional immediately upon seeing the lights switch on or like whatever it is the dishes are dirty and the sink like whatever that is and um

i think in a relationship you know to at least for me i think it was growing out of those things those like nitpicking things and trying to see like zoom out and see the value in going through life together with someone as a good partner too and be like okay

know if we're dying if i'm dying or on our debt like if we're old we're still together do i really want to be thinking about all the time and energy and emotion that i

towards being mad at someone for turning a light switch on or like not turning it off even though i i think just kind of like you know

dude that's the it's the principle that i came back to and i did not come up with this i heard it from somebody else but it was just like hey am i gonna be bothered by this in five hours am i gonna be bothered by this in five days five months and if i'm not bothered by it in five months you know if it's something that's consistently giving me trouble and it's going to give me trouble five months from now then yeah we should probably address it but it's like i

don't know when it comes down to things like that like i i think that is part of a successful relationship is being able to have compromises

(...)

and even just even internally let go of stuff that it seem it might seem big and it might seem like it's an attack on you but

it's not i think there's i don't remember who said this quote listeners check it out it's a good one i think from somewhere which is uh i don't even remember the quote but the thing like the theme is we're all thinking about our

the best quote i've ever heard

i think we're all thinking about ourselves a lot more or as much as i'm thinking about myself the next person is thinking about themselves so i think we're pretty i think it's just as humans i feel like we're pretty consistently inward focused you know kind of trying to figure out our affiliation within our friend group like whatever that is to you you know trying to make sure that we're doing things correctly and that might that might not be quite true but i think we yeah i'm our own behavior quite a bit

yeah it's it's like the the time-old parable of

(...)

you do under yourself as you expect your neighbors to do to you

i definitely didn't say this correctly but you know now everybody's thinking about the actual right phrase there

at the end of the day i think like the biggest compliment

and still will be a continuous struggle it's not ever gonna officially go away at least i hope it won't because that's it's also part of the driving force for for cal and i is it's like it's the accountability coupled with the respect coupled with the communication coupled with um wanting to see the other person succeed more than or just as much as yourself like not putting yourself on a pedestal that's higher than them and like that's ultimately i think what it boils down to

i would i would also add like being confident that they love you and even though they may do something that bothers you and it's probably not directed towards you in like a pointed jab it's just you know they're thinking about other things that even though that seems important probably in the big scheme of things right now it's not

what are you doing after this i

think i'm gonna go connect with cal nice

what are you doing

i kind of want to buy a lego

dude you might not have too much time left on that i know

but then you said you're gonna go connect with cal so my answer is that i'm gonna go connect with him

And with that, we are so thankful you are here on this journey with us. Thank you so much.

(...)

Signing off. Kyle's gonna play us out.

(...)

Amazing grace(...) And like I was saying, when I go to Target, I plan on spending $5.(...) All I'm looking for is the one I know

from the clothing department that undershirt that just needs to be a part of my wardrobe. And I don't understand how every time I walk out and before I'm out, I've spent $210.

(...)

And I know Kevin's gonna be mad at me, but you know what? At the end of the day, what I get from Target to put those plans, those succulents, adding in some of that glorious, glorious home energy from Target into my own home makes that $210 so worth it. And with that,

(...)

thank you for being a part of the Real Mom Hub. We'll catch you on the flip. Deuces.