Heart Versus Head
A podcast that helps couples fight better and connect again.
Heart Versus Head
Slay Your Own Dragons
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Are you a princess waiting for a prince to rescue you? In this episode, Randy and Beverly talk about grand, romantic gestures and why too many Hollywood stereotypes about love have actually made relationships harder. Even if you achieve great romantic gestures and win the princess... you're setting your relationship up for future failure. It's time to focus on teamwork and kick some dragon butt together. Tune in this time around as Randy and Beverly take a lighthearted look at why Randy sucks at being the prince and why Beverly isn't much of a "sit and wait to be rescued" kind of princess. #HeartVersusHead #SlayYourOwnDragons #couplesgoals
Heart Versus Head is a podcast about relationship styles and how those relationship styles influence communication in the most important relationships. The hosts - Randy Hampton and Beverly Craddock - are a married couple who are sought-after relationship coaches, award-winning authors and regular people who (like everyone in relationships) are just trying to stay connected through all the noise of life in the modern world. You can learn more about the couple and their work at HeartAndHeadCoaching.com, where you'll learn to fight better and connect again.
Welcome to Heart vs. Head, a podcast that helps couples communicate and fight better. Here are your hosts, Randy Hampton and Beverly Craddock.
SPEAKER_01:Hey everybody, it's Randy and Beverly. Welcome to the Heart vs. Head podcast. We are a married couple who uh figured some stuff out about relationships, wrote a book about it, working on another one. We are uh really here to help you fight better, I guess, is is the way we describe it so often. We don't think that couples can ever really be in a relationship where they never fight. It's just not a thing. You're gonna have disagreements, you're different people, and in your relationship, one of you is approaching everything from your heart as a feeler, really more based in how everybody feels about decisions that are made. The other partner is making decisions from their head. They are a you know logical, fact-based, kind of right, wrong, black, white kind of a thinker person. If you are heart-based, it doesn't mean you're not logical and can't think. If you're head-based, it doesn't mean you're a robot and can't feel. It just means in your relationship you've got a preference, and that's the stuff we're gonna help you unwind throughout this podcast. We have a lot of fun doing it. Beverly is actually very, very funny and interesting. Um, and I'm here to just weave together her moments of brilliance. Beverly, hey, how are you?
SPEAKER_02:Wow, it's quite the intro.
SPEAKER_01:You're welcome. What in the heck are we talking about today?
SPEAKER_02:Today is focused on uh something that a client reminded me of the other day. I've been married for a long time. This person is not very happy, hasn't been happy, probably since the first five years of the relationship. We're we're good, we're solid. And so maybe 20 years of just unhappiness, unmet needs. And it was a reminder for me because we we see that a lot with couples where they have an idea, maybe love is something that doesn't manifest, doesn't ever happen in their marriage. And so they they spend 20 years or whatever amount of time frustrated or feeling like they're settling or unhappy. And a lot of the premise for it seems to come from this place of the prince and the princess. You know, go back to maybe Cinderella if you want to pick a story. And wouldn't we all like to be the prince and the princess?
SPEAKER_01:It is certainly something that Hollywood has created, a belief that somewhere out there is that person that's gonna that's gonna rescue you. Yay! And we see it a lot from people that have kind of outsized expectations of what the relationship is supposed to be about. And we we saw it in our relationship. I mean, certainly Beverly was was single for a long, long time, and I think there were certainly a lot of expectations of what I was gonna accomplish in the rescue. Long, long time. Well, it was a while. You were single for a while. By choice. Well, that's that's probably true because you hadn't met a prince yet like me. Um but a lot of toads. I right kissing a lot of frogs and um ribbet. I sucked at it. I I still to this day suck at the rescue. You know, Beverly will talk about things that bother her and things. I'm not that good at the rescue, I'm not a very good prince. And and Beverly is certainly a princess and deserves a great prince. And I try hard and I think I I bring some things to the table, not to diminish our relationship ever, but I'm not a very good prince. I'm not a very good rescuer, and and there's a reason for that. I don't know what in the heck you need most of the time. And so I think that's pretty common, is is hearts. You will sit around and wait for your partner to do these things, just like believing that they already know what to do, and I don't know what to do most of the time.
SPEAKER_02:We certainly pick up these ideas in Western culture. You're right, the movies, the books. I can think of so much evidence of movies like You Complete Me, or even Pretty Woman. I mean, that that is kind of to a T where he he goes and shows up on a horse, I think, outside of her the the limousine, but with the umbrella, like the sword, yeah, the the whole Richard Gere moment there. Very romantic, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and I think it it it has crept from from movies like this into the mind of all these these hearts, the the that value love and that value those those great big romantic gestures and all of those things. But sometimes we suck at delivering on it, and I think that's the the hard part, not because we can't deliver on it, but because it never really gets told to us the value of it and what exactly the expectation of it is and how it should look. We're just supposed to know. And I don't I don't know how to be a prince. I know how to be a frog, live in the mud, yeah. I I don't know how to be a be a prince, and so it's really incumbent on Beverly to one help me be a prince, but to kind of steer me away from my frogly nature and the the mistakes that are that are pretty common for for me to make.
SPEAKER_02:I go back to you were a better boyfriend. There's a podcast about that. You did have the the romance down. I mean, we had a a short honeymoon type period. Maybe that was because you knew you were gonna run out of tricks or something.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, wait a second. No, that was not what I knew. I knew that Beverly was was perfect and perfect for me. And and I knew that she was a wonderful princess. And so we actually we'd known each other for years and years and years, but we we dated for six months. So I don't think I was running out of tricks. I just knew what I knew what I wanted. But eventually I did. I did run out of tricks, if you will. It kind of felt a little bit like, I don't know, the Cold War where you know the the US is just spending and spending and spending, and we eventually outspend the Soviet Union, so it it falls apart. I I think a lot of my tricks though were oh, spend money on her or for things and to do things and all of those things, and eventually you do you do run out of money. That that happened. But but you talk about me being a better boyfriend, and it wasn't related to money, it was related to just yeah, just bringing, yeah, bringing that stuff. And I think our brain one day goes, Okay, I won. You know, I don't have to be a prince anymore. I can go back to being comfortable and being the frog that that forgets his socks and underwear and leaves it on the floor and and doesn't pick up after himself and lives in the mud. It's not a good way to go through your relationship because if you start talking like we have to all of these couples, you hear so many of them that go, yeah, it was really, really good, and then I haven't felt that good since 1994, and uh that's that's a problem.
SPEAKER_02:It starts, I think, in that honeymoon period. The the romance, the gestures. I mean, holy cow, the millennials are really setting themselves up with these proposals that are just you know through the roof with creativity, but it's gotta be epic and it's gotta be good for the gram.
SPEAKER_01:Make it big and huge, huge things. There's a lot of pressure in that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so good luck with that, y'all. But I think the thing is, is it starts some with with some of that. The problem is, is if we play along and if your partner provides that in the beginning, this this fantastic show and display of gestures, you can't sustain that for a long period of time. And so what happens is that will all slow down and potentially come to somewhat of an end or a slow crawl. And the problem is when that expectation is met in the beginning, then it does leave a heart wondering, okay, well, what happened? The problem is I think the highs have the lows. And this is where we run into people, as my example, where this person has spent 20 years and they're miserable and thinking about retirement and how it might just start with a divorce. And it's very sad because I think about there is love, there's been love, and I think a lot of those heads are are feeling what Randy's feeling, which is heck, I didn't know how to do all of that stuff. There was no training. The, you know, my partner didn't ask for those things. I didn't know they were needed, required. Uh, wouldn't even know how to how to do that if if I was given a list. Maybe I could figure it out.
SPEAKER_01:We want to figure it out. I think the head partner, uh, and we've talked about it, wants the heart to be happy. We want our heart partner to be happy. It's how we judge our ability as a partner. It isn't that we don't want to do it, it's just that we don't know maybe how or what to do. Because big grand gestures are great, but then there comes this time where you do a big grand gesture and then you get, oh well, uh oh, we we shouldn't have done that, we shouldn't have spent that money. We I don't have time for that event or that thing, and and you start to get a little bit of criticism in it, and then you your heads lock up because we're we're mostly idiots. Love you all. We we get stuck and we go, oh my god, I I don't I suck at this. I don't I don't feel appreciated, I don't feel that I'm getting any benefit out of these big grand gestures anymore. All I'm getting is questions of why do we spend that when we we you know the kids need shoes. Um it's tricky for us, and what I had to learn, and I think the thing that made a vast difference in my world, what I had to learn was make sure that I was going for what Beverly was needing. I was I was hitting her needs, and I I had to learn to ask for what she wanted and and expected and all of those things and be able to communicate that. That's super, super important that we're asking. What what do you need? Because when I really, really stopped and I looked at it, what she needed was connection. What she needed was was time with me, not the money, not the hey, we need to rent a a horse-drawn carriage and tour Paris and Central Park. Those things are cool, by the way, um, and fun to do. But it wasn't the the stuff, it was the connection. And so heads, be mindful of that. Your partner isn't necessarily looking for you to be something bigger and and maybe outsized. They're looking for you to want to be with them and to want to treat them like a princess a little bit, but it's this fake sugary concept, this idea that love is these grand rescue gestures, and that's just probably not true.
SPEAKER_02:What we want to talk about is the the problem with that kind of scenario, because we we do see it a lot. And uh I will say it can be more the younger generation. I think there's just been much more Disney in their life, and let's let's face it, it's it's a great, great hook, and it's very addicting to watch, and and it sets up these expectations. But here's what it does on a negative side to real love, to real relationships. It creates kind of a power imbalance, right? Where if you have a prince and a princess, if you think about going over to Europe and looking at the king and the queen, and there's a power difference there. Are you willing to be with a a partner where one of you has all of the control and the other one is kind of passive and helpless and and just waiting for for that hero to step up and to rescue and save us? The second thing is it reinforces the the gender stereotype. Sometimes men are the strong, the hero, the prince. Women are that vulnerable, uh, needy princess. And I'm not sure that continuing those gender stereotypes moves us into the 21st, 22nd centuries. Um, it also encourages that fantasy over reality. And I think that's one of the biggest problems is that when we spend 20 years in a marriage thinking that it's supposed to look a certain way and feel a certain way, and that's not even grounded in what is humanly possible. Um Randy is is very busy providing and working and looking at the future and and being a team member with me. There's there's just not a lot of time for him to be out with these heroics or or these grand gestures. And I think what Randy said is very true, that really connection trumps all of those things. Having that team member is is really the key. So I want to talk a little bit about okay, so what what would that be if we're not gonna go prince and princess? I think it looks more that team approach, and what you start to find is we we both have kind of interdependence. So maybe there's days where Randy is the strong one that I can lean on, but other days where maybe he's having a moment and he leans on me. I mean, that's reality. We we live that life. How about where we grow together, where we're not just uh dependent on one person, but but each of us are thriving and encouraging growth with within each other and being very open and honest and both being vulnerable, not just one person who always has to be strong. When dragons come, it's not one person having to go fight. I hate those shows where the hero is out there fighting the dragon and the other one is just sitting there helpless. And I'm always like, do something. Get off your butt, help out. No, just stand there. Dragons are hard to find.
SPEAKER_01:It's scary.
SPEAKER_02:Well, so the dragon, you know, it's like instead of one being helpless, you know. I mean, it I'm always joking with Randy when we go for walks and there's homeless people, and I always tell them, okay, well, you know, if it gets dicey, I got your back. And that's that's exactly what would happen. If somebody came after Randy, I would be pulling their hair.
SPEAKER_01:She'd be writing the scrap with me.
SPEAKER_02:I was getting my butt kicked. Thanks, baby. That's right. So I think, you know, this idea of being being a team, you know, of of working together. And I think if we if we look at it and think of it that way, it's not about a rescue. It's about choosing each other every day, again and again. It's about connecting with kind of that bridge between us, whether it's connecting over time, over the challenges that we face, and recognizing that we have each other. We we don't need more than that.
SPEAKER_01:All these things make you stronger. They they make you better. As a person, as a partner, and as a couple, when you work through all these things together, when you both fight the dragons, you come away from that very, very strong and on the same team.
SPEAKER_02:So some final tips for hearts. Really kind of question these needs and expectations that you have. And when you look at them, do they seem grounded in reality or a bit fiction, I guess? Do they do they seem grounded in logic or realism, or do they just seem pure fantasy? When you are in a relationship, there there can be moments of excitement and gestures. Help your partner out, tell them what you need. It doesn't make it less romantic. If I tell Randy, oh, what I've always dreamed of is a a trip to Iceland or somewhere, give him a heads up. He'll work on that. It'll still be amazing. Just going there will be amazing. It doesn't have to be somebody reading my mind or just putting it all together and surprising me as this helpless person.
SPEAKER_01:I'm super glad to hear that it doesn't have to be somebody reading your mind because that's the part of it that heads suck at.
SPEAKER_02:Hearts, when you look at your expectations, when you look at whether they're grounded in reality, are these things even possible to request of your partner? I think what you always want to remember is we don't really need rescued. We are good enough, we are lovable, we're amazing. If we put ourselves in that situation where we we think we need rescued or we're expecting someone to rescue us, it just sends the message that there's a there's a problem, there's an issue, that we we can't just rescue ourselves. While it's romantic on one hand, it also is really not doing us any favors as hearts to think of ourselves that way. And I would challenge Hearts to kind of look at that programming that we get as kids and to think about maybe it would be better if I just found someone who was more that team member, someone that we together are that partnership.
SPEAKER_01:It is really important, Hearts, that that you hear this because what Beverly's saying is absolutely true. You in order to be the princess that needs rescued, you gotta be in a bit of a victim kind of mindset, and that's not a healthy thing to be in the relationship where you're constantly waiting. Because if you're constantly waiting, Beverly, if you're constantly waiting for me, your head partner, to rescue you.
SPEAKER_02:We're gonna drown.
SPEAKER_01:You're gonna be in trouble. We're club, club, club, club, we're dragon food, baby. Because we can't, we just can't always be that too much pressure, and there's stuff going on in our lives, too. And and it doesn't work very well for couples. And we've we've kind of figured it out in our relationship, and I still love big grand gestures and love doing stuff for Beverly because she's absolutely awesome, and she will always, always be my princess. That's the podcast for today. Thanks for checking out Heart vs. Head. Be sure to like, subscribe, comment, or email us at info at heartandheadcoaching.com. Love hearing from all of you out there. Have a wonderful week. We'll talk to you next time.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to Heart vs. Head. You can learn more at Heartandheadcoaching.com and check out new podcast episodes every Wednesday. If you have a question for Randy and Beverly, send an email to info at Heart and Head Coaching.com.
