Heart Versus Head
A podcast that helps couples fight better and connect again.
Heart Versus Head
Where Did Fun Go
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In this episode, Randy and Beverly explore why relationships tend to experience less "fun" over time. Many couples talk about how things 'used to be' exciting and fun but now they're stuck in a world of sitting on the couch at the end of the day without the connection they used to share. Relationships will all experience a dip in the fun factor - for lots of reasons - and this episode offers some ideas to get the fun back. If you're ready to have some fun, grab your partner and listen to the podcast. #HeartVersusHead
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_02:Hey everybody, it's Randy and Beverly. Welcome to the Heart versus Head Podcast.
SPEAKER_01:This podcast is about hearts and heads in relationships. You are either a heart or a head. Hearts are people that operate from their kind of their emotional center. They take into account how everybody's feeling about things and how they're feeling about things, and they use those those feelings to make decisions. Heads are people that are more logically based, black and white thinker types that make decisions based on facts and logic. Now, one of the things that we tell everybody is this does not mean that heads are more intelligent or that hearts are more compassionate. It is a preference. We can all do all of these things. Heads have feelings, hearts can think, but it's a preference that m people have in their relationship. So in your relationship, you have a preference for the way that you make decisions, and your partner is generally doing it the other way, because this is the place in relationships where opposites do attract. And even if you find somebody that's exactly like you over the course of your relationship, one of you will change, and you'll end up in balance as heart and head. Balance is the I guess balance is the good outcome. Unbalanced is the typical outcome. What we've found is this really affects people and their and their communication, and that's that's what we talk about on the podcast. Beverly, how are you? Good. Excellent. Uh so tell us what what are we talking about today?
SPEAKER_02:We used to have fun, Randy. Where did all that fun go? It's been 15 years. I love you to death. I just want to know where's the fun.
SPEAKER_01:First of all, um, one of the things that we've talked about before is that it it all sounds like criticism to a head. Um I'm not blaming you. I said we. Oh, I know. We, we, we. Yeah. Okay. I I get no, but I I probably not the fun one.
SPEAKER_02:Heads clearly.
SPEAKER_01:Clearly. Beverly is the fun one. Um, she's my fun. Um, you are my variety. You you you do things, but I am certainly a a stability kind of guy and sit on the couch and not boring. Well, maybe okay. Uh maybe it is boring. It's intellectual. Yeah, it doesn't seem boring for me, you know. You don't have to live with you. That that's probably true. I wouldn't live with me. I would I would have killed me in year three. I would have been exhausted living with myself. Oh, exactly. You need a vacation. You'd you'd need a vacation from all the fun. We're we're talking about why why they change, why it changes. So we've been together for almost 16 years now, and the relationship over time, it has changed. I think when we got together, we did all kinds of fun things when we were dating. Um I don't I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:Um Well I think there's okay, so there's a couple of different kinds of fun, right? So there's there's the fun that you mentioned, which is we used to do fun things. And when I look back over the last couple of months, yeah, we've done a lot of fun things. Actually, we went on a whale tour the other day. That was amazing. We at Christmas to be with the family, the kids, had all kinds of fun. That's not really the kind of fun I'm looking for talking about. I'm talking about on a day-to-day basis. Basically, what happens to couples? We we tell couples this all the time. When it starts out, when we're dating, oh my gosh, we are on cocaine basically in our brain, the endorphins, the dopamine going crazy in there. And so, of course, when we're dating, it's exciting and novel. Will this person like me? Will I like them? What are they gonna do next? And of course, we're gonna have this amazing honeymoon period dating. And what we as hearts wish is that that would go on forever, and that would just be the way life is, and wouldn't that be happily ever after? So many movies, Western culture, all about how they they finally get together, and and a lot of times the movie ends there or the book, and we just as hearts, we fill in. Oh my gosh, they lived every day in that wonderful romance. Happily ever after. Yeah, happily ever after, and it's it's the happy. Right. But heads don't look at it that way, right?
SPEAKER_01:Uh no, I think I think heads take a very functionalist approach to a relationship. It's it's more about that relationship fitting into to life and to work and to career and to to hobbies and and how does the relationship kind of make it let me let me use uh an analogy, I guess, and and I know you'll have a crazy one here in in a little while when one pops into your head, but let me let me tell you how I kind of kind of think about this. Hearts are like steak. Heads are kind of like salt. Okay. Um I I I think you look at the relationship kind of as the main course of life, and the most important thing I think heads kind of approach it from the perspective of it it makes all the other things better, it makes life better, it makes life easier, it makes to have a partner that understands us and helps us and and all of those things.
SPEAKER_02:Salt is essential for life.
SPEAKER_01:Salt is absolutely essential. So steak. So is steak. Yeah. Um, sorry, uh I probably some vegans and vegetarian folks out there. It could be a soy burger. I think maybe that's kind of the difference in in my mind how we how we kind of look at it. You need both. Right. Um, steak's no good without salt, salt's no good without steak. Also also not true. Both can stand on their own.
SPEAKER_02:Right. I do have an analogy.
SPEAKER_01:But it brings it together. You do have an analogy. Wonderful. Let's I love yours, though. Oh, okay. Excellent.
SPEAKER_02:Um, so mine is around this idea, because it's uh this comes up with clients all the time, and because I work uh with a lot of hearts, I work with heads too. But for the most part, uh the highest priority of clients for me are hearts because I get them and I understand it. And so what again, what hearts do is yes, we we think relationship is the the reason that we live when we're a hundred years old. It's all about the people. So I think that what happens is when we're dating and that courtship is going on, the endorphin's going on, and we we love being in love. I I like to look at maybe what happens in the animal world. So I was telling Randy earlier about this story about uh I was over swimming the other day, and next to the pool, it was a very quiet day, and there were these two doves. And if you've seen doves, uh the the dove, the male dove does a courtship routine, little dance that he does.
SPEAKER_01:And they do this little thing where they like bow. Yeah, and they put their tail up to show that they're lovely.
SPEAKER_02:Fanny it. Yeah, fan their tail. And and it's it's it's beautiful, it's very romantic. And what was funny to me was that I was surprised how long this dove was going after it. I mean, he really was persistent, and the more he liked her, he was working hard. He was, he was probably a young dove.
SPEAKER_01:He wasn't waiting okay, okay. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
SPEAKER_02:Take it back. Anyway, so uh this is going on, and it reminds me of the animal world, right? It's all about procreation, the species. Now, you could sit there and humanize the dove and say, oh, he's he's flirting, he's courting her, why can't men be like this? Uh and we we see it a lot with doves. Every time I think that they want to bring babies into the world, they're out courting someone. I don't know if it's the same girl or not, but anyway, what we don't realize is that that really is biology, and you take that biology over, and that's what humans are doing too, is that when we're in that courtship phase, that's why the chemicals kick in, can't argue with the chemicals, the dopamine. And so to have that beautiful, romantic expression of love on a daily basis just isn't practical for our biology. We're not going to be able to sustain that, create that with the same person. Now, I'm not saying to just keep moving on because being in a long-term committed relationship beyond Randy's functional reasons for doing that is amazing. I love our relationship. I don't want anything else. I love you and I love uh so many things about our relationship. I guess what I'm looking for is a little more spice, and I think that's where we can help some clients today.
unknown:Cool.
SPEAKER_01:I love you too. Um it's uh the the analogy is is good because you know we we have that tendency to see that the the courtship in nature and go, oh, isn't that that that romantic? Right. Uh you romantic was the word you used. And there there is no romantic if you're a dove. It's not romantic. It's I need to breed, I need to, you know, get get this this female dove to to have eggs and and make more doves. Uh and and for humans at a you know at a core biology level, you could say that's what we're about, too. But darn it, don't we all have that desire for that long-term relationship? There has to be something more to it, or we wouldn't all strive for it. It wouldn't be a thing if it wasn't worth something.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So in order to provide the solution, hang with us, we've got to go back and figure out a little bit more about what's actually happening. So one of the things that happens is when we're dating, of course, I mentioned this briefly, we go from the novelty of a new person to then just uh the the person now that we know. And so that novelty kind of wears off, and that just isn't as exciting. We're not gonna be as motivated. Let's let's face it, we work really hard in dating to get the person, but once we've got them, we don't work so hard. Uh another reason is basically as life settles in, there's just more complexity, more responsibility. Everybody's tired, exhausted. All of our other commitments are pulling us in other directions. We do have to have jobs and work, maybe kids. So it seems pretty obvious that we're just overwhelmed. So, how can we even begin to focus on that little bit of spice again? Uh, also, I think sometimes couples have had fights or criticism along the way. We know that if we feel like our partner shut us down when we were in the mood, or maybe we made a joke and they told us that we're an idiot, then we're not gonna probably put ourselves out there again. We're gonna feel shut down on that. And I guess I would say, lastly, is just the way that heads and hearts are in general, that hearts are so connected with emotion in the moment, heads are so connected with logic in the future, that a lot of times the the heart feels that, you know, that space aliens thing, how am I going to connect with this person? What happened to us? Where did you go? And maybe we just feel like we're settling.
SPEAKER_01:As we've as we've discussed, uh I think for hearts, they feel like the head has made a choice. They we've decided, oh, okay, got the person, now I don't have to work so hard, or that the head has made a a calculation of of less love somehow, or maybe they don't feel as strongly for the heart as they did in the in in the past. And I don't think those things are true at all most of the time. Um, but it is how hearts kind of put that in in perspective. In our relationship, I think the easiest thing to talk about is we've been married for 16 years. I was a lot more fun in my forties than I am in my fifties. And so life does come at you. You deal with getting older and all of the other things that that come with that. And it's just I can't go do the things I used to do. There will be no jumping out of airplanes at this point. I I suppose I could, but as you get older, you you know, you deal with all the other stuff too. And and your your your chemistry, your b your body changes, your mind changes. So there's a lot of factors that go into this. How do we here comes that word. I I hate the word fix because Remedy. We're not broken, but it but how do we how do we change it?
SPEAKER_02:The thing about it is fun doesn't fade because love weakens. Fun fades because of all the things that we've talked about stress, responsibility, misunderstanding, criticism, and so forth. So fun is actually not a personality trait that our partner had and no longer is in touch with. It's a relationship skill, which good news, bad news, it's some a skill is something you can acquire.
SPEAKER_01:Uh bad news is I I think the word is reacquire.
SPEAKER_02:Reacquire. Reacquire. Bad news is you have to do some work.
SPEAKER_01:You have to you have to be aware of it and you have to be willing to to work on it.
SPEAKER_02:Right. So if it's been years, I would say start small. You know, if it's 20, 30 years in the relationship and and it's just dead or flat, we're gonna have to revive it slowly. Um, wouldn't want to give it a heart attack. Clear. So, you know, maybe if if notice it what what's happening at night. Maybe you're the Netflix crowd and maybe you're just not even sitting by each other anymore. Maybe you're in separate rooms. I've heard of this, watching separate TV shows. Okay, we need to spend some time together. We need to uh find something we can both agree on, sit and watch it, sit sit close, right? Touch is is a huge part of connection. We don't necessarily have to do a lot of talking. Let's just start by finding a shared movie that we uh uh compromise, you pick, I pick, whatever way, but find a way to have something in common. Movies are one of the easiest things. Going out to dinner, date nights, of course, are also obvious choices. And then uh one last thing for maybe those couples that have just been way too many years. The next time that uh maybe you're cooking dinner or or it's uh it's a night off or something, go over, you know, turn some music on. Music is always a great way to connect, sets a mood, and just go over to your partner and and just start slow dancing with them. We can all slow dance. We haven't forgot how man, it always comes down to dancing. Dancing is awesome. Movement really is amazing. Hearts, I think, love music and movement. So it doesn't matter, nobody's looking, nobody wants to judge how you're dancing, just just start with some movement and see if that doesn't lighten things up and and bring you to the next level. So the next level would be couples that maybe have out been out of touch for less time, maybe a couple of years or or less. For them, it's going to be easier to kind of get back into it. So instead of just dancing in the living room or the kitchen, maybe uh set a goal of an intentional dance night or karaoke or turn on some music, find something on on YouTube or something to play on the TV, dance along to it. You can get a little more inspired that way, like a dance off, your turn, my turn, show your best moves. You might talk about your week, and maybe you're sitting at a meal and you're talking about how was your week and challenge one another, say, okay, tell me about your week, but turn it into like a dramatic movie trailer. You know, what is your week like if you had to be creative with it? It's a book, it's a movie, make it make it relatable in that way.
SPEAKER_01:It's Hollywood's latest hit. Randy was oh, sorry.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, I was like, And then maybe you're not that creative, but at least uh here's one for anybody go back to a shared memory and just kind of talk about the old days, the times that we were out together, retell those, those stories. And a lot of times we go, yeah, whatever happened, and why don't we do that more? We should do that more. And it it kind of gives you some spark back into the relationship. And then if you're really high energy, you're very motivated, you're all about this, then even get out of your comfort zones, you know, go to a karaoke bar, belt out your songs to one another, the love songs, and maybe uh play more game nights, find ways to add this fun back into your life. Take ballroom dancing up. There's just a lot of different ways that you can take these things in different directions. Another thing would be to ask each other, what did we used to do for fun? What what makes us laugh? When are we the most fun as a couple? And sometimes just those conversations can lead you down a path where you can start figuring out more of what was lost, where you got too busy, and how to start to bring that back in. Now, uh in in kind of closing on the solutions, a lot of things that Randy and I do are when we tell jokes kind of to one another or or things that are funny, we're very lighthearted about our life. So considering the fact that we're kind of 24-7 together, people are amazed that we don't hate each other or drive each other nuts. I think a lot of it just has personal sense of humor.
SPEAKER_01:Where we do drive each other nuts. We're just able to laugh about it.
SPEAKER_02:Right. So, you know, if Randy forgets something at the store that I needed to make dinner, uh, I'll I'll I'll make more of a joke at it than a criticism and say, well, let me, you know, let's go back to the store together. You know, we gotta we need this ingredient. We're gonna have to go back and get it. But it we make it into something fun, not a punishment or a criticism.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a it's you know, everything's an adventure, and this is really the advice for heads. Everything in your head is not as important as. your relationship focus on it and and do some of those things. Reconnect with your partner. Have some fun. Uh it does change everything.
SPEAKER_02:And recognize that maybe your partner is trying in their in their own way to connect with you or to be funny. I know one couple recently he said, well, I stopped being fun or funny because you don't laugh at my jokes. You you don't like my jokes. And it was very sad. But even that can be communicated about, you know, we could sit down and say, okay, so what is it about my jokes that you don't like? And you can kind of break that down into kind of figuring out is it just the way he tells them or is it something specific? Some people are into puns and and there's all kinds of different ways to tell a joke, right?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Yeah. Dry humor or or dead pan and and physical humor and all these differences in things like that. Yeah, everything everything can change. That's the podcast for today. Thank you very much for for tuning into Heart versus Head. Something else for you to talk about with your partner and that's really what we want to do. We want you to have a conversation. If you can talk about where the fun went without it being personal you can you can change it. You can get the fun back. And if you would do us a favor like comment subscribe follow this podcast and it really helps us out if you tell a friend or 27 about the podcast Heart vs Head thank you so much for for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
SPEAKER_00:Aloha thanks for listening to Heart versus Head. You can learn more at Heart and Head Coaching dot 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 dot coming
