Stronger Marriage Connection
It's often said that marriage takes work. The Stronger Marriage Connection podcast wants to help because a happy marriage is worth the effort. USU Family Life Professor Dr. Dave Schramm and Clinical Psychologist Dr. Liz Hale talk with experts about the principles and practices that will enhance your commitment, compassion, and emotional connection.
More than ever before, marriages face obstacles, from the busyness of work and daily hassles to disagreements and digital distractions. It's no wonder couples sometimes drift apart, growing resentful, lonely, and isolated.
The Utah Marriage Commission invites you to listen and discover new ways to strengthen and protect your marriage connection today!
Stronger Marriage Connection
Hidden Toll: How Conflict & Divorce Impact Children | Jenet Erickson | #124
Dr. Liz and Dr. Dave welcome Dr. Janet Erickson to discuss the profound impact of marriage on children and families, exploring how parental relationships shape child development and identity formation.
• Strong marriages create a sense of wholeness, identity, and belonging for children
• Research consistently shows divorce has significant impacts on children of all ages
• Children of divorce often face existential questions about their identity and place
• Adult children of divorce can overcome challenges by witnessing healthy marriage models
• A "good enough" marriage is worth fighting for, though abusive relationships warrant separation
• Marriage involves a journey from "loving without knowing" to "being seen, known, and loved"
• Maintaining family rituals provides stability during transitions
• Personal growth and self-awareness are crucial for healthy relationships
• Happiness ultimately comes from deep connection with others
"We are relational beings and relationships are worth it, and this is the essence of life. Happiness is love full stop, and our ability to love and to be in loving relationships is worth the growth. It will take growth. It's going to take change in all of us, but that's what we're born for. It's what we desire more than anything."
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On today's episode. Dr Liz and I welcome Dr Janet Erickson to the show. We discuss the importance of strong marriages for children and even the impacts of high conflict, abuse and divorce on both adults and children. She shares several insights about ways to strengthen marriage and the power of being seen, known and loved.
Speaker 1:Janet Jacob Erickson is an associate professor in religious education at Brigham Young University, where she teaches the Eternal Family course, as well as the Introduction to Family Process courses for the School of Family Life. She received a PhD in family social science from the University of Minnesota after completing a bachelor's degree in nursing and a master's degree in linguistics at BYU. She's a research fellow of both the BYU Wheatley Institute and the Institute for Family Studies and has been a columnist on family issues for the Deseret News since 2013. She miraculously met and married her husband, michael, when they were both 34 years old. When they are blessed with children LaDawn, now age 14, and Peter, now age 12,. She left her position at BYU in the School of Family Life After 10 years. She returned to BYU in religious education and has been there since 2021. We hope you enjoy the show 2021.
Speaker 2:We hope you enjoy the show. Welcome to Stronger Marriage Connection. I'm psychologist, dr Liz Hale, along with the esteemed professor Dr Dave Schramm, and together we have dedicated our life's work to bringing you the best we have in valid marital research, along with a few tips and tools to help you create the marriage of your dreams. You know as a marriage, along with a few tips and tools to help you create the marriage of your dreams, you know as a marriage therapist for a few decades. Now, it's not uncommon to sit with a couple as they contemplate whether they can muster enough friendship and reparative work to stay married for the sake of the children.
Speaker 2:Well, the answer to that question is really different for everyone. In my experience thus far, some chose to stay married until the youngest child left home for college. Others decided to end their marriage without the weight and focused on being good co-parents. Yet still another group decided to stay married for the sake of the children and are still married even though their children now have children of their own. That last group actually is a great example of how those marriages actually improved simply with the passing of time. Well, dave, we are really pleased that social scientist and associate professor Dr Janet Erickson is joining us today to discuss the effect that marriage has on children and on the family as a whole. Welcome to Stronger Marriage Connection, janet. It's wonderful to be here, Thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you both for the work you do.
Speaker 2:Such a treat. Likewise, you are an expert on family life really, both professionally and personally, I would say, as you were raised in a family of one of 11. What number in the lineup are you? I'm right in the middle, number five. Wow, and how did that family life inspire you in the work that you're doing today? Yeah, I bet you reflected on that a fair amount.
Speaker 3:I feel like as a child I would go around thinking, oh, analyzing what was going on and not realizing that I was going to end up studying that because I did something different before. But it has been powerful to be up close, first of all, to have so many siblings and be so engaged in family life. Just caring for younger siblings and being cared for by older siblings, but then watching them grow and have marriages, and us coming from the same family but different dynamics emerging in their families. Yeah, it's a gift. It's a gift to be that close to so many families.
Speaker 2:And has everyone had a successful marriage? Do you mind if I ask there have been some bumps, been some divorces, one of 11. That's a lot of people to study.
Speaker 3:Yes, no, and there have been a couple of divorces, experiences with abuse in family, experiences where marriages have gotten better, um, a widowed sister whose husband passed away, so a range of things. Who's now raising her children alone, right?
Speaker 2:ah, and that's that's really lovely. Well, thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Inside scoop in your life a little bit yeah jenna the, we know from the research right that marriage affects children in profound ways. I think about my parents and how much their marriage has impacted us as children. They have a strong, strong marriage going strong still today. Tell us a little bit about the research about the ways that marriages affect children, child development, even today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's pretty remarkable that just in the last year there's been more research confirming our decades of experimenting with divorce. So my husband's parents divorced at the height of the divorce revolution in 1981. And as you know so well, we saw divorce really spike across the 80s, 70s and 80s and that has tapered down, but you would think well, and 80s, and that has kind of tapered down but you would think well, with all of that maybe it doesn't make that big of a difference anymore because so many people have experienced divorce. But pretty remarkable that Melissa Carney would release her book the Two-Parent Privilege in the last year and decades of research confirming for her as a. I think she would see herself as a progressive caller, not a conservative mind, but saying when we look at this data we cannot deny that this foundation of marriage in a child's life is the most important foundation for their development. And obviously some are more at risk. We have way high divorce rates among our working class families. We have much lower divorce rates among educated, religious communities. But whether it's a child experiencing it in a community that is underprivileged, a lot of difficult risks there, fewer risks for those in more privileged backgrounds, but it's still hard on kids and that's what she shows. So we just can't deny it's a big deal in a child's life.
Speaker 3:I might give an example that's been powerful to share with students. I have a beloved family member, 10-year-old boy, whose parents announced that they would be getting divorced and from my experience this divorce will actually better his life. It's been an abusive dynamic. He will have a more stable environment. He will be able to differentiate a family that's stable and peaceful and loving from a different dynamic and that will help him.
Speaker 3:But after they announced it, he wrote in his journal. He writes in his journal on Sunday nights and he drew a picture and it was a heart and it had a ruptured line down the middle and on one side he had mom and one side he had dad and of course the heart was his own heart and all around it he had these questions. It was like I was reading research, because we know that when a child experiences divorce, there's like an existential reality that they have to deal with. And so he had questions like where do I go? Who am I? How will this be better? These big questions. It reminded me of my husband's journey as a young adult. His parents divorced when he was young, but he said as a young adult this question would come to his mind If they were not meant to be.
Speaker 3:Was I meant to be? Because you are their union. You're physically the embodiment of their union and I think at the core there is some rupture. That happens. That's sort of beyond the material effects, which are real meaning money's a big deal and having the resources we know two parents help a lot in the big big job of raising a child. But even apart from those realities which are big, is just what internally happens in the core of a person who is made up of two people and, when they are separated, what that means in their life.
Speaker 2:What that means about them. I wouldn't have thought about that. What it means about them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like Mike's question, right, was I meant to be? Who am I If they are not together?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what? What is it? Tell us a little bit more. I mean, do you have insights into what is it? I mean, there's economic right, benefits and those we talked about of a marriage, but of a marriage. But what does a healthy, strong marriage do for children? What they see, what they experience, what they hear? Have we been able to find out?
Speaker 3:hey, what is it specifically that yeah, isn't that just such a powerful question? Because you're right, I mean, melissa Carney's economist is going to be like there's a lot of resources going on when you have two people invested together in people that are related to them, right, there's this deep motivation to care for them. So they bring their time and talents and money and they pull it together for these people. But you're asking, dave, about something else, I think, and it's that it feels like.
Speaker 3:So when Elizabeth Markhart did her interviews of adult children who had experienced a divorce with their parents younger she also had she said the word that kept coming up in these interviews was exile, and it was capturing the sense that there isn't a home. So they're having to traverse two worlds and to choose one can feel like it's to leave the other, and so I think what parents are doing is they're pulling together two worlds into one and when they're apart, that child has to traverse those worlds themselves. And so my husband. He'd have different books at his mom's house and different toys and different activities, and he had a different world at his dad's house and he spent time with both really valuable, but he had to traverse those worlds.
Speaker 3:That was not done for him. And so there's like a unity, a wholeness that happens when parents are married. That is a wholeness for development, a wholeness for identity, a wholeness for belonging, a wholeness for a sense of home. And so I think there's something powerful that happens when a man and a woman, with their distinct psychological orientations, their distinct ways of talking, even their voice and body size, and all of those things, pull a world together that then a child comes from. That is a wholeness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fascinating, just that picture of your 10-year-old and your family with that, you know, line, jagged line drawn down the center. It's just really telling. It's compelling and telling about what goes on inside the heart and the mind of a child. What are your thoughts, janet, about an unhappily married couple kind of how we started out at the top of our interview choosing to stay together for the sake of their children and I know that's kind of a loaded topic. So much variety to that situation. But do you have some thoughts just off the top of your head Not that you haven't thought about this before, I'm sure in your research, but where do we go?
Speaker 3:You know it's so interesting because this takes me back to working with Bill Doherty at the University of Minnesota. He was my advisor and Bill, of course, started his career and he would say in the 1970s when I started to get my PhD in marriage family therapy, everybody thought divorce was like a bad cold in a kid's life. It would be painful, difficult, distressing. They would get over it. And then he watched as scholars like Sarah McClanahan and others who and Sarah McClanahan, really experienced her own divorce, she set out at UT, getting her PhD to prove this was not going to be devastating in kids' lives, that what was most important is that the couple was really happily married and if they weren't, then it would be better for a child to not be in that marriage. And so I think when she saw the data decades into this has to speak before the Senate about what the implications of divorce are in children's lives, she herself was like this is not what we thought. And Bill would say that meant where the orientation had been from a therapeutic mindset if you're unhappy, let's get you out of whatever painful situation you're in because you should be happy shifted for him to, I think, a mindset that would say a good enough marriage is worth fighting for. A good enough marriage is worth fighting for Because adults are.
Speaker 3:We all know this. We're struggling ourselves to learn what it means to be true to another person, to be selfless but also honest with ourselves and just the whole right. Self other dynamic, and most marriages, self-other dynamic and most marriages, I think, are going to have dips and we know this. They're going to be this developmental process for the adults in it. It's the most powerful way for adults to grow themselves is to be in that kind of close relationship with another person and I think Bill would say it's worth working toward Now.
Speaker 3:If it's abusive, that is not a healthy dynamic and there's many women who are. They stay in marriages that are bad. They don't know how to get out, they fear being right, independent, and the same could be true for men. They need support to know it's going to be okay and that you getting healthy and your children in a safe environment is what you're working toward. But if and that takes a lot of courage but if it's a dynamic where we're like you know, there's probably some things I can work on as a person to help this be a happier space, it is worth. It is worth fighting for that. It is worth going for help. It's worth giving your life to trying to create a stronger marriage.
Speaker 2:It's worth that. Look in the mirror right, that long, steady study of what part of this belongs to me. Is it I, is it me? And that's really well said. And that word abuse, dave and Janet, we know that it gets overused too right? I hear it every day inappropriately and so that gets a little tricky too, like, well, he is abusive or you know she is, her words are abusive. It's tough to to really understand and investigate what does that word really mean? Just a thought, by chance, janet, on abuse and how to differentiate seriousness. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a really powerful question. I think there's a statement from a church leader actually that I have found helpful and there is irreparable harm being done to the human dignity of another person and those are serious kinds of definitions, right, and I think I can say from my own family's experience that when that's going on and someone courageously leaves that marriage, it does improve life for those children.
Speaker 2:It's so hopeful, isn't it Just so hopeful? I know there's a lot of listeners tuning in who've just felt so discouraged because they are looking at divorce or have been divorced, and it's upsetting. When they really could not have helped it, there was no other choice and for some I really do believe that. So lovely, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's take a deeper dive, if you will, even just for a minute on. We know the all kinds of positive effects of a healthy, stable marriage on children. Flipping that script a little bit the effects of unhealthy conflict over months, even years, on children. What does some of the research suggest about staying in marriages where it's not healthy, not only for the partner or the spouse, but kind of that spillover effect onto the children?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it's interesting. You know the idea of trauma and kind of even low-grade trauma in a person's life and the physical implications. So I think with young children we'll see like physical anxieties, physical tics if you will, ways of coping that are unhealthy patterns. But then I think that insecure environment it's interesting.
Speaker 3:When Mike and I have conflict our children are pretty strong-willed but when they see conflict between us they become very sober.
Speaker 3:It's like that is the threat to them. There is nothing that is more threatening to their sense of self than our conflict is not honored and they are mistreated and abused. Then what that would mean to a child's sense of self, sense of safety, confidence that they can navigate the world, and then the development of coping mechanisms to just function in that world that tend to be very unhealthy and I think that it helps us explain why divorce can perpetuate intergenerationally. You can develop very unhealthy coping mechanisms that aren't healthy individually developmentally just to like deal with parents' conflict, whether I quiet down or whether I over function or whether I right, and those become patterns we take into later relationships that they have to be healed. And so I think children can whether that's escaping into other kinds of things to deal with the conflict, whether it's hiding or right in some way, not being able to fully develop because they can't, in a traumatic, if you will, what feels traumatic to them environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it reminds me of some of the the research as a graduate student I say. I got my phd auburn university so I studied with uh for a time with dr mona l shake, and the effects of uh, just listening to conflict, parental conflict on children's sleep, uh, sleep patterns and how disruptive that was, which then affected their immune system, their digestive system and, anyway, the effects on their bodies because of how it affected their sleep patterns. So all kinds of effects. Now I want to be careful here because of course we don't want to shame anybody, shaming parents for arguing in front of their kids, or some parents, like Liz said, they don't have any control. Yeah, someone did something, they made choices and I get the brunt end of this and I had zero. I wanted to stay married, wanted this to work out, but end up on that harsh reality at times Are there kind of the spillover effects of, well, first, the spillover effects of children experiencing divorce.
Speaker 1:But how can that be mitigated? I guess? Are there some positive things that parents can do? Maybe going through that divorce and the process, the aftermath kind of through that, especially, a parent is going to be stressed out, they're going to be worrying about their own struggles. How can they focus on the kids?
Speaker 3:if you will, yeah, no, it's such an important question, right? Because you're dealing with your own healing and trauma, whatever that might be. And how do you meet these kids' needs? And you know they need me so much and I want to create a stable environment and it's been stripped from me.
Speaker 3:This is what I think is so powerful, and I take it back to mother-infant bond. This is so interesting because when an infant is born, they have to bond with someone that they find reliable and consistent and sensitive. We know that development depends on it. The brain literally depends upon that relationship eye to eye, body to body and so the mother is regulating the emotions for that infant. That's what we can see is now happening.
Speaker 3:An infant can't regulate themselves, so that attachment figure, typically the mother is regulating them, and so it's interesting to think of that principle, as you're in situations like this, and so I would say the truth is, whenever a parent becomes healthy a mother or a father a parent becomes healthy a mother or a father when they do what is needed to become a healthy person, when they understand identity and boundaries and all of the principles that would be powerful in them becoming healthy, their children become healthier, and what a mother is doing in a situation like that, or a father is they're saying we can do difficult things, we can go through challenging things and learn from them and grow from them, and I will be here through it all and we can process it together.
Speaker 3:I don't think bringing in difficult things. That's why I think criticism of a spouse is always hard for kids, right? Negativity about a spouse is always going to be hard, but we can process difficult things together and we can find health and healing through the emotion regulation that happened when you were an infant and we're going to be regulating this together. So I think that that principle of whenever a parent gets healthy, even if their children are adult children, it is a better thing for their children. Whenever I grow as an adult to becoming more able to be in relationship in healthy ways, I improve things for my children and so there's just strong motivation to find grounding myself when the ground has moved and I don't know where it is, to find grounding in God, in others, in community and seek healing, and it will improve life for my children. That's just inherent to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a powerful message. Yeah, thank you. We'll be right back after this brief message and we're back, let's dive right in.
Speaker 2:We typically, I think, when we think about outcomes of divorce, think about the younger children. But what about the effects, Janet, on older children when their parents go through what we often call gray divorce after many years of marriage?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, this is really interesting, right? Because you think, oh, they're established as a person, this won't have any impact on them, but it does. We know it does. They now are in that situation where they're having to pull the worlds together and even if they're with their own children, when they go to grandma's, it's not going to grandpa's and that division is just a reality. That's going to impact many, many aspects of their lives.
Speaker 3:Rituals, christmas and Easter and All of these things impact weddings of children and I think talking through that is really important. But I think, as you were asking that previous question too, I was thinking I used to teach a class on the importance of rituals and routines in family life. Rituals are our sociology term for traditions. We typically write birthday traditions and Sunday traditions and write family life. Rituals are our sociology term for traditions. We typically write birthday traditions and Sunday traditions and write family trips.
Speaker 3:And one thing I know that we can see in the research is when a parent is able to maintain those rituals. So for a mother who's going through divorce, with younger children it's maintaining dinner and it's maintaining cuddling time on the bed. Dad's not there anymore, but we do these things and it tells me in Sunday rituals and it tells me we're still a family and things are stable here, and I think that that's the same with adult children. So to the degree that we can maintain kind of stable rituals of connection, our Christmas traditions are and it gives a sense that like we're still together, even if we it looks a little bit different in how we navigate that there's still parts of us intact, right, very intact Parts of us intact.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, I know that research shows that if our parents divorce, we have a greater chance of divorcing ourselves. Is there any way for adult children of divorce to lessen the effects of parental divorce in their own lives?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love this. So this is my husband right, and I can say right off that one of the things early in our marriage he would say it helped him so much to see strong marriages. So his parents divorced. We were late 34 when we got married but he had like a 13-year period where he had good friends that he watched in beautiful marriages and their family and it's really important, I think, for us to see and know this is possible and this is what it looks like, because this is interesting. When we would struggle early in our marriage around whatever kind of little thing, he was much more likely to go to a thought that like this might end.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. Understandably sure.
Speaker 3:Understandably, because even in his mind he's like I know that's not going to happen. It's like those early that early trauma is, is right in in the brain, in that limbic brain, and so when you think there's conflict, that that go to and I would be like what are you even talking about? My parents have been married 56 years. I watched lots of traversing of difficult things and complex things. I had no fear at all.
Speaker 3:But when a person who fears that that limbic mind operates that way, then they're going to want to jump out and head well, I'm going to make sure I'm safe. That means parting from you, and so it's just a blessing to have someone say nothing's going wrong here. Like we're in this, we're in this for the long haul, we can figure this out. This is part of growing up, and it feels like sometimes those that experience divorce are even more aware of like I want to hold on to this, I want to do what it takes to be strong. But they need to be strengthened in the confidence that they can, that you can, and there is that limbic mind that's going to tell you this is what's going to happen. You don't have to go to that space because we're rewiring attachment in this secure relationship and it's going to be secure and it'll be okay.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that makes sense so beautiful, it's so nice that you could be that reassuring voice. It's got to be really hard when both partners have that amygdala going crazy right Like, get out, get out. This is not safe and I see that oftentimes in marital therapy and I guess that's where the voice maybe of a therapist can come in and say you know what we can get through this. I don't see a reason why we'd have to go to divorce. That'll be up to you. But let's talk about a few things that can really make a difference here. Just that reassurance. I love that your husband would look at other couples and families and just say I want that and kind of almost became a student because of his own loss so much.
Speaker 3:I tell my students your strong marriages or your family's marriages. You cannot imagine the positive impact that energy has on others. And just by people being in the presence of that they develop a sense of what is possible and have hope in it and confidence in that. So I do think there's a lot of power in just exemplifying stability right.
Speaker 1:Qualifying stability, right? Yeah, jenna, do you have these tips or tools for these students to make it more likely? Right, they could be that transitional character that we talk about, because they had zero control. All of us had zero control on what happened to us when we were children, or our parents' marriages. What can they control now, moving forward to help them have a stronger marriage so their children will be able to have that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, such a powerful question, Dave. So I know you've done work with Jason Carroll on this, but it's pretty amazing when I talk to a group of students I ask them what's the rate of divorce, they're like half right, they think it's a crapshoot, they think that like I don't have control over this and I'm just going to enter into this and 50-50 chance I end up sad, you know, and I think then when I tell them, actually the data suggests very different risk, like unbelievably, like from 10% to 70%, based on what you do right now with things that are in your control, like sexual partnership before marriage, right and commitment in the dating relationship, and religiosity is a powerful thing, and becoming educated and not having children before you get married and not having children before you get married and these factors that are so education, religion, not being a teen when you get married, not having children before marriage, the number of sexual partners these are big deals. These are things we get control over for the most part and it decreases the rate of divorce literally to like 10%.
Speaker 2:No kidding, great that's so encouraging.
Speaker 3:That's how dramatic right those like pathways into marriage are. But then I think too, when you think about, as a person, what can I do? First of all, it's figuring out being healthy myself, because you know what happens as a human being is, we're like I'm just going to earn my sense of self through others, and so I get married and like, naturally, you have this very like enmeshed dynamic. That's the beginnings of marriage, where, like you are my world and if you're unhappy with me, then everything's unhappy and right and you get kind of unhealthy ways of using one another. And so I talked to them quite a bit about what it means to be grounded as an individual, in your sense of self and identity and knowing how to navigate conflict from a place of differentiation or being able to say right, this is my feeling, this is yours.
Speaker 3:How can we work together as partners to create something beautiful? How can we work together as partners to create something beautiful? And the power in that growth and learning how to do that, beyond those sort of foundational pieces that get you into the marriage, is having confidence that nothing's going wrong when things are hard. This is really pushing me to figure out my grounding as an individual, my capacity to truly love and not use someone as my own source of validation, where we get all tangled up in falsely relating to each other, and that's a beautiful process of development for everybody. Everybody's doing that, regardless of the healthy marriage you came from. You're all growing in that way.
Speaker 2:I'm so curious, dave and Jenna, both about the good enough marriage. Are there any? Just a couple of bullet points about a good enough marriage, of how sometimes we just don't even recognize it right? We think it's just so problematic to have a season of difficulty or to be upset with each other or discouraged or feel a little like, oh gosh, my husband doesn't treat me that way, the way my friend's husband does on social media. I don't see that Right. We can easily just get discouraged in our own heads. Yes, with a good enough marriage, it's interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 3:That in our world, liz, like this social media world that I think is very quick to like, there's just really quick judgments in the sense that, like, happiness is something I can get quickly, it is something I can get quickly, it's something I should have, other people have it and it's just a flip of what actually leads to happiness. Because we're going to find out right that, a happy marriage, I'll show my students a picture of a couple that's older, president and Sister Hinckley, of a couple that's older President and Sister Hinckley. He says in this powerful statement he'll say the girl as she passes away, the girl of my dreams as a child, has once again become the girl of my dreams. And here's this old couple, wrinkles everywhere and to see the love they have for one another. Now, that's so much more than that happily married couple on their wedding day. Like the love is unspeakably different. The layers of it are so deep because of the difficulties they have traversed together and hung on to each other in it.
Speaker 3:I just had a student reach out. She's like they've been married eight months or something and she said I don't know how to love my husband and I was like, oh, that is right, I'm sure. For her it's like. So I said, do you know what happens in marriage? You enter marriage and you love without knowing.
Speaker 3:That's part of being in love. Like, you love without knowing. You're best to know, but you, like, are compelled by dopamine to just center in on this person, obscure anything, dopamine to just center in on this person, obscure anything, and you love without knowing. And then, within a short time, you're knowing and you're not sure you love. You're just seeing all this stuff that like what.
Speaker 3:This isn't what I thought and you could be like something's wrong. But you're actually in this very natural process of like, now you're seeing and so it's making you insecure because it's things that are fearful to you or you don't know what to do with, or their differences. But where you're headed is intimacy, and intimacy is seeing and knowing and loving, and being seen and being known and being loved. It wasn't about falling in love. That's not where we're headed. We're headed to something much deeper and that means you're going to traverse a process where those things fill out of balance. And so I told her you keep going on dates and you keep having rituals at night, whether it's ice cream or pillow talk, where you're talking to each other and you keep doing these same little things all the way throughout, while you're in this process of knowing without loving, and I promise you, if you're faithful to each other, you're going to get that deep place of seeing and knowing and loving, and it's worth everything. It's just worth everything.
Speaker 2:I love how you laid that out. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's powerful, beautiful, thank you. We'd like to ask all of our guests, janet, a couple of questions. The first one, in honor of the name of our podcast, stronger Marriage Connection is what do you feel like is a key and there's all kinds of keys, right, so I don't know if it's the key, but is there a key that you feel is critical for a stronger marriage connection?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love. You know Gottman's going to say friendship is the core, like when you're building friendship. But sometimes you're like, how do I build friendship? Like I'm not sure I like this person right, and so I think those little things that we do, those rituals of connection, the willingness to spend time and do that, matters.
Speaker 3:Now, having said that, I think we can be like attachment oriented and, you know, try to have good communication and that might miss the side that I was talking to my husband about this morning, which is the human nature, is to like, judge another person and be blind to ourselves and it's sort of the other where it's like I try to see in myself and I try not to be afraid of seeing in myself where I contribute to difficulties in this relationship. And then I look with compassion on my spouse. I see their troubles as kind of an expression of woundedness, of the need for growth. I'm more honest with myself because I want to be tough in learning the things that will help me to have a deep relationship. But it's so natural for the ego to be like you're the problem and you're the.
Speaker 3:That's why, you know, therapists will say what's the most important trait before you get married the ability to self-confront. We want to look for someone who has the ability to look at themselves and be honest with themselves and honest with you, and if you have that, you do that, they do that. There's nothing that can stop it from going to a place of intimacy, because it's based in faith and not fear. It's like I want to grow, you want to grow, help me see myself, and that's what I care about. Rather than it being easy and pleasurable, I want to grow with you. That's what we got into this for.
Speaker 2:Indeed, we did. Oh, so much good information. Is there a question we haven't asked you that you were hoping we'd bring up, or anything as we wrap up towards the end of our interview today? It's been so fabulous.
Speaker 3:Oh, just grateful for the work that you do for caring about it. I think when that 75-year study came out of Harvard that said happiness is love, full stop. After 75 years, what is it that shapes human well-being that we just have to deeply realize? We are relational people and we need relationships, and we need strong relationships, and they will always be difficult. They will always be difficult because we're different, but it is worth it because this is who we are. We are designed for love. We are designed for deep connection and relationship. So that's where we're headed and it's worth all the effort to create strong relationships in our lives.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful. Where can our listeners, viewers, all of us, find out more about you and your research, please?
Speaker 3:Oh well, I wish I had something more concrete to offer, but I have my Vita online and a couple of talks that I have given that, I think, capture this idea.
Speaker 2:Powerful talks, I might add Great Thank you. So just Google your name. That's right, We'll put links.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll find out your, we'll make it easy for listeners and we'll get direct links to that and we'll put it in the show notes there, janet. So well, another question we want to ask we ask all of our listeners is as a takeaway of the day, is there a take home message that you want our listeners to remember from our discussion today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think we are relational beings and relationships are worth it, and this is the essence of life. Happiness is love full stop, and our ability to love and to be in loving relationships is worth the growth. It will take growth. It's going to take change in all of us, but that's what we're born for. It's what we desire more than anything, but that's what we're born for.
Speaker 1:It's what we desire more than anything. Wow, yeah, very powerful. Thank you, liz. What about you? What's your take of the take so many have?
Speaker 2:all these copious notes that now I can't even read. Um, you know I love, uh, jenna. Just a reminder to couples that these relationships, they will always be be difficult because we're different, but we were designed for love and deep connection. Just made my day to remember that it's beautiful. And what about you, dave? What's the richest nugget you hope we all remember from our time together today with Dr Janet Erickson?
Speaker 1:Yeah, this has been really powerful. Thank you so much. I have a lot to reflect on. I'm going to go back and listen and tell these great words of wisdom Kind of a message is especially towards the beginning. It was this happy, healthy. We starts with a happy, healthy me Making sure that I'm in a good place. I call it search inward and then turn outward. Not in a selfish way about me first, but it really is me making sure that I'm okay, that I'm good, whether I've experienced trauma or parents, divorce or other struggles in life. Making sure that I'm grounded and I'm okay, and then I can turn outward and help and lift. And then the ability I think you talked about being seen, being known and being loved. Did I get those three?
Speaker 2:right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That was powerful, great Thank you, wow. Well, thanks again, dr Erickson, for making time to coming on and sharing so much wisdom, thoughts, principles and tips for us here on the Stronger Marriage Connection. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2:Thank you and for coming on. Thank you and really that's the only way we're ever going to feel seen and believe we're loved. Right Is if we're seen and known. Dave and Janet, it's so powerful to me. If you don't know me, if you tell me you love me, it's like yeah, but if you really knew me, I've got the secret back here. But when you live with parts and you tell me you love me, it's like there. It doesn't get much better than that because you know yeah, yeah, because you'll love this quote from it's tim keller.
Speaker 3:He was like a protestant marriage family therapist, but um, he says to be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. I think my kids feel that. For me, sometimes, when he says to be known but not loved, that's our greatest fear. But to be truly known and truly loved is well. He says a lot like being loved by God. It's what we need more than anything. By God, it's what we need more than anything. But what a process, right? Because I'm sometimes scared to see my kids truth be told. I'm not sure I want to know you, I just want you to be my picture and I'm going to tell you that I love you and vice versa. Right, but that's actually not what we need and yearn for. We yearn to be seen and loved and known and that's what allows us to love and see and know. Right, that's heaven. That's what heaven is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's about connections, relationships, wow. Well, that does it for us, our listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 2:And remember, dear friends, it's the small things that create a stronger marriage connection. Take care now.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us today. Hey, do us a favor and take a second to subscribe to our podcast and the Utah Marriage Commission YouTube channel at Utah Marriage Commission, where you can watch this and every episode of the show. Be sure to smash the like button, leave a comment and share this episode with a friend. You can also follow and interact with us on Instagram, at Stronger Marriage Live, and Facebook at Stronger Marriage, so be sure to share with us which topics you loved or which guests we should have on the show. Next, if you want even more resources to improve your marriage or relationship connection, visit StrongerMarriageorg, where you'll find free workshops, e-courses, in-depth webinars, relationship surveys and more. Each episode of Stronger Marriage Connection is hosted and sponsored by the Utah Marriage Commission at Utah State University. And finally, a big thanks to our producer, rex Polanis, and the team at Utah State University and you, our audience. You make this show possible. The opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views of the Utah Marriage Commission.