How People Mess Up Their Lives and How to Not Make the Same Mistakes: Part Two – Marital Neglect

Brent and Janis continue their series on the mistakes people make in their lives and how to not make the same mistakes.  They cover mistakes or mistaken beliefs people have:

·      Don’t think marriage takes work.

·      Talk to each other in ways and with words they would never use with anyone else.

·      Don’t give enough time to the relationship -other things are a priority.

·      Are in competition instead of supporting each other in goals,

·      Insist on their way even if they realize they are wrong or that it will harm the relationship.

·      Don’t celebrate their milestones.

This podcast should not be considered or used for counseling but for educational purposes only.

Transcript:

Welcome to Life & Love Nuggets, where licensed therapists Brent and Janice Sharpe share how you can thrive in your life, your love, and your relationship. 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to Life & Love Nuggets. We're glad that you're here. We're going to continue here on a series that we started. Yes, we started a series on how people mess up their lives and how to not make the same mistakes. Or, in other words, how to not be stupid.

Though we don't say stupid, so probably that's not what we should say. And we have the, I can't even think of the words, the learned counselor of wisdom. We have you, Brent. I was going to say all kinds of complimentary things. What? And it just went out the window. In my mind, it sounded really fun.

It sounded so impressive. Very impressive, yes. We're just quite impressive, you know.

We're so together all the time. We're professional communicators.

Oh, my gosh, yes. So today, we're going to step into another topic. Last time, we talked about comparisons, which is a killer. Today, we're going to start. I don't know how long this will go because we've been marriage counselors for almost 40 years, and we've seen people do a lot of stupid. Which has been really good for us to keep us from doing some things. Good reminders, yes.

Constantly a good reminder. Just don't do that. Yeah, that doesn't work well. That doesn't work well. So we're going to talk about marital neglect and how we don't really care for our marriages very well sometimes and how we do stupid in the midst of marriage. Now, there's so many different directions, and so we're just going to start, and we're going to roll with this. So the first thing that came to our mind was when people don't think that marriage takes work.

Now, I'm not surprised at this with how our culture is, and we live in such a highly romanticized culture. So when people think that this is going to be magic, we do a lot of premarital counseling, and most of them are still kind of in the magic phase. We just celebrated 46 years, and I remember the magic phase for us, those first many months. And something about this chemistry that just, it messes with us. I mean, it's a wonderful thing, and God designed this, I think, to be a blessing so that we feel this energy in the beginning of a relationship. I think it just confuses us. Nobody told us when that first happened that this will last about 18 months, where you're going to, it's going to be easy.

Except in our case, and it lasted 46 years for you, right, babe? And so where the natural inspiration will last about 18 months, that's at least what the national average says, so some a little bit less, some more than that. And when you're in it, when people say that this is going to take work, we just, oh, bless their heart. I know people struggle in marriage and have to work on it, but our love is just different. It just, we just have something unique. I mean, I think everybody thinks this. And so what God designed, because I think he had to design it this way, where we had this attraction, we were drawn to this person.

I think he designed it just to get us in the room with the person so that we would meet them. I always tell people it would be a little awkward if we were just attracted to every single person that walks down the street. Okay, and so there had to be that initial thing, but it kind of gives us some wrong perspective because we think this is magical, this will take us forever now. And so we always talk about this idea of romance movies. They all last about 90 minutes and they fall in love. They have the glance across the room. They have this encounter.

They have all, I mean, this is why it's a thing. There's just so many different ways that this can start. And they have that initial chemistry. And then, of course, they have to go through a difficult patch and break up or whatever.

Somebody moves away. Somebody moves away.

There's all kind of different things that happen. And so they're kind of heartbroken. And then they realize that, oh, my gosh, I can't live without this person and this feeling is not going away. And so one of them, such an interesting phenomenon, how many of these movies end with somebody chasing the other person to the train station or to the airport. And then the final scene is the wedding and everybody's happy. Everybody smiles and the credits roll. Assuming that now that you've found the right person, now that you feel this thing, then we don't really need to talk about the next 70 years.

That should be a slam dunk. That should just be easy. And so I think that kind of throws us off. It confuses us. And so we don't think about we're going to have to work at this. And so we tell folks that we should learn from that because what are the things that we naturally do when we're inspired? You ought to remember that.

Remember the way you treated each other, the way you talked to each other, the way you cared for each other, small kindnesses. We dated.

We did all kinds of things like that. And then we get married and we turn into grown-up problem solvers and we stop doing all that stuff. And then the feelings start changing. And then we think, oh, my gosh, I've fallen out of love or I just don't feel the same passion. Well, there's a reason for that. It's because the behaviors have changed. And so we talk about this concept of feelings follow behaviors.

We don't realize that in the beginning because it didn't seem like it. It seemed like we got zapped and so we didn't have to really work at it. But that's during that initial attraction phase. It's that energy, this chemistry that we feel. And I just encourage couples that we need to learn from that, pay attention to that, because if you can then put into play purposefully what was naturally inspirational in the beginning, if you can now make it purposeful, then you can sustain nice feelings. Yeah. You know, I always talk about the idea that the scriptural story doesn't talk about feelings.

It talks about love as an action. It's a behavior that we do for others. Now, God in his blessing gives us these really nice feelings, and I think we would all like to enjoy this journey. And so we try to help couples learn how to help each other love each other. But a lot of that is by putting effort and work into these practices. Yeah. And so even think about the, I don't know if it's eHarmony that started the soulmate word.

Yeah, I think so. Well, they didn't start it, but they utilized that in their marketing strategy. And it's all about finding your soulmate. And I think there is that thing that we think that, kind of like we all have this little serial number behind our ear, and there's one matching serial number that matches that out of all the 7 billion people, and I just need to wander around trying to find that person. And so there are, how do I do that? How do I find the soulmate? And in that beginning of the inspiration, it feels like it.

I found them. I found the one. The soulmate idea, though, is not really, it's certainly not a Christian concept. It's actually out of Greek mythology. The story goes that Zeus, who was kind of the main big god, was frustrated that humans were becoming pretty powerful. And the story suggests that humans at that time kind of were two people, like connected, like back to back. You know, they had four arms and four legs and two faces and all this kind of thing.

And so what he decided to do was he was going to just cut them down the middle, and they would spend the rest of their life wandering around trying to find their other half, and that would keep him busy. And so they wouldn't mess with the gods. And so this is kind of how soulmate started, the concept. And we've kind of carried that because, again, we would love things to be matching. It would be cool if it was magic, and it didn't take work. Well, even that analogy makes me think about how people really do spend a lot of time searching for magic in all areas of their lives. Or just, you know, like you said, their relationship kind of fades a little bit in the magical part of it.

And so it's like, I've got to find magic out there somewhere. And instead of going, okay, this is where I am, and it's going to take some work. All of life takes effort. I'd love to have a great vegetable garden, but I don't want to dig, I don't want to do any of those things. But it does, it takes work. Yeah. So we get kind of lulled to sleep, I think, during those courtship days where it feels kind of magic.

And then if we start bumping into problems, I think we just go into denial. You know, I can't really say we're having problems because then I might lose this person that I had magic with. And so it just gets, I think, everything a bit confused. But if that's the way it works, if it's the idea of a soulmate, or if it's the idea of magic, then when it fades, the natural conclusion would be is, oh my gosh, my feelings are fading. I must have messed up. I must have picked the wrong person. I thought the last number of the serial number was a seven.

It is actually a nine. I need to go find the nine. Anyway, you know, we just, that's the natural conclusion. And if the feelings start fading, we start thinking, well, you know, maybe I picked the wrong person. Maybe we didn't really love him in the first place. People rewrite history. They come up with all kinds of things that just aren't even a thing, you know.

If we realize that it really is the behavior, I tell couples, if you all had had kind of a rough argument on your first date over politics or something, you probably wouldn't have had a second date. The reason you had a second date is because the first one went very nice, and we were being very loving towards each other. It felt, you know, something sparked there. And it really was those behaviors. Now, again, it was easy. We thought we didn't have to try. We didn't put effort into it.

But when we realize that feelings follow behaviors, they're a byproduct of behaviors, then if we do go through a lull, as every couple will, you'll go through times where you're tired and you're, you know, stretched, and you're just depressed about other things or having a hard time, anxious about life or whatever, and then we kind of blame it on our marriage. You know, if they were... If this was better or they were better, then I would feel better, you know, kind of thing. But when we go through a lull, we know, oh, my gosh, we have probably gotten neglectful. We have probably not been paying attention to the work, to the effort. And so if couples can refocus their effort and their energy towards one another, then we find, this is what we experience every day, the feelings start warming up. And when we say work, it's not like, oh, my gosh, I've got to do something hard.

Right, right, right, right. It really is habits.

It's really like everything else. You get out of the habit, and you get sloppy. And we have to be careful of not getting sloppy or lazy in our marriage. We have to continue to work on it. Yeah, and so, yeah, work, and maybe we'll allude to that a little bit more here, but we've talked about a lot of this in previous podcasts. But yeah, work is not pulling weeds necessarily in the backyard. It's loving things, loving behaviors.

But we simply just get neglectful. We do.

And we don't mean to. I mean, people don't go, okay, we're married now, so let's just not work on this.

Let's just neglect it. And people don't think that way, but they just get neglectful. It's just a phenomenon of life. And so we have to be very, again, purposeful, take what was naturally inspirational and make it intentional. And as couples begin to do that, we see some pretty amazing things happen. Yeah, I think the other way that I see couples get really casual, or I should say sloppy, is in the way they talk to each other. You know, this is the person that you're with more than anybody else.

And so sometimes the filter's gone. Yeah. So we're in a cranky mood and we snap at them in a way that we would never snap at anybody else. We say things that we wouldn't say to anybody else. We get snotty sometimes. Not I do, not me, of course. That would be impossible. Thank you.

I feel so much better. But we do. We see this over and over again. And I know in our office we see people say things and use words that we're like, wow, if this is how you talk in here, how do you talk at home? You wouldn't say that to your worst enemy. You never would. And so oftentimes I'll tell people, you know, talk to your spouse like you talk to somebody at work.

I mean, I know that sounds funny because it's a more intimate relationship. But being too casual with what you say, with the language that you use. You know, you may be in a job where people use all kinds of swear words, but that doesn't mean your spouse is there. And so when you say the word to them that you may say to somebody else, it can be really, really hurtful. We also can tend to interrupt our spouse more than we do other people. So it's being respectful of people and talking to them in ways that you would to the person you love the most, which is weird. It's your spouse, but we do, we get too casual.

So it's working on being kind in all of the ways that we communicate, even when we're having a bad day, even when we're in a bad mood and not throwing out zingers from old wounds or old situations in the marriage that have been healed. But I'm just going to sling something at you because I'm in a bad mood and you did something that I don't like. And so I'm going to make you feel bad, which we don't want to think we do, but we do. And again, we realize this is easier said than done. I mean, our spouse is the person we're with a lot, and we want to be able to kind of let down and relax more and not have to be on. And they can irritate us more than anybody else, except maybe our kids. Yeah, not mine.

And so we have such higher expectations and needs of this person. We don't really expect people at work to meet our needs in the same ways. And so again, so that's why it takes effort. That's why we're talking about marital neglect. It's just, we're just not paying attention. Yeah, well, I think also that goes along with that is because we have the idealized culture, we have this lie that tells us if he really loved me, he would know what I wanted. We don't expect that of people at work.

We don't expect that of other people. We know we have to communicate with them, but our spouse should know I had a bad day and they should do this. It's magic. If with as  You have different kinds. A beautiful table makes a difference. Yes. Anyway, I wouldn't have done that, but that's the beauty of who you are and you make it beautiful and, but when we're getting it out, putting it away, washing it, a lot of it has to be hand washed, we're very, very careful.

Most couples that we see are treating their marriage like it's old Tupperware, you know, it's something you just grab and if you knock it off the counter, it bounces across the floor and you just don't even think about it, you know, and we're just too casual. Now, I'm not saying we have to be uptight, I'm not saying we have to be weird or not genuine and real, the, I think it, I think love that is chosen is real, even if it's not empowered initially by feeling, you know, we've used that quote from C. S. Lewis before about love, he's talking about a neighbor and says don't worry about whether you love your neighbor or not, treat them as if you do and then presently you will come to love them and I just see the reverse of that happening too, as you love them, presently they will come to love you back, you know, they feel loved, they respond back in love, but it's not worrying about how we feel, you know, people are so caught up in what I deserve and what I need and I need to feel this feeling and, you know, couples end up waiting on well, you kind of hurt my feelings and you disappointed me and so I'm not going to do anything nice for you until you say you're sorry and then you do something and then I don't do anything which causes the other person to not do anything and we're both just stuck, love is an action and we're waiting each other out. And so it's about giving and loving regardless of how we feel and again, the wonder of love, the wonder of God in love is that he's blessed us with these really nice feelings if we can get into that rhythm and we've talked about rhythms and habits and it really takes, that's again, we've known each other 50 years now, married 46, we're pretty used to each other and if we were just waiting every morning for inspiration, you know, some of those days would be a little dry because we're distracted, you know, but it's choosing to continue to love and again, the wonder of this as we've seen is as one person does that, it does something and the other and then they give back, then it's easier for me to give, then it's easier for you to give and so we all know what a downward spiral looks like, it's where you've heard my feelings and I'm not going to do anything until you do something and we're just, we start downward spiraling, always think how do we get this upward spiral going where we're actually stimulating and inspiring each other into love and encouraging them into love by the way that we love them and so it's kind of almost how do we out give each other, you know, if couples can get into that mindset, then it can really make a difference and so this follows, you know, another one, again, pretty similar, we've kind of touched on this a little bit already, but they don't, people don't give enough time to the relationship, other things are a priority and so, you know, when we're first together, we just, we wanted to be together all the time, you know, we were in college, it's pretty a miracle that we graduated. We graduated well, too. We did graduate, we both had pretty high honors, but I look back on that and that's amazing because we just wanted to be together after every class, in between classes, on the weekend, we just wanted to be together, you know, we wanted to hold hands and have our arms around each other, I mean, this was just easy, you know, and when we left each other, we just thought about the next time we could be together, I mean, it was just, what happened, and then things start creeping in and we use that, I don't know, we've talked about this before, but we use this kind of, that initial phase as a face-to-face relationship, it's you and where it's just, like, impossible to offend each other because I just overlook stuff because I just feel so warm towards you that even if you do something that's hurtful, I just overlook it, you know, and again, that's about where we get the studies suggest about 18 months, but then everybody has to turn, just by life, we turn side to side, you know, we were going to school to get jobs so that we could live, right, and so that started taking our energy, grad school started taking energy, buying a house and keeping it up and remodeling one and flipping it, I mean, all that stuff just starts taking energy and there's nothing evil about those, you know, most of the things that couples are doing aren't evil, now there's some evil, I mean, there's some, we do have couples that, you know, one of them's gambling the family money away at the casino or whatever and so, but most couples, it's just neglect, it's all of our energy goes to other things and by the end of the day, I'm done, I'm spent, and I have very little energy to turn towards my partner.

And it makes sense because life takes time, kids take time, and I think a lot of people, and we hear people actually say this, a lot of people are like, well, I need to put all my focus on the kids and then when they grow up, we can be together and we can do things, which could be okay, except you lose each other in the midst of that. Yeah, so they, you know, we'll take vacations then, just us, you know, we'll, whatever those things are, they just wait and... And we really need to have more time away focusing on each other when the kids are little, when there is a lot going on in our lives, so that we can reconnect and remember who that person is and go, oh yeah, we really enjoyed each other. I know I tell clients, I will say, okay, I think you need to have a vacation away every six months, just the two of you from your kids. And then I always say, my husband says you should every three months. At least an overnight. Yeah, so, you know, you can balance it in there somewhere, but you really have to have the consistent date night, time away, focusing on each other to keep the marriage healthy and alive.

Now, the reason we're talking about this, it's hard, you know, we're not suggesting this is a snap, you know, we raised four kids and we know what that looked like and running here and running there and just trying to keep up with all of that. We were, you know, even when you were at home more, you were still working. Always worked part time, you know, as a counselor and you were with the kids more than I was and I remember days you'd call and go, okay, we have an impossible thing tonight. I know you have that meeting or I know you're working late. I have three places I have to be. Yeah. I don't know what to do about this.

Okay, got one kid over here and another kid over here and it was challenging and we had to be very purposeful again, I'm using that word, very intentional, very making the relationship a priority because if you don't, if we don't do this purposely, it will not happen because all of these other things are squeaky wheels. They will get your attention. If you don't show up to work, they're going to get your attention. You will not have a job again, you know, if you don't take care of your children, they are squeaky wheels, they will make you pay attention, you know, I remember when our kids were real little, if we weren't like paying attention to them, sometimes they'd come and grab our face. Yes. And make us focus on that, mom, mom, mom, mom. And so all of those, that's just going to happen.

They're just a little alarms going off and constantly we're addressing those things because we're trying to be responsible people, but the marriage just slowly gets neglected and it slowly loses energy and strength and power. And so it's a, this is a hard thing to do. And we've talked, you know, in previous podcasts about some of those habits and some of those rhythms that can make a difference. That's why we're so big on this is that getting those simple, loving things is just what we do is so important. But it's determining and sometimes couples get a little overwhelmed when we start suggesting these kinds of things and laying out all these things to do and it's like, oh my gosh, how are we going to do all this? Well, just start with one, just, just take a simple act, you know, we've talked about love nuggets, which is what we, the name of the podcast here, you know, life and love nuggets here. You know, these simple little things that we do to love another, um, we talked about date nights.

It's just those simple little things that we do. And so, um, so this is, um, this is kind of our time for this one. Um, so we're gonna, we just started, we got a whole bunch of, are we out of time for this one? Okay. And so, um, we're going to come back and talk about more stupid that we do and more things that we can do to kind of correct that stuff. And so wherever you find yourself in your marriage, know that if we kind of wake up, we pay attention and we lean into something, things can change. Things can get better.

They can get stronger. Never ever had a couple come to us and just go, we're just like way too happy. You know, you're gonna have to tone this down a little bit. There's always things that we can do to make a difference. So, so for this one, um, we're going to put a pin in it and come back to this in just a few minutes and, um, do another one, but, um, for now, go in peace, blessings as you go. 

The Life and Love Nuggets podcast should not be considered or used for counseling, but for educational purposes only.