What Healthy Relationships Do Differently - Part 2

[00:00:01] Speaker A: You ruin a companionship with your husband by making them feel they're not good enough. Nothing kills the relationship faster than the implied, you're not good enough. Something's very bonding when we validate each other and we say, your feelings matter to me. [00:00:23] Speaker B: Your. [00:00:23] Speaker A: Your thoughts matter to me. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Jacob and I were kind of butting heads on some things, and I was thinking through my responses to him. I found myself. I was just trying to fix it. I was trying to fix it. Wasn't validating the feelings. Wasn't validating the feelings. And then I just, like, stopped, and I was replaying his conversations in my head, and it was like, for the first time, I was listening and he wasn't even in the room. Welcome back to part two. Two of what healthy relationships do differently. I'm Sarah. I'm with my awesome dad, Doc. How you doing? [00:01:00] Speaker A: I'm good. [00:01:01] Speaker B: Good. Well, I love doing these talks with you. I was planning for next year and I was thinking about what are the favorite things that I'm doing in my life right now? And Grotential made the top. It made the top list, dad. [00:01:18] Speaker A: Awesome. [00:01:18] Speaker B: I love doing this with you. [00:01:20] Speaker A: I do it to be around you. [00:01:25] Speaker B: Our goal when we started this was like, if 100 people that are leading in the church listen to this and can grow and get some good leadership, we would feel like it was a win. And so I feel like everything else is a bonus. And being able to do this with my dad, pleasure of my life. I love it. [00:01:44] Speaker A: I do, too. [00:01:45] Speaker B: I love learning from you. So we are going to do part two, and we. In our first part, if you missed it, part one, we talked about the first three qualities of what make healthy relationships. And so we talked about simple companionship, the idea of being friends. We talked about empathy and sympathy, putting yourself in the other person's shoes and feeling what they feel and having empathy for them and then understanding. And it was the idea of everyone kind of got somewhere because things have happened in their life. And how do we understand our partner better? How do we understand how they grew up versus how we grew up? How do we understand their hopes and their dreams? And I'm most excited about for the second part of this list. [00:02:37] Speaker A: Good. [00:02:37] Speaker B: This feels like it's going to be the most helpful. So I would love for you to kick it off with what is your favorite thing about my beautiful mama? [00:02:51] Speaker A: She is a delightful person to be around. She's just absolutely delightful to be around. I love her company. [00:03:00] Speaker B: So Christian got married a couple months ago, and he. We have a Tradition in the family that when one of our kids get married, we do a breakfast that morning. And so I think you and mom started that tradition for us. And so we carried it on for our kids. And I caught Mom. You and her were sitting in the sunroom and you were just holding hands and sitting very close to each other, and she was just giggling. She was just giggling and giggling and just putting her head in your shoulder. And that was a moment that stuck like a picture in my mind. I thought it was beautiful. After 54 years of marriage, sitting that close, being that in love, just giggling with each other. [00:03:43] Speaker A: I love her company. She is a delight to me. [00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah. She may or may not be sitting right over here. Okay, so this. It's number four, but it's our first one for today. This, I think, can make a world of different. And the idea is validation. Can you talk to us about that? [00:04:07] Speaker A: So we want to talk about this both ways. Right. So the opposite of validation is we. Do not permit our partners to be able to express what they're really feeling. So it goes something like this. Your partner says, I'm really tired. And we say something like, well, what do you have to be tired about? You didn't do anything. Okay, I just invalidated them. [00:04:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:43] Speaker A: Or your partner says, I'm troubled about this. And we say, well, you shouldn't worry about that because. Because. Okay, I just invalidated. I was a master at this invalidating Shay. Until I. Until I read Men are from Mars, Wimmer from Venus, and then I understood what I was doing. I didn't. I thought I was helping and I was making it five times worse. [00:05:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I heard some dumb quote somewhere. Lex, maybe you can help me with this one. It's like when you treat your husband like a king, you get the king. When you treat your husband like the joker, you get the jester or something. I mean, you get the point. That's not the saying. But what we call out in each other. You see more of, you know, and I think too often with. I'll just be very broad with women is the criticism is so high. We can be critics of ourself. We can be critics of our spouse. And so your lack of validation comes through regularly with what they are doing that's annoying or what they're not doing that you want them to do. And there's a level of criticism that can just decay the marriage or the relationship. What would you say to someone who has a critical spirit? [00:06:17] Speaker A: Ah, stop. [00:06:19] Speaker B: Yeah, [00:06:25] Speaker A: Jesus used hyperbole. He said, if your eye offends you, pluck it out and cast it from you. Now, that's hyperbole. But what he was saying is, do whatever you have to do to stop this. Yeah. Gray says in his book that. You ruin a companionship with your husband by making them feel they're not good enough. Nothing kills the relationship faster than the. And you may not even say it, the implied you're not good enough. Yeah. So the opposite is equally true. Something's very bonding when we validate each other and. And we say, your feelings matter to me. Your. Your thoughts matter to me. I'm not going to judge you for how you're feeling about this. [00:07:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:41] Speaker A: Oh, and the same. At the same time, Sherry, I'm giving up the idea that you need me to fix you. [00:07:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:49] Speaker A: If you felt the way you should, you wouldn't be feeling this way. So I'm going to fix you. [00:07:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And that's torture for some of us, you know? [00:07:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And Christ had a parable on that. Get the beam out of your own eye before you start digging splinters out of your spouse's eye. [00:08:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And that is so, so true. And it can. It just can flow into that without the intentionality. And I think some of this I learned, like you said, from the wrong things, doing the wrong things. Because I think I, without knowing, was making Jacob feel little. And it was the words I was using. It was the way I was saying something. He would say, why do you look like that? I was like, what do you mean? He's like, your face says more than your words. And so I was like, I gotta tell my face what I'm actually thinking too, you know? But this idea of validating my husband does it really well. He's very, very kind to me. He knows that work is my heart, our family work is very all encompassing for us. And he is very kind on validating that. I'm tired or I need rest or I need to say, no, he is. He's. And he makes me feel okay, you know? And that's. That's a safety that I do. I do love. [00:09:13] Speaker A: I feel Shay is very good. Good at encouraging. [00:09:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I said no one believes in me like my mom. [00:09:25] Speaker A: She's an encourager. [00:09:26] Speaker B: You did a sermon. What was the sermon that you did? And you were talking about the holiness of Jesus or the glory of Jesus, the glory of God? No, it was recently, but I'm trying not to say when it was because we're filming for two months down the road. So what was the sermon? You did a couple weeks ago on [00:09:54] Speaker A: Peter's sermon on Pentecostal, the glorified, glorified Jesus. [00:10:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. After I sat next to mom during that, she cried during the sermon. I went to your office because commonly I'll go in between services, just see if you guys need anything. And I just wanted to say, wow, wow, wow. What a sermon. It was, like, probably top two you've ever preached. I mean, if not top one, it was phenomenal. But I saw mom in there with such a heart of gratitude for how God has used your life together and the church and how all those moments of everything were orchestrated to create that sermon. Like that was her heart. Like, she had this moment of epiphany and faith in Christ and just seeing this culmination, and I just saw her weeping, and I was like, now that is validation. [00:10:52] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:10:54] Speaker B: You need to get. You need to get you a woman like Sharon Collings. Yeah. [00:10:59] Speaker A: Yeah. She said one of the nicest things I've ever heard. She said, you exist to preach that sermon. Yeah. [00:11:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:09] Speaker A: And then I just felt like Billy Graham. [00:11:13] Speaker B: Yeah. I saw dad floating out of the building. Yeah. But I think you have power to do that for your spouse. And what a delight it is, what a joy it is when you just pay attention, when you can just be present in the moment and put down your phone and put down the distractions and the things that steal our mind. It's so easy to validate. My husband. [00:11:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:38] Speaker B: When I'm aware. And I think that is something that is a gift of God that we could do for our partners. And the more I talk about him. Well, the more I see the goodness of what he's doing. [00:11:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, yeah. [00:11:55] Speaker B: The more I'm annoyed or frustrated or chewing or there's clothes by the side of his bed. Like, the dumb stuff. The more I'm like. But then it's there, so it's. What is that? There's an effect. What's that? [00:12:07] Speaker A: It's called the reticular activation system. You see what you're looking for? [00:12:11] Speaker B: Activation system. Our brain. It's awesome. It is so awesome. Okay. One more good idea about validation. [00:12:23] Speaker A: I think healthy validation, It has to develop. So what you. Some things you just continually validate. But if you're doing this right, like you just said, we find new, interesting things about our spouse that we can validate. [00:12:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:49] Speaker A: So maybe 30 years ago, it was validation for. For me to say to Shay, hey, you're a good cook. But if that's the only thing I validate for 30 years. [00:13:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:04] Speaker A: Then it loses its. [00:13:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:07] Speaker A: And I have to. I have to keep an open eye to see the freshness. [00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I think validating character overdoing is also something that made me think of it like she's so much more than a cook. When you can validate the best about someone's character, you know, I think that at least that's what feels so good to me. [00:13:34] Speaker A: I think you're absolutely right. Yeah. [00:13:36] Speaker B: Okay, let's move to five. And this one is passion. [00:13:43] Speaker A: There is a bond in life of a shared passion. And I want to talk about passion in multiple ways. Okay. But where there is no life passion, there's no relationship. Ah, let's. Let's start with a passion as a shared passion for life itself. You have a passion for the same kind of things in life. So I see husbands and wife who golf together. They have a shared passion for golfing. I see couples that go to sporting events. They have a shared passion for sporting events. Sharon and I took dancing classes once, and people had a shared passion for dancing. [00:14:42] Speaker B: I wish that was on video. [00:14:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:14:45] Speaker B: Mom is like a graceful gazelle and I would love to see you. What kind of dance was that? [00:14:51] Speaker A: Swing dancing. And I was the big dumb guy standing there and Sharon was doing all the fancy. [00:14:59] Speaker B: Was it fun? [00:15:00] Speaker A: It was kind of fun. [00:15:01] Speaker B: That sounds really fun. I would have loved to see. Did you wear your cowboy boots? [00:15:05] Speaker A: Of course I did. I don't. It's all I own. [00:15:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. [00:15:11] Speaker A: But at least we have a dance we can do at weddings. Ah. [00:15:14] Speaker B: Do you remember it? [00:15:15] Speaker A: I know one dance. [00:15:16] Speaker B: Do you remember it? I'm gonna have you guys do it right here at the end of the podcast. So stay tuned. [00:15:23] Speaker A: I just have to count to four. One, two, three, four. [00:15:28] Speaker B: I love it. Yeah. I think this happened by accident, honestly, with Jacob and I. Cuz this was never an idea I knew about until later in life, later in marriage. And one thing we had always done was try to set like goals for the next three years, five years, and we would go on a date and we'd talk about the things that were passionate about and we'd write them down. And then we'd circle the one or two things that we had in common. And so we moved towards these goals because it was a common passion for both of us. And so that's. We years ago bought this little trailer, tiny home on the lake because we'd sat down and we said we would love to have a little place where we could drive over that bridge of marblehead and act like the rest of the world was behind us, and we were on vacation, and. And then, you know, we've talked about it here on the podcast. But the land of, like, we want to have a greater vision for our life than just us. We want to. We want to have it for a vision for our kids, too, if they want it. And so the land has come from that, and now we're working towards that together. And it's like we go, he worked on the land the other day, and I came, and he just showed everything off. You can't tell. The land is so big. So it's like he cut some trees and stuff, and it's like, that is beautiful, babe. This looks awesome. You know, but having that shared passion in life actually probably makes a more passionate relationship physically, too. [00:17:05] Speaker A: Yes. [00:17:06] Speaker B: Would you agree with that? [00:17:07] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I like to hold that for just a minute. Okay. You look at couples that have a shared passion for their kids. They just both love their kids. All right. And then you look at other couples where maybe it's. Maybe it's a mixed family and the couple doesn't share the same passion for the children. You can. It affects the relationship. I know some people who are lifelong. They are wounded for a lifetime because one of their parents had no care for the family and abandoned them. So shared passion in the family. It's very bonding. [00:18:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:18] Speaker A: I've known couples that stayed together long enough to figure it out just because they love their kids and because they love their kids, they stayed together and staying together. They figured some stuff out, and they ended up making their marriage a good one. [00:18:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:36] Speaker B: Okay. You said there were two sides to passion that we were going to talk about. So the shared passion for life. And what's the second? [00:18:43] Speaker A: And so the second one is. The first one is kind of an external passion. [00:18:55] Speaker B: Let me go one step deeper before we move on. If you aren't on the same page, if you don't have shared passions right now, or this is something that sounds great, but you've just never taken the time to do it. What would be your advice to initiate this in your relationship? [00:19:14] Speaker A: I think you already gave us a good example. You and Jacob sat down, you wrote down some stuff, and you saw where it overlaps. [00:19:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:25] Speaker A: I also think sometimes we need to do things with our spouses that maybe we wouldn't pick to do because it might turn out we like it better than we thought. [00:19:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:36] Speaker A: You know? [00:19:36] Speaker B: Yeah. It's that it reminds me that mutual submission idea where husbands submit to their wives, wives Submit to their husbands as we would to Christ. Like, there's that mutual submission. What? Okay, sorry. So the second piece. So the shared life is more external. [00:19:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And then there's the internal. There is the. What does it mean to genuinely love another soul? It has to mean something more than an intellectual definition. It has to be an actual passion of the heart. [00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:19] Speaker A: In great relationships, people have a genuine soul love for each other. Their souls take delight in each other. Their souls are. When God married Adam and Eve, he said this reason a young man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and the two shall become one. That's this heart passion. [00:21:01] Speaker B: I love that this is coming from 54 years of marriage because. Do you think it always felt like that? [00:21:11] Speaker A: No. I'm certain that I have a. I'm certain that I have a deeper love for Shay than I've ever had in my life. Okay. I'm not talking about shared activities. I'm not talking about holding hands. I'm not talking about going on dates. I'm talking about in my inner self. I love her more than I ever have. [00:21:48] Speaker B: So what would you tell the listener on how to cultivate that? I mean, I know. So we talk about the companionship, the empathy, the understanding. All these are going to cultivate something better. And so I know that's actually what the whole podcast is about. But I would love to HEAR from your 54 years of experience, when you think about this side of passion, that in your soul, you love her more. How? [00:22:16] Speaker A: Okay, this is just a very simple thing. Because I love her, I will not permit myself to think certain thoughts. If it pops into my head, I'll say to myself, stop. I do not permit you to think that way. [00:22:36] Speaker B: And you're talking about thoughts that are negative towards her. You think the best about each other. [00:22:42] Speaker A: Absolutely. I want. The better I think about Sharon, the more passionate I feel toward her. I also think that genuine love nurtures what is best in the soul. Selfishness kills what is best in the soul. But I honestly believe that genuinely loving someone makes your soul better. I'm a better soul today because I love Sharon. [00:23:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:24] Speaker A: The act of loving her, the act of bonding my heart to her, it has made me a better soul. And because I'm a better soul, I'm able to love better. Yeah. It's like you. You love. Your soul gets better, Your soul gets better. You love better. You lot. It's. [00:23:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I can. I can imagine people listening to this and desiring it deeply. And I can imagine men Listening to this and wanting to love their wives better. And so I think a lot of what you and mom have taught me specifically is you do not quit. You. You do not give up. That emotions don't get the final say. And I think when you. When you live a lifetime of thinking what's best about each other, pushing for each other, being on the team, validating one another, having that companionship, having empathy and sympathy, like that's what gets you here is this grit that doesn't quit. And I think it's made the biggest difference in mine and Jacob's life too, is we just both refused to quit. [00:24:37] Speaker A: Right. Separating from each other was never an option. We never gave ourselves the option of, ah, letting go. [00:24:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, let's move to the last one. And I think this is one that we've commonly heard, but I would love to hear new perspective on it. So the last one is listening. So talk to me about listening. [00:25:10] Speaker A: Because humans are created the way we are. There's something bonding when someone speaks to you and you give them your full attention. There's something very separating when you're talking to somebody and you know full well they don't care. They're not listening. [00:25:34] Speaker B: Checking their watch, looking at their phone. Yeah. [00:25:36] Speaker A: Enduring. All right, so relationships are strengthened by what happens. The emotional interplay between speaking and listening. [00:25:50] Speaker B: Yeah, [00:25:55] Speaker A: We. [00:25:57] Speaker B: The emotional interplay between speaking and listening. Awesome sentence. [00:26:04] Speaker A: It is. [00:26:05] Speaker B: Well, I think about friends I have, and they will talk. And I know we enjoy each other's company, but like the second the Apple watch goes off, they're reading the text as I'm sitting there, and I'm like, okay, all right. It was nice talking to you because I already feel like I'm intruding. And I know, like, Jacob and Jer, they found a game that they played and lexing, I would be so annoyed because they playing this stupid game on their phone. And we'd be jealous of the phone. We'd be jealous of the attention and what it feels like when Jake puts down his phone for me and I am equally guilty. It's probably not a game, but it's some sort of social media. I'm scrolling. But what you can give someone by that emotional interplay between listening and talking. Love that line. Love it. [00:27:00] Speaker A: Because it is an emotional transaction. For good or for bad. It's an emotional transaction. [00:27:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:11] Speaker A: Another thing I want to say about listening is the better I listen, the better I do all the other things on the list. [00:27:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:20] Speaker A: The better I listen, I'm a better friend. Friends listen to each other. The better I listen, the more I'm able to sympathize. The better I listen, the more I can validate, the better I listen. It triggers my passions. So listening heightens everything else on the list. [00:27:46] Speaker B: You had said something to me that it's not just how we listen. Like we want to be a better listener, but it's how we talk to help other people listen better. Am I saying that right? [00:28:02] Speaker A: That's. I'm glad you brought that up. Okay. I want to be a good listener, but I want to talk in a way that it's easy for Shay to listen to me. [00:28:14] Speaker B: So my sister Katie and I, we've always been accountability partners. We're able to love each other and say the hard things to one another and encourage each other. But one thing we would work on when we were early married was talking in the way that our husbands could hear it. Is that kind of what this idea is? [00:28:31] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. [00:28:35] Speaker B: Ah. [00:28:37] Speaker A: We. There are trigger words. [00:28:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:42] Speaker A: And we just can't use the trigger word. If I know this word upset Sharon, I can't use it in a conversation with her because I'm making it difficult for her to listen to me. [00:28:56] Speaker B: Right. Ah. [00:29:03] Speaker A: If I'm thoughtful and I'll pay attention and I'll listen, I can learn how to speak to people in a way that it's easier for them to listen. Now we preach, so we have to do our very best to make it easy for people to listen. And we work at that. Well, I should. [00:29:25] Speaker B: And it is work. [00:29:27] Speaker A: I should be just as diligent in my relationship to Shay to pay attention and learn how to talk to her in ways that it's easy and pleasant for her to listen to. Because I'm contributing to our relationship. [00:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think what Katie and I do is we'd like bounce or we'd replay the conversation and it would be easy to hear when we replayed with each other how Jacob or Paul would feel small or how we would say you always or you never. And we always. We made these like, large blanket statements that made them defensive. And so I think in relationships that can be. Can just happen. It's just when you're not paying attention and talking to the way that you're spouse can hear it. You do. You can pull apart from each other pretty quick with the language that you use. [00:30:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:34] Speaker B: So what would you say? How do you get better at this, dad? How do you get better at talking in the way that a partner could hear it? [00:30:44] Speaker A: Well, I. I got started doing it by Reading Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. [00:30:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:51] Speaker A: And Gray told me what to say. [00:30:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:53] Speaker A: What I was saying wasn't working. [00:30:57] Speaker B: Did that work for you, Mom? She doesn't have a mic, but I'm just interested in, like, lines from the book. Did that feel like it helped? Yeah, she said it was helpful. [00:31:09] Speaker A: I obviously wasn't saying the right thing and didn't know the right thing to say, so I just started saying some of the stuff that he said to say in the book. [00:31:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And I could see if Jacob did that, that I would think it was cute. Like, I would think, man, he's trying. Like, I could see how I would. But I could also see other women would be like, he's just reading it straight from the book. He can't even. You know, I can see both sides of it, but I could see how just the act of trying to get it right means the world of difference, you know? [00:31:43] Speaker A: Well, I would try. I. I would try not. I would try to make it personal. I wouldn't hold the book. [00:31:51] Speaker B: His. Her. Yeah. [00:31:54] Speaker A: Gray told me to say, but we do this in learning a lot of stuff. We imitate until we understand. [00:32:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:08] Speaker A: There are some. There. There are some people who are just. They have taught themselves to be great listeners and easy to listen to, and those people create good relationships. [00:32:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:34] Speaker A: When Sharon's talking to me at her best, I. I love to listen to her. [00:32:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:39] Speaker A: It makes me happy to listen to her. [00:32:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:43] Speaker A: When we're. When. When we're not at our best, then we don't want to listen to each other. [00:32:48] Speaker B: Sure. [00:32:50] Speaker A: We want to tune each other out or whatever. [00:32:54] Speaker B: Yeah. I was thinking through. Jacob and I were kind of butting heads on some things, and I was thinking through my responses to him. This wasn't long ago. And I. I found myself. I was just trying to fix it. I was trying to fix it. Wasn't validating the feelings. Wasn't validating the feelings. And then I just, like, stopped. And I was replaying his conversations in my head, and it was like, for the first time, I was listening, and he wasn't even in the room. And I thought to myself, this man has a way of making every room he walks into better. And he. For his work, he. He changes things. He makes it better for our family. He makes. He makes. He comes home and he's fun, and he's going to cook something delicious, and he just makes it better. And. And I was thinking, man, do I want to listen in the kind of way that makes him know that, like, makes him realize that instead of trying to fix and trying to. And just listening to him in the kind of way is like, man, I trust you, because you know how to make things better. And that's going to be my new goal, is when I listen to him, I want him to feel that just by being in my presence, you know? [00:34:19] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:34:19] Speaker B: Okay, so validation, taking a minute to validate each other, not minimize, not fix passion. What are your shared passions for life? And then how do you cultivate and grow that inner passion within you for one another? And then this idea of listening, putting the devices away, having your full attention on your spouse, and then not just being a better listener, but talking in the way that they want to listen or talking in a way that they can hear it. All right, well, thank you so much for your time, Dad. I love this. I appreciate you. I hope you have a really good day. [00:34:59] Speaker A: You too. [00:35:00] Speaker B: All right. Thank you for listening. If this has been helpful, please share it. Share it with your spouse. And maybe you guys could go on a date and talk about it and see how you could grow and cultivate something deeper. We appreciate you and we hope you have a great day.