How To Have A Great Marriage

We believe life is precious. This is it. We've got one shot at this. It's on us to live life to the fullest to maximize what we've been given and play the game of life at our full potential.

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If this is hitting home, you're in the right place. Our mission is to open the door to the exceptional life by showing you how to play the game of life at a higher level. So you're playing at your full potential rather than at a fraction as most people do. We'll share the one thing that once we learned it, our lives were transformed. And once you learn it, watch what happens. Welcome to Think It Be It the podcast. I'm Kelly Hatfield.

Hey. And I'm John Michell. So today the topic is marriage. Kelly, what do you think about marriage?

Well, I'm coming up on my 20 year anniversary being married. So I have good thoughts about marriage.

2020 years. 2828. Yeah. And together

for 30. And, but we've been married for 28 of those.

So Wow. Wow. Well, my hat is off to you. I'm just a mere rookie at 12. So

But you have a lot of practice leading up to the actual marriage am

Ryan idea. That is so true. I had a lot of tryouts always amazed me, you know, I had such a, I thought such a package. You know, I'd take them on trips. And I would, you know, lavish them with gifts, yet it was so hard to get anybody to marry me. I mean, that I would bribe them in so many ways, but they're all rejecting marriage.

No takers?

Are you kidding? Get married, do you? Are you? Hey,

Well, God,

The reason I thought this would be a good topic is, as our audience may or may not know, I do. I'm on the middle couch for the 17 head coaches at the University of Texas and I do a weekly Personal Growth program for them. And I find sort of the best of the best content for coaches and and oftentimes, it's big night name coaches, but sometimes it's something pertaining to their personal life. And, and so one of my favorite podcasts to listen to, is a great sports psychologist by the name of Michael Gervais that you and I had the pleasure of, you know, meeting there in Seattle and going to the Seattle Seahawks facility, and it was a cool experience for for both of us. You remember that?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. That was a great day.

And and so in Seattle, he there's this this couple, John and Julie Gottman, who are really the premium preeminent authorities on on marriage in the United States, they call him the the Einsteins of love. And so I'm giving it to the coaches here in a week or so. But I just listened to it. And I thought we talked about it because it's so interesting. And some of the things that they talked about, is you have to make a treat your partner's goals as high as your own goals. That's an interesting idea in that. Yeah,

No, absolutely. And it makes perfect sense. I mean, I think to make marriage work, you're supporting one another, right? You know, and supporting one another, and whatever that may be goals, you know, absolutely, or in, you know, anything that they're looking toward achieving or or doing in life. So I absolutely am on the same page with that. And I'm lucky, you know, we talked about support, like when I left a six figure job, you know, 14 years ago to start my first business. Jared was my biggest, you know, cheerleader champion, you know, and the person who to when I was uncertain helped remind me, you know, that I could do it. And so anyway, I think that's such a critical and foundational part of marriage is supporting each other and with your goals.

And how do you how do you do that with Jared?

You know, as far as with Jared is concerned, first of all, I think it goes back to what we talked about all the time, John, which is clarity, you have to be clear what each other's goals are, and share that with each other. And, you know, and have conversations around it and progress and ask, like I say, how do you want me to support you on this? Yeah, you know, um, you know, it's just so that, because sometimes it's like, hey, all I want you to do is listen, or I don't need your input on how to get from point A to point B, I just want to download kind of what I'm going through in my experience. So it's really just the lines of communication opening and asking, how should I support you through this? starts the dialogue in the conversation.

You know, it's interesting how a marriage, either you create a culture in your marriage, just like you have a culture, in your company, or in your team, if it was your sports team, in that interesting that you have a culture in your marriage?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, going back to how to support one another, getting clear about how to support one another is so important, because I'll use the reverse were sharing with Jared, for example, maybe some of the challenges I'm having related to a goal or to one of the businesses or whatever, and right away, he goes into just solving it. And a fan. Yep. So being able to communicate and say, I don't need you to solve this, like, I already know the direction I'm going in, I just need for you to hear what it is that I'm saying. And just to listen, you know, so that's the way you can support me, you know, so being really, again, having that open dialogue around how not only how can you support them, but how being very clear about how they can support you.

Boy, you know, it's clear that you guys have a high level of both clarity, but also communication, to be that aware of how you're interacting with each other. That's, that's pretty cool. You know, another thing they talk about is how we all have unconscious tripwires from childhood wounds. Where, you know, if if you have a it's important that that you know, your childhood wounds, and you know, your partner's childhood wounds, because then as things come up, you can see the the landmines or why the person may be reacting. Whereas you didn't know that you wouldn't know why they're, you know, being the way they are. And, and, you know, I look back on my life and I had a I had a good childhood, but I didn't really feel heard. You know, I mean, it wasn't a, you know, giant trauma. But that's sort of what I came away with. And, and I can see how that will play into issues that might come out with the ginger in May. What about you? Do you have any childhood wounds that you got to sort of navigate around?

Oh, I think you know, don't we all? You know what I mean? Yeah, I would think so. I don't know how you get a walk away from childhood unscathed. You know, whether it's with your family, whether it's with your some of your experiences in school, and, you know, with peers or, you know, that's part of, of what makes you who you are, is those experiences that you have. Right, so as far as just, you know, childhood trauma, I mean, you know, absolutely, you know, and so how those things manifest themselves, like, you know, for me, again, we've talked about this in prior episodes, like part of my, the fabric of what my upbringing what I developed, was this people pleasing. Yeah. So like, I'm just gonna make everything okay, because there's so much that everybody is dealing with. So if I just kind of go under the radar and do everything perfect, or make this person happy, then everything will be okay. And maybe the boat will stop rocking, you know what I mean? And so, some of that will show up in the relationship, you know, when I'm not, you know, I use the methodology, our methodology to help me overcome a lot of that. But it's still, you know, it's, it's, it's hardwired in so it takes work. And in those moments where maybe I'm overtired, where I've been triggered by something, you know, you'll see it show up, you know, and it'll be like a, you know, it'll go I don't know if you recognize this, so I'm just going to call it out and then I'm gonna back out of the room slowly.

And I'm going to avoid being here with anything. Exactly. Uh, you know, one thing, Jen, she told me that that I think was interesting, because I see that that childhood wounds, but I don't want to, I don't want to over emphasize it because, you know, if you have a childhood wound, but you, you hang on to it and you almost become a victim to it, that's a problem. So I'm like, Yes, it happened, it's not that big a deal. So I don't want to give too much energy to it, I want to acknowledge it, but I also don't want to give too much energy to it.

Well, we talked about that in a prior episode to where it's like, you know, what the story about your story, right, you can either choose to fall into that world of these terrible things happen to me. So that's why I'm a dick, you know, in my Drive, whatever, you know, or it'll be like, you know, I'm, I'm choosing to use this, like, this made me a better person as a result of going through this, because I learned how not to be, you know, or whatever the case may be. So again, it's just framing or how you're narrating your story, that makes all of the difference,

right? Why, and they also talked about this concept of repair, which comes into play, like when you have a disagreement, or there's some little tension. And after a little time passes, either party will try and repair what happened, you know, just, maybe it's a tags, maybe it's a, you know, a hug, whatever, whatever it is. And that's a powerful concept. But I see, it's so so much of this stuff is around, just awareness, awareness of, of the basics of, of having a good relationship, they talk about the four horsemen of a bad relationship. And they are criticism, number one, defensiveness, number two, contempt number three, which is, you know, looking down on your partner from a position of superiority. And number four is stone stonewalling, which may basically mean shutting down. And, you know, I've always been a believer that, that criticism is the worst thing you can do. And men are particularly susceptible to feeling the pain of that, because, you know, most most women don't and don't realize this, and even men don't realize this, but the focus of a man is to please his woman, as his Tat is, and whereas a woman would take criticism as as help. The man takes it as I'm not good enough, or I'm failing and my main goal of pleasing my, my wife, do you think that's true?

Um, I don't know. I mean, I think criticism, you know, just in general, depends, I guess it depends on how it's delivered. We mean, how the criticism is delivered, I'm thinking about it from a woman's perspective. So if Jared is critical of me, probably feels the same way as it does. When it's, you know, whether you're a man or a woman, if somebody's critical of you. And you're I don't know, if I'm going to look at that as help. If it's not delivered in the right. Yeah. You know what I mean? So I guess the delivery is really, you know, what it all comes down to, and here's the thing, criticism is such a slippery slope. Because you know, we've talked about this before, whatever you look for, you'll find, if you're training yourself to look for all of the faults in your partner, guess what, you're gonna find them, because that's how the brain works. You know what I mean? And that's when we're talking about marriage and relationships, there's a lot of intention required, you use the word awareness, you know, and, but there's a lot of intention required. And so, you know, the methodology helps you become more intentional, right now, how you're showing up and training yourself to kind of get out of some of maybe those ruts you've been in because I mean, we've been married for 28 years, it's easy to get into, you know, really easy to get into patterns in your marriage and right ruts and those kinds of things. So I think, you know, just being very intentional, and again, back to that criticism piece. That's a slippery slope and that again, because we're wired for fear and we're wired for negativity, you know, you will start your brain will start seeking that out if those are the things you're paying attention to. And then that just compiles and picks up momentum. So that's why built into it initially when, when you and I first met and there's a section there on relationship and marriage. One of the things was just giving Jared compliments, you know, minimum of two compliments a day just doing that one thing I was never really credit goal. That's not the way I roll, but by just making it a point to acknowledge and say, hey, thanks so much for doing that, that was super helpful, or you look great today, or whatever the case is, it immediately starts to change the way the relationship feels. And then you're not if you are prone to criticism when you're training yourself to complement that slowly phase out.

Right? Yeah, that's a that's a great point. Yeah, that's, that's the power of our 12 men. And today technique is, is all of this is all your actions virtually are subconscious. And when you train your, your subconscious to do the right things, like two compliments a day to your spouse, game changer, you know, with ginger, and I, you know, she is, I'm the big picture guy, and she's the detailed person that makes everything run and it works great. And, and it's a good fit. And we were talking about this last week or so, you know, she wants a lot of things done exactly right. In our house, like always turn out the lights and turn off the Wi Fi and always close the back door. You know, there's, there's 20 or 30 things, and it hits me about a week ago. I'm like, you know, I based on what she says I think I'm doing at about 80%? And I'm like, Well, why not just go to 100%? If I'm if I'm at 80? Why not just take it to 100%? Because it would certainly make her happy. And and I have the ability to do that. So why do anything 80% And so I made a list of all the things that are important to her to run our house, like, like we want it run. And so we're in this experiment, period, but it seems to be working. And and you know, and so that's sort of what I'm doing for her. And then you know, I'm going to enlighten her about the things that would be important to me, and you'll probably around that being heard and, and that that type of thing. So, you know, it's we're in this experiment with our relationship, but But again, it seems to be going pretty darn well.

Well, you know, that's it. One thing I want to point out is just again, the intentionality to improve the quality of your relationship. But most people aren't doing that they're not thinking about, you know, maybe they're daydreaming about how to get out of it.

Yeah, that could be, that's not good.

I think there's 50% that fall into that bucket, you know, but I think, again, it's easy to pick up momentum in that light. And it's, it's so much like, it's so satisfying to be working toward that level of relationship that you want with your partner. Because John, you've said this, and I'm not sure where this comes from, I know that there's research behind this, but your relationship is one of the number one indicators of your happiness, right? Because this comes in you spend the most time with, right? So putting the time in and being intentional about proving improving that relationship is so important. It impacts your life. Like we all know, we've been in a crappy relationship, or maybe when things aren't going well in the relationship, how it bleeds in to every other area of your life.

Right? So Well I tell you, you know, it's it's amazing when I look back on my life. And as I think I told you, when I turned 50 I had lived in Dallas all my life, except for four years in Austin at University of Texas. And I truly felt I had dated every girl in Dallas. Every I had every one of them I had dated, and I never even got engaged, you know? And I'm like, you know, one would think maybe, maybe the problem isn't them.

Who's the common denominator?

Right. And, but, you know, when I met Jen's really, I'm like, Oh, I see the problem. It was them really sad story elements. But you know, she was just so so much head and shoulders above the rest that I'm like, boy, I'm glad I waited and and I see that. Even even in the best of relationships. There's challenging times. We haven't really had many challenging times at all. We we haven't really even had a big giant Fight in 12 years. But I see how valuable and how wonderful a great relationship is. And to wrap this up, so the gunman's are talking, they have a new book. And they they talk about their program, it's it's an eighth date program, where you're going to go out with your spouse on eight different dates. And each day, you're going to talk about a particular subject again, so around this idea of clarity. And you'll, you'll maybe do a little homework before each date, but things you'll talk about are like, how each partner defines trust. How do we want to handle conflict? Maybe you're talking about spirituality, maybe you're talking about sex, maybe you're talking about many, but you know, they they gave you a yellow variety of things to talk about. But I think that's a great idea to to the more communication you have with your spouse, the better the relationship gets. Do you like that idea?

I think that's a great idea to to the more communication you have with your spouse, the better the relationship gets. Do you like that idea?

Oh, no, I think it's I love the idea. I think it's fantastic. I think, you know, we talked about this related other topics before, but everything is so fast, everybody's running as fast as they can, you're in this reactive mode. And so having those set times, you know, where you've got these dates scheduled, and a topic that you're going to be talking about, it takes all of the guesswork out of it, it takes in and again, it gets you really intentional about getting clarity in these different areas of your relationship, because we don't take the time to do that. It's, you know, again, we have these million things coming at us a day and we're not, you know, many people aren't prioritizing their relationship, the romantic partner relationship, and this forces you to do that.

Right. Right. You know, I tell you, I'd be interesting is if you if you bought the book, and I bought the book, and then, you know, in a month or two, we report back, what what was the effect? I bet it'd be good on both.

Yeah, I'm sure it would be, you know, I learned some things. Well,

So the name of the way I don't know the name of the book, but the author's are, John and Julie Gottman Gott, ma n. And they talk about the eight date program. So that'd be that'd be interesting. I know. I'm gonna go by it. After we get off here, but so until next time, we'll say yeah.