Transcript:
Keeping the Messiness of Everyday Living From Overwhelming Our Relationships
Welcome to the Us & Kids podcast. I'm your host Jan Talen. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, a wife and mom and a grandma. This Us & Kids podcast is about how to be married forever while you pair it together. It's not an easy task. And so I encourage you to subscribe to Us & Kids in your favorite podcasting app. I'm glad you're here so that your marriage and your home can be fulfilling and so very good cause today we want to start out by talking about how to keep your relationship raga clean.
Last week we talked about how to clean up what's under your rug, so that sort of feeds into how to keep your rug clean. But I was talking last week more about don't sweep more stuff under the rug and today I'm going to talk about what to do to keep the stuff that's in everyday life cleaned up. It won't be a repeat. It's new information. I'm glad you joined us. Well as you know, with most rugs they get walked on and sometimes with our relationships we can feel a little walked on or used or taken advantage of. But one way to mellow that down is to more importantly, pay attention to not when you feel used or abused, but paying attention to the places where you guys have had successes. These are milestones. Sometimes they involve an adventure.
So I invite you this year to make a little list, a piece of paper up on a wall, something in your phones that pays attention to, Hey, we did it. If it means that, Hey, we did, we ate family dinner together three times this week, mark it down. Have you say, Hey, we did it. We talked about my folks without us fighting. We did it, we did it. We balanced the budget and had money for our savings, had money towards that debt. We did it. Mark those milestones because you know what? When we notice those positives, Oh it's so good in terms of keeping the ugly stuff from blowing up out of proportion. Now sometimes those milestones include adventures. Like we changed the car tire on the side of the road ourselves. Mark the adventure because you did, it was stressful and you did it. Sometimes there's an adventure of Yeah, we had to split up.
One of us had to get to the hospital for a breathing treatment and one of us had to stay home with our littles and put them to bed. They've never done that before. It's never been split up like that, but we did it. Give yourself those high fives in those, yay for us and write them down because then you can go back to them and cheer each other up when you're feeling Ugh. Keep track of those good things, but also keep track of the details that just make your head have a headache. So these are little things like if somebody has a prescription that has to be repeated, have a method and a way to keep track of what that prescription number is and how to get it auto refilled. If somebody has an unusual process in terms of paying off debt or in terms of having to communicate with a different family member, have a method about how that's going to happen, but write it down because if you only have to do it now and then you go, how did we do that?
Get it written down and in a place where you can find it, because it's easier if there are bills that just show up now and then only pay two or three times a year, make sure those are included in these random little things that can make each other angry. Until we've taken care of it and we have a process that is actually doable. So keep track of that random stuff and keep track of how you're going to deal with that random stuff. And you heard me? That means write it down and in a place where both of you can find it so that you're on the same page. Hmm. How else do we keep those rugs clean so we don't get walked on so that it's a pretty part of our relationship?
Don't forget little things they do add up. Pennies do add up. So do nickels and dimes and you know that when they're going through the couch cushion, the diaper bag or your car seats, right? You need the extra 15 cents and when you find it, it's like, yes. Don't forget the little things, meaning the little things someone has done for you, like I dunno, hanging up your bathroom towel or making your half of the bed or putting your dishes in the dishwasher. Now sometimes I sort of hope you aren't being that picky about who's doing what. We become less picky when we know that we're both in it together and doing the little things, helping each other out is part of that so that when someone comes and you've done a little bit of something that's cute, I don't know, putting a piece of chocolate on their pillow or making their napkin look like a cute animal, or having a delicious cup of coffee ready for them. Make a note of some of those unexpected cute things. Remember that flowers, little pieces of candy, favorite dishes, something cleaned up that rarely gets cleaned up. Little love notes and smiley faces all add up quickly. We forget them. Our brain is far more prone to hang on to the negative, than hang onto the positive and so reminding you to write some of those things down because it will help you in the uglier days. When you think he doesn't like me, she doesn't care. Go and look cause yes you do.
It'll settle you down, pull you back together on the rug of both feet with a nice little kiss. How else do you want to stay so that rug works well and functions well? Work together towards your financial goals. Oh, that means you have to have financial goals and I'm going to encourage you to do that, to talk about what do we hope to achieve this year with the money that we have as income. If we don't put it in specific places, it goes in lots of nonspecific places where we don't know what happened to it and we can become a bit dismayed. It's not easy to talk about money. It has a lot of power play in it. So in talking about money, remember to use the word "our" because you're both working towards financial security and stability if you're at home and the ones spending money, if you're out working, would that much time to spend it.
I used to tell my husband I was home more than he was. I clearly was still am the main money spender and when I would return things, which I was fairly good about doing, the bags didn't stack up or they never got returned. If I had stuff that Nope, we didn't use, I was returning it. I would come home and I would say, Hey hun, I made money today. Yeah. And he'd look at me and I would go, well, I returned all this stuff and look, I made money and he sort of rolls his eyes, I get it. Part of it was remembering that we were in it together and I was going to honor the effort he put into making enough money for our household to function. The money I made at that time was a little bit of extra money. Not anything that was going to cover a consistent expense. Talk about be in it together.
No. What your bills are and share the information about them so that you have shared power over your finances. There are lots of plans out there about how to do this. I don't advocate necessarily one over another. What I do advocate is that you work a plan and that you work a budget. This keeps the anxiety about what's happening to the dollars in upfront clear, no secrets places and that helps relationships feel secure. So one other thing to do to make sure that your rug on the entry way of your relationship looks great and that is work together with a calendar that you can both see. For years, my husband and I would sit down on Sunday night on a piece of furniture we lovingly called the black love seat. It was true, it was black, it was leather, it was comfy. And in the evenings it was ours.
No children allowed our love seat. And on Sunday nights we sat on that love seat with a calendar. At that time there weren't many electronic calendars. We worked paper ones but we worked them and we shared who had to go where, when, when did he have to actually be home because one of us had to get the others to piano lessons or soccer or swim or whatever. We talked about where there was going to be time for us and what other things we had to accomplish. When did we have to do our financial meeting so that we could follow each other with a budget? When did we have a date on the calendar, when did we need to take care of helping other people in some way or another and we blocked out those times so that it was for both of us. We knew what was happening. We did that on a weekly basis. We also usually worked a three month calendar as well usually because when we worked a three month calendar that worked around a sport that one of our high schoolers was involved in and sometimes middle school, but the high school calendar was more intense and we had to make sure that we were tracking over that season of that sport because it filled that calendar all the more.
I'm encouraging you stay organized with your calendar, talk with each other. The other thing that we would do consistently still do is we would touch base daily about what was happening today so that we would review a little bit, doesn't take long. We're dressed in the morning and we're saying, okay, so you're going to work and you have to do this after work and I'm going to be here so we'll see each other about eight 30 tonight. I know, truthfully that's the truth for us right now is usually we see each other about eight 30 at night, but we know what's going on. It keeps integrity between us so that we can talk about how was your day and know some about what to actually ask because there aren't any secrets and we can be helpful with the other. When somebody says, I have a tough meeting at three I'm not sure how it's going to go.
Then we can say in our family, I'll pray that you have a lot of wisdom then and know that somebody has their back. It's a way of encouraging. So I'm suggesting in order to keep that entryway rug of your relationship nice and cleaned up, talk about what you're doing daily, weekly, and quarterly, sometimes yearly. Then remember to talk also about those finances and to keep track with each other about them. Remember to do really good, nice little things for each other. Smiles touches, little gifts, things of encouragement. Remember to track little details. They can make the other person angry. Where are the bills kept? Where did you put my shoes? Where's that winter stuff? Keep track of that little stuff and keep track of the good stuff. So I've just worked my way backwards from what we just talked about in terms of how to keep that entryway rug of your relationship in really good shape this year because it's going to be a good year.
Of course, we've made a cute little printable for you so that you can put it out on your dresser and on your refrigerator and go, Oh yeah, that's what we were going to do. Right? And you know that there's a great little website out there called Us & Kids were getting ready to start our first course called D N a for fun. And you'll find information for that on the website. And, um, and why don't we encourage you stay together, work well, being married forever while you appearing together is a lot of fun. It's gonna be a good year and you are worth it in fast, talk, touch, enjoy each other. Catch up with you next week. Bye. Bye.
