Transcript: EQ, Marriage and Kids

Welcome to the Us and Kids Podcast! I am excited to be your host, Jan Talen. I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a wife, a mom, and grandma.  

This Us and Kids podcast is about how to be married forever while you parent together!  You and I know this isn't an easy task. And that's why I encourage you to subscribe to Us and Kids in your favorite podcasting app. If, after this episode, or another one that you listen to you would be inclined to leave a review, that's always helpful to the other people that are wondering what's the best one to listen to. Your feedback is really helpful to them. 

This isn't an easy task. So I encourage you to subscribe to Us and Kids in your favorite podcasting app. I am glad you're here today because I have invited my friend, and co professional Mark Van Dellen to join us to talk about the six things that we need for getting our marriage started well and keeping it running smoothly. I'm glad you've joined me. This is a powerful and direct, very linear 1,2,3,4,5,6 suggestions on how to keep your marriage on track, doable, and reasonable. I am really glad you joined us. Let's get started. 

Mark:  Yeah, honored again to be here with you guys. 

Jan: So tell me a little bit. ..when you do work with couples that are saying, "We think we want to get married!" and they're all sparkly eyed.  They did all the engagement stuff already. What are you looking for when you start to talk with them, what markers make you sort of have a red flag and what things do you say, Ah, Solid! This gets you through a lot!" Give me a little clue there of what you're looking at and for.

Mark:  I like the word "path". Like the path to marriage health.  And so we've tried to identify what are some of those by thinking about if we're gonna map out a trip. , We know that if we're going to go from point A to point B, there are a couple markers along the way.  We know that a couple hours in we're going to take a gas and a bathroom break. So we've tried to use that same mindset on your path. Here are essentially the six key things you need to have conversations about, develop skills in, and then continue to use those things throughout your relationship. Marriage is not a set it and forget it kind of endeavor. I sometimes like to say it's kind of like a shower. If you don't shower, if you go a long time between showers you start to stink. Same goes for with marriage. If you  get married and then you walk away from your marriage for a couple of weeks then you don't engage in some of these skills, your marriage starts to stink, and you feel it, and you don't feel great about it. So we tried to say here are the six things - like brushing your teeth,  using shampoo,  if we could use them like that shower analogy, it will help to set the path. And let's equip you along that path. 

Jan:  So, if I want to set this path and I've been dating, hanging out with this person for a year and a half. What if my path is a mess? Can you get it straightened up? Maybe I should hear what is on the path first. 

Mark:  Yeah, We would explore that together and I'm actually finding interestingly enough, the trends of couples getting married today in 2020 is a little different than the path of maybe 10 to 20 years ago. It's, it's a little less linear. It's a little less go to school, get good grades, meet someone, get a job, get married, have kids. I'm actually seeing  this next generation, asking some of these harder questions earlier on. So prior to engagement, as a really interesting trend that I'm experiencing, I'm talking with couples they were dating seriously. They would like to unpack some things before they move to having a ring and invites, or an actual date on the calendar for a wedding.   I'm loving. their approach. To your point Jan,  if our relationship feels like a mess, how do we unpack this? Previously people were coming to me after they've mailed invites, after they've got a guest list. And now they're all kind of a mess and want to get it sorted out. This path is way more complicated. So now I have people saying, "Alright. We feel like we're on this path - that we're on a good trajectory - can you help set us up for success?" So that's one really interesting trend that I've experienced. 

Jan: Maybe I'm being too sociological here's my thought. We've had no fault divorce now for a couple of generations if not a few more. I am wondering if those kids that are talking with you, pre-engagement, are some out of the product of divorced parents. I'm not looking for shame and blame here. I'm just, on a sociological level, curious about that. In terms of them saying, "I don't want to go through that. It was not fun. And I don't want to set my kids up to go through that. So I want to be sure before I get too far down the road."

Mark:  I think if you continue that socialogical thought, you know, even if I didn't have experienced divorce within my own family, the other part is that generationally we asked different questions. So, a lot of generations just asked, "What am I going to do when I grow up. What am I going to be when I grow up." This current generation is asking the "why" question a lot more. This is a challenging thought in the workplace, as well as a challenging thought in relationships. They are asking what is the purpose of their relationship, versus well it's just what you do next is get married. So I think there are some of those thoughts if I experienced divorce in my relationship. I'm probably asking harder questions so that I don't also experience it. But even if for those younger relationships, they're still asking that question because they've seen the implications of an entire generation that didn't ask the why question. 

So from a sociological perspective, you know, they're the generation asking some of those really complicated questions. They want to get this figured out instead of getting into it and then figuring it out. They're doing it in their job searches and they're doing it in their college pursuits. They're just not going as linear as: graduate, get a degree, then a job, stay at that job for 35 years.  That's just not the path any longer for the upcoming adults. So it's also not mapping on to their relationships in the same way.  

To your point of wondering if there are red flags or what do you do? Our very first kind of conversation is around the marriage mindset. What do you think about marriage? What do you hope marriage will do for you? What do you expect to get out of marriage? Why are you marrying the other person?   I did a lot of research into what is it that causes marriages to struggle,  or break. And I spent a lot of time researching the root causes such as what are the things or the problems in marriage? And once we identified kind of common categories I actually stumbled on something very different, that I didn't expect to stumble upon. It wasn't the problems, it was the mindset or like how equipped we were to navigate those problems. The problems weren't the problem, even though the people thought so.  We did identify or recognize the problem, and also recognized that it was their thinking about the problem that was, in fact, the problem. 

So if they saw the problem as a challenge, or we'll figure this out and be better for it then it was more overcomeable. If they saw the problem as being horrible and awful. And they believe that my spouse will never change their mind and I'll never change my mind.  So that means that we're going to be at odds forever. Those are  two way different mindsets around the same problem which then sets up two different trajectories for that relationship. 

I think so many books and so many things that are meant to be helpful but only offer a tool like a hammer  or picking up just a screwdriver when we know that marriage is way bigger than just one tool. Preparing for marriage, it's way bigger than just one tool. We hope that you know how to plan a house and build a house long before you ever grab a screwdriver. And I think that's where, a lot of times, we weren't equipped and we didn't spend a lot of time equipping people for marriage. 

So we start right there with mindset. Let's set their expectations. And I often joke about fairy tales. I don't want to offend anybody but fairy tales create this perspective that happily ever after is easy.  Well, a month into marriage, it's not. Or maybe it is for three years and then all of a sudden, it's not. Well now, do I have the wrong marriage? No, not necessarily. Or the fairy tale idea that I found my one true love! These are fairy tale type things and so when all the sudden when he or she does something that I don't like, I may, without the right mindset come to the conclusion that I married the wrong person. And now I've got to detach myself from that person and go find the next person who is my one true love. This is not how relationships and marriages work.  And so we really try to unpack that mindset to make sure that we can uncover some of these fallacies that we've been we've either been taught or, honestly, we've inherited  It's like we've absorbed these concepts because we've all read Mother Goose things, or whatever it is that we grew up on. They always have a happy ending. And they're beautiful things but they don't always translate to real life. So all that to say, sometimes I spend a little bit of upfront time chipping away some of the sparkle and the butterflies so that we can take a look into reality. I don't take a fearful or scare tactic. But let's ground you in reality.   It'seasier when we're dating to ignore some of these red flags so my goal, through a lot of conversations questions and assessment, is to identify some at least yellow flags, and then talk about them. 

Jan: So you had started this out and I think I derailed it with a sociological conversation. So getting back on track, you had said that there were six things.   Did you just talk about one and two of them, or have you not done those yet? 

Mark:  I don't know that that's on you. I just talked about the first one. What we find as you prepare for marriage and actually as you even navigate marriage is that these are the six things that you keep coming back to and evaluate. So I'm a big fan of evaluating an assessment, assessing things.  So like if you could evaluate your marriage on a scale of one to 10 in these six categories,  you can see where are we? What's reality? How do we improve our marriage mindsets? The number one thing is thinking about what do you believe about marriage and what do you think it'll do for you?  Why do you love the other person?

 Number two, we look at personality differences. So now you're understanding that you  are two different people. A lot of times people get married, thinking they're going to fix or change the other person, and they're often sorely disappointed when that doesn't happen. So, what I found out was a lot of people were communicating when they come to me with marriage issues they would use the word incompatible. So when we talk about personality differences we try to shift that perspective from compatible or incompatible to complimentary. So how do you take your differences and make them work well together, versus, it's an on off switch of whether we're compatible or incompatible.So that's where the personality differences kind of thing. 

Jan: So I'm gonna just play with that for just a second, because in another podcast that we're doing together, we're talking about emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence includes emotional awareness of yourself and others, if I sum that up correctly. It  is often written into some personality traits as well. And so, I'm a therapist, I feel, I just do. I empathize pretty easily. I feel it, and I like it. All of them (emotions), I like them. However, I'm married to a wonderful attorney, a business attorney. He likes to write things on paper. He doesn't have as many feelings, he doesn't really want to know all of my feelings. Now he has learned over the years,but in the beginning he was really stretching to pay attention to all the words I had to say when I came home from working at 11 o'clock at night. All the things, feelings I had all day at that eight to 10 hour shift were a lot to absorb. So, I guess as I think about that a little bit, I think, okay, make sure you for my listeners, make sure that you're also paying attention to this emotional intelligence podcast that is up as well, because those emotions are going to play into understanding personality differences and give you a little boost with that. 

Mark: Yes, exactly. I mean, that's why I like the complimentary and it's a fascinating thing that when you and Chip were dating you were attracted to your differences. 

Jan: Yes we were. 

Mark: That fact that you probably gave him a little more fun because he's a lawyer so he loves to study and write and you provided this sense of spontaneity and fun. And he also helped you remember where your keys were and he brought this stability that a lot of us want.  Then we get a couple years into marriage and we determine that you are no longer  like me, so I've determined we're incompatible. But you know, we can complement each other even on the emotional side. You've helped Chip, identify and discuss emotions and you've also probably gotten a little better at packaging some of your language with them, so that he can receive it and deal with it. 

This leads to the third step in our roadmap. We look at communication styles. And so I say,  Talk and Fight style. So it's not only just the way we communicate, but it's also how we fight fair and navigate conflict which brings in that emotional intelligence as well. I like to remind people that the best marriages aren't measured by the absence of adversity, conflict or difficulty. They're always measured by how well we navigate those things. And when our mindset says well we're getting married because we're gonna be happy forever and we're going to skip forever and hold hands and it's going to be rainbows and lollipops. then that breaks the second you fight. So we'd like to equip people with skill sets around how to fight fair. How do you communicate about emotions? And how do you keep kind of the communication lines open? 

Jan: If I can interject one other piece in that, Mark. I think that you study more early marriage and I study more ongoing marriage. And in the studies of ongoing marriages of people who have been married 50 years or longer and we ask them what helped them through the tough spots, they don't say communication. They say, we learned how to play, how to take serious what was serious, how to stay light hearted. when it didn't need to be serious. And we learned how to be kind. And those two are the things that carried us through, so that even when we were at crossroads with each other and hotter than hornets we knew how to stand down and be kind. I was thinking that with your platform for young marriages and early marriages that you're suggesting these ideas too. Being able to listen, being able to say, we're not incompatible. What was your word? We're complimentary! And that's really a kind word.

Mark: Yes.  It's saying, "I see your gifts." It's not focusing on your weaknesses. I didn't mention it in the first marriage mindset kind of concept but we take time to celebrate. And I hope that that starts that habit of putting on rose colored glasses. Gottman's  research on kindness in marriage says that the marriages that last are the ones that  choose to put on rose colored glasses, more often.  So instead of focusing on the less pleasing facts such as: She leaves her shoes out or he leaves the toilet seat up or my kid got a D on that test and you're not as upset about it as I think you should be, we can look at the strengths and celebrate these things together. That attitude maps or shows up throughout the entire relationship. It doesn't mean that we don't have junk. We all have junk. It's our perspective. And then how do we navigate that junk. So, I know your podcast also really engages parents to love each other while also loving and raising these kids. What's your tagline on relationships? 

Jan: Oh, it is how to be married forever while we parent together. 

Mark: Awesome. I knew it was something catchy! So next we spend time in our fourth  component of the roadmap talking about upbringing and family. And so I think all of us say, "I'm never going to be like my mom or my dad".   And then we get into a relationship, or we start raising kids and and that's what we are (like our parents) because that's the only example we had. And so we spend time talking through both sets of families and sometimes that's blended, sometimes it's not. What did you experience growing up? It's as granular as who does what tasks around the house. I actually steal an example from a book written by a pastor, out of Chicago where he talks about when they first got married. Their garbage disposal broke, and his wife told him, "Hey the garbage disposals broken." He said, "Great - call the repairman. Let me know how much it costs." And the fight was on. And he said he had no idea why. They learned in that moment that she grew up in a family of tinkerers and fixers, and he grew up in a family of his dad was a traveling salesman, and you would pay to get stuff fixed. And so her perspective on what a husband does, and should do, was different from what he experienced and they had no idea. They were well into their marriage when they ran into this silly disposal conversation. So, we like to hit that stuff, early. And then also paint the picture that when you add a kid into this mix, new things are going to show up. You can bet that how you parent in the middle the night, at 2am, you're going to do exactly what mom and dad did. And you can choose -  if it's what you want to do great. You get to choose that. If you don't want to copy mom and dad then hopefully you could have a conversation about it. So I'll bring it into family, and  in that we talked a little bit about not just family planning, but included it into your purpose for your marriage and where do you want to go with your marriage.  So when you insert a job change or a job loss or a child or, you know, whatever it is, your plan for your marriage can navigate that well together.  So we look at the past and look at the future. and begin to figure out how we are going to walk in that together. 

Jan:  What like that is, in the course of DNA for Fun. We talk about the D stands for what's your desire or what's your dream? You know, what's your direction. Any of those D words. We have intention now, and we have a fact that we're going after. Instead of just riding our emotions and seeing once where we go. For me, when setting up young marriages and helping young families stay on their feet,  it's important to remember you're tired. You're weary and often you're overwhelmed. And we let those emotions dictate our choices.  If we don't have that direct desire or direction in front of us, those emotions can take us far out into an ocean and sink us. 

Mark:  The unfortunate truth too is the picture of our parents that we see is in time-warp. By the time we recognize what's going on in our parents relationship, we're 8 - 10 years old. Maybe it's middle school when we can recall our parents' marriage and our parents are at least that many years into their marriage. We never see the part of their marriage that we're experiencing as a young married couple. We never understand mom and dad as they were two years into their marriage. Mom and dad now, are so far from those first two years of their marriage that they can no longer harken back in the same way. So,it's unwise to evaluate our year or two year old marriage, based on our parents' 30 year old marriage, good and bad. And so, helping them see that their parents have already sailed that and they've already navigated some rough seas. Now it's your job (as a newly married couple) to  plan your marriage map.  And that map doesn't have to look the same as theirs.  Your relationship is unique. 

We could grab parts of their model that you like.  Two of my favorite questions for deciding if there is something from their marriage that they want include is 1 - What's one thing that you've noticed from each set of parents that you would like to continue doing?  What's one thing you love that you like you would love to replicate and continue. It's generational awesomeness. But I also give them permission to say 2 - What's one thing in your parents relationship that you would like not to repeat. And it doesn't have to be real. It doesn't have to go super dark. Some people do. But it's really powerful because it gives you a choice in your relationship.  You don't have to keep doing things exactly as your parents always did. And you get to pick up what your parents were awesome at and choose to do that.  The other fun part is it brings the spouses together of, you know, future spouses, looking at each upbringing. It's an easy way to talk about your spouse's family with objectivity and admiration.  So being able to say, "I love that about your parents.  I hope we can do that too!"So it's a really fun exercise. And I like to invite couples to actually communicate back to their parents, what they noticed in the parent relationship.  So we're trying to help parents see that you are now coming together as a couple, and go back to both sets of parents and say we observe, here's who we want to be. Thank you for the example. Every parent wants to know they did a good job so this conversation helps to set the new couple up for such success and support from the parent. 

Jan: What it does there nicely, I think is say, "You guys are your own couple. You are not your mom and your dad. You are your own couple. Now create your own colorfulness, your own marriage and be willing to create that piece of art in a way that makes sense for you and your family. 

Mark: For all of the couples involved. I'd like to remind people that  getting married as a young couple is, at some point, fracturing the dream that your parents had. You can't possibly have done everything exactly the way they wanted in childhood. This starts that process in a healthy way of saying,  "Mom and Dad,  we are spending intentional time planning our future. And we're inviting you into the picture of our future. And we're resetting your picture of our future rather than the one that you had when you held me as a baby in your arm. We're probably not landing exactly there at this point in your life."

 So, yeah, I love doing those like those first four roadmap pieces are really exploratory, great conversations. And then the next two get a little more tactical, a little more technical. The fifth component is money, ready and or not. How much do you make? It's that one of those conversations. It's also how you start blending and merging financial decisions. Even simple ones like do you buy a soda at the gas station, or what house are we going to buy? How do we start doing that together so that one person doesn't have all the control of money. Usually one person usually shakes out as the primary bill payer. I'm just guessing, in your relationship Chip likes numbers and spreadsheets more than you. 

Jan:Yes, he does. 

Mark: But that doesn't mean that you're absent from money conversations. We try to help couples start to have those conversations and get comfortable with them. 

And then the sixth conversation is around intimacy and sex and what does that look like and how does how does healthy married sex and intimacy look different from maybe what we've seen or experienced prior to marriage. The key thing that I like to add in that intimacy conversation, the one thing I discovered was the word in Hebrew, for intimacy is To Know. or YADA . And so, in this process of becoming more physically and spiritually intimate, you know that you're revealing parts of yourself and you're as vulnerable as you could possibly be. And so that's kind of the angle we have that conversation. It's also not necessarily a "how to" conversation, it's more of how do we engage this together in the healthiest of ways. So those are like the six key areas that every relationship, new and old, should continue to keep an eye on those gauges checking in on the question of, "Are we healthy here, and if not, how might we improve? 

Jan:  The piece that I like about those last two; the money and the intimacy,  is that research tells us that.  Those are often the two that are thought about the most and neglected the most. And so financial messes happen. And so there's disconnected there, and discussed. And then there is a mismatch in terms of what we expect in terms of emotional intimacy, but also a mismatch in terms of what we expect in bedroom intimacy. Somebody is too tired and too weary. Somebody says that they've had children out over them all day long and more touch is not happening. The importance of understanding how money and intimacy play with the health of the relationship. And really it's just being able to talk about it and process it, and then stay in a compassionate, kind of space with each other.  

Mark:  This is why I like the roadmap concept. Your relationship is always journeying so the way your relationship looks at year 10 with three kids, versus year one with no kids, or a kid or whatever your situation is, your relationship, if you manage these six components, you continue to take those along that journey with you.  What physical intimacy looks like after three kids crawling all over you in year 10 could well look different than what it was in the first years of marriage..  It may be different than what you thought. It was different because everything in our bodies changed and  those are all things that I didn't know when I was first getting married.

 I like to remind people all this stuff is stuff.  I screwed up a bunch and did research on and put it together into one programmatic conversation because it's all stuff. Nobody had these conversations with us, when we were starting to get married and all of a sudden we got some bumpy spots and our marriage, like a boat, was not equipped to hit those rough seas. And thankfully, you know, learning some of the stuff helped us. We learned to be more equipped, to navigate it but I want to help people be able to do that better. 

And I guess you're still gonna experience some rough seas but be better able to navigate them, rather than ask really really hard questions such as, "Do I still like the ship I'm on?" And that's not a question that we necessarily need to ask if we're really intentional about the ship we climb into, and then how w and what are the key components of navigating that ship. 

Jan: Yeah, and it's keeping up on the care of that relationship ship.  That is of ongoing importance. We don't have any control over the weather. I'm a boating person so I like being on the water but I'm well aware that I don't control the weather. If I keep my boat in fairly good shape with good emergency equipment, and with good core skills, those six, then I probably can stay afloat. And I might have some cleanup to do after a storm, but I'm still floating around. 

Mark: Uniquely, we very intentionally built that roadmap almost like a pyramid shape and it goes from like the foundation of marriage mindset, all the way up to money and, and intimacy love life. Some people disagree with me on this but some of my experiences with people, with couples in real life relationships that you can be in financial ruin, you can  have no physical intimacy and still have a pretty solid boat. It's not my ideal, don't hear me say that those two don't matter. But the first four are crucial. And the five and six, the money and intimacy are almost icing on the cake. And again, I don't want to  put them down as if they're not important. But I do know people who have lost everything financially and still have a very good relationship. I know some people who physically are incapable of physical intimacy, because of injuries or whatever that looks like they can still have a phenomenal relationship, phenomenal marriage. Unfortunately our expectations going into marriage has this kind of pyramid flipped upside down, we start with sex and money. And I think that's what you're getting at is when a lot of marriages  fracture around sex and money it's because we've made them number one two and three, and they're not. They're mountain top kind of pieces to a relationship. Yand I also know couples where like sex is great, and money is great. And  all the other componants aren't there, they don't have a healthy, we call it, meaningful marriage. And you can have, you know, a great sex life and a ton of money and still have not a meaningful marriage. The other way around is not true. You can not have those last two things (sex and money) and still have the other four foundational things and still have a very meaningful existence. 

Jan: I love how clearly you have laid that out in terms of being able to say, "Let's look at how we're doing and saying. Let's talk about these every anniversary." You (Mark) didn't say every anniversary I did:)  Talk about it every anniversary or whatever date you want to set it but put it on your calendar. Make it so that it's something that you can find and reuse and visit back again. When you hit a ditch go back to your core four and say what do we have to do. 

Mark: Yes, absolutely. And I didn't say here, so you're right on track. In the marriage mindset conversation we talked about what are your top five moments as a couple. That's your celebration piece. And then we say this is the habit.  For every single year on your anniversary revisit your top five moments.  Admittedly your first time through might be clunky. If you add kids to the mix and a new job and a move to a new city - whatever the competitions are, it may be clunky to start.  I've seen people turn tragedies or difficult things in the top five moments. And it's just such a great habit that helps develop your kindness and rose colored glasses. Keep that into your life. And that better equips you to navigate some of those other things throughout your relationship.

 And it's not, you know, like I said at the very beginning it's not set it and forget it. This is stuff that we regularly revisit. And when you notice a little bit of a tear in your sail or stutter in your boat engine, you have to fix it. You have to put gas in a motorized boat, you have to change the oil. That is what a marriage requires to experience success. So, we equip people with a workbook  . We remind couples to revisit these concepts, every single year. Ashley and I almost work through our program regularly in order to make sure that we continue to have a working functional boat to sail these beautiful waters and the rough seas.

Jan: I love the idea.  I think my listeners are running up to supper time or bedtime here So, any other final ideas that you'd like to give them?

Mark: I would say the reminder that if there are chinks in the armor, if the boat is feeling like it's not perfect, don 't abandon ship. It is something that we need to continue to do maintenance, and when life gets complicated with kids and meal prep and jobs and all of that it's still important and valuable to do that relationship (boat) maintenance. Even when it means taking the relationship and investing more into it. Get it up to speed so that it is ready to go again.  And so that's one of those life places that it is worth it to spend time investing. Marriage is the number one relationship that kids benefit from. It's the number one relationship we have, and it requires and deserves our attention. 

Jan: Well said! You're so right. So often I say that the kids follow the parents. When the parents do well the kids will do well. And so, taking good care of that relationship is just a good value. Both the relationship, the individuals there in the family, are worth the effort. You've given some really good guidelines and very concrete ways to take care of your marriage and family.  I just want to encourage my listeners to take care of it. Keep your boat afloat. Take care of the daily, weekly, yearly maintenance and have some fun. 

Thank you Mark for joining us. 

Mark: Thank you. This was fun. 

Jan: Absolutely. It was good to see you again and we'll catch up with you again later Thanks Mark!

Jan: Mark, thank you so much for this wonderful information. The six steps that you set up for us are so concrete and direct that I just feel like they feel doable. We feel empowered.  

I just want to encourage my listeners. Be sure that you are grabbing the printable for this, and using it like Mark said anniversary after anniversary. And using it when you feel like there's a bump in the road to be able to say, one of the six here is off. And how can we best reset. You guys are worth it! Your relationships are worth it!

 We are glad that you joined us here today. There are two other supports besides the printables we just want to briefly mention. One of them is that Mark has a website, The Meaningful Marriage that has some other courses on it if you want a little boost in some ways or you want to help somebody else who's just thinking about getting married. Mark knows how to do this and does it well. The DNA for Fun Communications Course on Us and Kids website is also available for your purchase, and for using in order to really beef up your relationships. It has workbooks, and it has practice sheets that go along with the course that really adds strength into your relationship, both with your kids, and with your spouse. 

As always so glad you stopped by, so glad you joined us and I am cheering for you! Keep on working on keeping that marriage forever, while you parent together. You're all worth it. Talk to you later. Bye bye.