← The Grounded Union Podcast
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- [00:00]
Kaitlyn
Sam.
- [00:28]
Brandon
Welcome back to the Grounded Union podcast. We're going to be talking about the secrets to a peaceful and connected marriage. And this is something that I think every couple wants. It's interesting. I asked the guys in my men's community app, Grounded Nation, what they were wanting in marriage and a lot of them said, peace, peace, peace. This is this common thread that so many couples are seeking for, is to feel connected and for things to be at peace. In short, what that means is that your time together equals enjoyment instead of your time together leading to chaos and pain. And so I want you to think for a second you maybe had a very immature or selfish reason for getting married, that I just want to get married so I can have a slave that takes care of all my needs. Most people didn't actually get married with that mentality. It was, I really love this person for me, I love this person sitting in front of me. Kaylan I really wanted to spend my life with her. I wanted to do amazing things together. I wanted to enjoy her, learn about her, build a family together. That's why we entered into marriage was to experience the peaceful connection and bond that was promised to us or this facade that we were given in marriage. And for most of us, we get married, life gets a little rough, we get knocked off course, we get distracted, we break our commitments, and what do we know? Marriage is nothing close to peaceful and connected. And most couples then just settle, okay, we're not going to have a connected marriage. We're not going to be at peace. And a lot of couples end up creating two separate lives. I have my life over here at work. So then we both get full time jobs separate from each other. That's just, that can be the norm. But then you work overtime, then you're hanging out with the guys from the office. And we live these two separate lives because together it's not enjoyable, it's not connecting. And so that's not what we signed up for. So if you are in this place where you're like, you know what? I'm done having chaos and pain be what defines our relationship. We've talked about in previous episodes the role that addiction and broken trust play in this. Today we're going to talk about some of the practicals we've already told you, which is how you get to enjoy time together. How do you reframe seeing your beloved? Being in the same room with her, being with your spouse and being like this is connection and peace is the normal instead of the, the rarity. Maybe on your anniversary, you Put your best foot forward. What if every day was enjoyable? What if every day you woke up and were like, thank goodness I'm married to. I can't wait to see how we connect it. That's what we're talking about in this episode.
- [02:33]
Kaitlyn
I love that. And we wanted to first do a bit of storytelling on our experience in our last 10 years of marriage. And we're going to talk a little bit about the common way that we all were taught or told or believed is like the way that you connect in your marriage, and that's through dates. And the disclaimer is that we are not against going on dates with your spouse. That's great if you want to go on dates. What I wanted to bring about was the conversation of this kind of society vital norm, which is to have a connected marriage, you must go on a lot of dates. And so, of course, when we first got married, for the first five years of our marriage, which if you've been around for season one and the beginning of season two, you understand those first five years of our marriage were absolutely tumultuous. And so yet you'd be surprised, you'd be surprised by a lot of things. You'd be surprised to find that we actually went on many, many, many, many dates. We actually set so much intention on going on dates that we would hire a babysitter weekly so we could go on a date and so that we could go to our small group Bible study at the time. And so we had this in the beginning, had one daughter, so she would. We'd have a trusted person come over, stay with her. We would go on a date. We even for many times tried. We need to go on these overnight like dates. We need to have a whole day away from our child, just us. We need to have a whole night together. This is how we connect. It's like, here's the prescription to connection. You must have time just together and time away from kids. And again, those things aren't negative. Those things actually can be connecting. Yet what we found was that five years into our marriage, we had an absolutely disconnected union at the root level. Yet we spent all this time going on all these dates. So why are we so disconnected? And what I find to be so fascinating, we were talking through this a lot before we even recorded is in the last five years. So from 2019, 2020 on, till we've gone on maybe five dates, absolutely shocking.
- [04:36]
Brandon
People are like, the marriage coaches don't date.
- [04:38]
Kaitlyn
The Brandon talks marriage account goes on maybe one date a year. Like maybe we were trying to trace back, we think, our last date, the date that we all think of, that I spend time just together at a restaurant. We have no kids. We think that was two years ago on our anniversary. My mom happened to be visiting. We were like, oh, it's our anniversary. We will go on this standard date.
- [05:00]
Brandon
So of course we ended up on the side of the highway eating cake and fooling around. Fooling around in the minivan. But we'll leave, we'll leave that one for another day.
- [05:07]
Kaitlyn
Like we said, we're not against dates. Like, I would go on a date tonight. That sounds so exciting and so fun and at the same time, I loved. As we were reflecting, I'm like, oh, my gosh. The last five years of our marriage have been the deepest connecting years of our entire lives together. We have actually only grown in connection in our five years, and yet we've only been on one, maybe one date a year, maybe even less. 5 is just thrown out. I can't even think of one other than the one from two years ago. And so what we're here to propose is that dates do not equal the foundation of connection in your union.
- [05:44]
Brandon
Dates are like going to church. So go with me here. You may be a good churchgoing Christian, you may be, you may not be a Christian, you might be a Christian and you're not sure where you go to church, what you want to do. Dates are like church because we've been told or led to believe here in the west that if you go to church, you'll be close to God, that you need to punch in your church card. I even shared a few things about how we had been off and on from going to church just on our own spiritual journey. You can judge me, you can take it or leave it. And people said you need to punch your one hour a week to go to church. And that's how you get closer to God. And I was like, I sure hope that it's not one hour a week is all. I punch my church card in and I'm good. It's my get into heaven card. It's the same thing with dates. Just because you go on a 1 hour, 2 hour date once a week, once a month does not guarantee you are connected. It's actually cruel to tell people, hey, if you go on a weekly date, you'll have a good marriage. What do you even. I. I see, you know, we talk about how, how bad this young generation is being on their phones. I see a lot of people in their 60s on their phones. Sitting at a restaurant, they don't even look up at each other. So going out to dinner does not guarantee that you have a connected marriage. Also, I do want to throw this out. No. Some of you guys are going to leave a negative review. Some of you guys are going to unsubscribe right now. Going to see a movie together.
- [06:51]
Kaitlyn
Literally just wrote dates equals movies.
- [06:53]
Brandon
Oh, we're on the same page. Going to see a movie together is not a date.
- [06:56]
Kaitlyn
No.
- [06:57]
Brandon
Oh, that is boo, boo, boo. Unless you end up making out. But that's. I don't know what you're. It's time together where you're enjoying each other. I like the intention of it, but that's what we're going to dive into is intention is the whole, is the whole component of this. So if you think that if you go to church, you're going to be close to God, if you go on a date, you're going to have a great marriage, you're going to be sadly mistaken. It's every moment, it's the intentionality of your relationship, it's the quality of your connection. And it's once you've addressed the root things that lead you to a part which is what we're so big on. That's what creates connection. That makes every day special, and not just every day special, but it allows you to create intentional times together that create connection. One of the biggest things that we have always been a proponent of is putting away screens. We're talking about entertainment, phones, TV shows, movies. Keep them if you want. But if you're not happy with your marriage and you want deeper peace, deeper connection, take the distractions, take the messages that are, that are being thrown at you. If you guys are sitting down at night and you're watching the news and you're finding about how horrible the world is, you don't think that's going to seep into your connection. One, you're not even going to talk about how you two are really doing. Two, you're just going to see the world from a negative lens or you're going to be inundated with sexualized content. Things that make you judge others, judge yourself, judge your spouse, and you actually don't even have time to connect. So we've always been big on, especially the second five years, putting the phones up, making eye contact, having a heart to heart conversation which will tell you guys at the end of the episode how we have those conversations. But when entertainment is so deeply engaged, enveloped around your time together, you don't really have Time together. You just have time around each other. It's not quality time. It's just filler time. That's why you don't feel close and connected, and that's why it's not producing peace.
- [08:35]
Kaitlyn
And one thing I want to add to this is that although we've been on five or less dates in the last five years, like I said, this is the closest and most connected we have ever been in our marriage. There is no lack in our intimacy, in our connection, in our friendship, even, because there's intentionality to the everyday moments, to the times that we spend together every single day. I see it as almost we nearly go on a date every single day. It's not the date you think of where we have to get the babysitter. We cannot have any distractions. We can't have our kids, can't have any noise. We just have to be sitting there. And like Brayden said, most people that go on those types of dates, if you observe. Like, we go to eat out as a family all the time, and it's like, if you look around, it's kind of shocking. It's like even people with their families, they're all on their phones. If they're sitting there on a date, they're staring at their screens. Like, when their meal comes, they might put their phone down for a minute and we'll talk about why. Why we. Why I think that is we, even on our dates are connecting time. Like Brandon opened up with choose into avoiding time together is because we know if we put the phone down on the date, there's actually only chaos or pain to meet us in the face because we haven't actually addressed the root system. But Brandon and I go on nearly no dates, and we feel no lack from that. We don't feel like we're missing out. Like somebody the other day was asking when we last went on a date, almost as if that was a negative thing. And it's like, oh, no, it's so incredible. We're actually so connected on the day to day to day to day that it. It doesn't feel like, oh, I just can't wait till we could have some help so we could go on a date together. It's just our souls are so fulfilled because we prioritize intentionality in every single day and every single moment that we have together that we are so fulfilled, so complete. The date is really the cherry on the top, which I think is the whole full circle moment. Here is the date is not the answer to your connection. The date is the cherry on the top to your connection. The date is what you do out of overflow of connection.
- [10:35]
Brandon
One of the things I do want to make sure we clarify is we do celebrate special days. Valentine. We love the good Hallmark. We love a good Hallmark holiday. You know, Valentine's Day, birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's Day, Father's Day. We don't act as though those days are normal days. In fact, one of the most damaging things I did during the first five years of our marriage is Caitlin communicated to me very clearly that she wants special days to feel different. So anniversaries, birthdays, Mother's Day. She wanted to feel like there was an intention and there was a plan and that that time wasn't just going to be a normal day. So on those days over the last couple years, we, and I and Katelyn make sure to have specific things that we do on those days that are different than our normal routine. So we aren't saying don't acknowledge an anniversary. We're not saying ignore special days. We're saying make them special for us in the context we're in. We're not empty nesters. And we cry thinking about being empty nesters. We have children ranging from 1, 3, 6, and 8, and they're with us. And so we, what we do is we create a celebratory day with them involved, and we bring that intention to it. So we are not anti celebrating special days and going on a date. We acknowledge the special days. And I finally actually started doing them last few years because before I just, I wanted to avoid the feeling of closeness. So when I felt uncomfortable, I just would fail to plan anything for anniversaries, for anything until the very, very last minute. And that communicated a clear message. Kaylan, actually don't want this quality time with you. This is uncomfortable. Stay away. Now I look forward to these moments together where we are acknowledging, okay, this is our 10 years together. This is a birthday. This is. This is Mother's Day. This is Valentine's Day. So we do cute, special things. So we do. Although we don't go on the standard date, I did take Caitlyn to Kawaii for Mother's Day. So we're not anti dates.
- [12:10]
Kaitlyn
Yeah. And I think we really believe that the reason why those who are like Brandon saying, maybe you're. You're hitting this wall when you want to go connect, when you want to go have quality time, whether that's through a date or whether that's through the intentionality of the everyday moments and You. All you can feel is chaos and pain. All you can feel is this need to run away, to escape, to dissociate. This was Brandon for the first five years of our marriage. And the reason why we believe this is the reason why we believe there is all of the rifts in the marriage is because deep below the surface of the foundation, there's still hiddenness between the two of you. So it's like, have you ever tried to connect, you know, magnets when you put them back to back on the wrong side of the time? All the time. All of us in school, it's like they hand us the magnets and we're like, ooh. You know, if you have it on the right sides, they connect fully, right? And if you try to put them on the opposing sides, you try to connect. No matter how hard you try, you literally can never get them connect, to connect together. You can keep trying and trying and trying to get them as close as you can, and they will not. And that's really, really how I see the concept of union with secrets. It's like if you have secrets in your union, you're two magnets trying to come together and connect, no matter how hard you might get really, really close. And that's what. That's what everyone in the church, everyone in the counseling office is. Will recommend is you'll be able to get this close, and that's about it. And please, dear God, don't tell all the secrets that are keeping you from fully connecting, because then your marriage will collapse. And what we tested and found to be tried and true is actually the things in between our magne that were keeping us from being fully connected. Those secrets, those hiddenness, once those got cleaned out, our magnets could fully connect. We could fully come together and have union and intimacy because now nothing stood between us. I see secrets as such a literal energy in the room. They're literally like, look at the magnets. They cannot connect. That's exactly what the two of us are. We have to stop believing that we can carry around secrets and have deep connection in our marriage. You cannot. You cannot come together together in union. And so if you have all these secrets and you can't come together and connect, then guess what? Every time you have a moment where the kids are in bed, you're going to turn on the tv. Why? Because you know that if you leave that TV off, all those things keeping your magnets from connecting, those are going to start to come to the surface, and you don't want to, because there's chaos, and there's pain in there, and you're scared, so you want to run away and turn on the tv. Then you get a date night. It's like, oh, gosh, here we are again. Our magnets can't connect because there's all this hiddenness we've been keeping from each other. And so, oh, oh, let's just pull up the phone, pull up the screen, talk about something surface level, maybe even get in an argument. I wonder how many couples get in arguments on dates. We used to love to argue on the way to a date. On a date, on the way home from a date.
- [14:55]
Brandon
I didn't.
- [14:56]
Kaitlyn
Crying, makeup streaming down the face because why not spend your time together actually just creating more chaos.
- [15:04]
Brandon
For the record, I didn't have any makeup on. That was Caitlin. We get triggered like that on dates. Like, you know what? If you think about the magnet analogy with Caitlyn, had me hypnotized as watching her. The closer you bring to opposing magnets, the stronger that force is. And I think about it this way. The times we're most emotionally triggered is when we're that closeness where it's like you're getting close to this thing I'm protecting. And so we're so big on getting the secrets out and getting to not just the secrets, but the underlying. So the secrets are blaring sirens, the underlying issues where there's pain and brokenness that keeps you from enjoying each other.
- [15:38]
Kaitlyn
Other.
- [15:38]
Brandon
And so the reason you don't like talking to each other and we'll talk in a future episode about how we handle conflict is actually an. It's an underlying condition. If you feel like you need to defend yourself, it's because you feel misunderstood at the root level. Well, why do you feel misunderstood? Because maybe you've hid behind a certain identity that is not true, and you're projecting that back on your. On your spouse. If you feel like you need to defend or project, it's because there's an underlying issue in your relationship that you have not addressed. If you actually live in peace with each other, and I'm not just saying don't be mad about what's taken place, but actually repair where the disconnect started. Then when you talk, you're like, you know, oh, you're coming from this place. I know where you're speaking from. I feel clean and clear. I don't have all this inner chaos happening inside of me. I feel safe to connect with you. You know, there's a saying, secrets don't make friends. They make Best friends, but that's not the. That's, you know, friends that keep secrets from other friends. The whole point of this is you sharing your secrets. You actually coming clean and being seen by your spouse binds you two together in such a beautif way. Because so much of our lives we're ashamed of, we try to keep from others, we try to keep hidden. And I did not like it that when I got married, Caitlyn could see through all my. My crap, all my bs. It was kind of like, whoa. Like, you preach on stage that people should live this way when we were traveling and speaking in churches, and then you come home and live this way. Those don't line up. And I'd be like, stop. Like, what do you mean? Like, don't do that. But that's actually a gift. And it's like, wait. All the parts of my life that don't make sense, that my spouse can clearly see, is the opportunity then to clean it up and no longer live. Live in a way that isn't in alignment with what you believe and what you, what you say you're all about. One of the biggest things that has revolutionized our time together and we. We see in couples that are thriving is time in nature. When we're outside, there'll be so many times where it's, you know, the kids have had a long day, we've had a long day, we're in the house, everybody's feeling cooped. Then we step outside our front door and we go for a walk. And you begin to breathe again, your body begins to relax again. Maybe there's sunshine, maybe it's cold, and you're. You're taking in nature. The easiest way to create connection is to do so out the wild, out where you have the trees moving, the wind blowing, you're out in the elements because it reminds you of where you started, that we all came from dirt and that we all are integrated into this world. And I think when we live our lives in our insulated boxes, whether they're air conditioned or heated, we lose touch with the ebbs and flow of the season. We lose touch with where we are and what we're doing. And I think that when you step into nature, you become emotionally regulated and you begin to tap into an environment that actually supports you and the connection you're trying to create together.
- [18:09]
Kaitlyn
Yeah. So to summarize, to truly build connection and peace and harmony in your union, you're gonna start by connecting your magnets together. So you're gonna take them from being this opposite Opposing magnet. By getting out all the secrets, all that's hidden. If this is your first episode, we dive deep into the conversations of how you can get out all the secrets, all the hiddenness. In all of the other episodes, we dive deep into this in our courses, in our workshops, and all of our offerings. So if this is your first episode, go back and start at the beginning to establish connection. You get out that little middle piece in between your magnets that's keeping you from being disconnected, and then you're going to build upon that. Like Brandon said with getting rid of screens, when we were in the pits of our marriage in 2019, we got rid of all screens. We actually had already been living those first five years without a tv and we, again, I love all these examples. We still were so disconnected. We didn't ever watch movies or TV shows together and we were still worlds apart. I can't even imagine if we added in the daily need to watch shows, nose together, like, how many more worlds apart would it be? We be. And for many of you listening, you feel like you are so far away from your spouse that it feels impossible to come back together. And I'm going to give you a little hint. If you remove your screens from your life, from your day to day life, those two worlds are going to get so much closer already. If you remove all the secrets and you remove all the hiddenness. Whoa. Your two worlds that felt inseparable or not inseparable, that felt. Felt so separated. Yeah. That felt incompatible. Your two worlds that felt incompatible and so separate are literally moving by heaps closer together. By getting out secrets and by getting rid of screens, we continue to not have a tv. We continue to not watch tv, we continue to not watch movies. And when I say this, I mean, like, we didn't have Netflix on our phones, we didn't have shows we watch on our phones. We didn't have sports. Brandon wasn't like, oh, but I still have to watch my one sports show on Sundays. I mean, absolutely nothing. Brandon got completely off of all social media platforms and video games and Brandon was completely done with video games. That was another thing that he used to lie about all the time. And so for him, in rewiring his brain, which we talk about all the time, from actually moving from one way of living to the next, you have to do something different. It's so silly to think, oh, I'm going to transform and create a new marriage while doing all of the same things I've been doing every single day. It's like, come on, we got to do something different here. So when we say, when we give a call, like I feel always the need when we talk about screens that it needs to be so clear because most of all of them, America has a screen addiction. And whether we want to see it or not, most of us are actually completely aware of the addiction and the pull that we feel. And we just want to let you know that you can totally free yourself from that, from every addiction. That's the whole essence of everything that we share. All you have to do right now is unplug your tv, remove it from the wall. If you need to put some art over it, remove your laptops and put them in a stowed away place. When you're done working, turn your phones. There's this little button. We all use it when we get on the airplane. And I just want to let you know you can actually use it at any other time of the day. You swipe your phone down and you click the airplane and it will turn your phone off. When you click the airplane again, everything that you missed will come back. You don't miss any phone calls, you don't miss texts, you don't miss emails. Everything will still be there waiting for you when it's the time for you to address those things. If you are with your spouse, if you are with your kids, if you just got home from work, it's not time to check your email, it's not time to work, it's not time to check your social media. It's time to connect. Yeah, it's time to do the things that matter. So many of us are like, why am I depressed and anxious? Because you do things that make you depressed and anxious. Because you're moving away from all the things that you love, all the things that bring life and vibrancy. If you want to feel alive again, start putting things into your schedule that make you feel alive. Scrolling on social media doesn't make any of us feel alive. Sure, you might find good resources like this one on there and you don't need to spend hours on there scrolling random stuff. You would feel so much more alive sitting down, looking at your kids, looking at your spouse, connecting in heartfelt conversation. Maybe you might take up knitting, you might get back out your guitar. Maybe you might start drawing again. Whatever it is, fill your life with the things that you love. As you remove consumption of entertainment in screens, you'll find, oh, whoa, there's so much more time available for me in life to do the things that matter to me the most.
- [22:32]
Brandon
And Then that leaves. So if I'm together with my spouse, we're spending quality time together. What are we talking about? What are we doing together? What's the activity? Because it can feel awkward, and a lot of couples have shared that. Well, we have two phases we're going to dive into now, which is that first phase when you are rebuilding your relationship, you got a lot to talk about. And we think that true connection can only create. Come through intentionality. And that intentionality only exists when there's no more hiding, there's no more secrets, there's no more disconnection. And so when you're healing, there's a lot of topics that you can dive into. One of them, which we talk a lot about, is your sexuality. And I think that it's. It's one of those ones. It's not. I don't like the whole idea of just, like, ripping off the band aid, but we need to face reality, and kind of tiptoeing around it isn't helpful. I would say one of the most crucial things that empowered me was when I was starting to walk through my recovery process, process out of addiction, being forthright and saying, you know what, babe? I have a sexual addiction, and I'm ready to face it. I want to talk about what that's been for our relationship, how that's impacted you. And we have 60 questions. We have our participants that go through our workshops. Talk through. But your sexuality, while you're healing, you're going to have a lot to talk about. You're going to have a lot to talk about. The ways you lied, the experiences you had as a child, things that you kept from each other. And so those are things we talk about. Those are things we talked about for, like, a year. And we still talk about them, but in a. In a very acute way. When you haven't rebuilt the connection, you talk about where the pain is. You sit with the pain. You have conversations about it. You hear from your spouse, and you hear what they're facing, what you're processing. And so that's one place you start, is you talk through where the sexual brokenness is in your relationship.
- [24:00]
Kaitlyn
Yeah. And I want to paint a picture for what our nights have really looked like for almost all of the 10 years of our marriage. Again, Brandon kicked and screamed for the first five years and the last five years, this is what we've done nearly every single night. I can't think of many nights we haven't done. This that brings an establishment, is the peace and connectedness in our union. And again, this is how you build upon the foundation of having no more secrets. If you go to start this right now and you're still lying about your porn addiction, you better believe it's not going to feel very connecting. It's going to feel chaotic. You got to spend your time together getting out all the secrets and then move into this, this segment of what we're talking about. But each night Brandon and I, like he said, we have four kids and we've done this through all the years of our children, we put them to bed. We actually all sleep together in one room. It's incredibly beautiful. And we have this large king sized bed. We have two trundle beds that are on wheels and they move in and out perfectly and our older children sleep on those. In the current house that we're in, there's this amazing twin sized window bed and then we have a crib. And so our baby sleeps in the bed with us. Our children, just the other three children disperse on those window seats, window beds and the two trundles that move in and out. And so we all go to bed at the same time. We lay together. The baby's nurse, nurse. We lay with the children. We talk through the day, we tuck them in, sing songs, whatever it may be. That rhythm has changed over the years. They all fall asleep and Brandon and I leave the room. This always ebbs and flows. This could be anywhere over the years. From 7:30 to 8:30 is around when we would exit the room. And so we're leaving the room and we go out to another space. Most of the time that's the living room. We snuggle on the couch, we light a candle. We've mentioned this in another episode. We actually used no artificial lights. We use no blue light after dark. We've been doing this for almost four years now. And so as the sun goes down, we honor the circadian rhythm. We turn off all lights if we had any on. We actually don't even. These lights are the only time we use them is during the podcast because you guys have to see our faces. And the same with our, our season one, we add the lights on at nighttime so you guys could see our face. And so if there were any lights on, those would go off. We light candles, we have red light bulbs that we have in lamps sitting on our counter. So we come out from our room. It's already a really nice peaceful environment. Like talking about creating peace if your is chaotic, really hard to establish a peaceful connection in your union. And so we're creating A peaceful environment in our home. We've lit some candles, we sit together on the couch, we make warm drinks like tea or hot cocoa. We have non caffeinated chai and we snuggle up and we look at each other, we make eye contact. Maybe we're snuggling when we're not looking at each other, but we, we're nestling into each other with our eyes closed. We're connecting our physical bodies. There are ways to connect physically without only having sex and having an orgasm. And sometimes times, especially when you're rebuilding trust and intimacy and connection in your union. Connecting, physical touch that's non sexual in the sense it's not leading to actual sex and orgasm can feel so connecting, can feel so vibrant. To feel the warmth of each other's bodies, to feel close again. A lot of times, even in our workshops, people are like, I don't even love my husband anymore. And it's like, yes, of course, because he's been lying to you and betraying you. And I can guarantee as you get all that out, as you connect your bodies, as you make eye contact, light a candle and look at each, you will begin to fall in love again. And we spent about 30 minutes to an hour. Sometimes we get talking and it's been so long that we're like, it's 10:30, we need to go to bed because we're like teenager best friends that are having like a late night sleepover together. And so many of you desire that for your union. It's like, I just want to be best friends with my spouse again. To where we're snuggling on the couch and we get lost in conversation because we love each other so much. And how you start is by getting everything out.
- [27:49]
Brandon
Yep.
- [27:49]
Kaitlyn
Turning off the screens. If we had a TV on and Brandon and I came out to do that, we wouldn't have the merit. If we came out and watched tv, we wouldn't have the marriage that we have now. And Brandon's going to dive into what the conversations look like now for us now that we've gotten out all the hiddenness and all the secrets. What does it look like? What do we talk about as we're connecting in this candlelit snuggle session.
- [28:09]
Brandon
I do also want to give a disclosure that there's. There's an occasional time that we're getting a tiny bit of work done or we're discussing things that we're going to be doing for our marriage work. So there are times where we'll say, hey, I have about 15 minutes, minutes of things to do on my phone. Caitlin has 15 minutes of things to do on her phone. Because we are around the kids a lot of the day, we'll accomplish those things and then we put our phones down.
- [28:27]
Kaitlyn
It's like communicated about and a time frame that we both feel really good about.
- [28:32]
Brandon
On top of this time after bed, after bedtime routine for the kids. We also really love talking in the car. We love those two times in the car and after the kids have gone to sleep. One of the best things to talk about with your spouse and the things we enjoy talking about after you've begun to create this peaceful, connected marriage is we talk about the day, we talk about what we experienced today, things we enjoyed, things we were grateful for, conversations, funny moments, moments. With our kids, we do the same thing, but it's high, low, and buffalo. What was your high of the day? What was your low of the day? What was something that surprised you today? So, Caitlin, I don't ask each other what was your high, low, buffalo. But what we do is we just begin to talk. We talk about things that we. A funny conversation, a funny experience, a tourist that fell down in the ocean. You know, we talk about all these funny moments we had or these insightful things, or we'll even go over things like, hey, did you know that you said this and it kind of offended the person you were talking to? I'm like, oh my gosh, thank you for bringing that to my attention. So we'll kind of just deep debrief the day. So if you're thinking about what do we talk about? You can debrief your day. What were the high moments? What were the surprising moments? What was the cliff notes of your day? And. And you can have. There's plenty enough to talk about about each day. We also then dive into parenting. So we'll talk about, hey, you know what I've noticed with our 6 year old that she's feeling disconnected from me or she's feeling this. This situation we've been running up into. And we'll brainstorm how we can create a more connected situation for. For that child. Or we'll talk about literally any situation with the kids. We'll brainstorm, okay, this sleeping situation, we've been trying to put him down at this time. Maybe we' day up a little bit to put them down for a nap. It this time we just go over the different dynamics of things we're facing with our kids. You might not have young kids, maybe you have grown kids. That's actually A great thing to talk about instead of getting on Facebook, for those of you, I'm talking to those of you in the older generation because this seems to be a common thing. You get on Facebook and you look at your kids and grandkids, lives online. But instead of doing that, sit down with your spouse and think about ways you could send them a card, go see, see them, call them. When is the next time you're going to see your grandkids not just going to see what they did at the beach or on their last vacation? So I would say parenting kids, grandkids, the intentionality you want to bring to your family life is huge. And a big portion of what we talk about. And there's so much more.
- [30:31]
Kaitlyn
Yeah, we'll oftentimes dive into when we get lost in really long dialogues is we'll talk a lot about our intentions, our beliefs, things that we're learning. So we might each be reading a different book or we might have had a really intriguing conversation with somebody and learn something new about ourselves, something new about a belief system, a way of thinking. We can get lost in spiritual dialogue. We can get lost in even talking. We'll, we'll retalk through our story. The things that we learned, the things that we really feel like so, so much energy and potency to share with other people. These exact types of conversations that we're bringing you guys into. Like the day the whole, this whole podcast came about because we were talking about, oh my gosh, like, whoa, this epiphany of remember how we thought we needed to go on a date to be connected? And like, look at, we were laughing like we've had less than five dates and look how connected we are. It's like we just start talking about the things that we believe in, the things that we're learning, the things that we're thinking about, and then these intentions that we're setting, like, okay, what are we going to be creating over the next week, month, year? Like, what is our vision for our next chapter, our next season? What is the vision for our life? Like, if you don't know, if you're kind of like, what do we talk about? It's like, let's start setting some intentions, like goals. Let's start setting some goals for what it is that we want to experience, what we want to create, what we want to do together. Like, even when we have work conversations, they're so life giving because the work that we've chosen to create is bringing about love and connection in life, in the world and other People's lives. So it's like we could even sit down and talk about work. And it feels so good for us because it's like, oh, this is creation, being birthed inside of us and then being given an offer to the world. So if you're like, what do we talk about? We would already talk throughout the day. It's like, what do you want to start experiencing together? What do you want to start doing? What? What plans do you want to make? Let the conversation flow from there. Like, share memories from childhood. Most people, like, don't even know that much about what their spouse experience from 0 to 18. Like, we spend so much time sharing memories, and that sparks another memory and another memory and a pattern and a belief and a way of viewing the world and a way of thinking. It's like before we know it, we just fell deeper in love and deeper in connection.
- [32:41]
Brandon
One of the other practical things is we'll talk about, about what our plans are for the week, the month the season's coming up. I think that, you know, a lot of couples get, get out of sync with each other because they don't actually even know what's happening. So if you're feeling like you're just crossing paths, you had one expectation. I thought we were going here for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving's next week and you both want to go somewhere else. So at night, during your quality time together and you're enjoying each other, talk about the things you have coming up. Make sure you're on the same page. It's incredibly practical. So to summarize the secrets to a peaceful and connected marriage. Marriage, it's address where all the separation is first and foremost. For a lot of people, that can be addiction, that can be bitterness. It can be a lot of things that you've kept from your spouse. So until you go into the pain, you don't get to enjoy the fruit of a, of a thriving relationship. Once you dig out the dirt, the practical pieces are don't put dirt back in. So don't, don't just go watch five hours of TV together. Go in and watch a walk in nature. Plan an adventure somewhere. Get your kids involved. Begin to create a life that is beautiful, that is enjoyable and that you can talk about, that you're proud of, that you're. That you're constantly developing and improving. We want to thank you guys so much for joining us on this episode on discovering what it would look like to have a peaceful and connected marriage. If you'd like resources to heal, we do have in the show notes my men's community app for men looking to rebuild their relationship. And if you're a couple working through addiction, we have our Grounded Intimacy program. All the details are in the show notes. If you got something out of this episode, please leave us a review so we can reach more couples just like you. And we'll see you guys next week.
- [34:13]
Kaitlyn
Sam.