Lessons from Daniel and Kim Curtis

Daniel & Kim were very candid as they shared their marriage story. So, if you're looking to deepen your connection, this episode is for you. We're diving into how to identify and emulate healthy relationship models, discover each other's love languages, and communicate in ways that truly honor one another. Plus, how to show up for each other when life gets hard.

Connect with Daniel & Kim Curtis at: 

• https://www.instagram.com/drkimcurtis/
• https://www.instagram.com/triangle_construction/
• https://www.instagram.com/bridgestherapy/

Thanks for tuning in! If today’s EP resonated with you, subscribe, like, and share it with someone who needs it. Connect with me on all platforms @karenwillcoach - and if you are ready to go deeper, join the community and continue the conversation inside my Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/loveandconflict" Until next time, let’s continue to fight for our union.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Hi, welcome once again to another episode of The State of Our Union and the Fight to Keep It. I am Karen Williams, and joining me today, my goodness, I'm so excited, is Daniel and Kim Curtis. They are both from the Bay Area. Bay Area, right? Yes. I was in San Francisco. But and I know people like the Bay Area is so big. I'm like, look, whatever, man. I am not a Californian. I call the whole anything north of LA is a Bay Area in my world. But it's so good to see you guys. Um just tell us a little bit about you both so that our audience know who they're, you know, who they're listening to. Well, thank you for having us. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Oh no, I love to listen to him introduce us. So he's a better storyteller than I am. So and it's a good way to fact check, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:53

Okay, Daniel, it's all you. Well, Kimmy. Our names are Daniel and Kim Curtis. We've been married. This will be our 20th year. So our anniversary is this year. We're very excited to have that. Uh we met right before COVID. Ken has been in uh social work.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Right before COVID. We met in 2005.

SPEAKER_05 2:13

Those years ago.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Oh, right before I wish COVID was 20 years ago. This is why I said this is the way to fact check. Go on.

SPEAKER_05 2:23

I was thinking we met right before the big crash.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Yes, the big crash. That's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:29

What makes this a little unique is that we met on Craigslist. Right? And so that was before it was being investigated by uh all the federal agencies. Yep. But yeah, well, I just went on there, I put a pair of tickets to a baseball game, and 9,000 guys answered and one lady.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Wait, I like to this is what I like to clarify. We did not meet in the men seeking women section. We met in the rat and rave section of Craigslist.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

This is good. This is gonna be a fun, fun time already.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

I love it.

SPEAKER_05 3:06

We're a blended family. We have four girls. Two from my previous marriages and then two from her previous relationships. And so we've lived as a blended family, but all of the children consider me part of their family. And we've uh we've taught ourselves that in relationships we always put ourselves first and we never allowed the children to ever get between us, whether we agreed with the other spouse or not. But we have two grandchildren now, two beautiful boys. We've never experienced boys, and so it's a completely different uh life cycle for us.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

So fun. I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm a boy mom, so having granddaughters, now that's what oh boy, okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

That's a lot, right? I'm in the space of there's no drama, it's so fun, and you you get drama.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Exactly. My gosh, your guys' story is sounds so fun. I'm like Craigslist. Okay, this is gonna be a good story, but uh that's actually a good one. That's actually a good one.

SPEAKER_05 4:14

The only way we would chat would be through Prodigy.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

We had to like sign in to play a game and then do one of the chat rooms so we would play cards, right? Or something like that. And then we would chit-chat in the chat rooms.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 4:27

So, Danielle, were you living in the in the Bay Area or lived in San Leandro and she was in San Leandro just on the other side of town? Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

But I worked 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. at a women's shelter. So I was crude, like entertaining myself with the rant and raves on Pegasus because they were like Facebook Rant and Raves, but they were like novels people would write. And they were much more entertaining than the Facebook page. So that would keep me awake at night. And then he posted on there one day and I responded.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

That is so neat. That is so neat. Oh my gosh. And listen, people, you know, they have the the dating apps and all that. That took dating apps to a whole nother level. I love it. Oh my gosh, I love it. But as you know, as we mentioned, I said, you know, our our forum here is very conversational. So we're gonna just dive right in, you know, make the best use of our time. Again, welcome, welcome, welcome. We're so excited to to have you guys. As you mentioned, you guys have been married. This is be this will be your 20th year. Wow, that's that's a long time. And the whole premise of this podcast is to help that one couple who may be married three to five years and really struggling at that, you know, that after honeymoon stage. And so my goal is to bring couples into the studio to at least say, hey, we've been married at least 10 years, and we want to be able to help you figure out this little rough patch right here. How do we get beyond that? And so I had you guys share a little bit about a challenging season and you triumph over it. Can you share a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_02 6:14

It's important to say, like, you know, there's not this one in 20 years. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Yes, that's so true. So true. Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

So we're always changing, we're always growing. So to keep it interesting, you know, you're you're gonna have more challenges as you go along. But Daniel was actually I asked him when we were applying for the podcast. So I go ahead.

SPEAKER_05 6:41

It does help when you have a short memory. I'm like, what was the one moment?

SPEAKER_02 6:45

He's a goldfish. We we Ted Lasso are marriage.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Yeah, because you guys did mention that you had there were changing events that you had to choose from. However, you said the one that really shaped you. I think you guys were married. Um, well, this is your second marriage, and how it, you know, how of course how they how it impacted how you treated each other.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

So absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah, go into that a lot.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Definitely we brought our um, you know, our our marriage experiences into the marriage at the period, or even into the dating space of it, and had to let a lot of stuff go there. But you're again, you're a way better storyteller than I am.

SPEAKER_05 7:33

You know, when couples learn how to be pliable in their relationships because they stand firm and I'm like, I'm not gonna budge on this, and that budge becomes a thorn for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_04 7:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:45

And I wanted I always tell people, we're so blessed, we haven't had a fight in 15 years, but I should stop saying that because we've learned to be communicative towards each other, we've learned to respect each other, and whether we're right or wrong, that we worked through that. And so going back to the original question of when people first meet in the first three or five years, we're starting to develop the layers of character and personalities, and we were challenged right off the bat, hardcore, deep in the trenches, to where we either had to survive it or walk away. Yeah. And I never wanted to walk away because one, I wanted to walk through that portion of our life together to if we weren't gonna survive, you were not gonna say you didn't survive because I walked away. It's gonna be if we didn't survive, it was gonna be because it just didn't work. Our personalities were on the extreme opposite of each other. We did not like each other in the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

No, our first date, we didn't like each other.

SPEAKER_05 8:48

No, it lasted a couple dates all the way up to the baseball game.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 8:53

Okay, but you know, we and it's it's always in the belief of a higher power, whether you believe in Buddha or God, knowing that you are not at the top of the pyramid, meaning that you have to rely on something more. You know, whether it's mother nature or whatever it may be, you have to believe there's something bigger and better out there. Not so much better, but bigger and more powerful and has a sway in your life, right? Whether it's you know it's a gut feeling or whether it's you feel like you're just being told or called to something, those are the things that you're supposed to listen to. And we do it, and I tell this all the time, we work so hard in our job, right? We do everything to be perfect. And then when it comes to ourselves, we only worked halfway. We look in the mirror, we see the failures and the accomplishments that mean very little, and we just push ourselves down to where we can't do it alone. So, in our first, really our first three years, it was an always change in relationship. We went from one spectrum to the other, and it helped us learn to embrace those personalities, those character changes to make them to who we are today.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Yeah, I think I think we both came into the marriages as divorcees, and I don't think that we were we felt respected in our previous marriages. We didn't have big voices. We were we were on the receiving end, right? We we had our glow up when we left marriage. Right, right. But we I think we swang to the other side of the pendulum because we were so suppressed in those relationships and so fragile coming out that we really came in strong. Yeah and that kept had caused a lot of friction between the other person. We weren't really trying to hear them, we were really making sure that we held our voices, and then we had if that was either going to end us or we had to change it and find a way to meet it. That's my professional opinion.

SPEAKER_05 10:53

Well, because I'd have never heard that so I'm going through and write that down.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Daniel said, I am taking notes.

SPEAKER_05 11:03

That's right. That's the first time I ever heard about you know, we've talked about it before about how our opposite relationships kept us down, and when you saw the personality change in me going from being married to you as a strong, vibrant, um, not so much dominant, but uh supportive male to my ex-wife here, get ready.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

I saw him one day. Um, we had to take one of the girl his daughter or one of the younger daughters over to the ex-wife's house, and she was pissed about something. And I watched him submit and I was like, Whoa, who's this guy? Because that guy never shows up in our marriage. I said, That's not hot though. So I need like just a little bit in the middle of what I did and what she's getting, and let's find a nice middle ground.

SPEAKER_05 11:47

Well, 12 years of fighting, so I learned to not fight by what I thought was submission, was actually just keeping my mouth shut.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Yeah. And you did the thing. You didn't like how my ex would come at me and then I would say, you know, I don't want to engage in a fight about it with him. And he wanted me to be more assertive and aggressive and push back on the way I was being treated. So I think that that showed up in our marriage of us trying to figure and grow up, you know, as who we wanted to be for the next 50 years of this marriage.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Well, no, yeah. And it's so important to, you know, as you as a guy as I talk and I'm thinking about every one of us, all of our relationship experiences, you know, I call them Louis Vuitton, but we drag all of our baggages into every relationship that we, you know, that we, you know, that we have or that we develop. Marriage is no different, you know, because however we think marriage should be, whatever those ideas are, we drag them into that new relationship as well. And uh yes, we know it's not fair to the to the new spouse or to the your new person, but that's all we know. And uh it's up to us now to make the decision to say, hey, what is it that we want for our relationship? What is our relationship going to look like? And I I know Rob and I were were, of course, we were a blended family as well. And so when we got married 33 years ago, it was um he brought two kids, I brought one, and then we had Jordan together. And it was like, you know, all these different personalities and you know, the the moms and and but you know, I have to, you know, I'm always, you know, I'm so blessed because our we were, you know, we are so blessed, but uh we never had any conflicts with their with the moms, with our exes. None there, you know, we we had our you know, failed relationships, but we never um it never got involved. It was always about what the children wanted. So that aspect was great. Again, the unfortunate thing was, yes, I was also in a relationship where, you know, I was, you know, put down and the all of my insecurities was on my sleeve, you know, they were like right there, you know. And so that was what pushed our relationship or challenged our relationship in the first couple of years. And it was like, oh my God, what it, you know, I don't know how to communicate. My best way of communicating was okay, I'm shutting down for about three days. I'll call you back, I'll talk to you later. I have nothing.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

Are you saying Kim is my twin? Kim, we went to the same communication school.

SPEAKER_05 14:37

I only wish you were too much.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

I didn't have anything to say.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

And that was my way of shutting everything down. I don't have any, I don't have the emotional bandwidth to even communicate what I'm feeling right now because it's gonna come out wrong. It's going to come out wrong. Just leave me alone. But no, we definitely had to get some help because my husband is the type where, okay, he's not uh, he doesn't necessarily push, but he wants answers and he wants to fix whatever the issue is. We need to come to some type of solution, some type of conclusion, resolve, whatever that looks like. And he doesn't stop. And I'm like, dude, we can't do this. I can talk to you right now. I feel like I'm being interrogated, and I'm just going through my whole thing. And at some point he was like, no, because what could end up happening for us was we kept having the same argument over and over and over and no resolve until we had to figure out, okay, well, not me mostly than we, because he already knew how to communicate. I mean, well, effectively, that is, effectively. But you know what, the the the main thing is, you know, I want couples to know, if nothing else, that this is just a season, you know, because marriage comes in in seasons. All right. So when we think about major challenges, I I thought about money, communication, intimacy, expectations. Which of those areas, if any, that really stretched you guys to a point where, whew, you're like, this could be it, but you got past that. If if it's none of these areas, tell us what that was for you.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Oh, I think it was maybe the expectations, but being able, see, I go, I'm like, that's kind of like the c like it hits all of those, right? The expectations, but it was the expectation about money, the expectation about how we would communicate, about intimacy, all of that, but it came down to not maybe being able to communicate those expectations to the other person of what our needs were, and trying to meet the needs of the other person when you weren't able to say, I feel uncomfortable or not right now. Now, how do you tell a mom of two to rein in her spending um when she doesn't like that conversation? Right? Um, so so I think that it was like, but we didn't maybe recognize that we had expectations.

SPEAKER_05 17:24

And it does help when we really truly know who the other partner is. So when you talk about like being a mother to spin, spin, spins.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

I didn't say that.

SPEAKER_05 17:34

Because I added two spins to it.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Okay, well, one of two spins.

SPEAKER_05 17:39

Well, if one spend that when you know the deeper root of it, meaning that you're either gonna be the one that budgets every single penny to the one that's a free spender. We both know we're free spenders, right? And so neither of us do the budgeting. I just have automatic payments, and if they go through, they go through. So in the sense of that neither one of us can sit down and become the other person that we're not. So the expectation of it is that we know I come from trauma in my family, and then I carry that with me. It's whether I embrace it and keep it in the forefront of my life to make it a part of my life, or do I make it run my life, right? And that changes day to day. Yeah. But it's knowing that expectation of the other person which allows us to work through those situational moments where and I and I do this in my work, I'm like, everybody is at 80%. Expecting them to be above 80% is just only setting them up for failure. Yeah. So when you want 90% of them and they can't do it, whose fault is that? That's my fault. Yeah. So it's like, do the 80%, I will pick up the other 20, and you do the same for me. Now the number for Kim is much higher, it's around 95, so I don't have to do much at all. Now the number for me is much, much lower. But I do feel that when you recognize what the potential of that other person can do, whether it's your finances, whether it's about communication, yeah, and just be open and fair to it, because you know, when you can look in the mirror and recognize your own mistakes, she already knows what those are. I already know what those are, and it helps us work through that. Doesn't always mean it's gonna be a generous lesson of a moment that we have a conversation, but it does cut off the knee-rooted foundation of how you move forward.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

Yeah. Yeah, and I think for me in those conversations, I would always bring my past self into the room. And when he was trying to say his needs, I would make it very personal about me and interpret it as him saying, I'm failing, I'm not doing enough, and then I would get defensive instead of just hearing, it's not about me, it's about these are his needs, and then how can I show up for him in that space? That I had to really work on not being becoming so defensive and bringing that yuck into the space. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

It you know, having oh, that is so that is so good because a lot of times as couples, when we when we hear something that triggers part of that, you know, pain or that trauma for us, we automatically internalize that. And that happened to me a lot in the you know, that first five years of our of our marriage, you know, um, you know, growing up and hearing a lot of no, you know, children should be seen and not heard kind of thing, you know, all of those things. So the moment I hear um something that is trying to silence me or, you know, quiet my voice, I take it as a personal attack. Now, mind you, again, he's just sharing how he feels and what his needs are and what his expectations are. And that's so good because we we often struggle with listening to our partners objectively without taking what they're saying personally. Hear what they're saying, hear their need, hear the question that's being asked, you know, and of course, even as I coach other couples, that struggle is still a real thing. It's still a real thing for them.

SPEAKER_05 21:27

We don't know how to separate our own issues with their issues. We mix them together because as soon as I hear you don't say I love you enough, that never happens, but I try to pick up one.

SPEAKER_02 21:41

I don't say it enough. I say it like 45 times a day.

SPEAKER_05 21:44

I know. But when you hear someone else talk about themselves and what they're going through is I am, I feel, yeah, you automatically just like you said, you become defensive. And so there's real it's there's no real habit forming technique that is out there that works because we don't want to teach ourselves those that will help us through that to be listeners and to be respectful to that space and then not to walk off and then go try to understand it and merge it with our own issues and figure out how we fix it. I've I've been a fixer for 20 years. You know what I do when I want to fix something Kim talks about? I walk away. What? She's still talking in the kitchen. I'm like, I can fix this right now.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Right now. Right now. And and sometimes, you know, I know sometimes, especially women, guys, I'm not really picking on you right now, but you know, we sometimes we just want to talk. We just want to talk it through. We just want to get it out of our head. You know, sometimes on paper, you know, that that helps if, you know, if you have a spouse that doesn't listen well. But the goal is sometimes we just wanna we just want to get it out of our brain. And that's it.

SPEAKER_04 22:58

Brain dumped.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Yeah. Yeah. Brain dumped, exactly. Not necessarily not necessarily. Necessarily a fix-in moment, just get it out. So, what would you say? What are some of the top struggles that you see couples married under 10 years? I know you you guys gotta know other couples. What are some of the common things that you see happening in that first 10 years of marriage? What's what's common for you guys in your circles?

SPEAKER_05 23:23

We've known couples that have been married 20 years with these issues, and I don't know how they're still surviving you. I'm like, I would have left you. But we can see like that dominating personality, or it's you cut them off in the middle of a sentence and you correct them. That's the biggest one. Like, no, that's not how it happened. And then you do it in a way that is so aggressively unrespectful for the other person. Yeah, if you're in and they you may they may think it's just fun and that's what you got used to, but that's something that should never happen.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Don't that give you the ick? Don't that give you the ick when that happens? Like, ooh. Yeah. Like, okay, I'm walking away now.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

Yeah, I really it makes us very uncomfortable when we'll go out to dinner and we watch somebody put down um or or tease too much and too long to where you're like, oh, yeah, this is not, this is really shaming and embarrassing for your partner. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like that. And I think we have to be really cautious, especially in younger marriages, of only telling our friendship circle the negative stuff about our partner. That's all they need.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yes. Go uh listen, expand on that. Let's let's hang out here for a second.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

So true.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

I think that I'm when I was younger, I would have said that maybe females are the the this is their problem, but I've seen it happen in men's circles a lot too, where they're putting down their partners, not with yours, but you know, the separate parties where the guys go outside and the women stay in the other room. And then they just spend that time kind of, I think sometimes it's embellishing the bad things so that they feel like they're connecting and bonding. But if all you're sharing is the negative things about your partner and never the positive side, when it comes down to a really tough day, you don't have the part the person going, Yeah, but what about this? What about that? Or they're telling you, You should you should leave that person. He's not good. Every time we get together, you have a laundry list of things that he's not doing right, which is probably maybe 10% of the marriage and 90%. We never call somebody and be like, you know what he did? He did all these amazing things for this time. We're only sharing the negative.

SPEAKER_05 25:40

I don't think we've ever tried to ever be like couple relationship um helpers. We've always known, like, hey, Bob and Jane are having a tough time. You can clearly see that. Yeah. And so we we try to be emotionally supportive to them. We don't be like, oh, tell me how your day was, but it's more of we we do it by show.

SPEAKER_04 26:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:04

And unfortunately we we've broken up as many couples as we felt. Not married ones.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Oh, okay. I was gonna say yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:15

Because we've shown what we think true, genuine love and respect for each other as a couple through our relationship bonding, through our friends and our circles, and we we've outlasted almost all of them.

SPEAKER_04 26:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:29

But if we you know, people would be like, we've actually had like my sister's a perfect example. She was dating a guy and she saw us in our beginning, and she totally like, I want that. Yeah. You know, and then they broke up. And so she it helped her to at least step into the right direction, knowing what to do. We're very we can say we're very unique in how we treat each other, how we love each other, how we show up, but it should be a standard and not be, oh, we know one couple that acts like that. Exactly. It should be every couple that acts like that.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 27:00

Like you do that through very specific tasks, very specific ways of building a relationship. But we we've never been the couple that helps the man and the woman of another couple. We just show it by how we are. And if they want to be a part of our relationship, then we let them in. If they don't, then we we say thank you and we part one.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Yeah. Because it's so important that um, because I I believe it is anyway, uh, important for especially younger couples to have couples who they can emulate. They can see the example of exactly what they want. Because a lot of times we don't know how to how to articulate exactly what we're looking for in a healthy relationship or a healthy marriage. Because let's face it, we all most people plan for the day, they plan for the event, but they never really plan for the marriage. And so they get married, and now we're living day to day, and we really don't know how to do that. And so as you're talking, it sounds like you're making the point that most of us learn better when we can actually see the example that we're looking for, that model. I didn't grow up, neither did my husband grow up with that example of saying, okay, I can see uh when my parents were married, their relationship were, you know, was an the example that I emulate. No, neither one of us had that. So we had to figure out what our marriage relationship was gonna look like. And we actually figured that out by watching other healthy couples. And we we saw the ones that we said, uh, nope, we don't want that one. Yep, I think we want to model that one, you know, and we stayed away from those that will, you know, make their couple or their their partner, not couple, but their partner sound, you know, less than or, you know, embarrassing or because you know I said, listen, I don't want to hear anything that's gonna cause me to see this person differently. That's not my person. I don't want to see them in that light. Don't don't share that. Now, you know, when you're talking about, hey, I love my person, I just need to, I just need some help getting through this season. That's a different conversation than the attempt to shame your partner into changing. Because that doesn't work.

SPEAKER_04 29:16

That's so good.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Yeah, that doesn't work at all. And so I would encourage, you know, on that note, encourage couples, especially if you are in that um that 10-year or less phase and you're going through that really hard season. Find that couple that you can emulate, find that couple that you can model your relationship after. I'm not saying every relationship, you know, you have to follow every single thing they're doing, but when we're talking about respect and values and couples' goals and vision and mission for your relationship, you gotta be able to see that in someone else to be able to emulate that.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Absolutely. I had a just like uh slideshow of couples that we have done that with throughout our marriage and having small groups through the church uh experience and kind of picking and choosing. And it is true to have you have the role models of who you want to take the positives from, but it is kind of nice to have those ones every once in a while that you can drive home and be like, Did you see that? I don't want that in my marriage. And and take from that and have that dialogue together.

SPEAKER_05 30:29

Absolutely. And it does help, especially for men, is that they have to be able to self-recognize if they can do that, right? If they can show value, if they can show respect. If they grew up or they've been taught another way, then it's gonna be difficult for difficult for them. So they have to be able to really self-analyze themselves and say, did my parents emulate that? Did I did I learn though how to respect a woman and her her her person? Can I do it to her? Did I do that to my mom? Or something like that. And so I was blessed. Like my parents, um, they divorced after 20 years. But you know, my dad showed no value for my mom and disrespected her, and um, and on and on and on. But I go back and I can still remember because I grew up in a small town, so I always saw my grandparents. She had apple pies sitting out on the table, you know, just out the window for the window below, that type of thing. Grandpa worked hard at the railroad, and they had family values. You showed up and everybody was playing uh an instrument, or everybody just came and hanged out, and I remember that all of my years.

SPEAKER_04 31:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:41

And it continues to teach me that I've always wanted to be like my grandparents. Now, of course, I'm sure they fought and they had their struggles. Yeah, yeah. I never saw it. And by me not seeing it, I always taught myself to recognize the best in people.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I know those memories gotta have bring uh or have brought a certain level of safety, you know, that you wanna recreate in your own home, your own marriage. And that's the goal. We're not saying you have to bake the apple pie and put it on the window as well, but whatever that represented for you, you can reproduce that in your home. And that's the that's the message I'm hoping that you know our audience is taking away. So, gosh, we can probably stay and talk all day, but I am not gonna keep it for the whole day. So we're gonna wrap with this last question. If you could sit across from a couple in their first five to ten years of marriage, what would you tell them to focus on first to kind of grow from that point onward? So I've thought about it.

SPEAKER_05 32:47

Look them straight in the eye, don't show fear, walk fast.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

Don't show fear. Listen, I th I I I think my t I think my team is gonna keep all of that. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_05 33:01

And I mean, when you when you offer advice to a single person, like what would I tell a man who's truly it's when you can go in the reverse, like just yesterday, 10 notices or just something off, right? And I wasn't ready to share it. And I'm like, I've already shared this before, I'm like, why am I gonna keep doing this? Are you all right?

SPEAKER_04 33:20

Right?

SPEAKER_05 33:21

The simple question are you doing okay? So it's knowing that even though you're going through your own stuff, and some of it you may never fix, right? So that's the highlight of it that you're gonna carry this the rest of your life. Yeah, but it's knowing when your partner can recognize that and take a moment of pause and say, I'm here for you. Yes. Are you all right? Then it gives us the ability to kind of relax our shield and our boundaries and our wall, bring them down bid, and just be like, I'm not okay. Yeah. And then we don't have to discuss how to fix it, because those are life problems and always gonna be there. It's just whether it's a small one or a big one. But we're always gonna work through this together. And that's the nice thing about our relationship is that when she brought it to the table, and I don't know her perspective, but my perspective is she taught me how to always be open-minded to knowing her position in her life to be able to, is this something I can help her with, or is this something I'm gonna listen to, or is this something that she just needs a hug?

SPEAKER_04 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:29

No, knowing that belief that physic now we know physical contact is what bonds people. And so having that hug for 20, 30 seconds, making that cup of coffee, learning your gifts, right? So being more than just a husband or a wife, but knowing what you're supposed to bring to the table in a relationship that will build it. Like what do you call those? What do you call the gifts? I do my gifts. Your love language? Love languages, yeah. Like those are things that help you become better. And they're just simple steps of reading something like all this time, and a little bit of enlightenment can change everything for a person. So don't always just rely on your knowledge, your experience, and yourself. It may never be enough. And so if it's never gonna be enough, rely on what hundreds and hundreds of therapy years and people researching to bring it in to make it simple for you. And if you can save a merge just by knowing what a love language is and it costs you$7.95 or it's free on the internet, why not do it?

SPEAKER_03 35:33

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

Yeah, I I would also say to to younger marriages, and and maybe it's not true for everybody, but it was definitely true for for me and and how I respond to things. And it's probably I might have a speech to narcissism, and I recognize it, right? Like every mood he had, every reaction, I would be like, Oh, it has obviously something to do with me. And 90% of the time it had nothing to do with me at all. But I would he would be in a bad mood. So now I obviously I must be in a bad mood. Yeah, and then he didn't have to be in a bad mood anymore. But now I absorb that for him, and I'm storming around the house because he's not talking to me and making something and creating a whole scene, right? That is had had nothing to do with me. He just had a bad day. Maybe he stepped his freaking toe, and then I'm like, the whole world's falling apart. He's not responding to me as he should be, he's not bringing me in so that I can fix it for him, you know. And so it would make something then he had to fix me instead of even worrying about his own stuff, like how much effort it must have been to navigate managing me. And I would say find the sense of humor because Ryan, you it's that has saved our marriage on multiple occasions.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

Yes, humor is required, it's a requirement. You gotta be able to laugh at yourself. If because if you if you're in your marriage and you're taking each other and yourself super seriously, oh my god, at some point somebody's gonna break in half. I mean, you're just gonna break.

SPEAKER_05 37:19

We're going to public functions and I'll go and I'll tell an off joke that nobody laughs at. But I can hear her in the corner belly laughing. And then I tell the whole group, I'm like, there's my wife. Back to laugh, I'm a joke. And that's all, that's where the value is. All I care is about that one person. Exactly. Excepting exactly the way I am.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

Exactly. Exactly. Oh my gosh. So, what do you what would you guys say would be that one thing that you wish somebody had told you guys about about marriage? Because even though this is your second marriage, but what would from the beginning, what would that one thing be, you know, that you wish somebody had told you guys?

SPEAKER_02 37:59

I think that we often as women, maybe, maybe not. I'm not like we we forget our role as women, as as that partner, and we become roles to everybody else. And then the spouse becomes that again. Oh my gosh. Right. You gotta date, you gotta, you know, sometimes, and he probably maybe you don't like this, but there's like hot sex, and then there's that maintenance sex that you don't really feel like you're super into because there's so much stuff going on. But I'm gonna just show up and do the maintenance stuff so that he can get find that woman in me again. So that now the next time I'm like, hey, hey baby, how you doing?

SPEAKER_05 38:42

What's wrong with that?

SPEAKER_02 38:43

So some maintenance sex is sometimes important.

SPEAKER_05 38:46

It's maintenance sex.

SPEAKER_02 38:47

It doesn't sound hot and it's not gonna be, but in order to have a hot sex, you gotta have a maintenance sex on the back.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 38:57

You're right. That is the one thing we did take away, is we always try to bring our relationship back to life.

SPEAKER_04 39:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 39:06

But if we need we're like, oh, we need we need sun in the fun. We're gonna draw up every single problem we have and we're just gonna fly it somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 39:13

Or it's just like let's just go out, and it doesn't happen a lot. But when we know we need it, we take it. We don't make it work. Because one of the things I've always learned in my life is that it will always still be there tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 39:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 39:26

Yeah, whatever is going on in your life will always be there tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 39:29

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 39:31

And she does a lot more than me, but I'm never happy.

SPEAKER_00 39:39

Oh my god. Yeah, grand the grandparent season is whoa, because you know, for us anyway, you know, our grandparents were they were old. And I was like, we're looking at each other like we're not old.

SPEAKER_03 39:53

So what is happening there? How are we grandparents?

SPEAKER_02 39:57

Right? I keep looking at the books that I'm reading, and she's got like a walker, like curly, you know, and I'm like, oh, that's like your great-great-grandma.

SPEAKER_03 40:07

Like, I don't we don't look like that.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

But my gosh, Kim and Danielle, it is so awesome to have you guys with us. Listen, thank you for lasting through our technical difficulties. But um again, thank you so much, guys, for showing up, for speaking into the lives of our younger people. For everyone listening, watching, thank you so much for joining us on another episode of the State of Our Union and the Fight to Keep It. Thank you.