Episode 155: 15 Lessons for 15 Years of Marriage
Introduction
You’re listening to Live Free Creative, an intentional podcast with practical tips for living your life on purpose. I’m your host Miranda Anderson. And I believe in creativity, adventure, curiosity and the magic of small moments. I hope that every time you listen, you feel empowered and free to live the life that you want.
Welcome to Episode 155 of the live free creative podcast. Did you notice that my intro is a little bit different because my voice is coming back? If you are a new listener, you probably don’t know that I have had a wild couple months with a paralyzed vocal cord, which is kind of a big problem when you’re a podcast host.
I luckily have been able to have a successful surgery. I’ve been doing weekly vocal therapy and my voice is coming back and better than ever.
I am super excited about this episode. About this month, October is my anniversary month. Dave and I have been married for 15 years this week, which feels like a fun milestone.
As a nod and celebration of our anniversary month, I have a whole month of relationship oriented podcast episodes for you.
This October, we’re going to be talking about romantic relationships, partnerships, the nitty gritty, some great advice, things that we’ve learned, things that I am learning. And I hope that you will come along, whether you’re in a current romantic relationship or you’ve been in one in the past, or you hope for one in the future.
These episodes will hopefully be interesting, inspiring and help you feel a little bit more empowered in your relationship appropriately.
Podcast Sponsor for October: Coconu
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I’ll put a link in the show notes directly to the website where you can go explore. I think with the holidays coming up, it’d be kind of a fun, playful stocking stuffer, a little wink, wink across the room to your partner. I love sharing some of my favorite products with you, and I think that you will love Coconu as much as we do.
Magical Adventure Moment
Now to kick off the show, I want to share a little magical adventure moment.
I was sitting with Dave asking him about what magical adventure moments came to mind. When we thought back over our 15 years of marriage, we were trying to mine our memories for some of the vacations we’ve been on as a couple, some of the more connective things that we’ve done. And we were just laughing, thinking about how many of our “romantic” getaways have also included some really awkward and silly and unexpected moments.
One thing that we thought of that really does looking back feel like a magical adventure moment was a trip to Jamaica that we took when Milo was about 10 months old. We had loved traveling as a couple, and this was kind of our first exciting vacation as parents. We thought, “his’ll be so fun. We’re great at traveling. Our kid is great. We’re going to have such a wonderful trip”
We took Milo to Jamaica for a week and we thought we would do it the same way we always had–shoestring travel on a budget.
We stayed in a guest house that ended up not having air conditioning. We were a little lost the whole time to be honest. And Milo did not sleep almost the entire trip.
So rather than what we had kind of envisioned this beach vacation sitting and relaxing and spending time together as a family, splashing in the waves, instead we were both navigating having a very tired, very uncomfortable, cranky 10 month old on this getaway that we had been so excited about.
The magical moment came when we one day decided to take a taxi out away from the city of Montego Bay, where we were staying and go explore this museum that was on a bunch of land. And we did a tour of this museum house and learned some stories of the area.
And we decided that we would walk back rather than take another taxi back to town. Dave had Milo strapped on his back in a carrier and we started what was probably, or three or four mile walk back.
We walked along the ocean on the highway. We weren’t down on the beach or walking on the highway and the sun was shining, but it wasn’t too hot. And after about a half a mile, I noticed that Milo’s eyes were getting heavy. His lids were drooping, and I whispered to Dave, I think he’s going to fall asleep and we kept walking and kind of talking softly.
And between the movement of the cadence of Dave’s walk and our quiet conversation, Milo fell asleep. And it was the first time in several days that he had had an actual more than a few minutes at a time of sleep. And he stayed out for about an hour or two, as we continued our walk back to town.
It was the first time in a couple of days that Dave and I felt like we were able to just enjoy being together. We had this sleeping baby and we were able to look up and look around and enjoy the beauty of the area and laugh about how naive we had been planning this trip together and really having no idea what we were getting into bringing a baby along on our sort of adventure travel trip.
We decided then in that moment that our trips in the future with kids might need to look a little different. We might need to adjust for this new season of life that we were in. I remember being so grateful for having an adventure partner who I could laugh with, who I could see the humor in sort of a tricky situation with.
We knew even in that moment as uncomfortable, sort of disastrous as this trip turned out to be, that it would make a really great story one day and that we would be able to look back on it and laugh.
It was kind of a unique, magical moment understanding that we were learning something really important in the middle of what turned out not to be our very favorite vacation ever, what instead ended up being sort of a turning point in our adventures as a family and the things that we learned as new parents together.
Sometimes the magic of the moment isn’t all beautiful and good. Sometimes it’s understanding you get through the experience that you are having.
15 Lessons From 15 Years Of Marriage
Okay, now I am so, so excited because I have invited Dave to be here as a guest for this episode 155. He’s been a guest a couple other times before we’ll link those in the show notes if you’re curious. I think one was Episode 10. It might’ve been Episode 25 and it might’ve been that long since he’s been on. So I’m thrilled to have him here in my office, recording with me, just for people who love numbers, the synchronicity of numbers:
This is episode number 155. Dave and I were married on 10/05 (October 5), and this is our 15th. Anniversary. So just kind of some fun, meaningful numbers, all coming to play for today’s episode.
Now we are going to share 15 lessons from our 15 years of marriage, and I hope that you enjoy let’s dive into the interview.
Interview with Dave
[Miranda and Dave warming up their voices]:
Mama mama mama mama. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my.
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
My mother may Mary.
One, two, three…testing testing.
Miranda: Here we are. Oh my gosh. Hi honey.
Dave: Hello.
Miranda: My husband, David Anderson is here for today’s show. I’m so excited to be able to share a little bit of time with him in the middle of the day. It’s like a sneaky lunch break date to record this episode.
D: That’s right.
M: Dave and I have been married for 15 years this week. How does it feel, hun?
D: It feels good. It feels quick. And also like has been a long time.
M: Yeah, I felt the same way. Like, I don’t really remember a lot about life before marriage, but also it feels like, wow, that like, how are we this old?
D: Yeah. And I feel like a lot of my memories have blended. I don’t remember, were you around when I have that memory or not? I don’t remember.
M: Yes, of course. Cause I have always been around. I’ve been around. I’ve always been with you.
So we thought it would be fun this whole month. Actually I’m focusing on relationships, partnerships, romantic relationships. And today for our 15th anniversary, I invited Dave to come on the show so we could share together 15 things that we’ve learned through our 15 years of marriage.
So we have just some quick lessons and we’re going to go back and forth and share the lesson and maybe give an example or not depending on what it is and how easy it is for us to think of an example.
And hopefully just share a little bit from the trenches of marriage. I mean, on one hand, 15 years is like, not that long. I feel like it’s really fun thing to celebrate a milestone in our own relationship. And hopefully we can share a little bit of insight that may be helpful for someone listening.
Lesson 1 – Try New Things Together
M: So I’m going to start with my first lesson, which is to try new things together. There’s actually some fun research that talks about how bonding it is for people in all different types of relationships to try new things. I think that that also holds true for our relationships.
There’ve been lots of times when we’ve tried new restaurants together, when we’ve tried a new hobby together, when we’ve both gone and done something as a couple, that was like, we didn’t have any experience with that hobby or whatever it is before that.
And so then we kind of formed this new relationship where we are learning something new together, and sometimes it’s fun and sometimes we both don’t like it. One of us likes it. And the other one doesn’t. Regardless, it’s almost like adding a new perspective and adding sort of some new fuel to our relationship.
Every time that we create these experiences together that we haven’t had separately. So that’s my first one learning things together.
Lesson 2 – It’s About Trust
D: So my first lesson is about trust? My lesson about trust is basically that life is easier when you can trust and be trusted. And I’m generally a pretty private person. It’s been really important for me to feel trusted, to feel that I can trust you with kind of the parts of my life that I’m a little more private about.
And that’s something that you’ve really helped me with. I feel like you are doing a very good job of letting me know that you trust me to do things the way that I feel like they need to be done. And I feel like you are an outstandingly trustworthy person, and I can trust you to handle things the way you feel like you need to handle them.
M: Yeah. Thank you. Trust is an important factor in our relationship. So I’m glad that’s something that we can have.
Lesson 3 – Have Personal Projects And Hobbies
The third tip we have for you is to have some personal projects and hobbies. So I know that my first one was, you know, do these things together. I think it’s also so, so important to create the balance in your relationship where you remain a whole person, a whole individual, that all of your hobbies and all of your projects and all of your work and effort and energy, doesn’t only go into things that pour into their relationship.
You also can have things that you love to do on your own and that your husband or partner is not involved at all, except for, to support and cheer you on and to take care of the kids while you’re gone.
I guess this goes into motherhood too, but to make sure that you’re having some hobbies and projects and things that you do without your kids as well, that you can do those things.
And I think it’s as important for both partners. I have lots of things that I like to do on my own. And I appreciate that you have things that you like to do on your own. Us being able to support each other in our own personal pursuits and be cheerleaders for each other in those things, rather than always being partners in everything is really nice.
I think it gives us both an opportunity to become our best selves. And then we show up as our best selves.
Lesson 4 – Have A Long Term Perspective
This partnership, tip number four, lesson number four will come from Dave. Yes. So I don’t know their lessons or tips, but I don’t know if I have any tips for you, but the, one of the lessons that I learned is that one bad day in your relationship does not mean you have a bad relationship.
And similarly one good day does not mean that you’re done and that you automatically have a good relationship that it’s, you know, it’s a process. And it requires work and it requires some time. And it’s important to have a long-term perspective on the things that are said and the things that are done.
I think one of the most important things for us is just knowing that we’re in this together for the long haul and little bumps and bruises along the way. Don’t take away from that. Right. That makes me think of a couple of times on the show. I’ve had episodes about seasons, and I think that this holds true for relationships as well.
And I had one comment about this, and then it overlapped with Dave’s the idea that, like you said, one bad day, doesn’t equal a bad relationship. Like it could even be a bad week or a bad month, or maybe even a bad couple of years. I look back on the early. When the boys were young and you were in school and I mean, life was tricky.
It was a lot to balance and we didn’t have a bad relationship. I just didn’t see you a lot because you were at school studying or in your first job. Yeah, I guess, I guess so. I mean, it was really hard to remain connected because you were gone so much with school and work for a few years there. And it was years.
I mean, it was like four or five years where. When we finally changed jobs and moved to Texas, we looked at each other again like, oh, hi, there you are. The remember, remember this is like something that we chose and that we, that we, we like spending time together. And I think it’s important to, like you said, take the long perspective and recognize that.
Just because something’s really good. It doesn’t mean that it’s always going to be feeling like that. And just because something is even sometimes really bad that it’s not always going to feel like that. And if you just hang on and, you know, trust each other through it, to lean into your other lesson, that you’ll find that you’re stronger on the other side of it all.
Lesson 5 – Appreciate Rather Than Expect
So good. One. Number five, a lesson that I’ve learned and continue to learn is to appreciate rather than expect. And I know that there will probably be people out there who think, gosh, you have to have some level of expectation because what if your partner just doesn’t do anything, you know, that you want them to do.
And I think that. The likelihood of that is probably really, really low. I think that more often we set these expectations that not only are unrealistic, but that in some cases, Aren’t actually what we truly want. It’s just what we see other people doing or what we, you know, we’re raised with these kind of cultural and social expectations of the different roles and relationships and things like that.
It is always going to feel good to appreciate the good things that are happening in your relationship to appreciate each other. And I think the, the more we can drop those expectations. The better off we’ll feel the better off we’ll be. Right. I mean, it’s easier to have gratitude for things that you appreciate than for things that you expect, right?
D: Yeah, absolutely.
Lesson 6 – Your Partner Is A Whole Person
D: So number six for me is I guess, similar to my previous one about perspective, but also understanding that people are whole people with flaws and contradictions that people can hold good and bad things at the same time. There’s not just a single black and white truth, that one certain action or one certain event isn’t necessarily all good or all bad, and that you have the opportunity to choose, to see the good or the bad in people and in things.
And just understanding that people are working through their life, seeing these conflicts and trying to sort out who they are and understand and giving people the space to work that out is really important. Not only for yourself to understand that you can’t judge people just based on the way that you see things, but also it’s important for your partner to be able to have space, to make mistakes and to learn and grow and become the person that they need to be.
M: Yeah. I mean, it’s so interesting is that seems like such a fundamental idea like that people are whole. And yet a lot of times in relationships, we sort of flattened people into just like what we want to see rather than having kind of the openness to recognize that they’re changing and growing and learning all the time.
And I think that a lot of times parents have the ability to see those things in their children. And we sort of give these allowances for like, oh, they’re making mistakes, they’re growing, they’re learning. And yet, when it comes to each other, we sometimes forget to allow that same space for growing and changing.
And, you know, and I think we do that for ourselves too, that, you know, we just need to have that added level of compassion for all of the learning that we’re all doing.
Lesson 7 – There Is No Manual
M: My next one is similar. Number seven. I have the idea that there isn’t a manual for being a perfect spouse or a perfect partner in a relationship. And the idea of manuals is something that I heard initially from Brooke Castillo on The Life Coach School, where she talks about, you know, sometimes we have these invisible booklets of like guidebooks of what roles people should be filling in our lives. And that’s just not true.
There isn’t an exact right way to be a partner in a relationship and sure there’s some research that will show some things work better than others. I think it’s really important though, to recognize the individuality of each relationship that we’re in and to not think, well, my friend’s husband does these things and mine doesn’t, so he’s not doing it right.
Or you could apply that to so many different situations of what you see on TV or what you see on social media, or even what you’ve invented in your head because of your own upbringing, your own thoughts and beliefs. And I mean, this plays well with the one you just shared too, of like recognizing people’s reality and their humanity, throw away the idea that there is one right way to do it for your partner.
And I think that you’ll find you’re a lot happier because it’s okay that it doesn’t happen that way all the time. And throughout our whole relationship, I’m getting to know you all the time. Like I knew you well, when we decided to get married and fell in love initially, and you’re growing and changing and I’m growing and changing, and I’m getting to know you and getting to know that it’s okay for things to like for us to do it our own way.
Our relationship can look different than anyone else’s and should and will. And not only acknowledging that, but embracing it, I think is really important.
Lesson 8 – Use Nature To Inspire And Rejuvenate
D: So number eight for me is something that I’ve definitely learned from you. And then that’s just an appreciation for the outdoors and its ability to inspire and to improve your life emotions.
I’ve always have enjoyed being outdoors for the activities and the outdoor sports, going on hikes, that type of thing. But just the restorative nature of being outside and seeing nature. I feel like that’s a really important thing for relationship because things like you said, like we’ve talked about before, it’s not always easy to be in a relationship and sometimes you need to have something external that can motivate you, that can lift you up and inspire you and help you become a better person, help you calm down and see have some perspective.
Your appreciation for nature has helped me find that as an outlet for me to be a better person and to kind of restore myself when I feel like I’m a little bit off balance.
M: I love that aspect of our relationship and with our kids too, that’s kind of like a go-to for us and I love it. So I’m glad that you love it too.
D: Thank you for that.
M: You’re welcome. M
Lesson 9 – Lean Into Things That You Love Together
My next one is number nine. So lesson number nine is to lean into things that you love. That you both love. So I feel like I’m going back and forth, like try new things together and then do your own thing, have your own hobbies. And then I’m back to number nine, which is to lean into things that you love together.
It’s always interesting when I talk to my friends about things that they do with their spouses, that things don’t always line up. So it’s great to get to know your partner as they change. To find things that you really love to do together.
And it’s okay if you don’t love all of the same things, but there’s gotta be at least a little overlap. Like I’m sure that there’s something that drew you to each other in the first place, like really explore those things. So for us in our relationship, I’m so grateful that you love food the way you do. You’re a foodie, just like I am. And that has been really fun. And that’s actually something that often I have friends that are like, oh, I wish my husband loved to eat out more. And I’m like, oh, it’s like the thing we love to do together. One of the things we love to do together.
We also really love to travel together. So we’ve made that a high priority in our relationship and with our family. We love comedy. I didn’t know how much you loved comedy until like halfway through. I mean, like, just like maybe six or seven years ago, I was like, what is something you really, really love? And you’re like, I love stand up. Like it was so out of the blue, I was like, You’ve been keeping this from me. Well, guess what, I love comedy too. So it’s so fun that we’ve gone to these comedy shows together and added that in as part of our relationship and the things we do.
We love seeing live music together. We love art. So going to museums or going to like outdoor sculpture gardens or. Really kind of sometimes planning our trips and our outings around something artistic, which is really fun.
So it’s amazing that we have these things that we really love to do together. And I think that serves our relationship. When we think about like, how do we make more time for those things that we both love that we can do together and enjoy together. And it really just kind of enriches the whole thing.
So that’s number nine.
Lesson 10 – Take The Initiative
D: All right. So the number 10 would be me. And so one of the biggest lessons I think I’ve learned from, from you, I mentioned before our appreciation for the outdoors and another one for me is the benefits of getting started and seeing things through. Giving you a metaphor earlier though, I feel like I’m more like a slow cooker, like a Crock-Pot.
And for you, I said you were a microwave.
M: I didn’t really like that though.
D: You got offended by that.
M: Can I be like a really nice frying pan? I’ll be an air fryer.
D: Maybe an instant pot, but I like to think things through be really deliberate and have five different plans for whatever may go wrong. Eventually, you know, I may just give up on it before I even start, because it’s just so exhausting, the preparations. And I’ve learned from you that it’s important to get your foot in the door and get started. Mistakes are gonna happen, and that’s going to be okay. Things are going to go wrong, no matter how much you plan.
And so you might as well get those mistakes out of the way and just get started and then see things through. There’s no one, I think that I’ve learned that better from than you. Just the importance of hard work and seeing things through. I think that’s important while developing yourself and your personality, but also in your relationship. Sometimes it’s important to just get in there and make things happen and not try and wait for the right timing.
M: Definitely. I love it. My little crockpot.
Lesson 11 – Money Matters
M: Lesson number 11, I’m going to share. And I think this is a big one. I’m not going to give it the attention that it deserves right now. I think I’m going to do it another episode about this later on, but money matters in a relationship. This is something that I think a lot of relationships fail or deteriorate because of the inability of a partnership to be on the same page with regard to their finances.
And Dave and I both grew up really differently with regards to money. Our families handled money differently. And so early on in our relationship where we had so little money, we both were coming in with just part-time jobs and trying to figure things out.
I think I’ve shared in a different episode that our first month of marriage Dave did a PowerPoint presentation and our main goal was to have a full-time job and to have enough money to both pay our rent, our $400 rent on our basement apartment, where we first got married and have enough money to also eat like buy groceries.
D: So it was your fault marrying someone that was unemployed.
M: I was eyes wide open walking into this relationship. And I was comfortable with this.
It’s just so interesting though, that from the very beginning we knew money was something we were going to need to talk about. It was something we were going to need to figure out together that very early meeting like that, our little early marriage meeting, like, What are we going to do this month to meet our financial goals of like paying rent and buying groceries.
That sort of has set the tone for what I think has been a really positive aspect of our relationship that we have tried really hard to always be on the same team, working on our financial goals together. And I think in a lot of relationships where things can get a skew is when money matters puts you on opposite sides, pulling against each other, rather than pulling together towards a common.
Just like everything else, financial situations in relationships go up and down and have seasons. And we have gone through all of that high highs and low lows with regards to our finances. Something that we did a couple years ago, that has been a huge blessing in our relationship was hire a financial planner to help us work towards our goals together.
So then it’s not only Dave and myself working on all of the numbers. We also have our financial planner who we meet with every couple months and we check off goals together and we are working on things where, you know, sorting through the details and getting good advice. And don’t you feel like that’s been super helpful?
D: Yeah, definitely. I think it’s good to have someone to bounce ideas off. And also it’s easier for us to be on the same team where we can say, Hey, what about this? What about this? And get kind of the third party perspective.
M: Yeah. So I know that that’s a tricky one for a lot of people. And the lesson that I’ve learned is that it’s way more fun and way easier when you can draw the line with you both on the same side and have all of your financial goals on the other side of something that you’re working towards together, that’s number 11.
Lesson 12 – Learn From Other Relationships
So that brings us to number 12, which is from me.
One of the lessons that I’ve learned from our 15 years of marriage is actually a deep respect for my parents and for their relationship, for their relationship with me and their relationship with each other. And I think that as I have my own struggles and joys in my relationship with you, I’ve learned that my parents aren’t just parents, they’re real people.
They have their struggles and their joys and things that they’re working on and struggles that they have things they need to work out. Things that they’re happy about, successes that they look back on and smile, and they have a full life that I didn’t quite recognize as a child, even, you know, as I was growing up in high school and college, they weren’t quite three-dimensional for me.
But as I have had my own relationship with you and having our children and just seeing them in a three-dimensional way has been really important for me, not only for my relationship with my parents, but also with you understanding that you are also a three-dimensional person and you have your things that you like to do. And like you mentioned, there are things that you need to develop on your own. There are things that we need to develop together, and there are mistakes that you’re going to make, and they’re going to be lots of wonderful successes that you’re going to have. We need to you celebrate those and learn from those and in order for us to be who we need to be.
M: That’s great. I love that one. And the reminder, I mean, to just appreciate our parents and the good that they have taught us. We’re super lucky in that department. Both of us.
Lesson 13 – Look For The Good
M: Number 13 is to think positive thoughts because you’re going to find what you’re looking. I guess think positive thoughts would be kind of like, look for the good look for the good in your partner.
This sounds like a trite thing that you would find like in vinyl lettering on a board of Hobby Lobby that you’d hang in the bathroom, look for the good, there is such power in minding our brains in paying attention to the thoughts that we’re thinking and directing them in the direction that we want them to go.
I guarantee if we all spent half the day looking for what’s wrong with our partners, we will find those things and we’ll be annoyed and grumpy and frustrated where if we spend some intentional focus every day, looking for the things that are going well, looking for the good looking for the things we appreciate looking for those sparkly nuggets.
That is what enticed us into this relationship in the first place and the reasons that we fell in love and the, all of the beautiful things about our partners that are there, that they’re there, they’re in anybody and everybody, you know, we can look for the good in anybody and we will find it.
This matters so much with the person that you’re spending so much time with the person that you’re coming home to at night, the person that you’re waking up to in the morning, I think that I can see in our relationship the times that I’ve had that perspective of looking for the good–it’s all over the place.
And when I don’t, it’s also easy to find things that are wrong with imperfect people, which we all are. It’s just like a really simple, easy thing to say. And also a really extremely powerful thing in practice to look for the good in your partner.
Lesson 14 – Be A Team Player
D: Lesson number 14 for me is the importance of teamwork in a relationship.
I mean, that seems, I mean, that’s like what a relationship is, right? The team. But I feel like the priority of the team over the person is really important. Being together on an issue is more important sometimes than being right. I think we mentioned, you mentioned earlier that pulling in the same direction is much more powerful, of course, than if you’re pulling in opposition.
Particularly when things are hard, it’s really easy to try and put the blame on somebody else, or try to put the blame on yourself. Either way, you’re not going to be in the right mind to solve the problem. When things are hard, the most important thing I think is that you get yourself on the same side and pull together in the same direction.
Just get started. Like I mentioned before, there’s so many benefits to just getting started. It’s important that when you are dealing with the hard problems that you are on the same side together.
M: Yeah. I love that. And even just the visual of like standing next to each other, pulling in the same direction rather than standing in opposition.
And I think that there’s times when you do obviously disagree on things, but is there a way to disagree together? I mean, that sounds silly, but like if you kind of wrap your head around the idea of being okay with the disagreement and coming together in the disagreement to find a mutually beneficial solution, or to figure out who cares more about this particular issue and who can give a little bit. Rather than pulling against each other, pull together to disagree against whatever the disagreement is and work that out and find the solutions.
It’s definitely something that takes practice, especially because I think we create sort of muscle memory in our relationship sometimes. And like an argument can turn into like the go-to argument where you already know how it’s going to end, because you’ve been down this path a thousand times before, Sometimes recognizing those patterns and interrupting them with like: Hey, let’s try something new or let’s do this differently–can be really helpful. I know that we have a few things like that we worked through to the point where like, we’re like this, there’s no sense in doing the same thing, in disagreeing the same way again. So let’s disagree differently and find a new solution and things always end up, you know, we always end up making progress that way.
I think it’s important to think of issues as being a part of us rather than trying to avoid them completely.
D: Yeah. Like in like one word “apart” rather than two words “a part”. The problem is not you. The problem is not me. It’s a problem apart of us. It’s a separate thing that we need to look at and analyze and solve.
M: Exactly. Yeah. We’re the solution. We are the solution to the problem.
Lesson 15 – Get Away Together
M: My final tip today, number 15 is to get away together and this can look a lot of different ways. This can look like getting away together on a date night, which is something that we do once a week and has been immeasurably beneficial to our relationship to set that time aside for each other every week.
It could be getting away together by going on a walk. It could be getting away together on a weekend or an overnight. Every few years we try to do a longer vacation together. Sometimes that looks like a week or a little bit over a week where it’s just us. No kids, no friends, just Dave and myself, and usually a beach.
And we can reconnect in ways that are almost impossible, I would say, when you’re in the throws of your regular life. This is something that obviously requires planning. It requires logistics. It requires babysitting, if you have children. It requires financial investment. And we have found that it is all worth it to put ourselves, put our relationship at one of the centers of our focus for our life.
Making sure that we are making it a priority and making time to get away together and to reconnect emotionally, physically, spiritually, logistically. Sometimes those are great times to do like some planning for the gears, some resets on our goals, our, you know, our hopes and dreams.
When Dave and I got married, we kind of jokingly said, we’re going to give this a trial run a 50 years. We’re going to go 50 years and then we’ll reevaluate and see how we feel about things. And it’s kind of, I mean, obviously it was a little bit of a joke because we hope to have a relationship lasts longer than that.
There’s something kind of nice though about the idea that we’re not locked into this. It isn’t something we have to do. This is something we choose. This is something that we get to experiment with and that can grow and change with us as we grow and change. There’s something kind of relieving about that.
These opportunities to get away together are opportunities to, I think, kind of refocus, reconnect and rekindle that relationship that drew us together in the first place. I think it’s been a really good practice.
D: I think back on times where maybe we’ve had some disagreements or we’ve had some hard times. I do recall looking forward to that Saturday where I just can’t wait until we get to Saturday. We can just kind of have some alone time together, work this out, sort of like iron things out and just get back to our normal and always has worked out that way.
M: Yeah. There’s kind of that saying that says it’s hard to hate people up close or it’s hard to not like people up close.
I think that is equally true in a relationship where you’ve already decided you love each other. And somehow just through the passing of children and, you know, mealtime and household duties and work and stress and all this stuff that like life puts on your plate, creating that space to be together and to be alone together, that time up close, is when you get to have intimate conversations and intimate physical relationships and hold hands again. And not to be interrupted very two seconds. There’s something really connective about that.
So I think that’s an important one. And that’s the one we’re going to leave you with today.
And we are looking forward to getting away together next month and I can’t wait. And if anyone wants to come babysit, our kids, let us know. Cause we don’t have a babysitter yet details. We’ll figure it out. So. Well, thank you, honey. So much for being here on the show today and sharing your insights about relationships with.
D: Thank you for having me on and thank you for helping me learn all of these important lessons.
M: Of course.
Conclusion
And I want to thank you for tuning in and listening to Episode 155 of Live Free Creative podcast. I appreciate you being here so much. If you are not yet a subscriber, hit that button in your favorite podcast-listening app, and you will get the episodes as they release every single week on Thursdays at 6:00 AM Eastern time.
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Thank you again so much for being here. I will chat with you next week. It’s going to be a juicy one. If you’re interested in relationships, you’re going to want to tune in same time, same place. I’ll catch you then. Bye-bye.
