0:00:00 – Speaker 1
nextTalk, sponsored by nextTalk.org, contains content of a mature nature. Parental guidance is advised. Welcome to nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim On AM630, the word. Mandy is the author of Talk and Kim is the director of nextTalk, a non-profit organization helping parents’ cyber parent through open communication. Follow us on Facebook, instagram and Twitter. Find our free video series and subscribe to our weekly podcast at nextTalk.org. Are you ready for the nextTalk?
0:00:38 – Speaker 2
We’re doing a month of marriage series. This is Mandy Majors. Kim is out today, but I have my favorite person in the studio with me today.
0:00:50 – Speaker 3
Cheapest guest too.
0:00:52 – Speaker 2
My husband, matt, is here. Matt, why don’t you introduce yourself? For those who have it, listen to one of your previous shows.
0:01:00 – Speaker 3
Okay, well, my name is Matt and I am Mandy’s husband, also the driver of the vehicle that charters our children wherever they want to go.
0:01:09 – Speaker 2
Uber.
0:01:10 – Speaker 3
Yeah, I am. I am our family’s Uber driver, and so I just I work for a living. I work for a biomedical research firm here in town in San Antonio, texas, and just enjoy living life.
0:01:26 – Speaker 2
We’ve been married almost 20 years. Don’t forget the 20-year anniversary next year, honey, yeah, no, I got it and we’ve got two kids ages 14 and 11. Okay, so why don’t you tell our guests, let’s just do something fun here? What’s something you struggle with?
0:01:43 – Speaker 3
Something I struggle with.
0:01:44 – Speaker 2
Yeah, I kind of put you on the spot here. Don’t say me Okay, like a daily struggle. Yeah, just a daily like oh, this is awful, like something you struggle with.
0:01:55 – Speaker 3
All right. Well, this is maybe not a big deal, but I definitely struggle with my commute to work. It’s tough. I don’t enjoy that at all. It’s an hour an hour and 15 minutes one way. So that’s yeah, it’s just a little thing.
0:02:11 – Speaker 2
I think we can all relate. We have these little annoyances in our life and they affect our marriage, because sometimes it puts you in a really bad mood and I kind of want to get irritated with that. But I also know that you’ve been in the car and you’ve been dealing with traffic and construction and everything that’s going on. So and that’s kind of what our show is about today Kind of learning how to respond differently, and we’ve got a couple of stories we want to share. But I really hope that you’re tuning in to all of this month of marriage.
Kim and I, we really wanted to do this series because we feel like sometimes marriages get neglected during Christmas especially. You know, a lot of times everything is about the kids, getting them where they need to go and everything. But then you add on Christmas and it’s about okay, what are we getting? The kids and their budget, the budget and all of that, and sometimes we get so busy that we neglect our spouse a little bit. So we’re doing all these cool shows I know Kim and Charles are doing ones that’s called what I Should have Said and how to have Fun and Matt and I are going to tackle a couple shows, and today’s show specifically is how to Respond differently. We’ve learned a lot about this in our marriage.
0:03:27 – Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, we have.
0:03:29 – Speaker 2
Okay, so let’s start with a story. Before we got married, we had a defining moment in our relationship and I want to talk about that because how I responded in that moment, how we both responded, was very badly, and we’re learning how not to do that because we don’t want the same outcome that we had in that.
0:03:53 – Speaker 3
So this was about 22, 23 years ago, Okay yeah, so let’s set the stage for them.
0:03:58 – Speaker 2
So I’m a paralegal in a law firm. Matt is working on his degree. Were you taking finals that week? I don’t know what you were doing, it was a high stress kind of time, but we were going. He picked me up for lunch at my law office. Again, this is, we had been engaged. We were not married yet. We were in the details of planning all the wedding out. He picked me up for lunch one day and we were both a little irritable. To begin with, I was stressed out at my job no-transcript. He was stressed out because of school, but we were going to our fall festival. Do you remember that Fall festival? We were in Indiana.
0:04:39 – Speaker 3
This is back in southern Indiana and at the time, every October, there’s this enormous street festival and this is a small town of I don’t know 200,000 people maybe 250 at the time and unfortunately, there’s this street festival for a week’s time and there’s all these, really all the great food and the games and stuff, but really it’s the food that draws the people, and of a town of about 250,000 people, there were probably about 400,000 that were actually there at that time and I don’t have a love for being around a lot of people.
0:05:15 – Speaker 2
That’s another struggle, that you have.
0:05:17 – Speaker 3
You don’t like crowds, I don’t like crowds.
0:05:19 – Speaker 2
You like people, you just don’t like crowds.
0:05:21 – Speaker 3
Well, I really no, I’m not a big fan of people.
0:05:22 – Speaker 2
either we’re an introverted type family.
0:05:25 – Speaker 3
But I definitely don’t like lots of people. Let’s just play it safe on that one. And so we were looking for a place to park. I had corn dogs on my mind.
0:05:35 – Speaker 2
I was thinking funnel cake and diet Coke. You know all the good stuff. And this is like something that I’m telling you. This happens every year in our hometown of Evansville, Indiana, and every year I see the pictures on Facebook and I’m jealous that I’m not there.
0:05:50 – Speaker 3
Yeah, considered actually flying back a couple times.
0:05:53 – Speaker 2
It’s like a big deal in our small hometown and he said there were so many people there because all the people from the surrounding small towns come, even though they’re not from Evansville for this festival.
0:06:03 – Speaker 3
Ok, go ahead. So the best I can remember of this historic event in our relationship. Bottom line was I got really frustrated because I couldn’t find a place to park. All I wanted was a nice corn dog. I mean, I just wanted to eat the corn dog. You were hungry.
0:06:18 – Speaker 2
You were hungry too. I was a little hungry.
0:06:21 – Speaker 3
And you were a little irritable. If I remember right, I was, so something happened. I don’t know, maybe you have better memory at the details of this, but what I remember is I got angry. I decided that I couldn’t deal with all this traffic anymore, couldn’t find a parking lot, and I’ll say maybe some of the more creative thoughts that I may have had or words that I may have had at the time, but I basically thought I’m getting out of here, we’re getting out of here, I’m done. I’m done with this, and I kind of snapped.
0:06:53 – Speaker 2
So I remember seeing a parking spot and saying, oh there’s one, like let’s go back there Because I’m trying to help the situation, like I’m like let’s solve the problem, yeah that didn’t help the hangariness of both of us and all the people and the crowds and everything. Matt, when he gets upset he will start aggressively driving, so he won’t.
0:07:19 – Speaker 3
Kind of aggressively doing about anything.
0:07:21 – Speaker 2
He will break faster and you will go forward like a whiplash sort of thing, and so you know when he’s not in a dangerous sense.
0:07:30 – Speaker 3
Kind of like full on NASCAR.
0:07:32 – Speaker 2
No, not like that, but you can just tell he’s jerky with the car movements, and so I could sense him getting very upset. Well, mind you, we had only been dating what a year? A year and a half and so I am telling him to calm down.
0:07:53 – Speaker 3
I once again. That also did not help.
0:07:56 – Speaker 2
I am like you have got to calm down. What is the problem? We are just trying to find a parking space and you are blowing up, and so he’s sitting here in all his anger and I’m like throwing salt on the wounds right now. Which? I didn’t realize I was doing. I was kind of like in my young, naive mind I was trying to point out what was wrong so he could fix it.
0:08:21 – Speaker 3
Yeah well, you were actually backing up a giant dump truck full of salt and really just piling it on these wide open wounds.
0:08:30 – Speaker 2
So what this ended up with was that we left the Fall Festival. We didn’t get to eat. We started screaming at each other as we’re driving down the road and I eventually said pull over right now at this gas station.
0:08:45 – Speaker 3
I went out. I’m getting out of here.
0:08:47 – Speaker 2
I am done Like I am not marrying somebody crazy, angry like you.
0:08:52 – Speaker 3
Yeah, you were a diva.
0:08:53 – Speaker 2
And I got out and I took.
0:08:57 – Speaker 3
I think that either the door is open or the window is down. I can’t remember. All I know was the moment after you stepped out of the car the wedding ring that I had bought.
0:09:08 – Speaker 2
Engagement ring. Engagement ring, rich, I had bought you, which you had bought with your money, because you sold all your stuff that you asked to pay for.
0:09:15 – Speaker 3
And unfortunately I still didn’t have it paid for. That engagement ring came whirling back at my face and I caught the ring, fortunately. But bottom line was you were walking away and the ring had come off the finger and it ended up in my face.
0:09:34 – Speaker 2
I said I am done.
0:09:35 – Speaker 3
And you were done.
0:09:36 – Speaker 2
And he peeled off and left me at the gas station.
0:09:40 – Speaker 3
Well, I mean, at that point, I did what you’d want me to do. Leave you alone.
0:09:43 – Speaker 2
Let’s just remind you, I’m on my lunch hour for work, so I’m feeling like I’m getting ready to get fired also. So all of this is happening, and so now I’m at the gas station. I don’t have a cell phone, because this is before cell phones, so I use a pay phone to call Matt’s grandma, because Matt’s grandma was a unique dynamic in our relationship. She was just one of those ladies.
0:10:13 – Speaker 3
You’re a true teller.
0:10:15 – Speaker 2
She was Well and she thought you could do no wrong, which was just so funny. She always called you the angel, the perfect angel, and our whole joke was I’m trying to reach angel status as well. We just had this fun little joke with her, but in reality she was really good at listening to both of us and then saying y’all need to do this or y’all need to work on that. She was really good about that.
0:10:38 – Speaker 3
Pretty wise.
0:10:39 – Speaker 2
She really was. And so I called her and I was like your grandson just left me at the gas station and I’ll never forget what she said. She said well, honey, what happened? I know him and I know he would not do that. And I said we were fighting over a parking spot and I got mad at him and yelled, and then he got mad at me and now I’m at a gas station and I need somebody to come get me.
0:11:08 – Speaker 3
All right. So it wasn’t about the parking spot, it wasn’t about the corn dog, it wasn’t about any of that. So wrap it up here. What’s the point?
0:11:16 – Speaker 2
So I responded very badly Now.
0:11:20 – Speaker 3
And I did as well.
0:11:21 – Speaker 2
You got angry. There’s no doubt about it. You shouldn’t have been acting the way you were acting and getting angry and jerking the brakes.
0:11:28 – Speaker 3
Nothing to do with you. Unfortunately, you were literally and figuratively along for the ride.
0:11:33 – Speaker 2
But I feel like in a marriage, as adults, we all have those moments where we kind of lose it. I call it crazy mom mode, crazy wife mode in my book. We all have those moments where our emotions get the best of us. Anger takes over and I feel like what often happens in marriages, like what happened in ours that day our relationship was instead of recognizing that you were struggling, I made it worse.
Well, yeah, I made it worse Because I didn’t handle. I should have been able to look at you and think he’s struggling right now. He’s frustrated. Let me just have him have a minute.
0:12:14 – Speaker 3
Yeah, well, and I think the reality is that, yeah sure, I was 20-ish at the time, maybe a little younger, so I had some maturity issues. But I mean, I think we can all say safely that no matter how old we get I mean we see it on TV all the time, we see it on social media that people, no matter their age or their level of wisdom and experience, they still have those moments.
0:12:37 – Speaker 2
Yeah, and let’s go back to that day, because your grandma called you.
0:12:43 – Speaker 3
I never did get the corn dog.
0:12:44 – Speaker 2
And you eventually came and picked me up and that car ride back to my workplace was very quiet. Yeah, there was no really talking. We were both really upset and there was no putting back the ring on. We were still broken up and you dropped me off at work and I remember going in and telling my boss like I’ve got to take the rest of the day, like I’m not in a good space, and I didn’t tell him what happened because I was so ashamed and I didn’t even really realize what had just happened really. But I was like I’m not feeling well and I’m not in a good place, I need to leave, and he was fine with it.
But I remember then going straight to Matt’s grandma and like crying and saying oh my gosh, like I broke up with him and I don’t think I meant to. And now he’s mad and she’s like well, one thing about Matthew like when you say something, he expects you to follow through, so he thinks you’re broken up, even if you don’t think you’re broken up. You know I’m thinking we just had a big fight, but in your mind you’re like I got an engagement ring thrown at me, like it’s done.
0:13:43 – Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean to be honest with you. It’s been a while. I don’t remember all the details. What I do know, though, is that that was really a pivotal moment for us. It was kind of like a premarital counseling, like being played out right in front of us.
0:14:00 – Speaker 2
If you’re just now tuning in, this is nextTalk Radio at 2 pm on AM 6 30. The word nextTalk Radio is listener supported. Everything we do at our nonprofit to keep kids safe online and strengthen families is accomplished through your donations To support our organization. Go to nextTalk.org and click on give. So we just kind of shared that breakup story. I think the most amazing thing happened, though, after that. Now it took a couple of days because you were like wallowing and I was wallowing, and it took four or five days. So this did not happen right away. I don’t want to put that out there. Like within two hours we were having setting down, having a very calm conversation. That did not happen.
0:14:44 – Speaker 3
The good thing that I think really did happen initially, though, is we both recognize that we needed to fix something. We recognize something was broken in our relationship, sweep it under the rug and think it’ll get better as he gets older, or whatever. We recognized, we got to, we got to, we got to be honest here.
0:15:01 – Speaker 2
Well, and one of the things that your grandma told us was you’re not going to change each other, so you need to talk this out. And how could it have worked differently? And we really did. And since that time we’ve we’ve I mean we’ve had a lot of fights and arguments. They have never escalated to that point. No, we have never. At that day was the day we said we’re not going to, like, threaten to leave each other, we’re not going to threaten divorce, we’re not going to threaten to walk out. That will never be vocabulary in our language. Like, we’re going to, we’re going to be in it and we’re going to have disagreements, but with the understanding that one of us is not going to leave the other, one kind of thing. That’s right. And I think we got that squared away, that after that conversation, and I think I realized the power of my words, because when I said I’m done, the engagement is off, and took that ring off, like it cut you more deeply than I thought it was going to cut you.
0:15:55 – Speaker 3
Well, I mean having it thrown back in my face. Actually that ring with that kind of was a thanks that was. That helped Really good.
0:16:02 – Speaker 2
OK, so why are we sharing this story? Because something happened this summer and it took us back to the story and it was a really actually cool thing, Even though Matt was really upset in the in the situation. We were on a family road trip.
0:16:17 – Speaker 3
That’s interesting here.
0:16:18 – Speaker 2
Cars and still in the car in the car around a lot of people and let me set this story up for you as well. We Matt does not like road trips. He’s six foot four. It’s uncomfortable for him in the car, so getting him to say yes to a road trip was a big deal Like. At first he was like no, we’re not doing it.
0:16:36 – Speaker 3
Yeah, I have to bring along my friends Tylenol and Ibuprofen.
0:16:40 – Speaker 2
Yes, I mean we have to take a heating pad in the car for him in case, like he is back, starts hurting, like it’s a, it’s a big thing. And but I had told him kind of what I wanted to go see and do. I wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, drive from San Antonio, we went to the Grand Canyon, then we went through Hoover Dam in Vegas and on to California and San Diego and all along the beaches and it was. It was an amazing trip and all the way back.
But I told him everything that I wanted to do and I showed him the budget and I was like, if we fly and rent a car, like we are way over budget. And so that was kind of like the deciding factor. He was like, ok, we could do it all if we drive it within our vacation budget. So we decided to do that and so we were on the road for a long time and we had broken it up and Matt kind of planned out when we were going to drive and he said rules like I can only be in the car eight hours. So that’s it, like we’re not driving more than an eight hour day.
0:17:35 – Speaker 3
But by the time we got from San Antonio to Las Vegas, Nevada, I had pretty much had it.
0:17:42 – Speaker 2
Yeah, well, we had stopped at Grand Canyon too, and our son got sick at Grand Canyon and you had to go lay in the hotel with him. So it was, there was a lot going on. There was a lot going on, but we went through Las Vegas. Now in Las Vegas we had decided we weren’t going to stay, but we wanted to drive through and spend a couple hours there. We had a really cool place that we went to eat for the kids. It was kid friendly, but I don’t think anything prepared Matt for all the things that he would see in Las Fates.
0:18:13 – Speaker 3
Right. Well, once again, lots of people, lots of congestion, high density and lots of things that I really didn’t want my kids to see. Billboards yeah.
0:18:27 – Speaker 2
There was one billboard in particular and it, you know, I’ve seen a lot of stuff on social media with my teen daughter, so it didn’t surprise me, but it was very. I mean, it looked like three naked people and they were all bunched up together. It didn’t imply to threesome, and so there was a thing, and so he was getting really upset because our son, who’s not really on social media yet, he knew that he hadn’t seen those things before and it was frustrating him. And again, you know we’ve been in the car for a while. There’s lots of people. You got kids in the background. I wanna stop and take pictures of this. I wanna do this. So I had a flashback y’all, because guess what happened? Matt started getting a little aggressive with his driving.
0:19:12 – Speaker 3
And I was a little hungry too.
0:19:14 – Speaker 2
You were hungry and he started breaking a little faster than he normally does and the kids were like whoa, dad, whoa, you know. And then so like literally, I look over at him and I’m like this is like the fall festival break-up thing. This is happening right now, except we’re 20 years older. We got kids in the back. Now we got two little people watching us we got bigger guts.
0:19:40 – Speaker 3
A little bit bigger, a little heavier.
0:19:42 – Speaker 2
We got more gray hair.
0:19:44 – Speaker 3
We have gray hair yeah.
0:19:45 – Speaker 2
You’ve got less hair.
0:19:46 – Speaker 3
Less hair, yeah.
0:19:48 – Speaker 2
And so I’m looking at him and I’m literally flashing back.
0:19:51 – Speaker 3
Okay, but wait, the result wasn’t the same though.
0:19:55 – Speaker 2
Ladies, in this moment let me tell you something. As I looked at this loving man that I love and we’ve done life with for 20 years, I wanted to look at him and say I need you to get it together. Like you’re acting like you did at the fall festival, and you had the wrong response, like I wanted to say all of that to him. It was going through my mind. Here’s what I need you to hear. Sometimes we don’t need to speak those thoughts if they’re negative. Okay, I recognize.
In that moment I remember we were at a stoplight getting ready to turn into the Bellagio and I looked at him and I wanted to say all of this stuff. And you know what I said. Instead, I grabbed his knee, because I know he loves when I touch him, like on his arm or his leg. I know that calms him down. And I said to him I know you’re frustrating. Once we get parked, I’m gonna take the kids and we’ll go sightseeing for like 10 minutes and I want you to find a bench and you people watch and you just relax or you can sit in the car Like I don’t need you to do anything and we’re gonna be here 30 minutes sightseeing and then we’re gonna get on the road.
Now, in that moment he didn’t hear me because he was upset and he was frustrated and he wanted to get parked. He didn’t respond to me, he didn’t say anything Like he wasn’t like oh, I’m so glad you’re responding Nothing, I got nothing, okay. But 10 minutes later we’re in the Bellagio and I can see his like. I can see his like blood pressure rising in his face and when I grabbed his hand and I said it again, he heard me. He heard me in that moment.
0:21:40 – Speaker 3
Yeah, it was pretty amazing.
0:21:42 – Speaker 2
You heard me and you looked at me and you were like you know what? I’m fine, I’m going to stay with you guys. I want to stay with you guys, I’m okay, and it was like a moment.
0:21:53 – Speaker 3
Well, I mean, that’s kind of girly.
0:21:54 – Speaker 2
I wouldn’t call it a moment, it was a moment for me, because I didn’t make the situation worse and at the Fall Festival before we were married, I made it worse. Well, okay, so yeah, yeah, I would my reaction.
0:22:06 – Speaker 3
So I would agree. I mean I was ready to drive our family Tahoe right through the water feature, the Bellagio, to get out of there I mean, I was just done.
0:22:12 – Speaker 2
You were done.
0:22:13 – Speaker 3
The really great thing about it was that you knew me well enough and you love me enough that you you really had had worked hard to understand ways to help soften me and to balance me out. And you, you invested in me over the years enough to know how to make me work, how I can, how to kind of take that situation and make it actually work for better rather than for worse.
0:22:48 – Speaker 2
And we share these two stories in detail. I mean, we took most of our time sharing these stories because I think you guys may be able to see your own marriages in these. I, we have come such a long way and after we left a long way to go, we have a long way to go.
But after we left there and we got out of the traffic, I waited until we were out of the traffic and then I could see his blood pressure Like I could just see his body like be, be okay again, like you’re calm. You’re calm, you’re not as tense.
0:23:18 – Speaker 3
I mean it was almost in Nevada California line, but it was, it happened.
0:23:23 – Speaker 2
It just took a while we had like three hours, three or four hours before we got to our hotel in California that night and the kids were tired from the Las Vegas stuff that we had done, so they were sleeping and we talked almost the whole way, almost three hours, about how we have changed so much and how open communication has really changed our family and how communicating with each other and being able to say listen, I am at my end right now, like I’m done and I need you to not try to fix it. I need you to not try to, you know, make it better or tell me what I’m doing wrong, like I need you to just give me a minute.
0:24:01 – Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, being married doesn’t mean that your job is to fix the other person. And I think so many times that we see that happen with other couples, where they think that they see something in their spouse they don’t like and they think it’s their job to fix it, and I don’t think that’s good. I think we’re supposed to love each other through the stuff.
0:24:21 – Speaker 2
You know what I mean. And that day, when I wanted to say all those bad things to you, like get it together and haven’t you learned? Like all those negative, horrible things were running through my mind, but on the flip side of that, all I could hear was God saying to me show him grace, he’s having a minute, like he’s having a fleshly earthly moment, and it’s not on you to point it out to him. He’s going to see it, but you just need to like be nice to him right now, like don’t make the situation worse. And I think it is something that we will apply to our marriage going forward over and over, because we really have learned a lot.
0:24:59 – Speaker 3
Yeah, we did, we applied to our marriage route, we apply it to our children, we apply it to our jobs, we apply it to our neighbors. It’s applicable in just about every way. When we’re dealing with others, learn how to respond differently.
0:25:15 – Speaker 2
If you don’t like the outcome that’s happening, like with our engagement story figure out what you did wrong and fix it. So the next time it happens, you’re prepared and you respond differently and your marriage grows, instead of you end up fighting.
0:25:30 – Speaker 3
Put it in the hard work, make it happen.
0:25:33 – Speaker 1
Thanks for joining us on nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim on AM 630, the Word. You are not alone trying to figure out how to parent in this digital world. We are here with practical solutions to help you. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Find our free video series and podcast at nextTalk.org. Are you ready for the nextTalk?
Transcribed by https://podium.page
