0:00:05 – Speaker 1
Welcome to nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim Every Saturday at 10 am on AM 630, 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?
0:00:32 – Speaker 2
Today, our show is called From Fighting to Talking. This is Mandy. I’m actually here with my husband, matt. We are in the studio today. We are wrapping up our marriage series. If you’ve been following along, you know that Kim and Charles did two shows, and Matt and I have done two shows, and so we really want to discuss with you today something that really encompasses things that have improved our marriage. We are fighting less, would you say.
0:01:03 – Speaker 3
Yeah, and more sex.
0:01:05 – Speaker 2
Oh my gosh.
0:01:06 – Speaker 3
I mean, more talk equals more sex guys, just FYI.
0:01:13 – Speaker 2
So I’m blushing a little. He’s like high-fiving me here. You know, at nextTalk we believe that open communication is the key. It’s the key to keeping our kids safe online. And if you’ve read my book you know that I say this has to start first between you and God. You have to have honest dialogue with God and kind of come to term with some things, acknowledge some of your past mistakes, realize your baggage, your caring, that sort of thing.
And step two in this whole process is you have to have open communication in your marriage, because if you can’t talk with your spouse about difficult issues, it’s unlikely you’re going to be able to talk to your kids about it. And we’ve seen that in our own marriage. We started working on our marriage first when we realized we weren’t really talking. We had surface talk going on but we weren’t really communicating the true feelings we were having about things and they’re difficult sometimes to hear. But when you’re remaining calm and you’re learning to not respond out of emotion but listen to the person, your relationships are better. And so we’re seeing this in our marriage, we’re seeing this with our kids. And so the show today we want to call from fighting to talking and we want to give you some really practical stories and examples of how we kind of worked this process in our marriage. We’ve been on this journey for four years now and it’s been a blessing, like we are continuing to learn every day the benefits of open communication. You’re just over there saying more sex, right?
0:02:48 – Speaker 3
Well, I mean, that’s certainly a benefit, but there are many more benefits to it as well and it’s not actually it is. nextTalk is about open communication, but it’s communication is not just talking right. So many men, as I’ve mentioned before, are not a big fan of sitting around and just chatting it up with the girls. Some of us, we just would communicate in different ways, and what I found, particularly in the past four years, is that you recognize that and you’ve learned to really be able to communicate with me in ways that I hear better.
0:03:35 – Speaker 2
Make you tick.
0:03:36 – Speaker 3
Yeah.
0:03:37 – Speaker 2
Well, and it’s the other part of that that’s really great, honey. The other part of that is when you’re, when I’m creating an environment where you can really tell me your true feelings, even though some things are hard to hear sometimes. When I’m creating that environment for you, you’re telling me your true feelings. It makes me learn you better, like I get to know you better, I fall deeply more in love with you, and so that helps me communicate on different levels with you, because I know how you tick.
0:04:08 – Speaker 3
Yeah.
0:04:08 – Speaker 2
Like I’m learning more.
0:04:10 – Speaker 3
Look, all guys can see the woman out there that it’s not listening. She’s not listening. She’s not listening to her husband, not listening to her kids, she’s not listening to her employer. It’s really all about her and it’s really sad when you see that and I say woman, I mean there’s men that are equally bad. I mean this is, but from my perspective as a man and as a husband, it’s just a really tough place to be in whenever the person who you’ve chosen to marry and share your life with is simply focused on their own needs and what’s important to them and you can just tell when they just aren’t able, aren’t willing to do the difficult work of listening. Have a 10 hour voice after an Zoom RoTe.
0:05:04 – Speaker 2
IAt that. Well, and that kind of goes back to our submission show. You know, if you haven’t heard that, you may want to go back and hearing it. But just submitting to God and being humble enough to listen to the people around you that you love the most. Let me set this up for you what I mean, because you may be out there thinking, okay, what do you mean by like really talking? And I want to kind of give you a story. This happened actually, I think, last week. This was a very recent story. So Matt has a really long commute for his job. He’s a business guy, he’s not a pastor, he doesn’t work in ministry. He has a long commute and it’s sometimes an hour or more each way, so he has a lot of time in the car. He loves listening to podcasts he loved Dave Ramsey podcast and Rick Warren and all kinds of great podcasts that he listens to. But also we use that time sometimes to talk.
0:05:59 – Speaker 3
I also spent a lot of time listening to Poison White Snake ACDC, growing my hair out long. No.
0:06:09 – Speaker 2
You couldn’t grow your hair out long, even if you wanted to. You’re losing hair, babe, that’s true. You’re losing hair and it’s turning gray.
0:06:16 – Speaker 3
Well, but I’m finding the hair that I lose from my head. It’s growing on my back.
0:06:20 – Speaker 2
Yeah, gross, that’s really gross, Okay. So this one day in particular he called and a lot of times we do talk in the car, we get caught up on each other’s day because once he gets home, the kids tackle him. I mean, even though we have a teen and a tween in our house, they still tackle dad. He’s still the big play toy. I love it. So we talk about each other’s day, we get kind of I don’t know the how are you, how are things, what’s going on? Out of the way he gets home, he can focus on the kids and we can have dinner or whatever.
This particular day he called me and normally he always asked about my day first. That is normal operating procedure for him when he calls me on his way home. This was different. He had tone and he said I’ve had an awful day. I just need you to know. I need this to be a restful night and I need it to be stress free and I’ve had a horrible day.
And he went into some details about what was going on to kind of make me understand. Okay, this is what happened. I get it. You need a drama free, kind of. Don’t bring up any big issues tonight. I need to rest, kind of thing. It was kind of his heads up for me. Now that’s fine, that’s great. I’m glad that he was able to tell me that so that I knew he was very stressed.
Here’s the thing I had had a horrible day and I was waiting for the moment when he was going to call me and say how was your day? So I could literally break down and he could be my rock, as he always is. And when I realized he started this phone call like this, I realized that was not going to happen, like I couldn’t really talk about my day. Okay, so let me tell you, old Mandy, before I realized the value of open communication, here’s what I would have done. I would have said, okay, I’ll have dinner ready and we’ll have a quiet night, and I’m sorry, you had a bad day. Old Mandy would have done that. I would have shielded him, I would have. And then what would have happened? You tell me if I’m right or wrong. You say, old Mandy you mean.
Before nextTalk, before I realized the value of open communication, old Mandy. You know, seven years ago, mandy, I would have shielded him and then he would have gotten home. I would have been standoffish and I would have yelled at him for something stupid, not because he had had a bad day, but because I didn’t get to tell him about my day. It would have been on.
0:08:55 – Speaker 3
It would have been.
0:08:56 – Speaker 2
We would have fought.
0:08:57 – Speaker 3
Yeah, oh yeah.
0:08:59 – Speaker 2
Okay. So, new Mandy, realizing this journey that I’ve been on, I realized the value of open communication, I realized the value of honesty. He told me on the phone that he had had a horrible day and I, literally, there was a moment I was laying on my bed talking to him and I thought, okay, I have a choice here. I can shut down right now and we’re going to end up fighting because my tone is going to come out and my attitude, because I’m mad that I can’t be honest with him, or I can just be honest with him, so we can both recognize that we’re both kind of on edge right now.
And y’all, I made a choice and so I said to him I said, babe, I get it, you’ve had a bad day. I need you to understand something. I have had a horrible day and I started tearing up and I couldn’t really get through it and I told him some stuff that was going on. I mean, there was drama and there was issues and there was all this stuff that we needed to deal with with personal stuff that I was going through and also some you know nextTalk stuff that needed to be resolved, that I just was trying to figure out.
0:10:06 – Speaker 3
Can I just step in for a second here for the men that are listening, and your wife or girlfriend, whatever the case, tells you this when they, when they, when you hear this, no matter what happened in this day I mean, you could have just lost the World Series it doesn’t really matter. When you hear her say this to you. She loves you and respects you enough to be telling you that this is a very significant issue and you need to understand. No matter what happens today, this is the most important moment of the day. This is it is not all about you, and so it’s time for you to open your ears and shut your mouth, and it’s time for you to listen to her.
0:10:53 – Speaker 2
And ladies. I knew he had had a stressful day and so I was brief. I told him what I said, but probably under three minutes, because I knew if I went into a 20 minute spiel he’d be gone, like he’s. He already was stressed out, so I kept it brief, but I gave him enough information that he knew I had also had a bad day. And then I ended it with this I said I’m not telling you to fix this. We don’t have to talk about this anymore. I get it. We just need to rest tonight because we both had stressful days. But I’m telling you this because I know our pattern If I don’t tell you, I’m going to blow up at you because I’m mad that I can’t be honest, and then we’re going to end up fighting tonight. I don’t want to end up causing more stress for our family. And what was so cool is when I said it, he stopped and he was like oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had a bad day too. I’m really sorry. And then we had a beautiful night.
0:11:55 – Speaker 3
Well, that’s kind of cheesy, I don’t know.
0:11:57 – Speaker 2
I call it beautiful but well, I mean we had a peaceful night, we had a drama free night.
0:12:02 – Speaker 3
Yes, we certainly did.
0:12:03 – Speaker 2
You didn’t talk about your stress anymore. I didn’t talk about my stress anymore. We decided we’re going to table everything and we’re just going to enjoy our family and we’re going to have a peaceful, restful night, drama free, and then we’ll get up and we’ll tackle our issues the next day.
0:12:19 – Speaker 3
Yeah, it didn’t take that much effort to do that.
0:12:24 – Speaker 2
It’s so simple. How did we miss it all these years? Like it is so simple, I feel like Satan tells us we can’t be honest with our spouses. You know, like what if Matt had had a horrible day at work and chosen just not to tell me? But he came through the door and he was just barking out orders and being mad about things and I would be like what is wrong with you? These are just simple concepts that we’ve missed all these years and it is making a world of difference in our marriage.
Yeah, um, you know you need to be able to identify your cycles, and what I mean by that is through this, just this one little incident that happened last week, we were able to identify that was our cycle. Like I would try and protect Matt, so when, when I had a lot going on and I thought I can’t put any more on his plate, I would not tell him things. And it wasn’t like I was keeping secrets, it was like, oh, now’s not the time, or, or I can’t. But I’ve learned, you know, I can give him a two minute overview of the things I’m dealing with, just so he knows I’m a little stressed, so if I’m on edge tonight or if I’m snippy at all like this is why? Can you just give me a little bit more grace?
0:13:39 – Speaker 3
Yeah, and I don’t know if there are other men out there like me, but from this perspective, but whenever she is like snippy or tone, I have tone. Yeah, like condescending.
0:13:53 – Speaker 2
I’ve recognized it. I have condescending tone Like it’s almost like I say are you stupid? But I don’t say that.
0:13:59 – Speaker 3
Right, right. And so I, I internalize that every time she has tone like it could we could be driving and she could be on her phone and she could be something going on there. But if there’s some tone, if there’s anything that’s not positive, I feel like she’s aiming those arrows directly at me.
0:14:19 – Speaker 2
And then you’re kind of like ready to rumble. You’re like, oh, it’s on.
0:14:22 – Speaker 3
Yeah, and you get mad at me. Yeah, exactly.
0:14:25 – Speaker 2
Yeah, if you’re just now tuning in, this is nextTalk Radio at 10 am on AM 630,. The word nextTalk Radio is listener supported. Everything we do at our nonprofit to keep kids safe online and strengthen families through open communication is accomplished through your donations. Thank you for your generosity To support our organization. Go to wwwnextTalk.org and click on. Give you know before before. If you just now tuning in, I’m in the studio today. This is Mandy and I have my husband Matt. We are wrapping up our four week marriage series and we are talking. Our show today is called from fighting to talking.
0:15:08 – Speaker 3
And I thought I was just going to drive you here and then all of a sudden you pulled me out 12 stories up in this building and now I’m stuck in here.
0:15:14 – Speaker 2
Stop it, okay, tell them you are joking. Yeah, I’m joking. You can’t force your husbands to do things like this, ladies. I’m just playing around. He said he didn’t say yes to me for the radio show. On the last show I shared, he did not say yes to me. He said I’m not doing it for you, mandy, I’m doing it for nextTalk, and so I use that as an example, because when I see my husband submitting to God and doing things that he’s not comfortable with to serve God, I’m okay submitting to him, because I know his heart is bright and I know his heart is seeking God. You know, today, though, we’re talking about we just talked about how we’re recognizing the cycles in our marriage, the buttons that we push with each other, patterns, and you need to recognize this, and why I say that is because a lot of times, they’re simple little things, but they create big fights.
0:16:06 – Speaker 3
Yeah, let me just really quickly ask this question of the ladies that are listening. I would ask you maybe you don’t want to actually respond, definitely not out loud but I would just ask you this to ask yourself sincerely do you really respect your husband? I mean, I’m being really serious, like and of course you may have to ask yourself that at different times of the day, because there are times that I don’t want to ask Mandy that, but in general let’s just generalize it Do you truly respect your husband? Like, do you feel like your husband is the most respectful person in your life? If the answer is no, there’s a really good chance that he senses that in the way you look at him, the way you speak to him and basically every possible form of communication you can possibly provide.
0:17:08 – Speaker 2
Well, and since you’re talking to the ladies, you know I’ll talk to the men Men. Do you love and cherish your wife as your own? Do you love them like you love yourself? Do you love your wife as much as you love yourself? Because that is your commandment and this whole thing about this equal responsibility in a marriage, it’s important.
One thing that we say to people when we speak sometimes is to create some kind of open communication of your marriage. If you’re listening and you’re like I don’t even know where to start, here’s a question that you can go to your spouse and say If you’re a husband, you can say what can I do better as a husband? If you’re a wife, what can I do better as a wife? Now hear me on this when you ask that question, you cannot get defensive with the answer. So you know, when I ask Matt that you know we have to talk about my tone. I do have a tone that I let my guard down with the people I love the most and I sometimes don’t realize that this tone and the snippiness is coming out.
0:18:19 – Speaker 3
It really fires me up when you do it, by the way.
0:18:21 – Speaker 2
It does, and we have noticed it in the last, what I would say, six months.
0:18:25 – Speaker 3
Well, it’s because our middle schooler helped us notice.
0:18:29 – Speaker 2
Yeah that I have a blog post about that at mandymajorscom, but it was it was called something about like my, my teen’s attitude is my fault because I saw my, my teen, having the tone that I did and I had this realization one day oh my gosh, I have tone. And I’ll never forget when I went to Matt and I told him that I was like I have tone and he he kind of smiled at me and he was like you do.
0:18:53 – Speaker 3
But the interesting thing is, like five years ago kind of before we started going entering this journey of open communication, there’s no chance in the world. I would have possibly even agreed with you, much less brought up the idea that you had tone.
0:19:12 – Speaker 2
Why, why would you not even agree with him?
0:19:14 – Speaker 3
The backlash.
0:19:15 – Speaker 2
Because I would fight with you oh it would the backlash.
0:19:18 – Speaker 3
I mean, yeah, it would be horrible.
0:19:20 – Speaker 2
I would give you the silent treatment.
0:19:23 – Speaker 3
It’s worse than that. I mean yeah, I’m not gonna say but the yeah, it was not worth it, like I calculated in my mind. Is it worth sharing this with her? Like what, what? What will be the repercussions of if I say this to her? And I even knew there were times when I had to pick the time and the day if I wanted to say something that was potentially divisive. And now I’m not saying that like I can weaken or perfect now I am not gonna wake you up in the or first thing in the morning when you were a horrible grouch.
Not a morning person. I’m not gonna, you know, I’m not gonna come between you and your sleep. I get that. But what we’ve, what we’ve been able to establish now, is that if I have some, I know that I need to tell her everything that’s going on. That’s how we grow as a married couple, and I reckon she has essentially created a safe place for me to be able to share with her things that she needs to know in order for our marriage to flourish.
0:20:34 – Speaker 2
And if you’re thinking okay, that was pretty good, that was good, I just made that up.
0:20:37 – Speaker 3
I just read that out of your book.
0:20:39 – Speaker 2
Why did Mandy change this much? Like, how did I change this much? Here’s why I’m so passionate about what we do at nextTalk. When my fourth grader four years ago came home and asked me that pornographic question, I realized it was in that moment that I realized I am not talking to the people that I love the most, like something is wrong. I have to step up my game because these kids are seeing so much in their online world They’ve got to feel safe with me. And then, through that process of trying to create that safe place with my daughter to talk about all these things, I realized we weren’t talking in our marriage. Like. This has transformed my life because now I’m able. God showed me, he told me this and this is in my book. He was not going to change my whole family dynamic without requiring me to change. I had to look in the mirror and I had to say how am I contributing to the Surface Talk? We’re not really talking about things.
0:21:42 – Speaker 3
Yeah and ladies, I mean, look, if you’re crazy and you’re going off and you’re just, you’re a hot mess. I just a real good chance your husband’s not gonna be real excited about talking to you about things.
0:21:54 – Speaker 2
And this whole idea of remaining calm, like when I was able to learn. That’s what I had to do with my kids. And then I realized I have to do that with Matt, like he needs to be able to tell me these things, you know. He needs to be able to say to me Mandy, you have attitude right now and this is not working.
0:22:11 – Speaker 3
It’s all you know. I think this brings us to this last point, and that is making your marriage a priority.
0:22:16 – Speaker 2
Yeah. So how do we do that? Like, how have we moved from point A to point B? And, like you said, we’re still growing, like we are still learning this whole thing, but it has changed our lives. A couple just takeaways Make your marriage a priority, ladies, you know Matt’s talking about if you’re a hot mess, if you’re saying yes to everything outside the home, you’re like the volunteer queen, but you don’t have time to go on a date with your husband. That’s a red flag. It’s a red flag.
0:22:45 – Speaker 3
Yeah, and you know, guys, if you’re spending more time sitting in a deer stand or prepping for a fishing trip and that’s like the highlight of your life, I would challenge you to think about your priority and really think how should she feel about that? I mean, I know, when you married her, you know it was a different place, right? We’ve been married almost 20 years now. And so we have evolved as people as well, as our marriage evolved dramatically in that period of time, but it’s being conscientious.
0:23:21 – Speaker 2
The next step talk it out instead of hold it in. See each other’s point of view. You know, recently I used to be really big on to-do list and Matt was able to say to me this is not working for me. I don’t like to do list at all, like I don’t like for you to hand me a to-do list. This is not working, so I let go of the to-do list. The problem is recently, you know, our lives have gotten busier, with me pretty much going back to work with book and nextTalk stuff.
And it happened again. I started, I reverted back to to-do list because time management is a big priority. Now we need to figure this out, and this happened a couple of weeks ago. We were fighting. We were fighting because I was stressed out, you were stressed out, I had my to-do list going again and when we talked it out, guess what we figured out. He felt controlled by the to-do list, like I was like a dictator barking out orders. I felt like he didn’t understand. I am now back at work full time, like I have a full time thing happening between the radio show, everything going on, and I felt like he wasn’t helping around the house enough because now we got to divide the responsibilities.
0:24:27 – Speaker 3
And listen, guys. You don’t have to sit there and knit a sweater with her to make her feel loved. Just listen to her.
0:24:34 – Speaker 2
Yeah, see what makes her.
0:24:35 – Speaker 3
Listen.
0:24:36 – Speaker 2
The other thing is see what makes her tick. You know, matt used to buy me these expensive gifts and while I appreciated them, like I’m just not a material girl Like I like him unloading the dishwasher I like him I still don’t like that. I like him cleaning the house or folding laundry. That’s what makes me tick. And he’s had to learn that. Yeah, yeah, that has been had. And likewise, be a good listener and don’t respond in anger. Pray first about everything. Remember feelings are powerful, but they don’t always represent truth. It is important to take your emotion out of it and listen to your spouse. For our wrap up segment today, let’s remember to prevent fights. You have to be honest with each other To recognize the storm that is brewing, know the pattern and the cycles. Have your guard up.
0:25:28 – Speaker 3
And number three, make your marriage a priority.
0:25:32 – Speaker 1
Thanks for joining us on nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim every Saturday at 10 am 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
