0:00:00 – Speaker 1
Jay Farner here, ceo of Rocket Mortgage. Making the right financial decisions has never been more important when you turn to Rocket Mortgage. We can help guide you to those right decisions now when they matter most. Mortgage rates are near historic lows, so now is a great time to call 8338 Rocket and if you need some extra money, a cash out refinance could give you that financial boost you’re looking for. Call today at 8338 Rocket or go to rocketmortgagecom to learn more.
0:00:26 – Speaker 2
Call for cost information and conditions, equal housing, lender license and all 50 states and MLS number 3030. nextTalk, sponsored by NextTalkorg, contains content of a mature nature. Parental guidance is advised.
0:00:43 – Speaker 3
Welcome to nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Cam every Saturday at 10 am on AM 630,. The word nextTalk Radio is brought to you by nextTalk, a non-profit organization keeping kids safe online through cyber parenting and open communication. Find resources, video and subscribe to our weekly podcast at NextTalkorg. Are you ready for the nextTalk, you guys? I’m so excited today because, as you know, kim and I have been talking about looking in the mirror and our last show was about open communication in marriage. Well, I have a special guest in the studio today, and it’s my husband, matt. Thank you for being here, hun.
0:01:23 – Speaker 2
It’s going to cost you.
0:01:27 – Speaker 3
I’m going to have dinner and your laundry done tonight. Is that good? Is that good payback?
0:01:31 – Speaker 2
Whatever you say, dear.
0:01:33 – Speaker 3
So, anyway, I am here with him it’s just me and him today and we want to talk about our marriage and what open communication looks like in that. But first, before we get going, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself For our listeners who do not know who you are? Go ahead.
0:01:52 – Speaker 2
So I’m Mandy’s husband. My name is Matt, I work in the secular world. I’m a business guy Not really anything to do with what we’re talking about but I was part of a major experience four years ago that really kicked off a lot of this activity.
0:02:13 – Speaker 3
And we’ve been married for 18 years. For those of you who don’t know, we have two kids. Let me just repeat that A 13-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy. And you know people used to joke with us Matt and Mandy majors, the M names. Do you remember that? Like, yeah, we’re not going to name our kid any M names? We didn’t do that.
0:02:32 – Speaker 2
Yeah, no, I, I that, yeah, I that never made sense to me.
0:02:38 – Speaker 3
He’s not one of those, One of the conditions that Matt had. When I asked him if he wanted to be on the show, he immediately said no, I don’t do this stuff.
0:02:49 – Speaker 2
I’d rather be at home.
0:02:51 – Speaker 3
Okay, and then I explained to him hun, every time I speak, every time I meet women, they always say where’s your husband? Like, my husband wants to hear from your husband, and the dads will come up to me at our workshops and say you know where’s the dad? Voice on this. And I was explaining this to him and and I it was really important for me not to nag him into being on the radio show you still nag me.
No, no, I refrained, I totally refrained. So one day he came to me and he said I’ll do it for nextTalk. And I said you’re not doing it for me? And he said no, isn’t that right.
0:03:27 – Speaker 2
Well, honesty is one of the cornerstones of our marriage. So, yeah, why stop?
0:03:32 – Speaker 3
So the one condition that I asked him when I asked him to be on the radio show was he said I want the name of the show to be telling her things she doesn’t want to hear. So that’s going to be the title of our show. I’ve given him that and I told him he could have the title. Is there anything you want to say about that? I see you smiling.
0:03:50 – Speaker 2
I better not, I better not. We’re three minutes into this thing. I got to make it 23 more 20, something more minutes.
0:03:56 – Speaker 3
In all seriousness, though, you know I wanted to talk about Matt. One of the things that women asked me the most is how did you get your husband on board with this whole talking about everything and this open communication? I get asked this all the time, and so I really wanted to tackle it the first half of the show and kind of say how we got here, because y’all know my story. I mean, four years ago my kid was told about a pornographic act. She didn’t have a phone, she was in fourth grade and it really shook me to my core and was a light bulb moment for me. And God took me on this journey and I’ve talked about that in previous shows.
I got bitter, we got mad at the world, we wanted to bubble wrap and then we moved past and then I had to realize, oh my gosh, it’s about open communication due to Ronyme 6, 6 and 7. You know, talk to your kids when you’re in the car, when you’re on the go, when you’re going to bed, when you’re getting up, when you’re when you’re at home. And then I just became so passionate about we got to talk about all these things, honey. We got to talk. We got to talk to our kids. We got to talk to each other, we got to figure out how we feel about these things, and when I became so passionate about it, it wasn’t met with the same passion from your side of the marriage. Is that an understatement?
0:05:08 – Speaker 2
or you got passionate, I got pissed off. Oh, I don’t know if I can say that word. I didn’t say that Okay.
I don’t know All right. So I got pissed off and said you know, I’m tired of this. And back when I was younger, someone’s bullying you or messing with you or you know something, something happened and you had you were able to take control of it. You know you would be able to punch the bully in the face or you know, whatever it, whatever it took. But now you’ve got these. You’ve got these people that you know across the world, across the city, whatever it is. They’re, they’re reaching into your kids, lives in the home. And I got to a point where at first I didn’t understand it, because I don’t I’m not a big social media guy anyway so I didn’t understand this whole thing of how our children are being attacked, and right under our very noses. And so I really went through this with Mandy and saw her passion and her recognition, and once I really took a minute to understand that the people are stealing our, stealing our children out from underneath us. I had to take some action. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t sit by.
0:06:12 – Speaker 3
Yeah, it was funny because at first you thought I was being a little over sensitive, like a little over dramatic, because I guess I’ve had that tendency before I think I called it an emotional wreck. Oh yeah, yeah, that’s the thing we do an EW sign above our foreheads when we’re either one of us are being an emotional wreck and I will say that I get three, three letters on the right hand turned sideways.
0:06:35 – Speaker 2
Three fingers turned sideways to make the E. Yeah. And then the on the right hand, the left hand, three fingers upward to make the W emotional wreck, the forehead emotional wreck.
0:06:44 – Speaker 3
It’s our sign to like step back. You’re. You’re kind of crazy right now. I need you to step back and process for a moment. But you really thought I was an emotional wreck at first, but I think through.
I want to talk to our listeners about how that process happened, like how you really got on board, because I think there were some things I did well and there were some things that I did not do well, and maybe that can help. You know husbands and wives that are trying to figure this out. If one of them is really like we got to talk about all this stuff and the other one’s like no, I don’t think we need to talk about that in elementary school, and so you know, what we don’t want to do is create this division in a marriage or this tension because one person wants to talk to their kids about all this stuff and one does not. It needs to be a united front going in with the kids. One of the things I mean, I think one of the things you told me was you know I would share statistics with you and share stories, and that helped, I think.
0:07:39 – Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean so for us, you know, this is usually a conversation that occur. It would occur near the end of the night and I had very limited bandwidth at that point. Anyway, Long day, two hours of commuting it’s again a long day at work. Get home, you know, play with the kids, and so by the time we would have the opportunity to talk for a few minutes. Um, the last thing I wanted was you trying to tell me how to live my life. Maybe I’m not supposed to say that either.
0:08:11 – Speaker 3
No, no, because this is a good point. There were a lot of times that I would really want to. I hate the word nag, but we’re going to use it because I’m. It’s my default sometimes, and it shouldn’t be to work in progress.
0:08:23 – Speaker 2
Well, yeah, I mean, we all have challenges.
0:08:25 – Speaker 3
Well, you know, when I get passionate about something and you know I had to refrain a lot because I would really want to say you got to go talk to him about porn, like right now, like it’s time, and I had to refrain from that. You know, one thing that we’ve really learned on this journey is is timing is important.
0:08:42 – Speaker 2
Yeah.
0:08:42 – Speaker 3
Timing is important and I know with Matt. You know, after a long day and he does have a very long commute and traffic, um, a lot of times I will say to him when we’re going to bed hey, I had this conversation with our son. I’d really like to share it with you. Um, let me know when you’re ready to do that.
0:09:01 – Speaker 2
Well, I’m not going to over generalize here, but I I’ll speak for myself. I am, I am not interested in having an open conversation about anything. That is just really too uncomfortable for me. Um, it’s the the, the, the coin, the term open conversation. It sounds like we’re all going to sit around and, you know, drink fruity starbucks drinks and you know, just you know, talk about the latest bachelor and paradise or whatever, whatever.
So I don’t like that, you know. I just. For me, it’s just a matter of, um, look what’s the problem? Well, how are we going to fix the problem? And it happened to be from my perspective as a husband and a father. Um, I need to tackle this thing head on and once again, I think where Mandy really helped me, uh, was simply understanding what’s going on. Things are so much different. I’m 40 something, 40 low 40s and so things are so much different now than they were whenever we were younger. And, realistically, I didn’t quite recognize that until I hear, uh, that my then hold was she 10.
0:10:13 – Speaker 3
Which story were you talking about? The first one, the first one, she was nine, nine, yeah.
0:10:17 – Speaker 2
I mean I, and whenever I seriously. Those kids are in fifth grade, fourth grade.
And then I mean how do like? I don’t want to have to help my daughter pronounce something like this, much less have to talk to her about it, what it means. But the thing is with, with all the technology they have available to them, whether they have a cell phone or not, their access to the internet is is it’s so open that if I don’t tell her then she’s going to Google it, she’s going to ask one of her friends, she’s going to find out, and I would much rather have the opportunity to share with her particularly what God wants for her and for what these things mean and how people have distorted these things.
I don’t want somebody else doing that.
0:11:04 – Speaker 3
You know, we say it all the time. The world is speaking loudly to our kids. So if we don’t talk early and often we’re our voices lost in their foundational truth.
0:11:13 – Speaker 2
Yeah, but but listen for them, for the moms, for the wives that are out there that are listening to this. Um, if, if, if you’re going to like constantly harass your husband and constantly nag him because you’ve got a passion and he’s not yet pissed off at what’s going on, please understand that it. That’s really not going to work.
0:11:33 – Speaker 3
I mean, it doesn’t work for anything. Walls are going to go. What you cannot nag your husband into conversation about anything you cannot we don’t want to have open conversations.
0:11:42 – Speaker 2
We really don’t. We would rather grunt. Yeah, I mean, in most cases I want a yes or a no or a, you know, just just, you know I, I, at the end of the day, I’m just wiped out. Yeah, I mean honestly, I am in and that doesn’t mean I love you less or love the kids less, but um, you’re exhausted.
0:12:02 – Speaker 3
Well, I’m getting older, and so that isn’t hell, yeah, um well, you know, when I, when I often say to you I don’t even know if you realize you do this, but you’re really good at it Like at night, I will say this thing happened today with our kids, like we had this sex talk and I need to talk to you about it, like I need to talk about what they saw, what they heard and what I told them so that we’re all on the same page, right, many times you’ll say, okay, honey, I love you, good night. I got to go to sleep and before you know, I would probably launch into crazy wife and think, oh my gosh, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t love me, he doesn’t.
0:12:34 – Speaker 2
Yeah, and look whenever you did that before, when you would launch into that crazy mom, crazy wife mom. Oh, forget it. Yeah, I’ll smile at you and I give you a kiss on the head, on the forehead, and I’m going. I mean, I’m out.
0:12:46 – Speaker 3
But what you’ve done really well is you do this most times. Now I don’t expect it, because you could be on a call on the way into work, but with your commute time, a lot of times the next morning you know I’ll be dropping the kids off at school and you know what time I do that, and then you’ll call me while you’re in the car and you’ll say okay, let’s talk about this and you’re refreshed and you’re ready to go.
0:13:05 – Speaker 2
Yeah, I need some time to process this stuff too. I mean, you know, this is, this is. I don’t think it’s natural for a lot of men, a lot of men, to be, uh, sit down and say, um, you know, let’s, let’s talk about our feelings right now. Let’s just talk about how we feel about this. Um, you know, and there’s nothing wrong with it for those that can, and um, I don’t mind, and you know I don’t mind a debate or discussion or but, but most of the time it’s just not something that that I do like directly, regularly, and that I feel really good about doing. I need to, I need to think about things and then understand how it applies to our life and um, and, and what I should do more often than not, obviously, is to pray about these things and um, and in many cases, just from my perspective, it’s not my immediate first response, especially whenever it comes with a tone like um, or the look or the nagging. I mean that’s just not going to help. You’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do this.
0:14:11 – Speaker 3
You’ve got to do this.
0:14:12 – Speaker 2
No, it’s not.
0:14:13 – Speaker 3
So what I’m hearing you say is you want to know these things are happening, you want to be involved in the conversations, but it has. You want it presented in a way. Is here’s the problem, what’s the solution? And you want it to be presented in a way that it’s not a bad timing issue. So I’m not when you’re exhausted, I’m in tune to that and I know we need to talk about this at another time.
0:14:34 – Speaker 2
Yeah, and you know it sounds so simple. You know this idea of open communication and you know, oh, it’s simple, Everyone does that. Yeah, Everyone does. A lot of people do it really bad. Yeah, I mean really bad, whether it’s at work or church or school or family. I mean, if you think about it, this idea of communication, a lot of people do it really bad. People just really suck at it. I mean, they just don’t do it well. And I think it’s important for people to understand that a lot of things it boils down to communication, whether you sit, verbally or nonverbally. That’s where the fight can be won or lost, and I don’t mean the fight between you and me, because I always lose those.
0:15:13 – Speaker 3
No, if you’re just now tuning in, this is nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim every Saturday at 10 am on AM 630. The word nextTalk Radio is brought to you by nextTalk, a nonprofit organization keeping kids safe online through cyber parenting and open communication. Find resources, videos and subscribe to our weekly podcast at NextTalkorg. Are you ready for the nextTalk? If you’re just now tuning in? Today, kim is out. She’s not here with us, but I’ve got a special guest, my husband.
He is in the studio with us today and he’s being very, very blunt about this open communication and what it looks like From a dad and husband perspective. We talked about how we moved into the process of him understanding the value of open communication. We talked about how we can’t really nag him into conversation. It has to be a process. He has to be understanding that open communication is the solution to a problem and that’s why it’s important and that’s what has got him on the bandwagon now.
I mean now we have so many benefits because I feel like obviously we’re continuing to learn. This isn’t just oh, we’ve learned it, check off the box. This is like an everyday learning experience. But I mean now you guys, like he had the sex talk with our young son before I even had the chance to talk about it with him. Like he just did it one day. He came home and he’s like, oh, by the way, my son and I we had this conversation in the car and I was like blown away and that was my cue. Like he gets it, like he understands the importance of talking early with our kids.
0:16:46 – Speaker 2
Yeah, you know I see parenting as like a team sport Really do, and I’ve got a role and you’ve got a role, and you know we just both have to play those roles. But it’s that way in our marriage too. I mean, you know you don’t like Mo in the yard, you won’t ever, you know, get out and like, help me in the garage. Well, you do sometimes, but you complain about it.
0:17:07 – Speaker 3
You complain about if I ever ask you to do laundry. I mean, that’s just how we have our system set up and it looks differently for everyone.
0:17:13 – Speaker 2
On that yeah, we have strengths, we have way of different strengths, but I think, when it comes to I think it’s just so and this is what I’m getting it’s so important that we raise our children, because if we don’t, and we don’t take control of this, there’s so many others out there that will, and they’ll do it the way they want it to benefit them not necessarily what you would ultimately want for your children.
0:17:36 – Speaker 3
So let’s move into. You know you wanted to title this show telling her things you don’t want her to hear or she doesn’t want to hear. I think that’s a title that you wanted to do. That was your stipulation of coming on the show this morning. So tell me an example. What are things that are hard to tell me that now that we’ve moved into open communication, you see, my response is different and you’re more willing to talk to me about it now, because you know I don’t have to carve out a special time or I don’t have to. Like you know, of course, timing is still important when you approach me as well. But what are benefits in our marriage?
0:18:11 – Speaker 2
All right. So, like I said, I really see parenting nowadays, with the challenges associated with the cyber world and so many predators out there, as I say it, I see parenting as being very much a team sport. And you know, when you’re on teams basketball, football, whatever it is everyone’s expected to play their role with perfection and to work together. And obviously those that work together, the best will be successful. And so if you’re not prepared to accept what I would like to say, and if I’m not prepared to accept what you would like to say, we’re not really performing at our peak and we’re gonna probably not there’s a chance we won’t be successful. So maybe I don’t know, 10 years ago, if I would have said, hey, babe, looks like you’re having a hard time getting this year’s butt and last year’s jeans that my weekend would have been ruined. I mean, it would have been ruined from every perspective. It would have just been misery.
0:19:17 – Speaker 3
So you didn’t say it.
0:19:18 – Speaker 2
So you kid me, I wouldn’t have even thought it, because if I thought it, you would have somehow recognized it through reading my mind or whatever you do. But honestly now, because you know that even though you might have a hard time getting this year’s butt and last year’s jeans, I still love you. And if anything, most of the time I’m usually not gonna say it quite like that, but if I do say something, it’s sometimes I do it just to get a rise out of you, just because it’s fun.
0:19:51 – Speaker 3
You’ve never said that to me. You may have thought it Now this is how you phrase it to me Like I’ll put on a pair of jeans or something and we’ll get ready to go out and you’ll be like honey, I love you, but those are not flattering for you. Like I want you to put on those jeans. Like you tell me what you think looks good on me in a nice way. You don’t do it demeaning. You’d never have said that to me. You’d never would say that to me?
0:20:15 – Speaker 2
I never would no.
0:20:16 – Speaker 3
You’re too respectful for that.
0:20:18 – Speaker 2
Well, yeah, because that’s the thing I mean. You have to be careful, you have to manage that between respect and open communication. I would say that to you in a joking way.
0:20:27 – Speaker 3
Like I said, just to have some fun. Oh yeah, because you’d want to see me get frustrated and get riled up.
0:20:32 – Speaker 2
But here’s the thing I know what’s important to you and I know what’s really valuable to you and what I want to see you happy and so what I want to do is help in every way I can to make sure that you identify that value. But it’s been really more a matter of give and take. Once again, if you know, if I understand a way that I can tell you something that I want to tell you, even if you’re not going to like it, and you’re open and receptive to hearing it in a way that I mean we just work together. Once again, it’s so much easier. Life is so much easier whenever it’s really clear, when we’ve you know you’ve developed a real clear understanding and we can be honest.
0:21:19 – Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, you know we talked recently about a struggle I’ve been having. This is an ongoing struggle that I’ve had that I recently identified and that was my tone, and so let me tell you how this went down.
0:21:34 – Speaker 2
Not all tone is bad, by the way, some guitars have great tone.
0:21:40 – Speaker 3
I have a distinct tone about me sometimes. You know, I used to be a Yeller and I have nipped that in the bud Like I no longer yell, but now it has transpired into tone. It is transferred into tone, and so let me tell you how this kind of transpired. I went to Matt a couple of weeks ago and I said, hey, one of our kids I’m not going to say which one one of our kids is having some sass. This is what happened and I told him the situation of the scenario and he said honey, I don’t think that’s sass, I think that’s tone. And I’m not trying to be mean, but I think they picked that up from you.
And you said that, you said that pretty good and I can tell you right now, if we had not been on this journey together, crazy wife would have come out because I got defensive in my head. Do you know how much I juggle? Do you know everything going on like it got? I got very defensive but I have learned to stop. Do not say my initial thought and process what you’re telling me, because you weren’t trying to be mean.
0:22:38 – Speaker 2
But remember, we’re starting from a different like base point here. Our base, like, if we’re climbing this mountain, are you know? Our base here is an understanding that we are both Majorly flawed people. I mean that’s there’s. No one is greater than the other, remember it’s. This is parenting, and life’s journey is a team sport, right? So we, we, we focus on Jesus and we, we work work on this together and we do this for each other.
0:23:08 – Speaker 3
I mean, we, we have been recognizing things that we’ve picked up From our past, from our childhood, that you don’t even realize you’re you’re bringing into your marriage and your family.
0:23:18 – Speaker 2
Yes, some of them are good, some of them are bad some of them are good.
0:23:21 – Speaker 3
I mean they could be spinning habits, tone, yelling, addiction, I mean you name it. There’s a lot of different things have bad habits that you can bring in, and we I think we’re really learning right now in this process to Identify what each other is struggling with and kind of hold each other accountable not in a mean way, not in a nagging way. But what I love about Matt is okay. So I took that tone business and I had a. I had a prayer with God a couple days later about it. So I was kind of mad for a little while. So I had to process that and I said, god, if I have tone, I need you to show me.
And that prayer has rocked my life because I have had to apologize to my kids Probably four or five times and that was a couple weeks ago because I see the tone coming out now. Yeah, and what I love that you did, honey, the other day I had to discipline the kids. They weren’t doing what they were said they were gonna do. I had to get gruff with them and Matt pulled me aside and he said honey, you were a disciplinarian, you said what needed to be said, but you didn’t have the sarcastic tone.
Yeah that was awesome.
0:24:24 – Speaker 2
Well, you know what? What kills me is whenever I hear people that have been married for you Know 20, 25, 30, 35 years and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they’re getting a divorce, and I just wonder, when I hear these stories, if they had enough love and respect for one another that they were willing to be honest.
0:24:43 – Speaker 3
Yeah, and not sweep it under the rug.
0:24:44 – Speaker 2
Not sweeping the rug, but be honest. And you know how can we raise children in a world where they’re afraid to be Sincere and honest with one another in a respectful, truly respectful way?
0:24:56 – Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, you know, and this past week we were grabbing lunch at Costco, dinner at Costco, and and we sat down and talked about my tone and how I needed to change, and what was so cool about that was in the Kid started popping up and said I need to work on this, I need to work on this. And as a family, we talked about what things we need to work on.
0:25:16 – Speaker 2
That’s when I found out that cargo shorts are no longer cool.
0:25:21 – Speaker 3
Our teen daughter said dad, you need to get a new wardrobe, like you need to work on this.
0:25:25 – Speaker 2
She said you look like an 80s guy. It’s like, what’s wrong with that?
0:25:31 – Speaker 3
Well, hun, I know this is out of your comfort zone and I appreciate you being here today. I really think that your dad and husband voice is invaluable and just thank you. I know this was totally out of your comfort zone.
0:25:45 – Speaker 2
It was, but I’m really glad there are people listening who recognize the value of this in so many areas, and I just asked for those, those ladies out there Please be patient with your husbands, your boyfriends or whatever it is. Just be patient and Be respectful.
0:26:05 – Speaker 3
Thanks for joining us on nextTalk radio with Mandy and Kim every Saturday at 10 am On a m 6 30. The word nextTalk radio is brought to you by nextTalk, a nonprofit organization Keeping kids safe online through cyber parenting and open communication. Find resources, videos and subscribe to our weekly podcast at nextTalk. Or are you ready for the nextTalk?
0:26:30 – Speaker 1
Jay Farner here, ceo of Rocket Mortgage. Making the right financial decisions has never been more important. When you turn to Rocket Mortgage. We can help guide you to those right decisions now when they matter most. Mortgage rates are near historic lows, so now is a great time to call 833 8 rocket and if you need some extra money, a cash out refinance could give you that Financial boost you’re looking for.
0:26:52 – Speaker 2
Call today at 833 8 rocket, or go to rocket mortgage comm to learn more call for cost information and conditions, equal housing, lender license in all 50 states and MLS number 30 30. You.
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