[COVID Crisis Series 17 of 25] Marriage For the Moment

The following is a full transcript of a Facebook Live, where Susie is speaking extemporaneously – she is unscripted and unedited. 

(00:01):

Hey friends, Susie Miller here, and I’m sorry about the technical difficulties, trying to figure all this out. Living on the road. I got to tell you one of the hardest things of living on the road is the lack of internet reliability. So that’s what I want to say there. So today we’re going to chat a little bit about how to Corona-proof your marriage. I have been talking with a lot of folks, leaders influencers, and then just us regular folks. No, all of us are influencers in our own little world, but talking with folks about what to do with respect to the fact that we are home alone, home alone, home altogether. So last night the president made an announcement that we are in for another 30 days and so I’m going to work on, Oh gosh, look at this.

(00:48):

Are you having a Monday morning like me? Anyway, it’s only, I guess it’s noon on the East coast. It’s only nine here and it’s been a crazy busy morning already. What I want to do is I want to pause for a minute and talk about Corona proofing your marriage in a really simple way. One of the first things you can do is do what I call bookend. This time I was training at a church, the other, or for a church to do some online training. Excuse me, I’ve got to get a tissue. The allergies are horrible here. Horrible. So it’s been really like the tree pollens off the charts. Things are crazy. And so I’ve got this runny nose and this cough and every time I cough I look at people and I go, Oh wait, it’s not Corona. It’s just allergies.

(01:28):

Hi Becky. Thanks for joining us this morning. So happy you’re here. Okay. Back up a little bit. So we are now in for 30, at least 32 days. Today’s the 30th, 30th, and the first. And then we start 30 days of April and we are in for 30 days. And I was mentioning I was doing this training for a church the other night. An online marriage happy hour, which was a blast. And we talked about, Hey Bob, good to see you. How are you guys doing? Tell me in the comments, where are you, what’s going on for you? Like, are you tuning in from where I guess is the question? Where are you tuning in from? And I will try to get my camera to work here and all the little details in place. Anyway, I was talking with this church.

(02:09):

Hey Melissa, good to see you too. I’d love to know where you guys are tuning in from and I’m hoping to love Corona proof your marriage is what brought you here. How are you doing? How are you doing? Really? We are now in this place where we are together with our spouses, with our kiddos, with our loved ones for 30 more days or 32 more days. I think I did the math. Yeah, 30 days of April. Plus my family loves the fact that I’m great with people, but not so great with math. Anyway, back to my story. We were talking on this marriage conference about how to Corona proof your marriage. And I thought I would share a little bit about it here and I really do feel like, not to be over spiritual or anything, but God gave me this vision of this idea of marriage in the moment.

(02:51):

What is your marriage in the moment? And so it kind of bookending what’s going on, the stuff before and the stuff after to this, this season. And so I would love to challenge you for the next 30 days to think about how you can create the best possible marriage for the moment. In this time, my daughter teaches math and I have this image in my head. I remember learning about absolute value where there were two lines on either side of a number and nothing about the number could change. And so what I was thinking about when all of this kind of came up was what if we took all the stuff that we were dealing with before it kind of put it in a box. And I’m going to come back to that because we can’t bring all of the junk from the past into this time now because we’re in crisis or in such a hard time.

(03:37):

And that is that’s just an is. And so I was talking with some friends this morning and some other leaders and we were talking about the fact that even the strongest marriages are struggling. We’re just struggling. And so if there were any hard hard parts in your marriage, chinks, places of lousy communication, all of that’s getting really loud. And I shared this story on this marriage conference of how John and I were having a conversation and the detail, I’ll just tell you the story. I had wanted him to wear gloves to the store to be, to be safe cause I’m a high-risk person. When he went to the grocery store and he didn’t wear him and we were wiping down and doing some things that our doctor had shared that would help me to preserve my health and to stay well.

(04:18):

And I got real felt myself getting really, really mad at him and I kind of snapped at him. I was like, you just don’t listen to me. You never listened to me. And you know what folks, whenever we use the words lit, never or always we know we’re in the wrong, wrong, wrong place with our mindset. And so I thought, Oh, there must be some stuff from the past that I need to deal with, so we do need to forgive more. And so I kind of really wasn’t as mad about the issue as all the anger that was coming down on me from this whole time of not feeling in control. Are you feeling out of control of your life? Are you feeling like there’s questions with no answers? And I think, you know, type yes. If you are because I think all of us are feeling, Hey Karen, good to see you.

(05:00):

I think all of us are feeling a lack of control. And so we’re grabbing control from wherever we can get it. And so if you’re feeling a lack of control in any, in your life with this coronavirus yeah. Put yes in the comments. So we all know we’re in this together. But what I realized in that moment was there were so many things that could be talked about that needed to just wait. And so what I talked about is on this marriage conference was this idea of taking some of the junk that you really probably need to deal with at some point, of course, and putting it in either a metaphorical box or if you need to write them down, literally put them in a box and put them on your shelf to let some of the past stuff go. Because you’re going to need all of your margin, all of your energy, all of the grace that you can for your marriage in the moment.

(05:44):

And so looking at how do I want to, who do I want to be now? And what kind of marriage do I want to create now? Hey Steph. Hi sweetie. Good to see you. And this is so true, especially if you’re home with little kids because you’re navigating not just your marriage relationship, but your marriage relationship, your work relationship, and your parenting relationship. All of the same time in literally what I would call a pressure cooker. You know, I have this Instapot and I put my food in and I put the lid on and it cooks really fast and then at the very end you let this pressure off and the steam goes out and it just kind of, I don’t know, let the pressure out of the pots, you can open it up and that image is what we’re all living in.

(06:23):

We’re all living in this pressure cooker. Do you feel that way if you feel that way? Again, let me know in the comments. Yes, pressure cooker city over here, or maybe you’re not feeling that. I have a friend who is loving this time with her kids because her job changed in such a way that she actually can just be with her kids. She’s not having those pressures of work and momming and wifing and house and all the things that come with just regular life plus a crisis. And so one of the things I want to do is ask you what do you most need in this crisis time in your marriage? Like if we bookend your marriage, Hey Sabrina, good to see you. If you bookend your marriage and you go, okay, this is some stuff I really want to deal with, but now it’s not the time because it’s going to just explode all over us, but I’m going to put it in a box and we’ll deal with it later.

(07:10):

So it could be like long-standing issues, you know. Now if one of those is communication, we’re going to talk over the next 30 days about communication skills that are going to help you in your marriage now. But this idea of marriage in the moment, what kind of marriage do I want to create right now? Or do we have the skills to create or the tools to create because this is what we’re living in and it’s going to end. And we’re going to pick up some stuff later. But for right now, if we bring all the past stuff and we’re all future-focused on, Oh what if we don’t get through this it’s going to just be harder. There was a meme that went around last week that I saw about this baby boom in I guess December or nine months from now. And then this divorce boom, and I’m, it just broke my heart.

(07:52):

It broke my heart. Hi Karen. Good to see you. It broke my heart because marriage doesn’t have to be hard all the time. Doesn’t have to be awful. Sometimes it is hard. Sometimes it’s mundane. Sometimes the world’s challenges are our life circumstances or our kiddos put more pressure on our marriage. And suddenly this person who we couldn’t wait to spend the rest of our life with becomes somebody that we’re at odds with all the time. And so what I want to invite you to do for today is think through what three things need to happen for you. And I’m going to use, Hey Karen Lees, I’m going to talk like the woman. Oh, cause I am. Oops, sorry. I hit the wrong thing. Hi Karen. I was trying to wave. What three things do you need? What three things does he need in this time?

(08:37):

Hey Kristin, and you can pop them in the comments below if you want. I have a very high introverted husband and one of the things he needs is some alone time every day, physical alone time, not quite time, but alone time. You know what three things do you need in this season, in this next 30 days that will help you feel more connected to one another, more calm within yourself so that you have the margin and the reserve that’s really going to help you. You know what? Three things. Write them down on posted notes and then pick a time today to talk about what those are so that you can begin to understand what the other person needs. Everybody is stressed in this time. Everybody is worried about something more than they were worried about pre-Corona virus. It might be about a loved one getting sick.

(09:25):

It might be about your income. It might be about what we’re now calling crisis schooling versus homeschooling. It might be about, you know, the quarantine with people that you don’t spend as much time with regularly. I know you’re together all the time, but we’re all stressed and stress causes us to be more angsty and be more snippy, have less reserve, and less patients. And so whatever you need to be able to fill up your cup a little bit so you can give and communicate with this person that you love, even if you don’t like them in the moment. In a more effective way, it’s going to be really important. So like I said, over the next 30 days, we’re going to be talking about this on and off. I’m going to be putting it in some emails. So if you’re not, if we’re not email friends, DM me your email and I’ll add you because on Mondays and Wednesdays, Fridays I usually do a marriage tip.

(10:10):

Tuesdays, Thursdays I do some spiritual stuff to help you with your relationship with God and then always talking about yourself and others because all of those things combined together for us to have great relationships. I am telling you, you do not have to get through this time with your marriage as a casualty. I’m actually praying for all of you and my friends and the people I know that we could get through this marriage in the moment more connected, that God would surprise us with some level of connection, and you know, a deeper foundation in our connection with our spouse. And so what I would invite you to do at this time is write down three needs. What are three things that you need? What are three things that he needs? And then began to look at them and go, how can we help each other have those needs met on a daily, weekly basis so that we are more connected so that we can lean into each other and be a team when it comes to dealing with this crisis or dealing with the parenting or dealing with the homeschooling or just dealing with all this together time and then have a, you know, make a little list over here.

(11:06):

Things are going to let go of or you’re going to wait on so that they don’t come in like this tidal wave of more and more and more. That’s hard. So that is one tip I have for you. Write down your needs and on a post-it note and let your husband do the same or your spouse do the same and talk about them. And here’s how you talk about them. This is the tip you tell them. I need some alone time on a regular basis, on a daily basis to just kind of recharge. This would be an introvert would say this and I need that every day. Can we find a time when the kids or you or the house stuff, whatever can be pushed aside and I can literally sit alone in my room, in my car, on my porch.

(11:50):

Hi Laurie. Good to see you, on my porch and really have time to just recharge alone and then you go like, okay. What I hear you saying is that for 30 to 60 minutes a day you would like some alone time, physical alone time. Okay great. This is how I’m going to meet that need for the extra fruits in the group. It might be I need us to have a chat every day at some point in time because I’m not getting any face to face time with my people and so I need to sit down with you face to face and just share my thoughts and feelings and you don’t have to do anything but smile and nod like I’m not going to require a lot of you. Maybe a few sentence interactions but I need some face-to-face time. You know, internet video is great, but extroverts need that physiological face-to-face time.

(12:32):

And so if you ask your spouse at that, when can we do that? Could it be, you know, can we chat while we’re making dinner together? And then during dinner talk and I can get that cup filled when you begin to talk about your needs, that way the other person can understand exactly what you’re asking for and can actually begin to try to meet them. I think a lot of what we do here when we have miscommunications is we’re not talking about our needs, our expectations, our desires, and then they end up coming out as either demands or just being angry and disappointed and frustrated and nobody likes feeling that way any day of the week, let alone when we’re together all the time. So that’s my tip for you today. To communicate, pick three needs, communicate your needs to one another and then have this conversation about what kind of marriage do we want to build in this moment for this time.

(13:18):

So I hope that helps you. If you have specific things you want me to cover in the next few days, I’ll be here every day at nine Pacific time, 12 Eastern time, 11 central to talk about these things. I’m going to have some guests on later this week to talk about some family stuff. I’m here to help support you through this time. PM me, message me, email me, and we will connect and be able to give you some tools and skills. And a lot of it’s just going to come from my clients and my work in this field. But also, you know, we live in 300 square feet. We’ve been doing this for going on three years and there’s times when we get on each other’s very last nerve too. And some of the skills that I’m sharing with you are the things that have kept us sane and kept us connected in this season of travel and living on the road. So I hope that today you find the time to write down through your needs. Ask your spouse for three of their needs and have a conversation about how to stay connected in creating this marriage of the moment. Thanks for joining me today and I’ll see you tomorrow.